INTRODUCTION

Ignacio Silva

About five years ago, I met Andrew Pinsent, Director of Research at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, over a coffee in Oxford. Within a few weeks we decided to create a programme to understand and document research into issues regarding science and religion throughout Latin America. This part of the world is a vast region where many philosophical and theological traditions meet. Our hope was to find academics working on science and religion research from this diversity of perspectives. And we were not disappointed. Over the course of three years, which included three international conferences and several journeys across the region, we were lucky to meet hundreds of scholars working on topics related to science and religion. This volume is but a reflection of what some of these scholars are currently thinking and discussing on these topics. Latin America is a somewhat overlooked region, in particular where issues regarding science and religion are concerned, hence the need for a volume detailing various features of the past and current state of academic research into these issues. It is well known that John Brooke has persuasively argued for the complexity of the relations between scientific enterprises and religious traditions in history.1 Similarly, David Livingstone has recently shown the importance of complicating even further our understanding of these relationships.2 It is in this spirit that I conceived this volume. Its goal is to problematize further the contemporary understanding of how science and religion relate by bringing attention to these considerations in Latin America. Before moving into the particular features of this volume, however, it would be good to offer, from the very beginning, a word of caution. Even though there are some chapters which explicitly analyse certain current characteristics of the ways in which scientific and religious discourses relate in Latin America (chapters by Navarrete or Machado Silva and Mortimer are clear examples), the goal of this volume is not to study the current, or historical, relations between science and religion in Latin America, as if the region were taken as a case study or as if it were a subject of study. On the contrary, it is a volume where Latin American authors express their views on topics within the contemporary global

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discussion on science and religion. Of course, many times the narrative and argumentation lead the authors to reference circumstances present in Latin America. Hence, there is a twofold Latin American character to the chapters. The book thus includes in its title the phrase Latin American Perspectives, firstly because it is written by Latin American authors presenting their views on different problems raised by the interaction of religious and scientific narratives. In this sense, they write from Latin America, with a Latin American mind. Secondly, the title also includes these words because there are many Latin American problems which are discussed in the following pages. I am confident that this twofold character of the book will benefit the current global dialogue between science and religion both by portraying some aspects of the current situation of Latin America and also by presenting the work of Latin American scholars to the English-speaking academy. The following pages are filled with a variety of different ways of thinking, a plethora of arguments and a large assortment of views on how science and religion related in the past, are related today and should relate in the future. As can be expected, much of the discussion is dominated by a Catholic tradition. After all, Latin America is a mainly Catholic region. Even within this tradition, however, we found different perspectives: included in this volume you will find diverse discourses inspired, for example, by the thought of Thomas Aquinas, Paul Tillich and liberation theology. But you will also find arguments motivated by Anglo-American philosophical discussions as well as phenomenological takes on philosophy. The structure of the book follows the current trends in contemporary scholarship dedicated to science and religion, which, it seems to me, can be divided into three interrelated units. In the first place, there are methodological discussions on how scientific and religious discourses should relate to each other. Clear examples of this trend are the works of Ian Barbour, Mikael Stenmark, John Haught and some of John Polkinghornes work, among many others. These authors present in their works a wide variety of typical interactions between science and religion, while advocating for particular ways in which religious and scientific discourses should, ideally, relate. A second trend focuses on the historical interactions between science and religion, mainly from the seventeenth century onwards, trying to understand how religious or theological narratives influenced and were influenced by the development of modern science. Typical cases of study are the religious justification of the new experimental and mechanical natural philosophy in the early modern period, or the theological responses to Darwin in the late nineteenth century. Good examples of this perspective are John H. Brooke, Ronald L. Numbers, Peter Harrison and Jonathan Topham. Finally, there is a large group of people working on a diverse number of topics which could be characterized as current cases of relation between science and religion. In this large group of topics I find discussions ranging from the interactions between the doctrine of creation with Big Bang cosmology and

