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

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LIFE SCIENCES

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than on any fundamental resistance to change.

Many see the responsible re-ordering of the world

as a mandate for human beings; the gift from God

is the gift of science and technology.

Both alternatives discussed above are in broad

agreement about the limitations of extending bio-

logical understanding of reality to cultural experi-

ence. Stated simply, sociobiologists find in Dar-

win’s theory of evolution reasons for the

emergence not just of physical traits, but also of

human character attributes. The philosopher

Holmes Rolston III has argued convincingly that at-

tempts to trace complex ethical characteristics to

genetic changes are simplistic. He believes that al-

though the tendency to socialize may have a ge-

netic component, the content of moral laws cannot

arise only from genes. However, while the first

view would see the shape of such moral law as

taking its orientation from the eternal law of God,

the second view lays emphasis on the moral free-

dom of individuals to devise their own laws, where

the will of God in this case is somewhat diffuse be-

cause God is part of the process of change. It is

also not clear according to this view what contri-

bution theology can make to debates over genetic

change, other than showing that it is possible to af-

firm science and be Christian.

There are also wider environmental issues that

impinge on genetic science when it is applied to

biotechnology. Important questions include the ef-

fect of introducing new genetic varieties on human

communities set in ecological communities. Plant

and animal breeding has taken place for many mil-

lennia, but the tools now available in genetic sci-

ence allow genes to be transferred across species

in a way that is unique. What once took years can

now be achieved in days. Many ecologists are con-

cerned about the loss of diversity and other possi-

ble damaging influences on fragile ecological com-

munities. Yet the understanding of ecology as

inclusive of human activity and in flux, rather than

equilibrium, needs to be taken into account. There

is a clash between those in the biotechnological in-

dustry, keen to introduce change for the sake of in-

dividual benefits such as pest resistance, and those

more inclined to consider the wider impact of such

changes on natural habitats. Theologians are being

forced to consider the complexity of these social

issues in deliberations about genetics and environ-

ment. Some suggest that complexity itself chal-

lenges the merit of secular approaches to ethics

that simply look to the consequences of actions in

terms of risks and benefits. Might there, indeed, be

a way of reshaping the direction of science so that

it does not look at problems narrowly, but consid-

ers social issues and the wider context of public

debate? Some suggest that the answer is a return to

a more holistic view of science, one that seeks

knowledge not just as information, but in the

broader framework of a search for wisdom.

See also CREATED CO-CREATOR; DNA; ECOLOGY;

VOLUTION, BIOLOGICAL; GAIA HYPOTHESIS; LIFE;

IFE, ORIGINS OF; LIFE, RELIGIOUS AND

PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS; SELFISH GENE;

OCIOBIOLOGY

Bibliography

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. London: Paladin,

1978.

Deane-Drummond, Celia. Creation Through Wisdom:

Theology and the New Biology. Edinburgh, UK:

T&T Clark, 2000.

Deane-Drummond, Celia. Biology and Theology Today:

Exploring the Boundaries. London: SCM Press, 2001.

Deane-Drummond, Celia, and Szerszynski, Bronislaw. Re-

Ordering Nature: Theology, Society and the New Ge-

netics. Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 2002.

Hefner, Philip. The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and

Religion. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1993.

Lovelock, James. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Ox-

ford: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Northcott, Michael. The Environment and Christian Ethics.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Peacocke, Arthur. Theology for a Scientific Age. Enlarged

edition. London: SCM Press, 1993.

Peters, Ted. Playing God? Genetic Determinism and

Human Freedom. London: Routledge, 1997.

Reiss, Michael, and Straughan, Roger. Improving Nature?

The Science and Ethics of Genetic Engineering. Cam-

bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Rolston, Holmes III. Genes, Genesis, and God: Values and

Their Origins in Natural and Human History. Cam-

bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Ruse, Michael. Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? The Re-

lationship Between Science and Religion. Cambridge,

UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Worster, Donald. Nature’s Economy: A History of

Ecological Ideas. New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1977.

CELIA DEANE-DRUMMOND

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LOCALITY

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LINGUISTICS

See LANGUAGE

LOCALITY

Locality is a feature of the world that is suggested

by the experience that local causes produce local

effects. In quantum mechanics, however, the EPR

Paradox conceived of widely separated situations

entangled by virtue of their quantum histories, and

it is possible for a quantum measurement to have

a nonlocal effect. It has sometimes been suggested

that nonlocality might form a basis for telepathy or

some form of faster-than-light signaling or travel.

However, it can be shown that within quantum

mechanics it is not possible to transfer information

faster than the speed of light by exploiting quan-

tum nonlocality. No two quantum mechanical

measurements can be connected to each other by

a faster-than-light signal.

