Van Huyssteen J.W. (editor) Encyclopedia of Science and Religion

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FAITH

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existence of God and that miracles, though possi-

ble in principle, were never actually believable be-

cause they were, by definition, violations of what

is normal. Thus, he argued, one should always

be skeptical about miracles and reports about mir-

acles.

Although Christians, on the Augustinian un-

derstanding, certainly confessed numerous objec-

tive beliefs about God, it was the inner virtue of

trust that was paramount; trust was always prior to

belief, and always linked to it. For Locke and

Hume and the philosophical tradition after them,

however, the relation between outer confession

and inner trust is reversed: One ought not to give

one’s assent to God until the evidence dictates it.

Even then, faith should be proportioned to the de-

gree of certitude possessed by the evidence.

Whether faith that is formed by certain or even

highly probable chains of reason is actually faith is,

of course, disputable, for there is no special per-

sonal virtue in committing oneself this way. Nei-

ther is there anything to be discovered by faith

since the assent depends entirely on external evi-

dence, accessible in principle to anyone who does

not have faith.

On this account, then, faith and science would

be comparable. Both are seen as explanations, and

both depend on comparable sorts of evidence, giv-

ing answers to the same sort of inquiries. For ex-

ample, religion and God might be considered ex-

planations upon inquiry by early human ancestors

into “how we got here.” If primitive people were

concerned by human and cosmic contingency and

felt the need to explain it, so too are modern peo-

ple, but they have much higher standards, such as

the ones that Locke and Hume proposed. Or so

the argument goes.

However, neither Jews nor early Christians ac-

tually seemed much given to this sort of specula-

tion about cosmic origins. Rather, they conceived

of their relations with God in much more personal

categories. Since their relations with God were per-

sonlike, they required personal sorts of concepts

for discussing matters about God, and such con-

cepts require certain personal virtues, such as

openness, loyalty, truthfulness, and love. These

factors are central in the Augustinian definition of

faith, where what is believed is important, but

what is more important is the inner, personal na-

ture of faith. In Christianity this inner aspect of

faith was never meant to be static; faith was con-

sidered to develop and transform the believer

through the exercise of the personal virtues. Ac-

cording to the biblical witness, this is a transfor-

mation whereby a person in faith is “in Christ” and

Christ is in the believer. Faith is thus theologically

never a set of beliefs simpliciter about God and

Jesus Christ; it is the very means by which God

dwells in the lives of the faithful. It is important to

recognize that much of what is believed about

God, as in the analogous case of believing things

about other human beings, can only be discerned

by those whose developing life in faith equips

them with the proper sensibilities. These sensibili-

ties rarely include the epistemic distance and

methodological indifference that scientific inquiry

requires. These sensibilities require the thinker to

put his or her own thoughts into question.

A holistic approach to faith

To approach faith in this way can cause one to

reconceive many (but not all) of the problems

commonly thought to exist between science and

religion. If the heart of faith is a personal openness

and an ongoing moral and spiritual transformation

of the thinker, then there is a certain shift in the

weight given to faith’s “what is believed” when one

considers the relations between science and reli-

gion. To be sure, the objective beliefs of faith are

never irrelevant to faith; nevertheless, if the thinker

who holds them is in the process of transforma-

tion, surely what is believed is continually subject

to ongoing interpretation. Any literalism that sug-

gests that a human thinker enjoys a God’s-eye

view is not tenable. Furthermore, insofar as faith

stretches itself to see the world as God created it

and seeks to reproduce itself through the rational

teaching of others, it is not innately unscientific,

unmethodical, dogmatic, or credulous. It can invite

method, freedom of opinion, and critical judge-

ment. Barring therefore any definitive reductionism

by science, discussion between faith and what sci-

ence proposes may always be open ended.

In addition, many of the personal habits and

dispositions required for faith may contribute to

the personal habits and dispositions needed by

scientists who want to do cooperative research

with intellectual integrity. Insofar as faith requires

deep self-reflection on the moral stance of the

thinker and on the purposes of human knowledge

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gained by research, and insofar as it causes the sci-

entific questioner to put him or herself into ques-

tion, it may even cause one to look at how science

contributes or does not contribute to overall

human flourishing, including aesthetic, moral, and

spiritual flourishing, since science is a function of

beings for whom these things are vital.

If, however, approaching faith in this Augus-

tinian way lessens the need for direct confrontation

with science over one’s specific beliefs about the

world, it also raises what may be a deeper prob-

lem, namely, the difference in the way faith and

scientific method think and imagine. Newman sug-

gested that if faith’s appeal to the human mind

should ever be overcome, it will not be because

faith has been out-reasoned, but because the

human mind has lost the ability to imagine itself

approaching the world by any method other than

the scientific, and because it must always provide

explanations of the sort provided by science, for

which a distanced and impersonal approach is re-

quired. This would result, in the poet T. S. Eliot’s

phrase, in a “dissociation of sensibility” whereby

faith’s native imaginative means and sensibilities

for dealing with the world and human life are re-

placed with other incommensurate sensibilities,

thus effectively overcoming faith.

