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

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LAWS OF NATURE

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empty, obsolete, and having no important role to

play in contemporary science. This, however, re-

mains a minority view. Most philosophers (and

probably all scientists) continue to think that laws

are important, even if their ontological nature is

elusive.

Laws and explanation

Even if explanatory potential does not by itself

make something into a law, the ubiquitous role of

laws in scientific explanations is beyond doubt.

This observation has formed the basis of the cov-

ering-law model of explanation introduced in 1948

by the philosophers Carl Hempel (1905–1997) and

Paul Oppenheim (1885–1977) and further elabo-

rated by Hempel in the 1950s and 1960s. To ex-

plain a particular phenomenon is to answer a why-

question, and this requires an account of how the

phenomenon was brought about. Hempel has con-

strued deterministic explanation as a deductive ar-

gument of the form:

, C

, … , C

, L

, … , L

______________

Here C

, C

,…,C

are statements describing

the initial conditions and L

, L

,…,L

are state-

ments of laws (together constituting the ex-

planans), while E is a statement describing the

event to be explained (the explanandum). Thus to

explain why a particular sample of metal ex-

panded when heated, one invokes a law to the ef-

fect that all metals do so when heated and the ini-

tial condition stating that the sample in question

was heated. The above deductive-nomological

schema has a probabilistic (statistical) counterpart

to account for explanations involving indetermin-

istic laws.

Since its inception the covering-law model has

been the target of many objections. But it is still the

starting point of any informed discussion of expla-

nation. It is plausible that most deficiencies of

Hempel’s model are ultimately due to its implicit

reliance on a broadly Humean (i.e., regularity)

conception of laws.

Laws and reductionism

Whether higher-level laws of nature (chemical, bi-

ological, psychological, etc.) are reducible to the

fundamental physical laws—and if so, in what

exact sense—is part of the problem of reduction-

ism. However natural it may seem to think that

chemistry is eventually just a chapter of physics,

many authors have resisted this line of thought.

Even physicists have always doubted that the irre-

versibility inherent in the second law of thermody-

namics can be explained on the basis of time-

reversal invariant laws of mechanics. Developments

in chaos theory have all but deepened such doubts.

See also CAUSATION; DETERMINISM; SYMMETRY

Bibliography

Armstrong, David What Is a Law of Nature? Cambridge,

UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Ayer, A. J. “What is a Law of Nature?” Revue Interna-

tionale de Philosophie 10 (1956):144–165.

Bigelow, John, and Pargetter, Robert. Science and Neces-

sity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,

1990.

Carroll, John. Laws of Nature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press, 1994.

Cartwright, Nancy. How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1983.

Dretske, Fred. “Laws of Nature.” Philosophy of Science 44

(1977): 248–268.

Earman, John. “Laws of Nature: The Empiricist Challenge.”

In D. M. Armstrong, ed. Radu Bogdan. Dordrecht,

Netherlands: Reidel, 1984.

Ellis, Brian. Scientific Essentialism. Cambridge, UK: Cam-

bridge University Press, 2001.

Harré, Rom, and Madden, Edward H. Causal Powers: A

Theory of Natural Necessity. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman

and Littlefield, 1975.

Hempel, Carl. Aspects of Scientific Explanation. New York:

Free Press, 1965.

Lange, Marc. Natural Laws in Scientific Practice. Oxford

and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Lewis, David. Counterfactuals. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press, 1973.

Mellor, D. H. “Necessities and Universals in Natural Laws.”

In Science, Belief, and Behavior: Essays in Honour of

R. B. Braithwaite, ed. D. H. Mellor. Cambridge, UK:

Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Rube, Jane. “The Origins of Scientific ‘Law.’” Journal of

the History of Ideas 47 (1986): 341–359.

Shoemaker, Sidney. “Causality and Properties.” In Time

and Cause: Essays Presented to Richard Taylor, ed.

Peter van Inwagen. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Reidel,

1980.

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Skyrms, Brian. “Physical Law and the Nature of Physical

Reduction.” In Induction, Probability and Confirma-

tion, Vol. 7: Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of

Science, eds. Grover Maxwell and Robert M. Ander-

son, Jr. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

1975.

Swartz, Norman. The Concept of Physical Law. Cambridge,

UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Swoyer, Chris. “The Nature of Natural Laws.” Australasian

Journal of Philosophy 60 (1982): 203–223.