Albert Einstein’s (1879–1955) General Theory

of Relativity requires local behavior in ways that

Newton’s theory of gravity does not. In Isaac New-

ton’s (1642–1727) theory there exist mysterious

gravitational forces that act instantaneously over

unlimited distances in space (for example, the

gravitational force of the sun on the Earth). In Ein-

stein’s theory there are no instantaneous nonlocal

gravitational forces. Everything acts locally. The

presence of mass or energy in space makes space

curved, and all bodies move in response to the

local curvature of space that they encounter locally,

not in response to long-range, nonlocal forces of

attraction.

Locality played an important role in the devel-

opment of Western science. Most early science in

the West was nonholistic in the sense that it main-

tained that the world could be analyzed locally

without having to understand the whole of the uni-

verse. By contrast, Eastern holistic philosophies

were handicapped in the development of a suc-

cessful working theory of nature because they held

strongly to a holistic view of the world. There has

been debate about the resonance between the ho-

listic nature of some parts of modern physics, no-

tably quantum mechanics, chaos, and complexity,

and early Eastern holistic philosophies. It is clear

that a local, nonholistic, largely reductionist outlook

is advantageous in beginning a successful scientific

enterprise. While there undoubtedly are holistic as-

pects of the world, they are most effectively under-

stood after having understood the local aspects.

See also EPR PARADOX; PHYSICS, QUANTUM;

ELATIVITY, GENERAL THEORY OF

Bibliography

Bell, John. “On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox.”

Physics 1, no. 3 (1964): 195-200.

D’Espagnat, Bernard. In Search of Reality. New York:

Springer-Verlag, 1983.

Shimony, Abner. “Controllable and Uncontrallable Non-lo-

cality.” In Proceedings of an International Sympo-

sium on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics,

eds. S. Kamefuchi, et al. Tokyo: Physical Society of

Japan, 1984.

JOHN D. BARROW

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MAIMONIDES

A twelfth-century rabbi and community leader,

philosopher and physician, Maimonides was fasci-

nated by the relation between science and religion

from his earliest days. A polymath by inclination, he

needed first to master the sciences then extant, in-

cluding logic, mathematics and medicine, before

being able to assess their relation to his Jewish

faith. Indeed, he insisted on philosophy’s mediating

role in the mutual illumination of faith and reason,

notably with regard to creation.

Early life and influences

Mosheh ben Maimon, called Maimonides by Latin

authors and known to the Arabic-speaking world

as Musa ben Maimun, Moses son of Maimon, was

born on March 30, 1135

C.E., in the city of Cór-

doba, Spain, where eight generations of his ances-

tors had served as rabbis and rabbinical judges.

Capital of the Umayyad emirs and caliphs in Spain

since the eighth century, Córdoba had remained

even in their political decline the center of a bril-

liant, prosperous civilization in which Jews and

Christians, as well as Muslims, were active partici-

pants. Young Moses himself was not to enjoy this

cosmopolitan milieu much past his bar mitzvah, as

the family was forced to flee their home in the

wake of the Almohads from North Africa, who for-

bade Jews or Christians to profess their religion

openly. Yet in the relative calm prior to the shat-

tering of their world, the Jews of Spain had built an

intellectual capital from which Maimonides was to

profit immeasurably, even after the world that had

produced it ceased to exist.

Poetry, astronomy, medicine, philosophy,

scriptural exegesis, grammar, history, and mysti-

cism were typically integrated into a comprehen-

sive education. Moses’s father, Maimon, led the

family to Fez (in present-day Morocco), the very

center of the Almohad movement, where they

managed to survive for five years, only to move on

to Palestine in 1165, where Maimonides journeyed

to the site of the temple in Jerusalem to give thanks

for the gift of this pilgrimage, and thence to He-

bron, the traditional resting place of Abraham, who

held a special place in Maimonides’s vision of his-

tory, not only as the first spokesperson of a uni-

versal monotheism, but also as the first to base the-

ological claims on arguments derived from reason.

Since the rule of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem

offered a less than favorable milieu for developing

Jewish life and culture, the family proceeded to

Egypt, where Maimon soon died, leaving his son to

take up the roles in the community to which his

learning entitled him.

Legal and philosophical writings

Remarkably, Maimonides continued his education

under the stress of exile and travel, composing his

commentary on the Jewish legal canon, the Mish-

nah, during the seven years of exile from his

twenty-third to thirtieth years. Taking up residence

in Fustat (Old Cairo), he was appointed judge of

the rabbinical court and soon assumed leadership

of the community. After the death of his brother

and the loss of the family savings in a shipwreck,

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MAIMONIDES

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Maimonides took up the responsibility of support-

ing the family as a physician, practicing medicine

until his death. During this time he was court

physician to Saladin (c. 1137–1193), the Sultan of

Egypt and Syria, as well as the entire court, leaving

him little time to study and write, yet he accom-

plished both, along with adjudicating disputes

within the Jewish community. The completion of

his groundbreaking codification of Jewish law, the

Mishneh Torah, around 1178, brought him even

greater fame that his earlier commentary, and he

was beset with requests for legal opinions from

communities throughout the Islamic world.