See also ATHEISM; CHRISTIANITY; SPIRITUALITY

Bibliography

Allen, Diogenes. Christian Faith in a Postmodern World:

The Full Wealth of Conviction. Louisville, Ky.: West-

minster/John Knox Press, 1989.

Aquinas, Thomas. On Faith: Summa Theologiae, 2–2, QQ.

1–16, trans. and ed. Mark Jordan. Notre Dame, Ind.:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1990.

Aubert, Roger. Le Problème de l’Acte de Foi, 3rd edition.

Louvain, Belgium: Publications Universitaires

de Louvain, 1950.

Augustine. Homilies on the Gospel of John. In Vol. 7: The

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (First series;

1886–1889), ed. Philip Schaff. Reprint, Grand Rapids,

Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974.

Buckley, Michael J. At the Origins of Modern Atheism.

New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987.

Dulles, Avery. The Assurance of Things Hoped For: A The-

ology of Christian Faith. New York: Oxford University

Press, 1994.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Philosophical Fragments; Johannes

Climacus (1844), trans. and eds. Howard V. Hong

and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer-

sity Press, 1985.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to

Philosophical Fragments (1846), trans. and eds.

Howard V. Hong and Edna. H. Hong. Princeton. N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 1992.

Louth, Andrew. Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the

Nature of Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1983.

Newman, John Henry. An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of

Assent (1870). Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics,

1973.

Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. Belief and History. Char-

lottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977.

Springsted, Eric O. The Act of Faith: Christian Faith and

the Moral Self. Grand Rapids. Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002.

Wolterstorff, Nicholas. John Locke and the Ethics of Belief.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 1996.

ERIC O. SPRINGSTED

FAITH HEALING

See SPIRITUALITY; SPIRITUALITY AND FAITH HEALING

FALL

According to the theology of the early Christian

church fathers, Adam not only possessed complete

human harmony, he also possessed an encom-

passing knowledge of nature such that God

brought all the animals to him so that he could

name them (Gen. 2: 19–20). Adam and Eve lost not

only these gifts as a result of the fall, but suffering

and death became part of their lives and were

passed on to their offspring. Eastern theologians,

therefore, spoke of death by heredity, while Au-

gustine of Hippo and other early Western theolo-

gians spoke of original sin that is passed on by

heredity from one generation to the next. Accord-

ing to this view, only the Bible, as God’s revela-

tion, offers true knowledge.

During the Middle Ages, the influences of the

theologies of creation and Christology, as well as

the reception of Aristotelian and other ancient

Greek writings, brought about a new understand-

ing of the regularity and independence of the laws

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of nature. Scholars began to see nature as a second

book of God’s revelation, in addition to the Bible.

Consequently, the idea appeared that humans had

to study the book of nature to regain partly the

knowledge that Adam had lost in the fall. This idea

was important in English physico-theology during

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which

strongly influenced the emerging natural sciences.

Criticism against the doctrine of original sin

emerged with Enlightenment philosophy, which,

contrary to the natural sciences and their concep-

tion of deterministic laws, emphasized human free-

dom and deemed the conception of passing on sin

by heredity a confusion of categories in which sin

was an aspect of history, and heredity an aspect of

nature. Enlightenment philosophy interpreted the

fall as a necessary step in human development

from a dreaming, childlike consciousness toward

the full adult consciousness that befitted humanity.

For nineteenth-century philosopher Søren Kierke-

gaard, angst, which distinguishes humans as ec-

static beings from animals, is the actual occasion

for sin. Kierkegaard rejects, however, any attempt

to scientifically construe a cause for sin because

this would create only myths.

The theory of evolution challenged the tradi-

tional doctrine of original sin from still another

angle. How could primordial humans, who hardly

differed in their abilities from animals, have had a

comprehensive knowledge of nature, and how

could they have determined the whole of human

history that was to come? Evolutionary theory also

weakens arguments against the doctrine of original

sin that stem from Enlightenment philosophy. Evo-

lutionary theory, in effect, transcends the juxtapo-

sition of nature and history that the Enlightenment

had assumed because it can show how behavior is,

in fact, passed on through heredity, and contingent

(historical) events can become structural elements

of a living organism.