Tooley, Michael. “The Nature of Laws.” Canadian Journal

of Philosophy 7 (1977): 667–698.

Urbach, Peter. “What is a Law of Nature? A Humean An-

swer.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39

(1988): 193–210.

Vallentyne, Peter. “Explicating Lawhood.” Philosophy of

Science 55 (1988): 598–613.

Van Fraassen, Bas. Laws and Symmetries. Oxford: Claren-

don Press, 1989.

Weinert, Friedel, ed. Laws of Nature: Essays on the Philo-

sophical, Scientific and Historical Dimensions. Berlin

and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1995.

YURI V. BALASHOV

LEVEL THEORY

Level theories are used to explain the relationship

between different academic disciplines and the re-

alities that they describe. Drawing on concepts of

emergence and supervenience, level theories seek

to counter the claim that all of reality can be ex-

plained as nothing but a collection of atoms. Vari-

ous scholars in science and religion have argued

that reality should be understood in terms of in-

creasing levels of complexity, each level emergent

from, but not reducible to, the levels below.

See also COMPLEXITY; EMERGENCE; HIERARCHY

GREGORY R. PETERSON

LIBERATION

Liberation is a central religious notion both in

South Asian religious traditions and in contempo-

rary Christian theology, but in what way are South

Asian meanings of liberation (mok’a, mukti,

nirv1%a) comparable to liberation as understood

by contemporary Christian theologians? This entry

will highlight significant differences regarding the

meanings of liberation across traditions, then draw

conclusions about the meaning of those differ-

ences for how each tradition engages the sciences.

The discussion will focus on those traditions that

seem most philosophically unlike Western reli-

gious traditions, namely the nondualism of Advaita

Ved1nta (constituted as a school by the eighth-cen-

tury theologian, 6a%kara) and Buddhism, particu-

larly the Madhyamaka tradition (inaugurated by

first-century

C.E. Buddhist philosopher N1g1rjuna).

Success in cross-cultural comparison requires

examining what South Asian religious traditions

seek to be liberated from. There is greater agree-

ment about the nature of the predicament that

makes liberation necessary than about how to es-

cape. The reason for this wide divergence is plain:

Each South Asian tradition (indeed each subtradi-

tion) has a unique understanding about the nature

of the ultimate reality to which liberation leads.

Nevertheless, nearly all concur in their assessment

that all beings are beginninglessly bound to

sa$s1ra, the wheel of rebirth or transmigration, by

the force of karma. The question about just what

causes karmic bondage quickly reintroduces seri-

ous debate both within and across South Asian re-

ligious traditions.

South Asian traditions, although they have typ-

ically maintained that all sentient beings are in

bondage, have traditionally been anthropocentric

in focus. Even if all beings are in bondage, it is

primarily human beings who can be liberated.

Moreover, only individual human beings, not com-

munities, are liberated from the cycle of transmi-

gration. Human bondage is rarely construed in so-

ciopolitical terms. Liberation is understood largely

as a matter of freedom from afflictions of the heart

and ignorance of the mind, the root causes of

bondage to the process of rebirth. Liberation from

craving, ignorance, and delusion (the three poi-

sons in Buddhism and also in 6a%kara’s Advaita)

does lead to more compassionate living, but the

essential locus of transformation is the person.

Until contemporary attention to ecological mat-

ters transformed Western religious thinking, West-

ern traditions have also been anthropocentric in

character. And, like South Asian traditions, the reli-

gious goal has most often been understood as sal-

vation for individual human beings. Salvation was

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understood as healing, as a reunion with God that

brings about the reintegration of the divided self

and reconciliation with neighbor. A comparison

that focused on salvation as healing would find im-

portant similarities with the South Asian goal to be

free from craving, ignorance, and delusion.

However, for nearly the entire history of West-

ern monotheism, the predicament from which one

needs to escape has always included a sociopoliti-

cal component, even when that component has

been muted by the quest for personal salvation.

The sociopolitical character of Western religious

anthropologies has meant that communities qua

communities, and not just individual persons, can

and must be healed. Communal healing requires

doing justice. Doing justice in turn has concretely

meant the liberation of persons from oppressive

socioeconomic and political structures that disfig-

ure human flourishing. This is the meaning of lib-

eration that finds vital expression in contemporary

Christian liberation theology.

