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

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TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS

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distributed, and relatively cheap. Every eight gal-

lons of ordinary water contains about one gram of

deuterium, which in principle could provide as

much energy as 2,500 gallons of gasoline. There is

no radioactive waste to guard or dispose. The

practical difficulties, however, are extreme. The

main technical problem is containing the unimag-

inably hot plasma of nuclei so tightly that a sus-

tained reaction can occur. No material container

could be used without instant vaporization. Strong

magnets need to hold the writhing plasma away

from all objects while a net surplus of energy is

somehow extracted. Intense efforts have been

under way for decades; perhaps someday the the-

oretical possibilities will be actualized.

But should fusion energy be practically real-

ized? Ethical questions remain open for debate.

Many positive outcomes are promised. Human so-

ciety might be freed from dependence on oil, nat-

ural gas, and coal, with positive economic and en-

vironmental consequences. The rule of fairness in

distribution of the fuel itself is better met, since

water is a more widely available resource than oil

or coal. Distribution of devices for deuterium ex-

traction and of expensive fusion reactors would of

course need scrutiny for fairness. One seldom con-

sidered question is whether human beings, in prin-

ciple, should be freed of all need to deliberate and

choose between energy expenditures. Has our

species earned the right to be trusted with the ca-

pacity to pave over the world? This worrisome

question forces attention again to the complexity

of the long-term consequences that could reason-

ably be expected. The ethical debates have hardly

begun.

The ethical debates over our second example,

the technology of cloning, exploded into public

consciousness with the appearance of Dolly, a

cloned sheep, in 1997. Significantly, this is a tech-

nology led by theoretical biology, not to be con-

fused with the techniques of selective breeding,

which are as old as agriculture itself. Cloning tech-

nology is made possible by the revolution in un-

derstanding organic life brought about by the sci-

ence of molecular biology, and especially by DNA

analysis in genetics. Dolly’s type of cloning, long

believed to be impossible, depends on replacing

the nuclear DNA in an egg cell with the nuclear

DNA from an adult somatic cell of another organ-

ism. The donor cells are made quiescent by starva-

tion, after which the donated DNA from those cells

is fused into the host egg cells by electrical pulses,

and the activated eggs, after a short period of in

vitro development, are implanted into a womb.

Ethical assessment of various types of cloning

in agricultural application, where the production of

sheep, cattle, and pigs is concerned, is likely to

dwell on outcomes more than rules, though there

are significant voices calling for a moratorium or

prohibition, in principle, against so-called Franken-

foods, because of their unnatural origin, or per-

haps because of offense taken by the possibility of

transgenic manipulation of genetic characteristics.

Ethical consideration of consequences will point

to the increased good of more and better quality

food in a hungry world, while opponents will urge

the possible dangers to health, both of consumers

and of over-manipulated organisms designed too

narrowly by genetic engineers focused exclusively

on the dinner table. A great deal more information

is needed on these hopes and fears. Meanwhile,

the principle of informed consent may be impor-

tant in the marketing of artificial life-forms, so that

consumers are given full information about what

they buy and eat.

Still more intense passions rise in ethical de-

bates on the possible cloning of human beings.

Here appeals to rules tend to come first, though

ethical concerns about consequences are also im-

portant. Aside from religious objections, ethical

principles concerned with the uniqueness and dig-

nity of human individuals may be invoked. Cer-

tainly, in principle, no human person should be

cloned merely to serve as an organ bank, to pro-

vide rejection-free transplants for an ailing heart,

for example. But might cloning be allowed from a

dying child’s tissues to alleviate an aching heart, if

this could provide a DNA-identical replacement to

nurture and love? Although all might agree with

the rule that no person (including clones) should

be treated as nothing but a means, might there be

legitimate mixed situations, where a clone could

be valued primarily as an end but also to some de-

gree as a means?

Factual outcomes need close attention here, as

well. If the motive is to produce mere replicas of

specific persons (musicians, athletes, soldiers, sci-

entists, perished loved ones, etc.), this may be both

objectionable in principle and also unachievable as

an outcome. Cloning will never be able to replicate

persons exactly. Persons, within general genetic

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limits, are partially self-creating beings. Monozy-

gotic twins (or triplets, etc.) are not really identical

persons, despite shared DNA and largely similar in

utero and childhood conditions. Much greater dif-

ferences of environmental conditions, in the womb

and throughout life, will assure that even the iden-

tical DNA shared by donor and clone will not vio-

late the latter’s uniqueness of personhood. Ethical

evaluation of this luring and horrifying possible

technology, like many other technologies still

aborning, needs to become more subtle in analyz-

ing principles and anticipating outcomes.

