Van Huyssteen J.W. (editor) Encyclopedia of Science and Religion

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SCRIPTURAL INTERPRETATION

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• Isaiah 17:7; 37:16; 40:12, 26, 28; 42:5; 44:24;

45:7, 12, 18; 48:13; 51:13, 16; 66:2

• Jeremiah 5:22; 10:12–13, 16; 27:5; 31:35;

32:17; 33:2; 51:15–16, 19

• Amos 4:13; 5:8; 9:6

• Jonah 1:9

• Zechariah 12:1

• Mark 10:6; 13:19

• Acts 4:24; 7:50; 14:15; 17:24–26

• Romans 1:20; 11:36

• 1 Corinthians 8:6; 11:12

• 2 Corinthians 4:6; 5:5, 18

• Ephesians 3:9

• 1 Timothy 6:13

• Hebrews 1:1–2; 2:10; 3:4; 11:3

• Revelation 4:11; 10:6; 14:7

Key Islamic texts from the Qurhan include the

following: 2:23–30, 3:190, 4:1, 6:38, 6:98, 7:189,

10:90–92, 11:7–13, 15:26, 15:28, 15:33, 16:66, 17:88,

21:30, 22:61, 25:59, 36:36, 39:6, 41:53, 42:47, 43:12,

50:38, 51:47, 54:49, 55:33, 57:6, 71:14, 76:1, 79:30,

91:7–8, 96:2.

These texts are referenced with great fre-

quency in scriptural commentaries of the Abra-

hamic religions. They are characterized by their

description of a single deity, who creates and

maintains the universe and guides human beings

in their relations with this deity and their world.

Premodern period

In many respects, the first-century Jewish theolo-

gian Philo was the first to draw a connection be-

tween the natural philosophy of the ancient world

and scripture. In his On the Creation, Philo reflects

upon God as creator of the universe, draws com-

parisons with Greek philosophy, and offers cor-

rectives based upon scripture. The great early

Christian scriptural scholar and theologian Origen

(182–251) builds on Philo in his commentary on

Genesis and the first of his Christian theologies,

On First Principles. In these works, Origen estab-

lishes the basic tendency of Christian theology to

appropriate natural philosophy while following

scripture. Early in the history of Christian theology,

scripture is not regarded as in conflict with scien-

tific knowledge of the world, although some early

interpreters of scripture sought to correct ancient

science by rejecting the notion of the eternity of

the universe.

The millennium that spanned the fourth to the

fourteenth centuries brought forth an abundance

of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim reflection on

scripture and science. Jewish scriptural interpreta-

tion during the early part of this period was largely

devoted to the refinement of its religious traditions

in an effort to sustain Jewish diaspora communi-

ties. Scientific reflection was not entirely absent in

Jewish theology of the period, but it does not be-

come extensive until the appearance of Mai-

monides (1135–1204). In Maimonides’s writings,

scripture is regarded as not at odds with knowl-

edge of the natural world, although Maimonides

did believe that scripture could provide a correc-

tive to that knowledge at crucial points. He asserts

that the universe was created ex nihilo (from noth-

ing); that is, the story of God’s creation excludes

the possibility that the universe was made of eter-

nal or pre-existing matter. Indeed, divine action in-

cludes a relation to every individual entity rather

than either detachment or panentheism. Mai-

monides is also remarkable for his early rejection

of astrology in favor of an “astronomical” approach

to the study of the universe.

The Christian theologians Athanasius (c.

290–373) in the East and Augustine (354–430) in

the West offered arguments from scripture that

God was the creator of all things and that therefore

the universe could not be identified with God be-

cause it had a beginning. Maximus Confessor

(580–662) further asserted that scripture teaches

the freedom of God in creation, a view that coun-

tered the ancient metaphysical notion of the inferi-

ority of physical matter. Instead, the dictum that

God created everything by free initiative and with

good intentions suggested a moral harmony be-

tween matter and spirit. The Summa Theologica of

Thomas Aquinas (1225/26–1274) represents the

pinnacle of medieval Christian reflection on the re-

lation between scripture and science. Aquinas’s

major contribution to the discussion was his argu-

ment for the design of the universe. Indeed, it is

his reading of God as the designer of all things, as

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opposed to the classical universe of eternal forms

and temporal objects, that formed the basis of

Aquinas’s five “proofs” for God’s existence.

Islam reached the height of its scientific attain-

ments during the medieval period when enormous

resources were brought to bear in support of Is-

lamic science. During this time, the scripture was

not considered incompatible with knowledge of

nature, and astronomical science was considered

necessary because every Muslim throughout the

world was required by the Qurhan to turn toward

Mecca to pray. The early development of astro-

nomical science was necessary in order to plot a

point on any horizon toward which the devoted

would bow. As a result, Arabic mathematics and

astronomy flourished with the likes of Abu Isa al-

Mahani (c. 860–874/84); Hamid ibn Ali, the inven-

tor of the astrolabe; and Jabir ibn Sinan al-Battani

(c. 858–929). These men, probably the greatest of

the Muslim astronomers, developed numerous

standard astronomical formulas.