Here, communities are liberated and their col-

lective well-being is the focus. Liberation is not

construed as individual escape from the threat of an

otherworldly judgment but freedom from a this-

worldly hell. This particular kind of communal lib-

eration is not commonly found in South Asian reli-

gious reflection. The compassionate presence of

liberated individuals can and does have social and

political consequences, but groups and communi-

ties are not liberated in their collectivity. This deep

difference has important ramifications for thinking

about the scientific implications of the notion of

liberation in Western and South Asian thought.

The human predicament in South Asian

religions

The human predicament in South Asian religions is

construed as bondage to a beginningless process

of rebirth. That process is fueled by karma, which

generates consequences for all human actions,

consequences that exert their presence across mul-

tiple lifetimes. That law-like process is driven by

some fundamental affective cause, usually de-

scribed as craving. Craving leads persons to act,

and action in turn generates the consequences that

insure rebirth.

But craving itself is analyzed as deriving from a

cognitive factor, namely ignorance. What exactly

one is ignorant of depends on the specific tradition

in question. Ignorance is always the failure to know

or realize what each tradition takes to be ultimately

true. For example, whereas Advaita Ved1ntins

argue that persons are ignorant of their true, infi-

nite, and unchanging Self (1tman), South Asian

Buddhist schools concur in arguing that ignorance

consists in entertaining the very idea of any sub-

stantial, enduring or permanent self (an1tman).

This analysis of the root causes of transmigra-

tion indicates yet another meaning of liberation in

South Asian traditions. Liberation is not understood

merely as a post-mortem escape from the cycle of

rebirth. Liberation is also the cessation of igno-

rance and the elimination of the three poisons in

and through which ignorance is expressed and

perpetuated.

Action, karma, craving, and ignorance are all

crucial links in a complex chain of causes and con-

ditions that extend over multiple lifetimes by

which the process of transmigration operates. The

Buddhist term for this complex cycle of causes and

conditions (hetupratyaya) is pratitya-samutp1da,

best translated as “dependent co-origination.” Bud-

dhist and Hindu reflection on liberation focuses

precisely on those cognitive, affective, volitional

tendencies that generate karma because the cycles

can be interrupted precisely at these points. But

the vision of complex causality and interdepend-

ence evinced in the chain of links that both per-

petuates and is the process and reality of transmi-

gration is worthy of attention to those interested in

the implications of Hindu and especially Buddhist

thinking about science.

Despite radical disagreements about the object

of ignorance, these traditions do agree that “igno-

rance” does not refer to matters of everyday expe-

rience. There are all sorts of things that an enlight-

ened person may not know about the empirical

world which do not imperil liberation. Because lib-

erating knowledge is knowledge about ultimate

matters and not conventional ones, religious

knowledge is not contingent on, nor does it need

to control, what counts as knowledge in conven-

tional matters. Cosmology or quantum mechanics,

theories about how the world works, either at the

macroscopic or the subatomic realm, are not di-

rectly relevant to liberating knowledge. There is,

therefore, the possibility of a comprehensively

hands-off attitude about scientific ventures. The

working and operation of the world are matters of

conventional truth (vyavah1ra satya).

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The term “ignorance” refers to the failure to

apprehend the ultimate truth (param1rtha satya)

about the underlying nature of reality, about the

being of things and not about how things work. A

radical distinction is made between the operation

of the world as it is ordinarily experienced and the

ultimate truth about the being of things, even if, as

it turns out later, these two perspectives turn out to

be profoundly interrelated, as is the case in the

Madhyamaka Buddhism of N1g1rjuna.

Ultimate truth and scientific truth: South

Asian approaches

The possibility of radically severing religious truth

from conventional truths that are the objects of sci-

entific inquiry is far easier for Hindu nondualists

than Buddhist nondualists. For the classical Hindu

Advaitins like 6a%kara, the empirical world, the ex-

perienced world, is not ultimately real. Nothing

given in experience endures. It is intrinsically im-

permanent and doomed to perish.

The fleeting realities of everyday experience

need a basis, a substratum, apart from which they

would not be. That basis or substratum itself is free

from change, beyond temporality, indivisible, self-

identical, and intrinsically real. Because it is free

from fragility, it is radically transcendent, but be-

cause it is the being of all things, it is also radically

immanent as the ground and basis of the conven-

tional world of experience. This reality is pure

being (sat) and is known as brahman. Only this

underlying reality is truly real and thus this tradi-

tion qualifies as nondualistic. From the point of

view of persons, liberation consists in coming to

know that one is in truth this ultimate reality and

not the finite self of ordinary experience.

