Abstract
Although Ian Barbour’s model for outlining the science-religion relationship is probably the best known taxonomy, it also faces substantial criticism. I offer a qualified defence of the continuing usefulness of Barbour’s taxonomy as a starting point for exploring the science-religion relationship. To achieve this, I outline a method for illustrating Barbour’s taxonomy by using the recent Disney/Pixar film Inside Out in a reciprocal manner: as an upshot, the message of the movie can be employed for modifying some aspects of the taxonomy.
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For Rowman and Littlefield, information about the Great Authors series can be found at https://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/RL/GAP#. The Wiley-Blackwell series can be found at https://andphilosophy.com/books/ and Open Court Press at http://www.opencourtbooks.com/categories/pcp.htm.
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As far as I can tell, there have not been any plans for a volume on “Inside Out and
Philosophy.” Still, this is not to say that philosophers have not written on this issue. For one example, there is the essay by Sirvent and Reyburn (2015), “Inside Out and Philosophy: What does it mean to be okay?” at the Wiley-Blackwell site for the Philosophy and Popular Culture series. For another example – and one that served as inspiration for this chapter – see B. Manninen (2016).
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Link to the official movie trailer: https://youtu.be/yRUAzGQ3nSY.
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See, e.g., David Hume’s warning about arguments based on analogies in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion:
After having experienced the circulation of the blood in human creatures, we make no doubt, that it takes place in Titius and Maevius. But from its circulation in frogs and fishes, it is only a presumption, though a strong one, from analogy, that it takes place in men and other animals. The analogical reasoning is much weaker, when we infer the circulation of the sap in vegetables from our experience that that the blood circulates in animals; and those, who hastily followed that imperfect analogy, are found, by more accurate experiments, to have been mistaken (2007 [1779]: Part 2.7).
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Among the more recent critics of Barbour’s model are Geoffrey Cantor and Chris Kenny (2001: 765) who claim that Barbour’s model is too much tied to the contemporary issues and it does not provide “a very useful or analytically helpful” framework to historians whose studies focus on the past episodes in science-religion relationship; Mikael Stenmark (2007, Chap. 10) and Taede Smedes (2008: 235), who argues that Barbour’s model “echoes the logical positivist vision of unification and has a strong bias toward science”, which makes it tantamount to ‘cultural scientism’.
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On this point, it may be useful to recall the demarcation problem in philosophy of science – the endeavor to delineate what counts as science proper, and what is just pretend-science. Without delving into this debate any further, it may be useful to apply a similar consideration when it comes to demarcating (or defining) religion. Even if we can define what Catholicism is, what Lutheranism is, or what any of the world religions is, this is very much in the abstract. But what about religion as it is experienced on the personal level? In his seminal book, Varieties of Religious Experience, William James argued that any definition of religion was arbitrary. For the purposes of his own lectures, he proposed the following: “Religion, therefore, as I ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine” (James 1958[1902], 42; emphasis in the original).
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On this point, Wittgenstein’s remark about concepts with blurred edges is most instructive: “Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?” (Wittgenstein 1953: §71a).
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Source: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2015&p=.htm and http://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/weekend/yearly/?yr=2015&p=.htm. Information courtesy of Box Office Mojo. Used with permission
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My exploring of this point was prompted by an audience comment at the “Science and Religion in Education” Conference in October 2016.
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Without trying to be coy, the aphorism by Antonio Porchia captures this difficulty well:
“I know what I have given you, but I don’t know what you have received.”
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Manninen, T.W. (2019). Turning Barbour’s Model Inside Out: On Using Popular Culture to Teach About Science and Religion. In: Billingsley, B., Chappell, K., Reiss, M.J. (eds) Science and Religion in Education. Contemporary Trends and Issues in Science Education, vol 48. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17234-3_3
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