This Month's Colloqium

Colloquia Archive

Preliminary Comments and Ouestions:

1. I cannot and do not presume to pass judgment on the "science" of Edward O. Wilson and sociobiology. My interest is in a theological "reading" of his ideas.
   
2. I like Edward O. Wilson and On Human Nature. I like the grandiosity and expansiveness of his vision. He thinks BIG! I like that.
   
3. I admire and celebrate the interdisciplinary nature of his work. We often talk about authentic dialogue between disciplines. While Wilson is not truly dialogical (he's rather optimistic--some would say arrogant-- about the possibilities of science and tends to discount theology), he does think beyond the confines of biology narrowly conceived as a discipline.
   
4. My opinion is that Wilson's reductionist reading of human nature (i.e. his anthropology) is helpful and insightful (I think that we would ignore sociobiology at our own risk both as humans and religious thinkers), but inadequate. A theological reading must be in dialogue and conversation with his sociobiological reading. To be hesitantly polemical I would argue that Wilson is a "disciplinary imperialist". He places his discipline at the pinnacle of all disciplines. More accurately, he thinks that his discipline alone is adequate for a complete anthropology (i.e. understanding of what it means to be human).
   
5. Now for some questions. Does Wilson display a Western bias, an over-reliance on Western Enlightenment notions (e.g. empiricism, progress) to the extent that it distorts an accurate reading of the data?
   
6. Can Wilson's sociobiology be read as a reductionist account of Christian anthropology? We've talked about theology providing an agenda for scientific research. Has an unconscious theological agenda (viz. Christian anthropology) determined how Wilson interprets the scientific data?

Specific textual questions:

7. EOW: "if the brain is a machine of ten billion nerve cells and the mind can somehow be explained as the summed activity of a finite number of chemical and electrical reactions, boundaries limit the human prospect--we are biological and our souls cannot fly free" (p. 1)
   DCR: can the mind be explained purely, solely in terms of chemical and electrical reactions? If so, would it be an adequate account of "man's ultimate nature"?
   
8. EOW: "Human emotional responses and the more general ethical practices based on them have been programmed to a substantial degree by natural selection over thousands of generations" (p. 6).
   DCR: Who does the programming? Can we call it "programming" if it's left to the arbitrariness and randomness of natural selection?
   
9. EOW: "which of the (biological) censors and motivators should be obeyed and which ones might better be curtailed or sublimated?" (p. 6).
   DCR: EOW is right indeed to ask this question. Further questions: Who will make this decision? What will be the basis for this decision? What will be the principles guiding and determining our consideration?
   
10. EOW: "The interplay [between biology sub-disciplines] has been a triumph for scientific materialism. It has vastly enriched our understanding of the nature of life" (p. 10) and "the final decisive edge enjoyed by scientific naturalism will come from its capacity to explain the traditional religion, its chief competitor, as a wholly material phenomenon. Theology is not likely to survive as an independent intellectual discipline. But religion itself will endure for a long time as a vital force in society."
    DCR: Can the spiritual (or theological) and the material compete in a nonzero sum race? Could interplay between theology and science be a boon to truth and knowledge'
    
11. EOW: People fear reductionism, but if this fear is overcome and biology tells us something about human behavior "humankind might appear to be less than unique and to that extend dehumanized" (p. 13).
    DCR: This might be a good thing. It would "embed" humans in creation, the sphere of God's activity (I'm thinking of some of Philip Hefner's ideas connected to his notion of the "created co-creator"). At the same time, however, I don't think that we want to say that the human isjust an animal, thereby offending our status (as creatures created in the image of God) and, more importantly, our responsibility as created co-creators.
    
12. EOW: Inbreeding imposes a heavy physiological penalty on a species (p. 37). EOW (therefore?) places high value on diversity(p. 198).
    DCR: Assuming EOW is correct (is he? is diversity that important?) is there theological and biological support? Can we say that diversity is a characteristic of the divine will? Do we have confirmation of this from sources besides the "Book of Nature"? Would, or could, the assertion that diversity is characteristic of the divine will force us to a re-reading of Genesis 11 (the Tower of Babel) or a more resolute adherence or consideration of Jonah? Certainly Acts (esp. Acts 2), Matthew 28 (the Great Commission) and Gal 3 could be used to further the principle of diversity? At the same time, if we are about genetic diversity, what do we do with NT passages that say we're "brothers and sisters in Christ" which seem to move toward a genetic kinship?