Islamic science is characterized by close atten-

tion to the Qurhan and its stress upon the corre-

spondence between the one deity, Allah, and the

uniform lawfulness of the universe. The Muslim

anatomist and philosopher Averroës (also known

as Ibn Rushd, 1126–1198) expressed a typical opin-

ion when he said that the study of the natural

world strengthened belief in the Qurhan. Averroës’s

rejection of absolute determinism and absolute free

will is largely the result of his avoidance of any

particular philosophical conclusion and his re-

liance on the religious narratives of the Qurhan.

Western scholars depended on Arabic copies of

ancient texts, and Averroës’s commentaries on

Aristotle, which interpret Aristotle according to a

monotheistic scripture, greatly influenced Thomas

Aquinas. Muslim science continued to advance

until the fourteenth century, after which it suffered

setbacks that persist into the twenty-first century.

Many interpreters of culture regard this reality as

rooted in the struggle of religion to come to grips

with the successes of modern science.

Modern period

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam experienced dif-

ferent fates from the sixteenth to the final decades

of the twentieth century. As the natural sciences

began to receive widespread patronage from the

noble and mercantile classes in the West, religious

and political realities prohibited Jewish and Muslim

involvement.

One of the events that marks the beginning of

the modern period in science is the astronomical

labors of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). His

great work, On the Revolutions of the Celestial

Spheres, published shortly before his death, estab-

lished the heliocentric model of the solar system.

This system was defended by Johannes Kepler

(1571–1630) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), but

was condemned by the Vatican. Galileo’s motto

concerning scripture has become something of a

byword for how persons of faith reconcile their

study of the natural world with their readings of

scripture: “The intention of the Holy Spirit is to

teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven

goes.” In attempting to substantiate the Copernican

rejection of an Earth at rest in its celestial position,

Galileo cited Proverbs 8:26, which speaks of the

“hinges” of the Earth, and therefore its motion. Ke-

pler’s view regarding scripture was different and

represented an early strategy of coping with the

moments in interpretation when science and scrip-

ture appear to be at odds. This strategy was to de-

fine scripture as governing religious experience

and moral development; as such, it was proposed

that religion should simply rule its own domain

and avoid the domain of science.

The Reformation of the sixteenth century,

spawned by the religious writings of Martin Luther

(1483–1546), Huldreich Zwingli (1484–1531), John

Calvin (1509–1564), and others, established an im-

portant epistemological principle that aided the ad-

vancement of scientific method, namely the inves-

tigation of sources over against traditional

authorities and practices. To the extent that scrip-

ture was regarded as the source of true religion,

the Reformation encouraged a kind of experimen-

tal attitude in which it was assumed that traditions

and schools of interpretation could be subjected to

critical methods in the interest of advancing truth.

Experimental science, which had to contend with

traditional assumptions about the world within the

wider culture, won a measure of courage from the

developments within religion itself. Protestantism

tended to be much more open to scientific ad-

vancement; in many ways it adapted to what it re-

garded as the necessary implications of such ad-

vancement. Examples of this would include the

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compatibility of the scriptural notions of creation,

prophecy, miracles, and religious experience with

various scientific understandings of the universe

and of human nature.

In many respects, the role of scripture as pri-

marily the source of religious experience and

moral formation emerges as an ongoing resource

for science, since scientists themselves are cultural

beings. Indeed, this view was one of the charac-

teristics of the transition to postmodernism in sci-

ence and religion. The English philosopher of sci-

ence Francis Bacon (1561–1626) in his great work

Novum Organum: Indications Respecting the Inter-

pretation of Nature (1620) was enamored with an

analogy of two sources or “books” of human

knowledge: scripture and nature. Both, according

to Bacon, came from God, but they had separate,

albeit related, functions in human life. Bacon be-

lieved that it was necessary for a scientist to follow

Jesus’ teaching to “become like a little child” before

the natural world in order to be freed from the ar-

rogant prejudices that blocked experimental think-

ing. A kind of humility, a first admission of igno-

rance, was required before observation and the

recording of empirical data could serve as an au-

thority for scientific inquiry. For Bacon, even ear-

lier successes in science must not hold captive any

future practice of science. Much of what allowed

this development was the Protestant capacity for

self-critique and an allowance for the separation of

the domain of science from that of religion and

scripture.