At this time, however, he also encountered

Rabbi Joseph ibn Judah Aqnin, who insisted Mai-

monides guide him into the logic, cosmology, the-

ology, and philosophy of the Greco-Arabic tradi-

tion, so as to be able to converse with other

learned communities in the Islamicate. Following a

course of study as old as Plato’s Academy in the

fourth century

B.C.E., Maimonides initiated his stu-

dent into astronomy and mathematics, and then

logic, and finally metaphysics, by using its tools to

explicate the conundra the revealed texts often left

to readers of the Hebrew scriptures. This series of

exercise in biblical interpretation and philosophical

exegesis was published in 1190 as the Guide to the

Perplexed. It was immediately translated from Ara-

bic into Hebrew, and then into Latin, where it

served as a model for Christian thinkers like

Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) to integrate asser-

tions of faith with explorations of reason.

Science and religion

The most vexing issue turned out to be the claim

of Genesis that time itself began with creation,

whereas the prevailing philosophical view had

long been of a universe emanating necessarily and

without beginning from a single unitary principle.

Maimonides established the model for addressing

this conflict between the divergent claims of rea-

son and of faith by using his philosophical acumen

to show that the authority whom philosophers had

invoked—Aristotle—had neither intended nor

achieved a demonstration of the universe coming

forth from a single unitary principle without be-

ginning. And having shown that, he proceeded to

delineate the anomalies in the actual universe, no-

tably the errant path of the planets (or “wandering

stars”), to point out that no set of logical princi-

ples could account for the actual ordering of the

heavens, despite the elegance of the necessary em-

anation scheme. So, he said, it makes more emi-

nent sense to posit a free creator, whose inten-

tional ordering could explain what logic cannot.

This central bit of reasoning displays how his

scientific acumen could be put to use to make it

possible for believers to accept the words of Gen-

esis at face value, yet he was also quick to insist

that neither view could be proven. Moreover,

where scriptural texts did conflict with proven

tenets of reason, then they would have to be inter-

preted figuratively; since the divine reality could

not be bodily, texts referring to the “Lord’s mighty

arm” would have to be read metaphorically. He

was even prepared to read Genesis that way, fore-

going a first moment of time for creation, but the

absence of a valid demonstration of the prevailing

philosophical view reduced it to the level of mere

opinion—however widely held it had been, and so

opened the way to a belief in scripture that was

straightforward yet sophisticated. Such is the legacy

that all religious traditions received from Mai-

monides, whose strategies were transmitted to the

Christian world by way of Aquinas and others after

him. In short, what seem to be conflicts between

faith and reason, religion and science, may often

be defused by a proper understanding of each do-

main, yet doing so requires an education and a

sensibility as astute as Moses Maimonides’s. As the

celebrated Hebrew saying has it: “from Moses to

Moses, there arose none like Moses.”

See also CREATION; GENESIS; HISTORICAL CRITICISM;

UDAISM; JUDAISM, CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN

SCIENCE AND RELIGION; JUDAISM, HISTORY OF

SCIENCE AND RELIGION, MEDIEVAL PERIOD;

HOMAS AQUINAS

Bibliography

Goodman, Lenn Evan. Rambam: Readings in the Philoso-

phy of Moses Maimonides. New York: Viking, 1976.

Hartman, David. Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic

Quest. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of

America, 1976.

Maimonides, Moses. Guide for the Perplexed, trans.

Michael Friedlander (1904). New York: Dover, 1956.

Maimonides, Moses. Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Schlomo

Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.

Seeskin, Kenneth. Maimonides: A Guide for Today’s Per-

plexed. West Orange, N.J.: Behrman House, 1991.

DAVID B. BURRELL

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MANY-WORLDS HYPOTHESIS

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MANY-WORLDS HYPOTHESIS

One of the fundamental interpretive problems of

quantum theory arises from the fact that from any

two or more states for a system one can create an-

other state, their superposition (mathematically, a

linear combination). Let s and s′ be possible states

for a system, corresponding to two different values,

k and k′ respectively, for the observable, O. (That

is, they are mutually orthogonal eigenstates of O.)

Their superposition, which is another possible state

for the system, is denoted by s + s′. According to the

standard interpretation of quantum theory, a system

in the state s + s′ does not have the value k for O,

nor the value k′ for O, nor neither, but if O is meas-

ured on the system, the system will be found to

have either the value of k or the value of k′ for O.

