Pope: Cooperation between science and faith needed for future of human family
November 08, 2012: The Pope on Thursday was present at the Pontifical Academy of
Sciences on the occasion of their Plenary Assembly. He addressed the assembly of scientists
and said, “The present plenary session, on “Complexity and Analogy in Science: Theoretical,
Methodological and Epistemological Aspects”, touches on an important subject which
opens up a variety of perspectives pointing towards a new vision of the unity of the
sciences.
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is international in scope, multi-racial
in composition, and non-sectarian in its choice of members. The work of the Academy
comprises six major areas: Fundamental science; Science and technology of global problems;
Science for the problems of the developing world; Scientific policy; Bioethics; Epistemology.
Later
in his address the Pope said “I am convinced of the urgent need for continued dialogue
and cooperation between the worlds of science and of faith in the building of a culture
of respect for man, for human dignity and freedom, for the future of our human family
and for the long-term sustainable development of our planet.”
Below please
find the Pope's concluding statement of the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Academy
of Sciences
Your Excellencies, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
I
greet the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the occasion of this Plenary
Assembly, and I express my gratitude to your President, Professor Werner Arber, for
his kind words of greeting in your name. I am also pleased to salute Bishop Marcelo
Sánchez Sorondo, your Chancellor, and to thank him for his important work on your
behalf.
The present plenary session, on “Complexity and Analogy in Science:
Theoretical, Methodological and Epistemological Aspects”, touches on an important
subject which opens up a variety of perspectives pointing towards a new vision of
the unity of the sciences. Indeed, the significant discoveries and advances of recent
years invite us to consider the great analogy of physics and biology which is clearly
manifested every time that we achieve a deeper understanding of the natural order.
If it is true that some of the new notions obtained in this way can also allow us
to draw conclusions about processes of earlier times, this extrapolation points further
to the great unity of nature in the complex structure of the cosmos and to the mystery
of man’s place within it. The complexity and greatness of contemporary science in
all that it enables man to know about nature has direct repercussions for human beings.
Only man can constantly expand his knowledge of truth and order it wisely for his
good and that of his environment.
In your discussions, you have sought to
examine, on the one hand, the ongoing dialectic of the constant expansion of scientific
research, methods and specializations and, on the other, the quest for a comprehensive
vision of this universe in which human beings, endowed with intelligence and freedom,
are called to understand, love, live and work. In our time the availability of powerful
instruments of research and the potential for highly complicated and precise experiments
have enabled the natural sciences to approach the very foundations of corporeal reality
as such, even if they do not manage to understand completely its unifying structure
and ultimate unity. The unending succession and the patient integration of various
theories, where results once achieved serve in turn as the presuppositions for new
research, testify both to the unity of the scientific process and to the constant
impetus of scientists towards a more appropriate understanding of the truth of nature
and a more inclusive vision of it. We may think here, for example, of the efforts
of science and technology to reduce the various forms of energy to one elementary
fundamental force, which now seems to be better expressed in the emerging approach
of complexity as a basis for explanatory models. If this fundamental force no longer
seems so simple, this challenges researchers to elaborate a broader formulation capable
of embracing both the simplest and the most complex systems.
Such an interdisciplinary
approach to complexity also shows too that the sciences are not intellectual worlds
disconnected from one another and from reality but rather that they are interconnected
and directed to the study of nature as a unified, intelligible and harmonious reality
in its undoubted complexity. Such a vision has fruitful points of contact with the
view of the universe taken by Christian philosophy and theology, with its notion of
participated being, in which each individual creature, possessed of its proper perfection,
also shares in a specific nature and this within an ordered cosmos originating in
God’s creative Word. It is precisely this inbuilt “logical” and “analogical” organization
of nature that encourages scientific research and draws the human mind to discover
the horizontal co-participation between beings and the transcendental participation
by the First Being. The universe is not chaos or the result of chaos, rather, it appears
ever more clearly as an ordered complexity which allows us to rise, through comparative
analysis and analogy, from specialization towards a more universalizing viewpoint
and vice versa. While the very first moments of the cosmos and life still elude scientific
observation, science nonetheless finds itself pondering a vast set of processes which
reveals an order of evident constants and correspondences and serves as essential
components of permanent creation.
It is within this broader context that I
would note how fruitful the use of analogy has proved for philosophy and theology,
not simply as a tool of horizontal analysis of nature’s realities, but also as a stimulus
to creative thinking on a higher transcendental plane. Precisely because of the notion
of creation, Christian thought has employed analogy not only for the investigation
of worldly realities, but also as a means of rising from the created order to the
contemplation of its Creator, with due regard for the principle that God’s transcendence
implies that every similarity with his creatures necessarily entails a greater dissimilarity:
whereas the structure of the creature is that of being a being by participation, that
of God is that of being a being by essence, or Esse subsistens. In the great human
enterprise of striving to unlock the mysteries of man and the universe, I am convinced
of the urgent need for continued dialogue and cooperation between the worlds of science
and of faith in the building of a culture of respect for man, for human dignity and
freedom, for the future of our human family and for the long-term sustainable development
of our planet. Without this necessary interplay, the great questions of humanity leave
the domain of reason and truth, and are abandoned to the irrational, to myth, or to
indifference, with great damage to humanity itself, to world peace and to our ultimate
destiny.
Dear friends, as I conclude these reflections, I would like to draw
your attention to the Year of Faith which the Church is celebrating in commemoration
of the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. In thanking you for the
Academy’s specific contribution to strengthening the relationship between reason and
faith, I assure you of my close interest in your activities and my prayers for you
and your families. Upon all of you I invoke Almighty God’s blessings of wisdom, joy
and peace.