See also CLONING; INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY;

IOTECHNOLOGY; REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY;

ECHNOLOGY; TECHNOLOGY AND RELIGION

Bibliography

Alcorn, Paul A. Social Issues in Technology: A Format for

Investigation, 2nd edition. Upper Saddle River, N.J.:

Prentice Hall, 1997.

Barash, David P. The Arms Race and Nuclear War. Bel-

mont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1987.

Barbour, Ian G. Ethics in an Age of Technology: The Gif-

ford Lectures 1989–1991, Vol. 2. San Francisco:

Harper Collins, 1993.

Beckman, Peter R.; Campbell, Larry; Crumlish, Paul W.;

Dobkowski, Michael N.; and Lee, Steven P. The Nu-

clear Predicament: An Introduction. Englewood

Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. 1989.

Bray, Francesca. Technology and Gender: Fabrics of

Power in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1997.

Bromberg, Joan Lisa. Fusion: Science, Politics, and the In-

vention of a New Energy Source. Cambridge, Mass.:

MIT Press, 1982.

Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society, trans. John

Wilkinson. New York: Vintage. 1964.

Ferré, Frederick. Living and Value: Toward a Constructive

Postmodern Ethics. Albany: State University of New

York Press, 2001.

Forester, Tom, ed. The Information Technology Revolu-

tion. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985.

Germain, Gilbert G. A Discourse on Disenchantment: Re-

flections on Politics and Technology. Albany: State

University of New York Press. 1993.

Higgs, Eric; Light, Andrew; and Strong, David; eds. Tech-

nology and the Good Life? Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 2000.

Holdredge, Craig. Genetics and the Manipulation of Life:

The Forgotten Factor of Context. Hudson, N.Y.: Lindis-

farne Press, 1996.

Ihde, Don. Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to

Earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Iannone, A. Pablo, ed. Contemporary Moral Controversies

in Technology. New York: Oxford University Press,

1987.

Johnson, Deborah G., and Nissenbaum, Helen, eds. Com-

puters, Ethics, and Social Values. Englewood Cliffs,

N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1995.

Sassower, Raphael. Cultural Collisions: Postmodern

Technoscience. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Tobey, Ronald C. Technology as Freedom: The New Deal

and the Electrical Modernization of the American

Home. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Winner, Langdon. The Whale and the Reactor: A Search

for Limits in an Age of High Technology. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1986.

FREDERICK FERRÉ

TECHNOLOGY AND

RELIGION

Technology, understood as practical implementa-

tion of intelligence, is a matter of know-how ex-

pressing values. Thus technology must somehow

relate to religion, positively, negatively, or neu-

trally, since religion is also supremely a matter of

values and ideas. Values come first for both,

though ideas—strongly valued ones—will always

be importantly present in both domains as long as

Homo sapiens is a thinking species.

Religions are differentiated by a conflicting

plethora of symbols and beliefs, but are alike func-

tionally in expressing worship. Worship is here un-

derstood as directed to what is taken to be of first

importance (last to be sacrificed) and of widest rel-

evance (impossible to be marginalized). Thus reli-

gion, in principle, is our most intense and compre-

hensive way of valuing. This is a highly abstract

characterization of religion. Actual people, on this

understanding, are more or less concretely reli-

gious; some, who are casual about their values and

see nothing as of comprehensive importance, may

hardly be religious at all. Religious institutions,

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made up of actual people, are also more or less re-

ligious, since admixtures of economics, politics,

cultural tradition, and the like, may be expected in

every major human context.

Asian religions and technology

Divergent intuitions divide the primary world reli-

gions over what is ultimately worthy of worship,

and thereby influence attitudes toward technology.

Hinduism, in its Vedic and Brahmanistic forms, fo-

cuses its ultimate valuations on brahman, the tran-

scendent, impersonal principle of universal order,

paradoxically identified with atman, the individual

soul. Although intermediate castes include war-

riors, producers, and servers, all of whom might

take an interest in worldly technology, the most in-

tense and comprehensive valuations of this many-

stranded religious tradition focus on the priestly

caste’s ultimate goal of renunciation—the termina-

tion of an otherwise endless round of birth, death,

and rebirth. Implements expressing practical intel-

ligence for uses in this world, therefore, are of lit-

tle religious significance. The predominant stance

of Hinduism toward technology is neutrality, bor-

dering on indifference.