The doctrine of the fall, on the one hand, in-

tends to emphasize that evil, which has been the

cause of great suffering in the course of history, is

rooted deep within humanity, and therefore is not

easily overcome. It rejects all simplified, quick, and

utopian solutions to the problem of evil. On the

other hand, the doctrine precludes human nature

from being identified with evil, and thus leaves the

way open for potential, however laborious,

progress. It addresses a depth in the human person

that can only be addressed in a language of its

own, such as myth.

Furthermore, evolutionary theory explains how

events and developments that are experienced as

negative or evil by single creatures (e.g., suffering,

being killed, being fed on) are conducive to the de-

velopment of life in general. In this way, evolu-

tionary theory provides a new context for theolog-

ical reinterpretations of the traditional doctrine of

the fall. These reinterpretations are developed

within the framework of either classical theology

(Raymund Schwager), process theology ( Jerry

Korsmeyer), or as part of a common theory of reli-

gions (Eugen Drewermann and Philip Hefner).

See also AUGUSTINE; EVIL AND SUFFERING; EVOLUTION;

UMAN NATURE, RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL

ASPECTS; NATURAL THEOLOGY; TWO BOOKS

Bibliography

Drewermann, Eugen. Strukturen des Bösen. Paderborn,

Germany: Schöningh, 1977–1978.

Hefner, Philip. “Biological Perspective of Fall.” Zygon 28

(1993): 77–101.

Kierkegaard, Søren. The Concept of Anxiety (1844), trans.

and ed. Reidar Thomte. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

University Press, 1980.

Korsmeyer, Jerry. Evolution and Eden: Balancing Original

Sin and Contemporary Science. New York: Paulist

Press, 1998.

Ricoeur, Paul. The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson

Buchanan. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969.

Schwager, Raymund. Erbsünde und Heilsdrama. Münster,

Germany: Lit Verlag, 1994.

RAYMUND SCHWAGER

FALLIBILISM

Fallibilism is the view that human knowledge lacks

a secure and an infallible foundation. Fallibilism is

associated in particular with American scientist and

philosopher Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) and

Austrian-born philosopher Karl Popper (1902–

1994). In its most comprehensive form the fallibilist

maintains that people cannot know anything with

certainty. In its more restricted forms uncertainty is

attributed to a particular domain of beliefs, such as

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empirical or religious beliefs. What separates falli-

bilists from others is the confidence each gives to

epistemological success in general or within a par-

ticular domain. Participants within the science/reli-

gion discussion quite frequently affirm fallibilism.

Its merit seems to be that it opens up possibilities

for a dialogue on more even terms than founda-

tionalism does.

See also FALSIFIABILITY; POSTFOUNDATIONALISM

Bibliography

Peirce, Charles S. Collected Papers, eds. Charles

Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur W. Burks. Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1931–1958.

Popper, Karl. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of

Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan

Paul, 1963.

Van Huyssteen, J. Wentzel. The Shaping of Rationality: To-

ward Interdisciplinarity in Theology and Science.

Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999.

MIKAEL STENMARK

FALSIFIABILITY

In opposition to the verification criterion of the

logical positivists, Austrian-born philosopher Karl

Popper (1902–1994) defended the idea of falsifia-

bility. According to Popper’s falsification criterion

scientists should develop theories that can be falsi-

fied by observation. They should then try to falsify

them, and those that survive testing should then be

tentatively accepted and regarded as corroborated,

that is, as closer to the truth than theories that have

been falsified. The criterion was intended to de-

marcate science from pseudo-science. In the mid-

twentieth century these ideas and their conse-

quences for religious beliefs were at the center of

the science/religion debate, but because of doubts

about whether science itself could satisfy Popper’s

requirements, issues of falsifiability have had a less

prominent place in the debate since the 1980s.

See also FALLIBILISM; POSITIVISM, LOGICAL

Bibliography

Mitchell, Basil, ed. The Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Ox-

ford University Press. 1971.

Popper, Karl. The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934). Lon-

don: Hutchinson, 1968.

Stenmark, Mikael. Rationality in Science, Religion and

Everyday Life: A Critical Evaluation of Four Models of

Rationality. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre

Dame Press, 1995.

MIKAEL STENMARK

FEMINISMS AND SCIENCE

At their most basic level, feminist perspectives on

science begin with the observation that women

have been excluded from the practice of science.

This exclusion has sometimes been overt. For ex-

ample, women have often been barred from getting

the education required to become scientists. Over-

all, feminists have demonstrated that, for women, it

is difficult to get in, difficult to stay in, and difficult

to advance to positions with the power to control

the direction of scientific study. Exclusion has also

been more covert, as demonstrated by the lack of

women’s perspectives within science.

Feminists argue that a number of problems are

related to this exclusion, including depletion of

natural resources, tainted food sources, pollution,

and impending viral disaster. They argue for a

number of different causes and solutions for this

exclusion of women—some compatible, some

conflicting—which makes it more proper to speak

of “feminisms” and science, rather than feminism.