But these early modern attempts at reconciling

science and scriptural interpretation did not pro-

duce all of the cultural changes needed for the ad-

vancement of science. Extreme skepticism was en-

gendered by a penchant on the side of religion for

“scientific proofs” for divine existence and pres-

ence in the world. From Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

(1646–1716) to William Paley (1743–1805), numer-

ous arguments to “prove” the existence of God

were advanced on commonly accepted philosoph-

ical grounds. Unfortunately, these arguments are

fraught with problems because scriptural traditions

do not claim that the natural knowledge of God’s

existence can be cognitively derived from such

“proofs.” The upshot was a bifurcation of faith and

science, with the latter assuming a kind of ideo-

logical status sometimes called scientism. Scien-

tism during the nineteenth century tended to be

positivistic and to rule out the possibility of sensi-

ble claims for the knowledge of God and, there-

fore, any truthfulness to religious scriptures. Fortu-

nately, during this century, restrictions in the West

toward the presence of Jews in the universities

began to disappear and Jewish science achieved a

great revival. Islamic scientists also made their way

into major research centers during the latter part of

the century.

Late modern era

The modern distancing between religion and sci-

ence has meant for some a kind of fundamentalist

abandonment of science for a supposedly scrip-

ture-based view of the world. So-called creationists

claim that certain literal interpretations of scripture

are the only permissible ones. For others, how-

ever, the preferred approach is the recognition of

the respective domains of religion’s interpretation

of scripture and science’s interpretation of nature.

Since the time of Charles Darwin (1809–1882), nat-

ural science has been understood by many inter-

preters as compatible with the narratives of their

religion’s scriptures. Such approaches transcend

the politically charged labels of “liberal” and “con-

servative” and more often reflect the kind of cul-

tural space where scriptural interpretation is ac-

complished. Science does not require scripture, let

alone metaphysics, to perform its work, but its

work is often performed by persons religiously

committed to classic religious texts and metaphys-

ical systems. Throughout the twentieth century,

proponents of scientism have had to acknowledge

the limits of science and, with this acknowledge-

ment, the persistence of religious interpretation of

scripture as a guide to the lives of many scientists

and a scientifically shaped world.

In many respects, the transition from modern

to late modern is marked by the use of criticism as

an intellectual enterprise. The modern tendency of

maintaining a “critical distance” between science

and religion (and its scriptures) is paralleled by the

late modern tendency to maintain a “critical dis-

tance” between culture and science, whereby sci-

ence is not considered to be the sole source of

knowledge of the world. Although this situation

could be regarded as a fragmenting of culture, it

also represents attempts to resolve what the

philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) called

“the conflict of the faculties.” The many disciplines

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of human inquiry possess a mutual compatibility

because they are all part of the cultural project of

understanding the world. Each make their own

contribution and, not surprisingly, scriptural inter-

pretation as a religious practice continues to con-

tribute to that project.

See also AUGUSTINE; AVERROËS; CHRISTIANITY;

REATIONISM; DARWIN, CHARLES;

UNDAMENTALISM; ISLAM; JUDAISM; SCIENTISM;

HOMAS AQUINAS

Bibliography

Aviezer, Nathan. In the Beginning: Biblical Creation and

Science. Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1990.

Barr, James. Biblical Faith and Natural Theology. Oxford

and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Brooke, John Hedley. Science and Religion: Some Histori-

cal Perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1991.

Brooke, John Hedley, and Cantor, Geoffrey. Reconstruct-

ing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion.

Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 1998.

Herzfeld, Noreen L. In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence

and the Human Spirit. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress,

2002.

Helm, Jürgen, and Winkelmann, Annette, eds. Religious

Confessions and the Sciences in the Sixteenth Century.

Boston and Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2001.

Hooykaas, R. Religion and the Rise of Modern Science. Ed-

inburgh, UK: Scottish Academic Press, 1973.

Linzey, Andrew, and Cohn-Sherbok, Dan. After Noah: An-

imals and the Liberation of Theology. London and

Herndon, Va.: Mowbray, 1997.

Noll, Mark A., ed. Princeton Theology 1812–1921: Scrip-

ture, Science, and Theological Method from

Archibald Alexander to Benjamin Breckenridge

Warfield. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2001.

Schacht, Joseph, and Bosworth, C. E., eds. The Legacy of

Islam, 2nd edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford

University Press, 1974.

KURT ANDERS RICHARDSON

SECOND LAW OF

THERMODYNAMICS

See ENTROPY; THERMODYNAMICS, SECOND LAW OF

SELECTION,LEVELS OF

In the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin in-

troduced his theory of natural selection, the gen-

erally accepted mechanism for evolutionary

change. More organisms are born than can survive

and reproduce; there will consequently be a strug-

gle for existence. Given naturally occurring varia-

tion, the struggle will bring on a process equivalent

to a breeder’s artificial selection: a differential re-

production leading to evolutionary change of a

kind that centers on adaptation, producing con-

trivances like the hand and the eye. A matter of im-

mediate interest was the level at which natural se-

lection was supposed to operate. Does the struggle

occur between individuals or between groups like

species? If the latter, can adaptations benefit the

group at the expense of the individual? Could one

have “altruistic” adaptations where, instead of an

organism selfishly serving its own ends, it sacrifices

its well-being and possibilities for reproduction to

the common good? Darwin himself was inclined to

think not, although he did equivocate with regard

to human beings. A contrary tradition was initiated

by the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred

Russel Wallace, who, as a good socialist, was con-

vinced that selection can work for the good of the

group, even if the individual suffers thereby.

