Science without God

Peter Harrison and Jon H. Roberts have edited a fine volume that aims to challenge the traditional history of scientific naturalism. According to this traditional history, scientific naturalism (qua an injunction on explanations appealing to gods) blossomed in ancient Greece, then died down for a bit in the early Middle Ages and was reborn in the late medieval era before ultimately finding its purest form after Darwin. Not so, say the authors. Additionally, this traditional history is sometimes taken to tell us something about the historical success of naturalistic explanations. That is to say, without appealing to the supernatural, the sciences have been extremely successful. This success could be taken as evidence that there is in fact nothing supernatural, that the universe is exhausted by natural causal entities and their respective causal powers. In brief, the success of methodological naturalism is often taken as evidence for metaphysical naturalism. Not so, say the authors.

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