Introduction

the theory of evolution, to discussions about the meaning of personhood and the approaches of neuroscience to the study of human beings. Examples of these types of research are plentiful, but it should be sufficient to mention the work of Robert Russell (and many others) on divine action, Justin Barret on cognitive science of religion, Elaine Ecklund on sociology of belief, or Simon Conway Morris on evolutionary theory. Each of these three perspectives is essential for a fundamental comprehension of the ways in which scientific and religious discourses relate today and will relate in the future. The volume is, then, structured following this picture of the current academic dialogue on science and religion. The first part includes four chapters from four different traditions: Catholic, existentialist, theology of liberation, and a historical perspective on methodological issues on science and religion. The second part, on historical cases in the region, includes three chapters: one focusing on the pre-Hispanic era, another examining Jesuit missions in the region, and finally, a chapter on the nineteenthcentury reception of Darwinian ideas in Latin America. The third part includes four chapters on contemporary issues on science and religion: two on evolution, one on the notion of the person and the final chapter on the problem of determinism and indeterminism and divine action. Oscar Beltrn, an Argentine philosopher, opens up the first part on methodological perspectives presenting and developing the thought of Mariano Artigas. One of the most influential authors on topics relating science and religion in the region, Artigas puts a strong emphasis on philosophy acting as a bridge between religious and scientific discourses. Beltrn, following Artigas, argues for the necessity of bringing philosophys sapiential character to the discussion table, in order to achieve an orderly integration of knowledge, which would lead to a vital and fruitful exchange between science, philosophy and religion. In the second chapter, Jaime Laurence Bonilla Morales, Colombian theologian, studies Paul Tillichs thought. Bonilla Morales argues that it is possible to find in Tillichs work, especially in his Philosophy of Religion, claims which would offer a unique connection of theology with the sciences. Bonilla explores Tillichs ideas surrounding the notion of the dimension of depth as a function of life, which leads to understanding religion as that which concerns us unconditionally, present in all human activities, science included. Chilean theologian Juan Alejandro Navarrete Cano presents a survey of what Latin American liberation theologies have to say on the relations between the contemporary natural sciences and theology. Navarrete Cano revisits the thought of Pedro Trigo, Juan Segundo, Leonardo Boff and discussions present in several academic meetings of the past decade in the region. He argues that even though some important work has been done on the relation between liberation theology and science, much is still to be done, in particular by improving

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the distinctions between the different levels of discourses and the inclusion of philosophical analysis into the discussions. The final chapter of the first part, by theologian Lus Corra Lima from Brazil, like the previous chapters, is somewhat of a mission statement. Corra Lima argues, in a thought-provoking manner, that the historical studies of certain traditional notions can (and perhaps should) bring new perspectives to contemporary issues. These new perspectives would, in turn, prompt the reconsideration of some traditional, though contemporary, notions, such as natural law and the family, among others. These new historically informed perspectives would call for, Correa Lima states, a healthy relativism. Thus, his goal is, positively, to show how history can help Christianity to relate affirmatively to the present, reaffirming its identity by reshaping some of its notions. The second part of the volume, devoted to the study of historical cases in Latin America on science and religion, starts with Mexican historian Jess Galindo Trejos work on astronomy, the alignment of buildings and religiosity of Mesoamerican pre-Hispanic societies. Trejo argues that the architectural practice of orienting structures in Mesoamerica using the sky as a reference to mark the importance of certain canonical dates bestowed upon the buildings an intangible value of solemnity, situating them in harmony with the calendrical principles established by the deities. Miguel de Asa, Argentine historian, presents in this parts second chapter the way in which natural science was incorporated into the life of eighteenthcentury Jesuit missions in northern Argentina and Paraguay. De Asa argues that, in view of the missionary goals of the Jesuits, the scientific products of the missions were a fruitful mlange in which particular aspects of aboriginal knowledge of nature were resignified and included into a body of Western knowledge. In a way, De Asa argues, science was at the service of religion and religion spurred the cultivation of science. The final chapter of this part of the volume brings some reflections on the reception of Darwinism in Latin America by the end of the nineteenth century. Hctor Velzquez Fernndez, a Mexican philosopher and historian, revisits the attitudes that different countries throughout the continent had towards Darwinism. Velzquez Fernndez, recalling Thomas Glicks models of reception of new ideas, finds that Latin America as a whole is a strange case in which French positivism and Catholic views on philosophy resulted in diverse approaches to Darwinism, ranging from anxiety and opposition (in Bolivia, Peru, Mexico or Cuba) to acceptance and adaptation (in Argentina, Uruguay or Brazil). The third part of the volume includes four chapters treating contemporary subjects, relevant not only to Latin American academia, but also to the global discussions into science and religion. The first two chapters form a set dealing with issues on evolution and creation. Thus, Brazilian social scientists Heslley