Buddhism, Hinduism’s offspring religion, takes

a similar posture, though with a more pronounced

negative tilt. Buddhism, because of its enormous

variety and complexity, as cultural form and philos-

ophy as well as religion, resists most generaliza-

tions. But the Four Noble Truths, traditionally traced

to the Buddha’s first sermon following his enlight-

enment, are as fundamental to all versions as can be

found. The First Noble Truth diagnoses the basic

human condition as suffering (duhkha), while the

Second identifies craving or desire (tanha) as the

cause of this suffering. The Third Noble Truth af-

firms that suffering can cease with the cessation of

craving, for which the Fourth prescribes an Eight-

fold Path (right view, right thought, right speech,

etc.) as the cure. But since technology, as intelli-

gence seeking practical goals, is fundamentally

to be achieved or prevented, it is hard to imagine

an honored place for it if craving itself is the pri-

mary enemy. True, Buddhism steers for a middle

way between the extremes of asceticism and hedo-

nism, and would not advocate a brutish life, devoid

of tools. But since Buddhism’s oldest, highest value

is the state of nothingness, transcending desire as

such (that is, the state of nirvana, where all craving

and all suffering have completely vanished), we

would look in vain to Buddhism for religious guid-

ance on technology policy.

Confucian thought is far more practical. Its em-

phasis on the sage of virtue, properly hierarchical

society, and correct ceremonial practices, in order

to retain both balance and the blessings of heaven,

is emphatically this-worldly. However, its strong

emphasis on the rectitude of the ruler and on

virtues proper to the sage tended to deflect con-

cern from the humbler manual arts. Chinese tech-

nology, for all its ingenuity, developed in relative

isolation from religious attention—assuming, as we

do, that Confucianism qualifies as a religious phe-

nomenon, despite its secular and humanistic spirit.

This spirit expressed for its adherents what, in the

widest possible context, is most to be valued.

Daoism represents another religious tradition,

but one with which Confucianism was able to co-

exist for millennia. It is said that in the late sixth

century

B.C.E., Confucius visited Laozi, the Daoist

philosopher, to consult him on ceremonies, adopt-

ing the role of disciple. At any rate, the cosmic bal-

ance sought in Daoism is compatible in many ways

with Confucian ideals. The metaphysical scale,

however, is much grander in early Daoism, formu-

lated in the Dao de jing (or Tao-te ching; attributed

to Laozi), in which the Dao (or Way) is identified

as a featureless, eternal, primordial reality, the

mother of the world, giving birth to all things.

Unity, above all, is to be sought, with the mascu-

line principle (yang) requiring completion and bal-

ance with the feminine principle (yin). Everything,

metals, geographical directions, seasons, colors,

and so on, could be classified in terms of these op-

positions in need of harmonization, calling for a

yin-yang way of life beginning with attention to

one’s own bodily health. To Daoism’s metaphysi-

cal enlargement is added a mystical spirit strongly

contrasting with Confucian worldliness. Unity is so

important that it drives out the possibility of dis-

cursive thought, which inevitably breaks up into

multiplicity of ideas. Similarly, the Daoist sage, un-

like the Confucian, is warned against intervening

in the course of events. This policy, called wu-wei,

is not one of absolute inactivity, but stresses the

importance of respect for the autonomy of other

happenings, both in their independence from the

self but also in their complete relatedness to the

network of things and processes as a whole.

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Through disciplined nonaction the Daoist relates to

the eternal Dao, finding increased personal

longevity and mystic ecstacy as reward. Technol-

ogy, as we know it, however, has no place within

the spirituality of wu-wei. Indeed, in our short sur-

vey of the primary religious traditions of Asia, we

have found none with a positive place for the

technological in general.

Biblical religions and technology

The three great religions of the Book, Judaism,

Christianity, and Islam, all have mixed records re-

garding technology. There are characteristic differ-

ences between them, but even greater differences

between strands internal to each faith.

Judaism, as the oldest, contains within its early

scriptures the fundamental tensions felt within all

three of the religions rooted in the Hebrew Bible.

