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The need for an entry on epistemology—the theory of knowledge—illustrates the important mediating role of philosophy in key aspects of the science-religion interface. More specifically, the problems occasioned for religious traditions by the rise of science have extended beyond particular disputes to a more pervasive sense that science stands as the measure of all valid knowledge. The result has been a significant questioning as to whether religious traditions can still be viewed as routes to truth. For those seeking to maintain that these traditions can be so viewed, and that the sciences might even profit by appropriating some of the practices of wisdom enshrined therein, epistemological analysis is inescapable.

A number of interrelated issues apply: What is knowledge? What can one know? Does knowledge require certainty, and how can one know?

What is knowledge?

Taking these in order, the standard philosophical definition of knowledge is that of justified true belief. The need for justification and the related concern for its mode of operation links to the fourth issue listed. The need for true beliefs raises the question as to what truth is in regard to propositions. There are three standard approaches: the correspondence, the coherence, and the pragmatic.

The instinct behind correspondence views of truth—whether in scientific or religious contexts—is that true propositions bring something of reality to conceptual articulation. Despite the lasting importance of this instinct, questions exist about the adequacy of the metaphor of correspondence. How in the scientific context, for example, can concepts be thought to correspond to an intrinsically unconceptualized material reality? Does this not inevitably trade off the assumption that real knowledge, although unavailable to humans, is of an intuitive, unconceptualized form? And does that not in turn inevitably serve to denigrate the only forms of knowing of which humans are capable?

Implicit in the above statement of the instinct behind so-called correspondence approaches is the recognition that no one proposition can be fully adequate to the complexity of even one aspect of reality. For their part, coherentist approaches maintain that the best guide to truth consists in the maximally coherent configuration of all relevant statements pertaining to a given aspect of reality. Further, to the extent that all aspects of reality are viewed as being interrelated, coherentist approaches tend towards the aspiration for the maximally coherent configuration of all possible information pertaining to all aspects of reality. In scientific terms this might equate with the heuristically useful, although unattainable, hope for a perfected science and in Judeo-Christian terms with the hope for the eschatological gathering, fulfilling, and true configuring of all things in God.

Integrating the diversity of pragmatist views is the conviction that standard truth talk requires expanding to reflect the fact that human engagement with reality extends beyond the concern to know reality aright to include also the concern to live within it well: Truth is a matter of practical action as well as of conceptual articulation. This resonates with the emphasis within religious traditions upon the need to integrate attentiveness, discernment, and wise practice. While the sciences are justifiably viewed as the clearest example of the human capacity for knowing the world, the scientific community may have something to receive here in the form of a more explicit attentiveness to the specific practical objectives and potential applications of any proposed research project.

What can one know?

The question "What can one know?" has traditionally been answered in two different, but perhaps ultimately complementary, ways: the realist and the idealist. The strong realist maintains that knowledge must involve a real knowing of the world as it really is. The idealist maintains that human knowledge can only ever be a knowing of reality as mediated by human concepts. The bind for both science and religion has been to be caught between a strongly realist-correspondentialist definition of truth and the recognition that all truth claims are inextricably shaped by human concepts. Much philosophy of science has sought to counter the charge that science is simply a useful construct that does not actually convey knowledge. Likewise, much philosophical theology sets itself against the charge that religion is simply a human mythic creation or emotive projection.

A potential way beyond the realist-idealist impasse lies in the dual recognition that while all human engagement with reality is mediated by concepts, such concepts themselves reflect a long process of interaction with the world and, for the religious domain, with the reality of God in such a fashion as renders them at least partially adequate to the reality of things.

Knowledge and fallibility

The move to any such critical-realist position clearly requires one to relinquish an absolute connection between certainty and knowledge. As noted earlier, however, principles already exist that encourage one to view both scientific and religious knowledge in its full and final sense more as an aspiration than a present reality, and this without devaluing the partial knowledge already available. Recognizing the fallibility of scientific knowledge should keep science open to revision. So also, recognizing the inexhaustible richness of God should keep religious understanding open to there always being more.

Two different constructional metaphors have been offered in response to the question of how one can justify one's beliefs: that of a building resting on sure foundations and that of an interconnected web, the strength of which derives from mutual support between members. In spite of their dominance throughout much of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and even twentieth centuries, foundationalist models of justification have tended to recede, along with the strongly correspondential definition of truth with which they are associated, as the inextricable role of language and concept in all human engagement with reality has emerged more broadly into view.

Quite apart from the unrealizable character of foundationalist aspirations, alternative systemic, coherence-based approaches to justification have been claimed to fit the actual practices of scientific and religious reasoning better. It can be claimed that any danger of promoting a move towards closed systems wherein coherence is won at the cost of insularity and ossification can be offset by a recognition of the permanent fallibility of present understanding and a consequent continual drive towards ever more extensive coherence.

While pragmatist views are generally seen as having a limited contribution to make to the justification of propositions, some accord them a greater role in choosing between methods of ascertaining truth. Perhaps their real value is in reminding us of the various factors that may influence someone in finding one system, rather than another, truth-bearing. While that is particularly appropriate in the religious context, it may also be more appropriate in the scientific context than many scientists care to admit.

See also CRITICAL REALISM; FOUNDATIONALISM; IDEALISM; NONFOUNDATIONALISM; POSTFOUNDATIONALISM; PRAGMATISM; TRUTH, THEORIES OF

PAUL D. MURRAY