Matters went essentially unresolved until the

1960s. Although some (notably R. A. Fisher) stuck

to the Darwinian line, a position like Wallace’s, en-

dorsing what came to be known as group selec-

tion, was assumed implicitly by most evolutionists.

Then a strong reaction set in, and thinking swung

to a Darwinian mode. Biologists realized that the

trouble with group-directed altruistic adaptations

is that they are open to cheating. While the altruist

is working for the good of the group at its own ex-

pense, the selfish individual is benefiting thereby,

and at the same time serving itself by refusing to

direct any effort to others. Selfishness will therefore

win out in the struggle for existence and altruism

will go extinct.

At about the same time, a number of new

models based on selection for self (individual se-

lection) were devised. Notable was the idea of kin

selection, introduced by British evolutionist

William Hamilton, which showed how close rela-

tives help each other for shared biological ends.

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Particularly impressive was the way in which

Hamilton demonstrated how his new mechanism

could account for the sterility of worker ants, bees,

and wasps. These groups are exceptional in that

only females have both mothers and fathers, males

being born of unfertilized eggs. This leads to non-

standard genetic relationships where females are

more closely related to sisters than they are to

daughters. Hence, selection favors adaptations (in-

cluding sterility) that motivate females to raise fer-

tile sisters rather than fertile daughters. In so doing,

one is accomplishing more to increase one’s ge-

netic representation in future generations than one

would if one followed more traditional patterns of

reproduction.

The Hamiltonian-type approach is often re-

ferred to as genic selection because ultimately it

sees evolution as a matter of the sorting of the

genes, the units of inheritance, and evolutionary

change as a simple function of change of gene ra-

tios. While this is true, it does not mean that the

individual organism drops out of sight, for it is or-

ganisms that package genes and it is organisms

that compete in the struggle for existence. For this

reason, it is helpful to distinguish between genes

as replicators, the markers of evolutionary change,

and organisms as vehicles or interactors, the carri-

ers of genes and the units that struggle for su-

premacy. At both levels and in both appropriate

senses, one has units of evolution.

Other models similar to kin selection were de-

vised showing how “selfish genes” can neverthe-

less lead to cooperative behavior between organ-

isms. The best known is perhaps reciprocal

altruism (something of which Darwin had an

inkling) where organisms cooperate because ben-

efits given are linked to the expectation of benefits

to be received. At the same time, students of the

evolution of social behavior turned to game theory

to work out how organisms, mainly animals but

some plants, adopt different strategies to maximize

their evolutionary success. This activity is all a

thriving part of the evolutionary enterprise, both

theoretically and empirically. It is true that in the

past a number of evolutionists have produced the-

ories and experiments showing that, under certain

circumstances, group effects within a species can

swamp individual interests, but this is in no sense

a return to old-fashioned group selection. It is also

true that some paleontologists think that in the

course of history one sees some species succeed-

ing in systematic ways, while others do not. But

such species selection is compatible with an indi-

vidualist approach at the level of the organism.

There is a richness to the evolutionary process,

something that can work in many ways and at

many levels.

See also ADAPTATION; ALTRUISM; EVOLUTION; FITNESS;

ELFISH GENE

Bibliography

Ruse, Michael. Darwin and Design: Science, Philosophy,

and Religion. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 2003.

Sober, Elliot, and Wilson, David Sloan. Unto Others: The

Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Sterelny, Kim, and, Griffiths, Paul E. Sex and Death: An

Introduction to Philosophy of Biology. Chicago: Uni-

versity of Chicago Press. 1999.

MICHAEL RUSE

SELF

Although it has been a subject of fascination for

thousands of years, self is an ill-defined concept in

philosophy and psychology, generally taken to

refer vaguely to the “inner” being of the individual

that is, at times, both the subject and object of ex-

perience. It should be seen as distinct from both

person (the totality of an individual being) and

identity (an individual’s sense of who they are in

relation to a social and physical world). When peo-

ple refer to the “problem” of the self, they are, in

fact, referring to a great many problems. Is there

really a self at all? What sort of methodology

should be used to investigate it? Does a person

have one self or many selves? Where is the self lo-

cated? How does the self develop? How does one

self interact with another? What is broadly agreed

is that the experience of self is somewhat para-

doxical since the self can appear to be simultane-

ously unified yet fragmented, continuous yet dis-

parate, immanent yet transcendent, apparent yet

elusive, private and personal yet social. These

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problems, as they arise in the behavioral sciences,

share a history with the world’s religions. Theolo-

gians and philosophers alike have attempted to ad-

dress them.