At the outset, the created world is pronounced

good (Gen. 1:31). The sun, the moon, the stars, the

birds and beasts, the trees and Earth, are all reali-

ties, neither indifferent illusion nor tricky Maya,

and they are of genuine importance. They are not

as important as the creator, of course, but they are

divinely approved. They are given their names by

the first man, and they are handed into permanent

human care. Adam and Eve, as exemplary human-

ity, are from the start commanded to till and keep

the garden entrusted to them (Gen. 2:15). Even

after expulsion from the initial paradise, humanity

must continue to till the ground, though in conse-

quence of the great disobedience that led to this

expulsion, tilling would henceforth involve toil and

sweat (Gen. 3: 17–19).

In the ensuing world of mixed morality, God

not only commissioned and approved the first

recorded technological project (Gen. 6: 14–16) but

also provided the design (three hundred cubits

long, three internal decks, etc.) and the specifica-

tions (gopher wood and pitch). This was for the

great ark that Noah was commanded to build in

order to preserve a basic breeding stock to repop-

ulate the world after God’s impending flood. There

is no hint of disapproval here of tools or the prac-

tical arts in general. On the contrary, human con-

struction is a pious act and is rewarded with sur-

vival. But immediately following the story of Noah,

after the human race has had a chance to replen-

ish itself and spread once more, the descendants of

Noah are depicted as offending God by their tech-

nological hubris (Gen. 11: 1–9). Having only one

language, they are capable of unlimited engineer-

ing ambitions and decide to construct an enor-

mous tower, reaching all the way to heaven. Be-

fore they can succeed in such blasphemy, God

says: “Behold, they are one people, and they have

all one language; and this is only the beginning of

what they will do; and nothing that they propose

to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let

us go down, and there confuse their language, that

they may not understand one another’s speech”

(Gen. 11: 6–7, RSV). In the ensuing linguistic con-

fusion, attempts to complete the tower of Babel are

aborted. God clearly disapproves when technolog-

ical pride oversteps its limits.

This duality in attitude continues to express it-

self in different strands of Christianity. The mystical,

otherworldly side, often (but not exclusively) asso-

ciated with the Eastern Church, centered in Con-

stantinople, noteworthy for its iconography and

other sacred arts, has characteristically distanced it-

self from the secular crafts. In contrast, the Western,

European, side of Christian faith, initially centered

in Rome, contains (though itself internally mixed)

craft-affirming strands that have blessed technolog-

ical dynamism in principle and eventually encour-

aged the emergence of the world of science and

high technology. Those monasteries following the

Rule of Saint Benedict (c. 480–547) were particu-

larly significant for maintaining a sanctified balance

between prayer, reading (or copying) scripture, and

practical work, including labor in the gardens and

fields and devoted craftsmanship of many kinds.

Islamic religion inherited what Christians call

both the Old and the New Testaments, in addition

to its own Qurhan and prophetic writings. Not sur-

prisingly, the relationship between Muslim faith

and technological prowess shows the same am-

bivalence we have noted in the other two Biblical

religions. One of the technological domains enthu-

siastically entered by early Islamic culture was ar-

chitecture. Islam requires frequent centralized

meetings of the faithful, but existing structures were

seldom adequate. The earliest practice of meeting

in private houses was quickly outgrown, as Arab

conquest spread Islam during the seventh and

eighth centuries. Existing synagogues and churches

were also usually unsuitable for mosques, which

were used not simply as places of worship but also

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as community centers. In response, the hypostyle

mosque, a rectangular building of many columns

supporting a roof, was invented, allowing easy ex-

pansion by the addition of columns in the event of

community growth. Minarets, initially built only in

non-Muslim cities as prominent vantages for calls to

prayer, were also created. But, simultaneously, dec-

oration of Muslim artifacts was tightly restricted.

Fierce rejection of even a hint of idolatry in this ar-

dently theocentric religion strongly opposes the

representation of living forms, lest human creativity

usurp the exclusive prerogatives of the sole Creator.

Iconoclasm, familiar in Jewish prohibitions on

graven imagery and appearing at least sporadically

among Christians, is a powerful governor in Muslim

attitudes toward arts and crafts.