The standard interpretation works in practice,

but many physicists and philosophers find it to be

unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons, not least be-

cause it contains the unanalyzed notion of “meas-

urement.” With minimal experience, it is easy to

judge when to say that a measure of O has oc-

curred, but upon what principle can such a judg-

ment be made? No satisfactory principle has been

offered. The other problematic feature of the stan-

dard interpretation is that it countenances physical

systems that are literally indeterminate with respect

to their values for observables such as “position.”

In other words, a physical system (outside of a

context in which its location is being measured)

can literally have no location (though if its location

is measured, it will be found to have a location).

The Many-worlds Hypothesis, which originally

arises from work by Hugh Everett (1930–1982), is

an alternative approach to interpretation that pur-

ports to dispense with the notion of measurement

and to resolve the problem of indeterminacy.

The central idea behind the Many-worlds Hy-

pothesis is that a state such as s + s′ in fact de-

scribes a multiplicity of distinct, independent,

worlds, some in which our system is in the state s

and others in which our system is in the state s′. In

most versions of the Many-worlds interpretation,

there are, in all, an uncountable infinity of worlds,

divided amongst the various states appearing in

the superposition (in our case, s and s′) according

to the probabilities attached to the various states.

So if, according to the standard interpretation, a

measurement of O on our system would reveal the

value k with probability



, and k′ with the proba-

bility



, then according to the Many-worlds inter-

pretations, in



of the worlds our system is in the

state s, and so has the value k for O, and in



the worlds our system is in the state s′, and so has

the value k′ for O.

It is important to keep in mind that the “worlds”

of the Many-worlds interpretation are not the same

as the “possible worlds” of philosophy. This point is

clear in light of the fact that the philosopher’s pos-

sible worlds need not obey the laws of quantum

theory, while the single “universe” of the Many-

worlds interpretation does obey the laws of quan-

tum theory. In the Many-worlds interpretation,

therefore, there is a single “actual” world in the

philosopher’s sense, but it consists of many distinct

independent “realms of reality.” However, in stan-

dard usage, these realms of reality are called worlds.

A variant of the Many-worlds Hypothesis,

called the Many-minds Hypothesis, asserts that the

multiplicity in question is not a multiplicity of

worlds, but a multiplicity of distinct, independent,

minds. Each observer in fact has many minds (in

most versions, an uncountable infinity of them),

and when the observer observes a system in a su-

perposition (for example, s + s′) some of the minds

observe the system to be in the state s, while oth-

ers observe it to be in the states s′, the proportions

again matching the quantum-mechanical probabil-

ities. In the case of the Many-minds interpretations,

rather than a single actual world with many realms

of reality, there is a single “person” with many

minds. Other than that, there are many similarities

between the two interpretations.

The notion of a measurement is supposed to

play no fundamental role in these interpretations.

A measurement of an observable O on a system

merely reveals the preexisting value in “your”

world that the system had for O. That is, if you wit-

ness the result k, then you are in a world in which

the system already had the value k for O. Similar

remarks hold for the Many-minds theories, mutatis

mutandis.

Many-worlds interpretations face a number of

interpretive difficulties. One is that any quantum

state can be written as a superposition in many

ways. In the terms stated earlier, s + s′ is equivalent

to an infinity of other superpositions, t + t′, where

s and s′ are different from t + t′. So given that the

quantum state of the universe is V= s + s′=t + t′,

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MATERIALISM

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are the realms of reality (the “worlds”) defined by

the states s and s′ or t and t′, or all of the above? If

one of the former two, then the interpretation

faces the obvious question why one (e.g., s and s′)

rather than the other (e.g., t and t′). If the latter,

then the interpretation faces the problem of how to

define a probability measure over all of the com-

ponents that can appear in any decomposition of

the quantum state. Indeed, if such a measure is

supposed to represent “ignorance” about which

world one occupies (or which mind is “one’s

own”) then it is far from clear that a satisfactory

measure can be defined.

This issue is related to another severe problem

facing these interpretations, namely, how to justify,

or even to understand, the probabilities of standard

quantum theory. The most obvious way to con-

ceive of probabilities in these interpretations is as

a measure of ignorance either about which world

one occupies or about which mind is one’s own.

The problem is that it is not at all clear why that ig-

norance should be measure by the quantum-theo-

retic measure (except by stipulation).

But perhaps the most significant obstacle facing

the Many-worlds and Many-minds interpretations is

the sheer implausibility of the hypotheses. The cen-

tral issue facing these interpretations is whether the

difficulties we have understanding quantum theory

really force us to such extreme measures.