The self in psychology

In the 1890’s psychologist and philosopher William

James (1842–1910) proposed that the self-as-

subject, the I-self, be differentiated from the self-as-

object, the me-self. His model contended that the

me-self, which is created from an individual’s sub-

jective interpretation of experience, could be sub-

divided into three components: the bodily, material

self at the bottom; the social self in the middle; and

the spiritual self, the extremely precious enduring

dispositions and moral constitution of a person, at

the top. The elusive I-self, he proposed, is an ac-

tive agent that is able to shape its own destiny and

is responsible for perceived continuity and the

construction of the me-self.

James’s differentiation of “me” and “I” remains

intrinsically attractive to many theorists, but al-

though an abundance of complex structural and

systemic models of the self have been proposed,

the very existence of the I-self is still frequently

questioned. Empirical and theoretical psychology,

however, has generally taken each individual’s de-

velopment of a sense of an inner self for granted.

One way of categorising models of the self is

through their division into global unidimensional

models, which emphasize a single factor such as

the importance of self-esteem for the maintenance

of the self, and multidimensional models, which

implicate a network of hierarchically organized

cognitive structures that collectively constitute the

self. Though these two types are not strictly anti-

thetical, there has been a dramatic shift towards hi-

erarchical models in recent years and the self is

more often discussed as a complex system rather

than a unitary entity.

On these lines, the psychologist George Kelly

argued that the self-system should be likened to a

theory constructed by the individual, which serves

to organize their relationship to the world. Some

information processing models suppose that the

individual’s cognitive experiential organization re-

sults in the formation of self-schemata, which are

constructs that serve both to give a sense of self

and to guide and govern future behavior. Others

argue that the components of what is generally

known as the self are interconnected so as to form

a loosely integrated whole giving the illusion of

continuity but continuing to exist as a multiplicity,

each retaining the capacity for a degree of au-

tonomous functioning—in the cognitive scientist

Marvin Minsky’s terms, a “society of mind.” A

common way of accounting for the apparent sense

of an inner self, whilst remaining ambivalent about

its literal existence, is to appeal to the idea of nar-

ratisation—the notion that what is called a self is

actually just a dynamic process of integrating a

personal experiential history into a coherent uni-

fied life story. The autobiographical narrative so

constructed effectively amounts to a person’s

unique identity, but this does not equate to some

mysterious transcendent inner entity. Many have

argued, however, that the demands of living in

postmodern society raise certain difficulties for an

individual’s construction of a singular coherent

identity; the essential fragmentation of the self is a

common theme in postmodern thought.

Social psychology is concerned not so much

with the individual representation and functioning

of the self but with its genesis and development in

a social context. In William James’s opinion, there

was not one single “social self” but, rather, a mul-

tiplicity, each of which could find expression at

any one time. This idea of multiple selves that are

essentially relational, situation-specific constructs

arising from social encounters, is a central feature

of social psychological models. In 1902 sociologist

Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929) and, subse-

quently in the 1920s, philosopher and social psy-

chologist George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), de-

veloped perspectives in which an individual’s

social interactions in the form of linguistic ex-

changes (symbolic interactions) were deemed to

be central to the construction of self. Indeed the

theory of the social construction of the self finds its

most straightforward expression in Cooley’s fa-

mous concept of the “looking-glass self,” the idea

that an individual comes to know themselves only

by assimilating the reactions of others towards

oneself into a self-image. Here, the “me” and “I”

components of the self are deemed to be interde-

pendent, each continuously redefining the other.

Modern empirical social psychology has identified

a variety of different socially determined factors

that come to bear on the development of the self,

even to the extent that an individual’s perceptions

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of especially close others may come to be inte-

grated into their concept of themselves.

Other, psychoanalytic theories, most notably

object relations theory, also emphasize the impor-

tance of the role played by an individual’s rela-

tionships in the healthy development as well as

the psychopathology of the self. According to ob-

ject relations theorists, who rejected the Freudian

psychosexual developmental model of the individ-

ual as narcissistic and pleasure seeking, the self

develops as a complex matrix of representations

acquired through emotionally laden experiences of

oneself in relation to others.

So, different theories have collectively en-

hanced the knowledge of the self, but none could

individually lay claim to offer a complete account.

