THE modern university prospectus presents a kaleidoscope of disciplines in separate silos with nothing more to unite them than a slick mission statement. Behind this PR strategy lurks a relatively modern phenomenon, which needs to be challenged and changed as a matter of urgency — and here is the case for why and how such change can be achieved.

Please do not be put off by the invoking of a “disciplinary imaginary” in the subtitle of this important and elegantly argued book by one of today’s most prolific and engaging theologians. Alister McGrath is an Anglican priest and theological educator, but here it is his current remit as Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford which is to the fore.

By “disciplinary imaginary” he invokes “a way of visualizing the ways in which individuals hold together multiple aspects of a complex reality . . . [and] imagine their social and personal worlds”. Historically, natural theology performed this function in relation to human engagement with the natural world, until individual disciplines became established and institutionalised.

It is to retrieve this lost disciplinary imaginary that McGrath devotes himself with a passion born of frustration at the loss of something potentially vital to meeting the existential challenges that we face today.

It is a book of two halves. The first looks back to the history of natural philosophy from Aristotle through the Middle Ages and on into the “skywatching” of Galileo and Kepler to the great English trio of Bacon, Boyle, and Newton. This journey culminated in a community of values which was not dependent on any particular religious confession, but, nevertheless, saw a clear link between acquiring a theoretical understanding of the natural world and improving the moral and spiritual quality of human life.

McGrath then traces the move from natural philosophy to natural science as “the parting of the ways” from “theistic science” to “naturalistic science”, with a judicious assessment of the parts played by Darwin and Thomas Huxley.

The second half sets out the case for a reconceived natural philosophy: “had it not existed in the past, we would need to invent it today.” Why? Because of the urgency of fostering human respect for nature in the light of environmental degradation.

How might this be achieved? McGrath appeals to Karl Popper’s concept of “three worlds” summed up as objective, subjective, and theoretical, i.e. physical, mental, and thoughtfully reflective. Having been compartmentalised for too long, they now need to be reintegrated by constructive engagement transcending disciplinary divisions, and actively seeking to discern the larger picture of the natural world so that we not only learn about, but learn from, nature.

McGrath is clear that he is not in opposition to modern science, but perfectly respectable endeavours to understand the natural world must be reconnected to the disciplines of, for example, philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, and theology, in the interests of a holistic view of nature, and of humanity’s relationship to the natural world.

Is this merely an exercise in intellectual nostalgia, attempting to turn back the clock to a time when, for example, religion matched what came to be called science in describing and explaining the natural world? Surely not. As McGrath explains, while science through its several distinctive disciplines has achieved so much when it comes to advancing and refining precise observations of nature, “it fails to do justice to the passion, emotion, delight and joy that nature invokes within us, or the ultimate questions that seem to be embodied and embedded in our lives.”

McGrath quotes with approval Ian McGilchrist’s pertinent summary observation: “Our talent for division, for seeing the parts, is of staggering importance — second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole.”

A 60-page bibliography testifies to the breadth of McGrath’s scholarship. His clear and accessible style testifies to his skill as an exemplary communicator.
 

The Rt Revd Dr John Saxbee is a former Bishop of Lincoln.

Natural Theology: On retrieving a lost disciplinary imaginary
Alister E. McGrath
OUP £30
(978-0-19-286573-1)
Church Times Bookshop £27