Despite these differences—or, perhaps, because of

them—feminist perspectives remain a rich resource

for understanding science and for rethinking the

relationship between science and religion.

Margaret Wertheim, for example, in her book

Pythagoras’ Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender

Wars (1995) argues that there is a connection be-

tween the exclusion of women in physics and the

exclusion of women from positions of authority in

Western religion. From the mystic Pythagoras, to

the revival of physics in medieval monasteries, to

Albert Einstein’s observation that “in this material-

istic age of ours, the serious scientific workers are

the only truly profoundly religious people,”

physics has been permeated with a religious sensi-

bility. Wertheim explores how women have been

excluded both from the right to interpret Scripture

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and from the right to interpret God’s other revela-

tion, nature.

Feminists have examined the diverse ways that

women have been excluded from science and how

male perspectives and bias have influenced the se-

lection of problems to examine and decisions

about how to organize and interpret data. What

these arguments have in common is that the prob-

lem is seen as external: The results may be biased,

but that bias is unrelated to the basic methods and

assumptions of science. In fact, bias occurs be-

cause exclusion of women leads to a distortion of

proper scientific method. These eternal explana-

tions lead to external solutions: Remove the barri-

ers for women in science; get them in and get

them into positions where they can influence the

direction, programs, and interests of science.

Wertheim, for example, argues that women should

be involved in physics in order to influence the di-

rection of the research and to create a new culture

of physics.

From this perspective, there is no such thing as

“women’s science,” except to the extent that

women may choose different problems to address

or, perhaps, organize data differently. Including

more women will bring about a better science,

truer to its ideals and goals, but it will not bring

about a different science.

Internalist arguments

Some feminists see this as a partial solution. Post-

Kuhnian philosophies of science suggest that sci-

entific concepts, theories, methodologies, and

truths are not objective, but instead bear the marks

of their collective and individual creators. The so-

cial location of the scientist not only influences the

direction of science, it can influence the shape of

science itself and even the truths it discovers. Fem-

inists focused on gender as one of the aspects of

culture that shape science.

All cultures sort human beings by sex, but

there are variations in the roles, duties, characteris-

tics, and so on that define those divisions. These

variations are what is meant by gender. Feminists

have argued that in the West, science is constructed

around gendered assumptions, with “male” cate-

gories privileged over “female.” It is not just the

centrality of “rational man” that is problematic, but

that what counts as rational or objective is that

which has been given a masculine meaning.

Women have demonstrated this connection be-

tween gender and science in a number of ways.

One of the most influential works in this regard is

Carolyn Merchant’s, Death of Nature: Women, Ecol-

ogy, and the Scientific Revolution (1976). Merchant

argues that prior to the sixteenth century, nature

was seen as female: a mother, a lover, and so on.

Further, nature was seen as a living, dynamic entity

with a body and a soul. This conception carried

with it an ethic towards nature that was marked by

moderation. If one abused or exploited nature, one

faced the consequences.

In the 150 years from Nicolaus Copernicus to

Isaac Newton, this view completely changed. Na-

ture became a machine, made up of discrete, in-

terchangeable parts. Because nature was no longer

alive, with no spirit and no animation, it could be

exploited at will. This change had a religious di-

mension. Merchant, Rosemary Reuther, Evelyn Fox

Keller, and others have argued that the scientific

revolution was a child of the Reformation in that

the removal of the divine presence from within na-

ture contributed to the transformation from nature

as mother to nature as machine. There was a fur-

ther connection in that the Fall of Genesis was

seen as both a fall from innocence and a fall from

dominion. Innocence could be regained through

religion, dominion through science (techne).

This change was, of course, gradual, but it was

not always subtle, especially in its use of gendered

language. Women and nature were connected:

Women threatened man’s innocence; nature threat-

ened his dominion. And, just as God intended that

man should dominate and control woman, God in-

tended that man should dominate and control na-

ture. In the early seventeenth century, Francis

Bacon encouraged scientific endeavor by declaring

that nature, like a woman, locked her secrets away

in her womb. But, like a women, she wanted to be

penetrated and her secrets taken. The male scien-

tist should extract the truth by force, and thereby

command nature and compel her to serve him.

These insights have been influential in the de-

velopment of ecofeminist thought, as well as fem-

inist philosophies of science. They suggest that the

problems with science are not external; rather, its

epistemological assumptions and methodologies

are themselves biased. The problem is not bad sci-

ence, the problem is science itself. Unlike internal

approaches that seek to get women into labs, these

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feminists insist that it is necessary to transform sci-

ence, to promote a different science based on a

feminist epistemology.