The Buddhist nondualism of N1g1rjuna is strik-

ingly different from Advaita Vedanta. N1g1rjuna’s

nondualism is a radical reinterpretation of early

Buddhist insights regarding the impermanent de-

pendent co-arising of things. N1g1rjuna argues that

the pluralistic view of reality in which each thing is

a stream or a flow of momentary arisings does not

represent the deepest truth taught by the Buddha.

The ultimate truth taught by the Buddha is to be

found in the affirmation that everything arises in

dependence on the causes and conditions that give

it rise. If everything arises through the causes and

conditions that give it rise, then no thing has any

intrinsic being or self-existence (svabh1va). In-

deed, if anything did possess intrinsic being that

did not arise dependently on causes and condi-

tions, it would be unconditioned and therefore

eternal. But no such things are given in experi-

ence. Nothing, in that sense, exists. Thus, the fun-

damental notion at the heart of N1g1rjuna’s system

is emptiness (75nyat1 ), the affirmation that all is

empty of self-existence.

Buddhist nondualism of N1g1rjuna’s variety is

different from the Hindu nondualism of 6a%kara.

N1g1rjuna’s nondualism does not affirm a single

nondual reality that lies beneath the unreal world

of experience. Rather, N1g1rjuna’s nondualism ar-

gues that conventional reality is nondual because it

is fundamentally interrelated or relational. The

reifying conceptual processes that lead one to be-

lieve that reality is thing-like, composed of a plu-

rality of unrelated entities, is produced by craving

and ignorance. Liberation here means removing

those affective and cognitive afflictions that ob-

scure persons from understanding the interrelated-

ness of all reality.

The implications of these two different kinds

of nondualism for the relationship between science

and religion are intriguing. Nondualist Hindus are

freer to say that religion and science are unrelated

and independent ventures because religious per-

sons seek to know the infinite reality of brahman

that undergirds all things but is itself beyond all

particulars. Scientists are free to pursue their own

investigations as are the religious because both at-

tend to different dimensions of reality. Science ex-

plores conventionality but religion inquires about

the ultimate truth of brahman. In the terms used

by the philosopher Harold H. Oliver (1984), it is

possible to read Advaitins as subscribing to a

“compartment theory” of the relationship between

religious and scientific truth because each has for

its object a different “domain.”

Unlike Advaitins, Buddhist nondualists of

N1g1rjuna’s variety cannot say that science and re-

ligion are inquiring about different domains. For

Madhyamaka, there is no ultimate reality that lies

beneath the conventional realm. Ultimate truth is

simply seeing that everything conventional is

empty of own-being. Emptiness is not an ultimate

reality behind the world of phenomena. Thus sci-

ence and religion must be two “complementary”

ways of interrogating the same domain of conven-

tional experience.

Buddhist nondualists, therefore, can more

strongly expect that scientific knowledge should

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disclose that the world of experience is fundamen-

tally relational. Just how and where this relational-

ity will show itself is not the concern of Buddhist

thinkers, although Buddhists do point to the strong

parallels between Madhyamaka Buddhism and

quantum mechanics. At a still deeper level, Bud-

dhist thinkers can be suspicious of scientific mod-

els that imagine reality to be particulate, compos-

ite, and unrelated. Such models cannot falsify

Buddhist intuitions because Buddhists maintain

that spiritual transformation is required before per-

sons are capable of experiencing reality as radi-

cally relational. Scientists are not themselves com-

mitted to these technologies of transformation but

rather to technologies of experimentation. Conse-

quently, Buddhists can have robust expectations

about what the sciences are likely to discover and

can celebrate those discoveries that seem conso-

nant with Buddhist intuitions, but they need not

predict or control scientific research.

Ultimate truth and scientific truth:

comparative judgments

Christian liberation theologians and others com-

mitted to particular conceptions of the just social

order called for by God may be constrained to be

more intrusive in their stance towards the sciences,

especially the social sciences. Such intrusion need

not be supernaturalistic or irrational in character.

For liberation theologians, scientific theories that

mandate the inevitability of economic disparity are

morally and theologically suspect, as are visions of

the social order that suggest that coercion and hi-

erarchy are unavoidable. Because such visions

imply that a just, equitable, and free social ordering

is impossible, they render liberation impossible,

thus contradicting what the God of justice requires.

Such prima facie contradictions can lead theolo-

gians to maintain that the science in question is

pseudo-science or that unwarranted conclusions

have been drawn from data capable of being oth-

erwise interpreted.