Psychoanalytic psychology, for example, has the

benefit of a holistic approach to the self and the

personality, but not the (alleged) fine grained, em-

pirically verifiable explanatory power of informa-

tion processing approaches. Information process-

ing accounts, by contrast, often fail to pay adequate

heed to the roles of affective psychological

processes when modelling the self. Despite con-

siderable differences of opinion over its contribu-

tory structures and processes, competing theories

of the self do generally converge on a number of

basic principles, such as its essential dynamism and

the notion that much of the self remains uncon-

scious, invisible to introspection. Some recent work

has been directed towards further uniting appar-

ently disparate theories of the self that have arisen

in distinct psychological schools.

Non-western concepts of the self are often dif-

ficult to translate into western psychological termi-

nology. Although the sense of self has frequently

been supposed to be an innate, pan-cultural fea-

ture of the human psyche, ethnographers are

agreed that what amounts to the sense of self

arises from a vast array of interconnected individ-

ual-cognitive and sociocultural influences. The in-

nateness controversy rages on, but it appears un-

likely that anything as complex as the self could be

determined by the genes of an individual. All this

is not to say, however, that evolutionary theories of

the phylogeny of the self should be discounted;

the “modern” self, in as much as it is partly deter-

mined by evolved mental and physiological

processes, must surely have been influenced by

the pressures of natural selection.

The self in religion

Several theorists have observed that Christian the-

ological notions of the soul are the immediate an-

cestors of Western philosophical and psychological

notions of the self, and there is a very strong tradi-

tion of positioning knowledge of self in conversa-

tion with Christian doctrine and the knowledge of

God. Contemporary analyses of this tradition such

as Charles Taylor’s The Sources of the Self (1989),

which charts the genesis and phylogeny of the

modern identity in Western philosophy and social

thought, traces the origin of introspection back to

Augustine of Hippo (354–430

C.E.), although the

writings of mathematician and philosopher René

Descartes (1596–1650) effectively inaugurated the

form of critical self-reflection that characterises the

“modern” period. Often, the theological influence

on the development of thinking about self in non-

Christian cultures is also readily apparent. Personal

senses of self, as well as concepts of the nature

and function of the self in a religious context, dif-

fer markedly between cultures. These range from

those of the modern western Christian world, with

their overt emphasis on individualism and personal

autonomy, to those of certain cultures and other

religious traditions where concepts of person and

self are less explicit or even absent.

In the western world, then, the origin of the

“inner self” as an inwardly focused and centered

entity that is distinct from the physical body lies in

the works of Augustine, who emphasized the im-

portance of adopting a first person standpoint in

the understanding of oneself, and in doing so, fun-

damentally changed the way that people con-

ceived of the soul and subsequently the self. For

Augustine, appreciation of the meaningful order of

the world, grounded in the goodness of God, was

possible only through introspection of the soul.

God, as an inner light—the light of the soul—was

conceived by Augustine to be the underlying prin-

ciple of knowing itself.

A major strand of Christian theological thought

concerning the origin and nature of the inner self

can be identified in discussions that are centred

upon the imago dei, the triune God in whose

image, Christianity teaches, human beings are cre-

ated. Augustine’s discernment of the triadic struc-

tures of human thought, which he grounds in the

being of God is a celebrated example of this type

of theory, but this theme has been revived and

elaborated upon many times.

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Conceiving the nature of God as Trinity, some

(such as Alisdair McFadyen) argue that a theory of

human nature might be analogously informed.

They argue that the model of the Trinity as a

unique community of persons does not entail the

autonomous individuality of each person nor an

understanding of each person as a specific mode

of relation to the other persons of the Trinity.

Echoing of the dialogical personalism developed

by the Jewish thinker Martin Buber, this under-

standing of the Trinity is reflected in the under-

standing of human persons as acquiring identity

only through their relations with others, including

their relationships with God. At all times an indi-

vidual self is engaged in a threefold living relation

with human others, with his or her environment

and, through faith, with God.

In Islam, where the word Nafs may be equally

well translated as soul or self, it is generally dis-

cussed in the context of Hudan (the right guid-

ance), and the appropriate path to virtue as taught

in the Qurhan. Although the Islamic concept of the

soul is affected by both inner and cultural factors

the notion of an essential self is less explicit than in

the West, being more of a social construct made

manifest through the taking of roles. In submission

to Allah the self is both controlled and cultivated as

part of a hierarchical cultural and religious order.

The various collections of teachings subsumed

under the generic name Buddhism, by contrast,

teach that the sense of an inner self (which is really

not-self), as expressed in words such as “I” and

“me,” is a source of suffering and that only through

surrendering this sense can a state of bliss really be

found. All sentient beings are deemed by Buddhists

to be part of a continuous cycle of birth, death, and

rebirth. Nirvana, effectively the escape from this

cycle, can only be achieved by a successive rooting

out of all greed, hatred, confusion, and delusion

from what passes as one’s self. In Buddhist thought,

it is by ceasing to grasp after the perceived conti-

nuity of self, and thereby accepting the present as

an opportunity to develop the cardinal virtues of

wisdom and mindfulness that one might finally and

completely transcend the process of becoming.