Feminist epistemologies and feminist science

Feminists have offered several alternatives to exist-

ing “masculinist science.” Feminist empiricists,

such as Helen Longino, have sought to integrate

feminist concerns with existing empiricist assump-

tions, arguing that the social identity of the ob-

server is not irrelevant to the practice of science.

Instead, values are imbedded in science, and sci-

entists should therefore be intentional about which

values they bring to their work. Feminist empiri-

cists have been criticized for retaining certain as-

pects of empiricism: the primacy of reason, the

centrality of the (experiencing) individual, and the

separation between public and private in science.

Further, feminist empiricists do not challenge the

assumption that there is but one science and one

nature waiting to be discovered by it.

As an alternative, feminists such as Sandra

Harding have argued in favor of standpoint theory.

This arises out of German philosopher Georg Wil-

helm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770–1831) dialectic be-

tween master and slave, and the observation that

the standpoint of the slave offers a more complete,

less distorted view of the world. The master thinks

that the slave responds only to the master’s com-

mands. The slave knows that the slave also

dreams, intentionally thwarts the master’s plans,

reads in secret, and even plots rebellion. In other

words, the master only knows one reality, but the

slave knows there are more. Feminist standpoint

theorists suggest that starting from—or at least in-

cluding—women’s perspectives on and experi-

ences of the world can give science a more com-

prehensive and reliable view of the world.

A third position, feminist postmodernism, be-

gins with the observation that there is no single

standpoint. Donna Haraway, for example, links

women’s experiences with the experiences of

other “others,” such as African Americans. Just as

contemporary science blurs boundaries between

human and animal, organism and machine, physi-

cal and nonphysical, this approach blurs bound-

aries between standpoints and embraces the par-

tiality of a feminist point of view—indeed any

view—and the possibilities that partiality opens up.

Despite their differences, these positions con-

verge on the point that there is something essen-

tially wrong with the way that science is done, and

they argue for a “feminist science.” This does not

mean that feminist epistemologies should be

equated with relativism; few if any feminist

philosophers of science would take an antirational

or anti-objective stance. Most would argue that

feminism is a way to increase the objectivity of sci-

ence, although it is an objectivity that is not

grounded in the detached observer.

Feminist rationality is a responsive rationality,

what Hilary Rose refers to as “thinking from caring”

and what Evelyn Fox Keller sees as knowledge

arising from a relationship between knower and

known. This knowledge does not require, and in

fact rejects, distance between the observer and the

observed. Nature is not a “thing,” separate or sepa-

rable from a speaking and knowing “we.” What

people know about nature they know because they

interact with and are embedded in it. People know

the world, because they are a part of the world and

because they are in a relationship with it.

In addition, feminists argue that it is not sub-

jectivity—the context and desires of the observer—

that leads to bad science, but the illusion of objec-

tivity. Values do not distort science; it is only

coercive values—racism, classism, sexism—that

threaten objectivity. Participatory values decrease

rather than increase distortions, so objectivity is en-

hanced when people are intentional about their

subjective preferences and can choose those that

are most effective. Feminists have gone so far as to

suggest that these participatory values are the pre-

conditions of objectivity.

Multicultural and global feminisms

An additional feminist approach is emerging in the

recent writings of Sandra Harding, where she ex-

plores the intersection of post-Kuhnian, feminist,

and postcolonial science and technology studies.

Just as feminists argue that feminist science in-

volves more than bringing women into laborato-

ries, multicultural approaches require more than

just tacking on issues of women of color. The

frameworks set by Western women can themselves

block concerns from other perspectives, and alter-

native frameworks give way to different institu-

tional contexts and different concepts. For exam-

ple, Western science thinks in terms of nature,

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which is distinct from the human being, while in

developing countries the focus is on the environ-

ment, which is something with which human be-

ings interact.

The issue is not whether knowledge is univer-

sal, or whether the law of gravity is the same

everywhere. The question is whether there is one

best way to represent the world. Women’s science

is problematic to the extent that, like men’s sci-

ence, it retains the view that there is a science.

Each culture is a tool box containing different

resources for understanding nature. Because dif-

ferent cultures are exposed to different parts of na-

ture, they develop distinctive resources. In addi-

tion, each culture has distinctive metaphors,

models, and languages that enable them to see

their particular parts of the world in diverse ways.

These resources generate both systematic knowl-

edge and systematic ignorance about nature.

If people settle on one “science,” these diverse

ways of organizing and producing systematic

knowledge will be lost, reducing knowledge of the

world. Diverse perspectives not only allow people

to see more, they enable people to see better, pro-

moting a more rigorous objectivity by revealing as-

pects of nature that may be difficult or even im-

possible to detect from within the dominant

culture and perspective. In the same way that the

world needs biodiversity to continue to renew it-

self, so too does knowledge of the world need dif-

ferent sciences to maintain its creativity.