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Machado Silva and Eduardo Mortimer present their findings on the replication of the Rescuing Darwin survey in Brazil, with regards to the expansion of creationism in the country. They find that there is a growing tendency among several different groups in Brazil towards intelligent design and creationism, although this could perhaps be explained more effectively in terms of an independence thesis than a conflict thesis present in that society. In the following chapter, theologian Eduardo Cruz, also from Brazil, after analysing some paradigmatic cases on evolution and creationism, argues for a new way to approach discussions about evolution and creation. Thus, Cruz affirms that addressing these discourses with a consideration of the role that narrative and myth play in human affairs, something common to both science and religion, could be a fruitful way of dealing with the current conflictive situation. Juan Francisco Franck, Argentine philosopher, moves the discussion to the realm of personhood. Franck argues that the notion of person as such, analysed from a phenomenological perspective, could serve as a converging notion for dialogue between philosophy, neuroscience and theology. Francks position is that this notion could help neuroscience to set its proper subject of study, could challenge philosophy to start from a new point of departure different from that of substance, and could profit theology in its discourse about a God which is closer to the world than the prime mover or pure being. In the final chapter of the volume, Claudia Vanney, an Argentine physicist and philosopher, reflects on the current debates on determinism and indeterminism, and its relation to the problem of divine action. In her path through these discussions, Vanney presents the thought of Leonardo Polo, a Spanish philosopher whose ideas are raising increasing interest in several academic circles in Spain and Latin America. By speaking of notions such as cognitive pluralism, Vanney argues that theological, philosophical, epistemological and scientific levels should be carefully recognized in such debates in order to avoid a reductionist position, acknowledging that sciences objectifying knowledge is not the only type of knowledge. Editing a volume like this one meant facing some challenges. The first challenge was the style of academic writing, mainly because English was not the first language of any of the authors included in the volume. It is certainly different writing in Spanish or Portuguese to writing in English, and even more so for an academic audience. I believe that, with the help and patience of all the authors, we have accomplished a good stylistic synthesis. Even though we have tried to write the chapters bearing the English-speaking reader in mind, you will find some Latin flavours to the discourse. Another challenge was to balance narratives describing the situation in Latin America and the actual thought of Latin American authors on different topics. As I mentioned, this is not a volume which tells the story of science and religion

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in Latin America, nor is it a volume which explains from an observers perspective what is going on in the region. It is a volume in which Latin American authors bring their own reflections on issues pertaining to science and religion into a global discussion. Clearly, because these scholars are working in this region of the world, they work from their own regional remit. Thus, this volume portrays, at least to some degree, Latin American scholarship on science and religion, but from a first person perspective. Finally, the choice of topics was certainly another challenge to overcome (some might even think that the volume is too eclectic in its topics). In a region where so many different philosophical and theological traditions meet, choosing a handful of topics and authors to represent this diversity was something of a wager. The decision was led by the structure of the volume. Many topics, and most importantly many scholars, were not included. Health and the spiritual life or the meaning and origin of life on earth are good examples of issues which could have been incorporated. Unfortunately, the limits of space and time precluded these considerations. A number of people and institutions deserve my gratitude for supporting this volume and the project of which it is part. First of all, thanks are due to the contributors to the volume, who found time in their busy schedules to write their chapters in a language which is not their own. Andrew Pinsent deserves my highest token of appreciation. From the very beginning of the project his support and vision inspired me, and many, to work on it with passion and dedication. I also thank Peter Harrison and Michael Murray, who have encouraged and motivated me to pursue this project since 2010. I am grateful to Fern Elsdon-Baker for innumerable discussions in a variety of exotic venues. I also express my gratitude to Lucio Florio, Eugenio Urrutia, William E. Carroll, Timothy Chappell, Bernie Lightman, Ronald L. Numbers and Ludovico Galleni for their outstanding support. Particular thanks are due to Victoria Randall, whose invaluable work helped with improving the English of each of the chapters included in the volume, and to Philip Good, Mark Pollard and the editorial staff at Pickering & Chatto, who believed in the volume from its inception and helped me prepare it for publication. Finally, this volume, as the Ian Ramsey Centres project Science and Religion in Latin America, could not have been possible without the generous support of the John Templeton Foundation.