The self at the interface of psychology and

religion

Some psychologists and philosophers of religion

have succeeded in coordinating certain aspects of

their respective theories and models of the self and

in many cases these theories are mutually inform-

ative. Francisco Varela, in The Embodied Mind

(1991), for example, draws his primary inspiration

for his theory of the self from Mahayana Buddhist

teachings. However, although empirical social and

cognitive psychology has attempted to quantify the

impact of various religious influences on self-

development, the emphasis on explanation in

these models seems very different to the more in-

terpretative, discursive theories that have arisen in

theological discourse. Although not all psycholog-

ical theories of the self are as antitheological as

those of Sigmund Freud or some evolutionary psy-

chologists, even those psychological models of

mental health and development that accentuate the

importance of an individual’s perceived relation-

ship to God portray the self in a fundamentally dif-

ferent light to that of explicitly religious theories. It

tends to be seen as a product of innate and ac-

quired individual and social influences rather than,

as in Christian thought for example, an entity cre-

ated and sustained by God, which stands in per-

petual relation to God. It seems, then, that al-

though the relationship between religious and

psychological theories of the self has great histori-

cal significance, and there may be dialogue be-

tween them, their objectives, their identities and,

ultimately, their raisons d’être remain distinct.

See also BUDDHISM; DESCARTES, RENÉ; EVOLUTIONARY

PSYCHOLOGY; EXPERIENCE, RELIGIOUS: COGNITIVE

AND

NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS; FREUD,

IGMUND; GOD; IMAGO DEI; ISLAM; PSYCHOLOGY;

ELF-TRANSCENDENCE; SOUL

Bibliography

Ashmore, Richard D., and Jussim, Lee, eds. Self and Iden-

tity: Fundamental Issues. New York: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 1997.

Bracken, Bruce A., ed. Handbook of the Self-Concept. New

York: Wiley 1996.

Harré, Rom. The Singular Self: An Introduction to the Psy-

chology of Personhood. London: Sage, 1998.

Kippenberg, Hans G.; Kuiper, Yme B.; and Sanders, Andy

F., eds. Concepts of Person in Religion and Thought.

Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1990.

Levin, Jerome D. Theories of the Self. London: Taylor and

Francis, 1992.

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McFadyen, Alistair I. The Call to Personhood: A Christian

Theory of the Individual in Social Relationships. Cam-

bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Miller, David L., ed. The Individual and the Social Self:

Unpublished Work of George Herbert Mead. Chicago

and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Anthropology in Theological Per-

spective, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell. Edinburgh, UK:

T&T Clark, 1985.

Proudfoot, Wayne. God and the Self: Three Types of Philos-

ophy of Religion. London: Associated University

Presses, 1976.

Schwöbel, Christoph, and Gunton, Colin E., eds. Persons,

Divine and Human: King’s College Essays in Theologi-

cal Anthropology. Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 1991.

Suls, Jerry M., ed. Psychological Perspectives on the Self,

Vol. 4. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1993.

Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the

Modern Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1989.

Varela, Francisco J.; Thompson Evan; and Rosch, Eleanor.

The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human

Experience. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991.

White, Vernon. Paying Attention to People: An Essay on In-

dividualism and Christian Belief. London: SPCK, 1997.

Yu, Carver T. Being and Relation: A Theological Critique

of Western Dualism and Individualism. Edinburgh,

UK: Scottish Academic Press, 1987.

LÉON TURNER

FRASER WATTS

ELFISH GENE

The term selfish gene was coined by Richard

Dawkins (b. 1941) in his 1976 book of that name

to convey the central sociobiological idea that it is

reproductive success, rather than individual excel-

lence, that determines the course of evolution.

Thus “the survival of the fittest” does not really

mean the survival of outstanding individuals them-

selves. It means the prevalence of their type in

later generations through increasing numbers of

descendants.

Biologists such as J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964)

had suggested this understanding of evolution as a

solution to the “problem of altruism”—that is, the

question how it was possible for animals often to

act in ways that sacrificed their own individual in-

terests to those of others around them. This un-

doubtedly happens, not only in the care of the

young but in many other social activities. How had

the trait developed? The answer lay in reproduc-

tion. Tendencies to act altruistically can survive

and spread through a species, even if they shorten

the life of their first owners, provided that those

owners have first transmitted them to a sufficient

number of descendants. Thus it is the genetically-

determined trait rather than the individual that, in

some sense, is selected and survives.

Dawkins’s contribution to this approach was to

dramatize it by depicting the gene involved as a

kind of counter-individual—a hidden agent ex-

ploiting the organism it rides in:

We are survival machines—robot vehicles

blindly programmed to preserve the selfish

molecules known as genes. . . . We are ma-

chines created by our genes. Like success-

ful Chicago gangsters, our genes have sur-

vived, in some cases for millions of years,

in a highly competitive world. This entitles

us to expect certain qualities in our genes.