What is needed is what Sandra Harding calls a

borderlands epistemology that values the distinc-

tive understandings of nature that different cul-

tures generate. The goal is not to integrate them

into an ideal knowledge system, because that

would necessarily sacrifice the advantages of the

differing conceptual schemes that different cul-

tures have developed. Instead of a single science,

scientists would learn when to use one science

and when to use another, what to value in modern

sciences and what to value in other knowledge

systems. What they would learn is which ap-

proaches provide the best set of maps for each

particular journey.

See also ECOFEMINISM; ETHNICITY; FEMINIST

COSMOLOGY; FEMINIST THEOLOGY; LIBERATION

THEOLOGY; WOMANIST THEOLOGY

Bibliography

Harding, Sandra. The Science Question in Feminism.

Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986.

Harding, Sandra. Is Science Multicultural?: Postcolo-

nialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies. Blooming-

ton: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Keller, Evelyn Fox. Reflections on Gender and Science.

New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985.

Keller, Evelyn Fox. Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death: Essays

on Language, Gender, and Science. New York: Rout-

ledge, 1992.

Longino, Helen. Science as Social Knowledge: Values and

Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 1990.

Merchant, Carolyn. Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and

the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper, 1976.

Rose, Hilary. Love, Power and Knowledge: Towards a Fem-

inist Transformation of the Sciences. Bloomington: In-

diana University Press, 1994.

Rossiter, Margaret. Women Scientists in America: Struggles

and Strategies to 1940. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hop-

kins University Press, 1982.

Tuana, Nancy. Feminism and Science. Bloomington: Indi-

ana University Press, 1989.

Tuana, Nancy. The Less Noble Sex: Scientific, Religious,

and Philosophical Conceptions of Woman’s Nature.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

Schiebinger, Londa. Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making

of Modern Science. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.

Wertheim, Margaret. Pythagoras’ Trousers: God, Physics,

and the Gender Wars. New York: Random House,

1995.

LISA L. STENMARK

FEMINIST COSMOLOGY

Feminist cosmology is both a critical and construc-

tive model of the cosmos. Feminists criticize the

mechanistic, dualistic, patriarchal model of the cos-

mos informed by Enlightenment philosophy and

modern science. This dominant model creates hi-

erarchical dualisms: human over nature, mind over

body, male over female, subject over object. The

subjugation of nature is linked to the subjugation

of women. Feminist cosmologies restructure these

pairs, like nature and humans, as intimately and in-

terdependently related to each other in a web of

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moral responsibility. Ecofeminists lead the charge

in developing a cosmology that not only recon-

structs a new world view, but also calls for radical

change in the way that humans live with the natu-

ral world.

See also COSMOLOGY, RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL

ASPECTS; ECOFEMINISM; FEMINISMS AND SCIENCE;

EMINIST THEOLOGY; WOMANIST THEOLOGY

Bibliography

Howell, Nancy R. A Feminist Cosmology: Ecology, Solidar-

ity, and Metaphysics. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2000.

ANN PEDERSON

FEMINIST THEOLOGY

Feminist theology emerged from the notion that

Christian theology and the institutional embodi-

ment of Christianity not only excluded women’s

voices and experiences, but also developed prac-

tices that are sexist, patriarchal, and androcentric.

Contemporary feminist theology finds its historical

roots with those who question authors of sacred

texts and those who challenge theologians who

defined what it meant to be a human being from

the perspective of patriarchal, male experience.

For centuries, male experience was the standard

by which the worth and contribution of women

was judged. In the 1960s, contemporary feminist

theologians began to challenge and protest these

fundamental doctrines and practices of institutional

Christianity.

Feminist theology is not limited to the Christian

tradition. Jewish and Islamic feminist theologians

also examine the patriarchal assumptions that sup-

port the subordination and oppression of women.

Judith Plaskow, for example, calls for a retrieval

and redefinition of the past in order for women to

reform Torah; Jewish women must rewrite texts,

author new liturgies, and disclose voices from the

past. Islamic feminist theologians, such as Riffat

Hassan, speak not only about patriarchy, but also

about mixing modernization and Westernization

with Islam. These are two examples of the growing

diversity of feminist voices in theology. While fem-

inist theologians come from diverse cultural and

religious traditions, they share similar hopes and

common interests.

Methodologies and types

Feminist theologians employ similar methodologi-

cal strategies that result in substantive, constructive

changes within Christian theology and practice.