The natural sciences are also suspect insofar as

they suggest that human beings do not have the

freedom or capacity to structure personal and so-

cial life in just and compassionate ways. Thus, if

evolutionary biology or behavioral psychology is

employed to undercut theological commitments to

visions of full human flourishing, such scientific

claims are subject to critical scrutiny and suspicion.

It is safe to assume that Christian theologians of

liberation are in general more likely than Buddhists

to question the putatively authoritative discoveries

of natural or social science. This possibility sug-

gests that such theologians allow for what Oliver

would call a “conflict theory” model of the rela-

tionship between religion and science, rather than

a compartment or complementarity model, be-

cause both modes of inquiry are making incom-

patible claims about the same domain of experi-

ence in the same respect.

These differing approaches to liberation seem

to be intimately tied to each tradition’s under-

standing of ultimate reality. Hindus can, in princi-

ple, maintain that the quest for liberation can be

radically independent and non-intrusive about

matters scientific. Christian claims about liberation,

on the other hand, are not about a transcendent re-

ality that is unrelated to conventional reality (as

brahman is). The possibility of conflict between

what is theologically required and what the sci-

ences indicate cannot be overlooked.

For Buddhist thinkers, liberation is understood

primarily as the transforming insight that enables

one to recognize the radically relational character

of reality, a recognition that generates compassion.

While the emphasis on compassion is shared

across traditions, Christian understandings of liber-

ation are intimately connected to reordering con-

tingent economic and sociopolitical structures so

that communities can be freed from oppressive

ideologies and structures. A wholly irenic relation-

ship with the natural and social sciences seems un-

likely when liberation is so understood. It would

appear that Madhyamaka (the Middle School) Bud-

dhists truly do hold the middle ground between

Advaitins and Christian liberationists. Although

M?dhyamika Buddhists can expect and commend

discoveries that confirm their own relational intu-

itions, they are not compelled to critique the re-

sults of particular scientific ventures.

See also BUDDHISM; HINDUISM; KARMA; LIBERATION

THEOLOGY; TRANSMIGRATION

Bibliography

Balasubramaniam, Arun. “Explaining Strange Parallels:

The Case of Quantum Mechanics and M1dhyamika

Buddhism.” International Philosophical Quarterly 32,

no. 2 (1992): 205-223.

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LIFE AFTER DEATH

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Garfield, Jay L., trans. The Fundamental Wisdom of the

Middle Way: N1g1rjuna’s M5lamadhyamakak1rik1.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Gutierrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation: History, Poli-

tics and Salvation. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1988.

Mansfield, Victor. “M1dhyamika Buddhism and Quantum

Mechanics: Beginning a Dialogue.” International

Philosophical Quarterly 29, no. 16 (1989): 371-391.

Mayeda, Sengaku, trans. A Thousand Teachings: The

Upade7as1hasr3 of 6a%kara. Albany: State University

of New York Press, 1992.

Neville, Robert C., ed. The Human Condition: A Volume

in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project. Albany:

State University of New York Press, 2001.

Oliver, Harold H. “The Complementarity of Theology and

Cosmology.” In Relatedness: Essays in Metaphysics and

Cosmology. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1984.

Puligandla, Ramakrishna. “Science, Philosophy, and Reli-

gion: Quest for a Unitary Vision.” In Reality and Mys-

ticism: Perspectives in the Upani’ads. New Delhi,

India: D.K. Printworld, 1997.

Thatamanil, John. “Nonduality and Ecstasy: 6a%karaand

Tillich on Theological Anthropology.” Ph.D. diss.,

Boston University, 2000.

JOHN J. THATAMANIL

LIBERATION THEOLOGY

Liberation theology originated in Latin America

during the 1960s in response to poverty, oppres-

sion, and failed development strategies. Method-

ologically it is described as theology “from below,”

beginning with social-historical reality and analysis

and reflecting critically on it in the light of Christ-

ian tradition. Through a process of conscientisa-

tion, oppressed peoples are themselves involved

in doing theology. The Exodus theme and the bib-

lical motif of God’s option for the poor are used as

paradigms for reflection. Other theologies subse-

quently developed using the same methodology.

These include black theology and feminist theol-

ogy, which respond respectively to racism and sex-

ism. All forms of liberation theology make use of

social, economic, or political analysis in order to

construct a stable interpretation of the conditions

of life from which liberation is sought.