I shall argue that a predominant quality to

be expected in a gene is ruthless selfish-

ness. . . . A gene leaps from body to body

down the generations, manipulating body

after body in its own way and for its own

ends, abandoning a succession of bodies

before they sink in senility and death. The

genes are the immortals. (pp. x, 2, and 36)

This powerful image certainly conveyed the

point about the importance of reproduction. But

the cost in clarity has been heavy.

The dramatic picture of genes as freeloading

individualists is not actually compatible with seri-

ous genetics. Genes are not fixed units at all. They

are varying lengths of DNA, and they cannot take

effect without cooperating in highly complex

groupings. Nor, of course, are they immortal, since

each gene dies with the cell that it belongs to. It is

only their type that survives—just as a species sur-

vives the death of its individual members. This may

not be a very interesting kind of immortality

However, the most substantial scientific ques-

tion that does arise here concerns the level at

which natural selection takes place. Sociobiologists

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resisted earlier suggestions that new developments

were directly determined by the interest of the

group or of the species. They rightly pointed out

that, in order for inherited traits to change, there

must be changes at the genetic level. Gene-selec-

tion must therefore indeed operate.

It is not, however, obvious that gene-selection

excludes selection at other levels also. At the indi-

vidual level, organisms are not powerless vehicles.

An individual animal can influence the evolution of

its species by, for example, exploring a new habitat

or finding a new source of food. At the level of se-

lection between groups, social tendencies can have

considerable effect on species-survival, though in

less direct ways than earlier theorists had supposed.

These scientific issues are still being discussed,

although they may not have much direct relevance

to the relation between science and religion. What

does make the topic relevant here is Dawkins’s

rhetoric: His personification of genes as forces rul-

ing helpless humans seems to involve a sort of fa-

talism, and his choice of the word selfish, instead

of some neutral term such as selectable, to de-

scribe the part that genes play in evolution gives

this fatalism a personal twist by appearing to credit

these forces with a motive. This is recognizable re-

ligious imagery.

What is the point of the colorful metaphor?

Readers often see in it the familiar doctrine of psy-

chological egoism—the view that selfishness, in

the literal, everyday sense of self-interest, is the

sole motive determining the behavior of all organ-

isms, including humans. This, however, cannot be

right, and it is not what Dawkins is technically say-

ing. He, like other sociobiologists, is trying to solve

the problem of altruism—that is, to explain why

animals often act against their own interest.

Dawkins’s explanation is that they are pawns,

being manipulated in the interests of the genes. Yet

he often writes as if he did attribute the selfishness

to the organisms themselves:

Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to

build a society in which individuals coop-

erate generously and unselfishly towards a

common good, you can expect little help

from biological nature. Let us try to teach

generosity and altruism, because we are

born selfish. Let us understand what our

own selfish genes are up to, because we

may then at least have the chance to upset

their designs, something which no other

species has ever aspired to. (p.3)

In this and similar passages there is a radical

confusion between attributing selfishness to genes

in a technical sense, as a causal property in popu-

lation genetics, and using the word with its normal

meaning to describe a motive attributed to individ-

ual organisms. Other sociobiologists such as Ed-

ward O. Wilson (b. 1929) also constantly slide into

this ambiguity between the technical and the every-

day sense of the word, though most of them use it

only for organisms, not, like Dawkins, for genes.

The confusion is perhaps a natural conse-

quence of choosing to use such a highly emotive

everyday word as selfishness as a technical term. In

any case, it seems plain that the official, scientific

message of sociobiology does not actually give any

kind of support to psychological egoism. As for

Dawkins’s alarming suggestions of fatalism, the last

sentence of the passage just quoted implies that

they are meant rather as melodrama than as seri-

ous determinist metaphysics.

See also ALTRUISM; DNA; EVOLUTION, BIOLOGICAL;

ENETICS; NATURAL SELECTION; NATURE VERSUS

NURTURE; SOCIOBIOLOGY

Bibliography

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1976.

Goodwin, Brian. How the Leopard Changed His Spots: The

Evolution of Complexity. London: Weidenfeld and

Nicolson, 1994.

Haldane, J.B.S. The Causes of Evolution. London: Harper

and Brothers, 1932.

Midgley, Mary. Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and

Stranger Fears. London: Methuen, 1985.

Midgley, Mary. Beast and Man. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Uni-

versity Press, 1978.

Rose, Steven. Lifelines: Biology, Freedom, and Determin-

ism. London: Penguin, 1997.

Trigg, Roger. The Shaping of Man: Philosophical Aspects of

Sociobiology. Oxford: Blackwell, 1982.

Wilson, Edward O. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975.

Wilson, Edward O. On Human Nature. Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1978.

MARY MIDGLEY

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