Three important steps must follow. First, feminist

theologians reflect critically on the patriarchal and

androcentric nature of the churches’ practices and

theological doctrines. This critical step challenges

the values and theological paradigms that support

patriarchy. For example, Sallie McFague (b. 1933),

a European-American ecofeminist theologian, chal-

lenges the patriarchal model of God and the world

as one that sanctions and supports an understand-

ing of divine power and human power that domi-

nates and excludes women. Second, feminist the-

ologians return to the tradition to delve deeper and

discover voices that have been previously ignored

and discarded. These acts of retrieval expand and

deepen the liberatory voices already within the tra-

dition. Third, many feminist theologians begin the

process of reconstructing theological doctrines

with new paradigms. McFague utilizes the

metaphor of the body of God to reconstruct the re-

lationship between God and the world. This para-

digmatic shift emphasizes mutual and reciprocal

relationships between God and the world instead

of hierarchical and dominating ones.

Generally, three types of feminist theology

have developed in their relationship to Christianity.

First, some feminist theologians seek modest

changes in the traditions from within Christianity.

For the most part, these theologians are less critical

of the structure of Christianity. Other feminist the-

ologians, while still working from within a Christ-

ian framework, seek not only to critique the theol-

ogy, but also to reimagine and reconstruct new

models of thinking about and practicing Christian-

ity. Radical transformation of both doctrines and

the institutional practices of Christianity is sought.

Another category of revolutionary feminist theolo-

gians find the nature of Christianity so thoroughly

patriarchal, that their only way to remain commit-

ted to feminist concerns is to leave Christianity.

These voices can be described as post-Christian.

The first phase of feminist theology concen-

trated primarily on issues related to gender. Later,

the development of feminist theology from a white,

privileged standpoint began to embrace and con-

nect with other women’s voices and experiences.

In fact, the category of women’s experience, while

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embraced early on in feminist theology, has be-

come problematic since it so often only seemed to

describe the experience of one voice: that of privi-

leged, white women. Feminist theologians were

primarily white, privileged women working within

the confines of the academy. As feminist theolo-

gians linked their projects to other liberation move-

ments, the challenge was to examine their own bias

of class and race. Feminist theologians began to

question the category of “women’s experience.”

There is no monolithic experience, no single way

of being women. Feminist theology consequently

linked the voices and experiences of those ex-

cluded because of race, class, sexual orientation,

disability, age, and gender. Consequently, feminist

theologians are now a worldwide company of

voices, having expanded from American white fem-

inists to Asian feminists, Womanists, Mujerista the-

ologians, and many others. Feminist theology con-

tinues to expand upon and celebrate the variety of

voices and experiences. Tensions and dissonances

that reside in these differences are opportunities for

creative new theological explorations.

Links with science and ethics

Feminist theology is also linked to other feminist

projects in fields like science and bioethics. For ex-

ample, in religion and science, feminists are critical

of the patriarchal systems in which both disciplines

are embedded. Science, like religion, is a socially-

situated institution that has excluded women from

its theory and practice. Contemporary feminist

philosophers of science are linked to feminist the-

ologians in their common critique of the Enlight-

enment ways of knowing the world (epistemolo-

gies) and their institutional embodiment, which

support patriarchal and androcentric viewpoints.

Feminists are critical of the convergence of modern

science with the modern or Enlightenment world-

view because it excludes women as valuable

knowers and participants in the scientific process.

Feminist philosophers of science criticize the En-

lightenment epistemology that sees those “in the

know” as impartial, detached, impersonal, value-

free, and dispassionate.

Similarly, feminist philosophers of science have

different ways of critiquing science. Sandra Harding

examines three different kinds of feminist scien-

tists. First, feminist empiricists uncover sexist and

androcentric biases in the sciences. The addition of

more women in the institution of science might be

enough of a corrective. Feminist empiricists, like

the reformist feminist theologians, don’t directly

link science to politics. Both groups are less critical

of the institutions themselves. Second, femi-

nist standpoint theorists claim that knowledge

grounded in the perspectives and experiences of

women’s lives is actually a more comprehensive,

objective way of knowing. They criticize the dom-

inant standpoint of patriarchal science. Much like

the revisionist theologians, they insist that research

and data collection must begin with voices that

have been systematically excluded. Finally, feminist

postmodernists reject the foundationalism of mod-

ern epistemologies and sciences, calling for a new

science. This position is similar to the post-Christian

feminist theologians who reject Christianity itself

and call for new ways of expressing spirituality.

Both feminist theology and feminist philosophers

of science require narratives of those who have

been marginalized. They both require beginning

the research, data collecting, and questions from

the perspectives of the voices of “the other.”

In both religion and science, feminists insist

that epistemology and ethics are inextricably

linked together: People are accountable for what

they do with what they know. Substance and

praxis follow together. Feminist research develops

postmodern epistemologies that value multidimen-

sional perspectives to expand and widen the defi-

nition of reason, begins research with the excluded

voices, and constructs the subject/object relation-

ship on the same epistemological plane. Feminist

research becomes a model for research and living:

Multiple voices are used for research, and conver-

sational praxis is the methodological means of in-

cluding voices of those formerly excluded. In the

field of religion and science, the research program

of Anne Foerst in artificial intelligence and theol-

ogy constructs an embodied theology and episte-

mology that redefines what it means to be human.

The theology of Nancy Howell explores how the

subjugation of women and nature is intercon-

nected. Her ecofeminist theology offers new ways

of constructing models of God and the world.

These are two examples of the constructive femi-

nist engagement between religion and science.

See also ECOFEMINISM; ECOLOGY, ETHICS OF;

COTHEOLOGY; EPISTEMOLOGY; FEMINISMS AND

SCIENCE; FEMINIST COSMOLOGY; LIBERATION

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THEOLOGY; POSTFOUNDATIONALISM;

OSTMODERNISM; WOMANIST THEOLOGY

Bibliography

Foerst, Anne. “Cog: A Humanoid Robot, and the Question

of the Image of God.” Zygon 33 (1998): 91-111.

Harding, Sandra. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?

Thinking from Women’s Lives. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell

University Press, 1991.

Hassan, Riffat. “Challenging the Stereotypes of Fundamen-

talism: An Islamic Feminist Perspective.” The Muslim

World 91, nos. 1/2 (2001): 55-69.

Howell, Nancy R. A Feminist Cosmology: Ecology, Solidar-

ity, and Metaphysics. Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity

Books/Prometheus Books, 2000.

Johnson, Elizabeth. Women, Earth and Creator Spirit.

New York: Paulist Press, 1993.

LaCugna, Catherine, ed. Freeing Theology: The Essentials

of Theology in Feminist Perspective. San Francisco:

Harper, 1993.

McFague, Sallie. Metaphorical Theology. Minneapolis,

Minn.: Fortress Press, 1997.

Pederson, Ann. Where in the World Is God? Variations on

a Theme. St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice Press, 1998.

Plaskow, Judith. Standing Against Sinai: Judaism from a

Feminist Perspective. San Francisco: Harper,

1991.

ANN PEDERSON

FIELD

The term field designates a variety of different,

closely related concepts in mathematics and

physics that have been carried over into everyday

language to designate a context or region of influ-

ence. In geometry a field is a function that is de-

fined (i.e., has values) at every point of a manifold

(smooth continuous surface). Similarly, in physics

a field (e.g., an electric, magnetic, or gravitational

field) is a function describing a physical quantity

(e.g., electric, magnetic, or gravitational influence

or forces) at all points of a region of space and

time. Sometimes the region that is under the influ-

ence of an electric, magnetic, gravitational, or other

source or agent is also referred to as a field. A sim-

ilar and almost equivalent definition of a field in

physics, especially in contemporary physics, is as a

continuous dynamical system, or a dynamical sys-

tem with infinite degrees of freedom. Fields are es-

sential to the description of physical phenomena,

particularly of the interaction between particles or

other physical entities, and to the quantitative and

qualitative modeling of forces, especially those that

act at a distance without any medium.

See also FIELD THEORIES; GRAVITATION; PHYSICS,

UANTUM

WILLIAM R. STOEGER

FIELD THEORIES

Most of classical and quantum physical phenomena

are fundamentally described and explained in terms

of fields, such as the electromagnetic and gravita-

tional fields. These physical entities are not localized

objects or particles, they generally vary in time, and

they are defined at every point in space. They rep-

resent the influence, or force, an object or particle

would experience at each point in space, at the time

indicated. These fields are represented mathemati-

cally by functions of space and time. Field theories

are the systematic theoretical mathematical-physical

descriptions and elaborations of these fields, includ-

ing their generation, detection, behavior, and rela-

tionships with one another and with other physical

entities, such as particles. Generally, field theories

are expressed in terms of partial differential equa-

tions that describe the relation of the fields to the

entities that cause, or source, the fields.

There are also energy and momentum conser-

vation equations that further constrain the fields, as

well as the closely related equations of motion,

which describe how particles or objects move at

every point under the influence of the fields. All of

these equations are generally derivable from a very

special function, called a Lagrangian, which gives

the kinetic energy minus the potential energy of

the entire system. The behavior of the system de-

scribed by the field equations and the equations of

motion is always given by an extremum (maxi-

mum or minimum) of the Lagrangian action.

In physics there are four basic interactions, or

forces: electromagnetism, the strong nuclear inter-

action, the weak nuclear interaction, and gravity.

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