Historical development

Not surprisingly, the religious background of a cul-

ture makes a large difference in its characteristic

readiness to respond to or incorporate technolo-

gies, as such possibilities present themselves. In

Tibet, deeply steeped in classical Buddhist thought

and perception, for example, the Manichos

khor,

or prayer wheel, a mechanical device consisting of

a hollow metal cylinder containing a written

mantra, has been in use for centuries. Each revo-

lution of the cylinder is thought equal to one oral

recitation of the mantra. From ancient times, these

prayer wheels have been attached to windmill or

waterwheel devices that have served to multiply

prayers without human attention or effort. But, sig-

nificantly, the harnessing of wind or water power

did not extend to grinding grain or sawing lumber.

Western European attitudes, set in a branch of

Christianity generally favoring the biblical affirma-

tion of the importance of creation under human

dominion, were far more ready to accept techno-

logical innovation. Monks, squinting over their

copy work, were quick to accept the benefits of

eyeglasses, when glassblowing crafts made lenses

possible. The Christian peasants of northern Eu-

rope, perhaps as early as the seventh century, in-

vented the moldboard plow to cut deeply into and

turn the soil, rather than settle for Near Eastern

and southern Mediterranean plows—suited to

lighter soils—that merely scratched the surface and

required cross plowing. The historian, Lynn White,

Jr., comments in “The Historical Roots of Our Eco-

logic Crisis” (1967): “Formerly, man had been part

of nature; now he was the exploiter of nature.

Nowhere else in the world did farmers develop

any analogous agricultural implement. Is it coinci-

dence that modern technology, with its ruthless-

ness toward nature, has so largely been produced

by descendants of these peasants of Northern Eu-

rope?” (p. 1205).

Countless other technologies were grasped

and put to practical work by the Western Euro-

peans, with encouragement from its dominant reli-

gion. The magnetic compass freed seamen from

hugging the coasts, making European exploration

(and ultimately domination) of the rest of the

world practical. The voyages of Christopher

Columbus and other explorers were enthusiasti-

cally supported by Church interests, and it is no

coincidence that missionary priests accompanied

him and other openers of the New World.

In the twentieth century, the technologies of

urbanization and modernization were subjects of

theological celebration by at least some Christians.

In The Secular City (1966), Harvey Cox praised

what he called the disenchantment of nature, the

elimination of its ghostly terrors, at first permitted

in biblical religions by the concentration of all sa-

credness in the creator, excluding everything cre-

ated, and then at last achieved by the antiseptic

powers of modern science. He also welcomed the

desacralization of politics and the freedoms of

anonymity provided by technological society.

In sharp contrast, reminding us of the deep

ambivalence of the biblical religions toward tech-

nology, particularly technologies suggesting hubris

or idolatry, many theological voices were raised in

opposition to the atomic bomb during the twenti-

eth century. A particularly forceful voice was that

of Jacques Ellul, whose indictment of nuclear en-

ergy included not only the bomb, but also the

megalomania of atomic power generation in gen-

eral, and of the heedless science that makes it all

possible. In a 1974 essay called “Le Rapport de

l’Homme à la Création Selon la Bible” (“The Rela-

tionship between Man and Creation in the Bible”),

Ellul summarizes: “The effort to affirm science by

itself, without limit, as judge of everything and car-

rying its own legitimization inevitably involved, as

the other side of the coin, the devastation of the

world, the squandering of possibilities, the frenzy

of destruction” (p. 153).

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Contemporary challenges

Most great religions have traditional ways of deal-

ing with such apocalyptic anticipations, and even

short of apocalypse, religions have (alas) had

much experience with mayhem and devastation.

Standard theological responses, even when the

scale of devastation is very great, may be expected.

A great fire is a great fire whether caused by burn-

ing pitch, chemical explosives, or nuclear fission.

What is radically new, however, is the empower-

ment provided by science-led (or high) technolo-

gies to accomplish hitherto inconceivable ends.

For one major example, theoretical biology has

inspired mapping the molecular basis for the com-

plete array of genes in the cells of a human person.

This could never have been so much as an objec-

tive, apart from the theoretical work leading to the

understanding of the double helix of DNA codons

that constitute the alphabet spelling out all living or-

ganisms. Now that the Human Genome Project has

succeeded, and genetic engineering is an estab-

lished technology, unprecedented practical possi-

bilities are opened for exploitation. New powers of

diagnosis of such feared diseases as Tay-Sachs,

Huntington’s, cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystro-

phy, are in human hands. Diagnosis is not cure, but

genetic engineering promises the synthesis of new

medical helps, such as interferon, to increase resist-

ance to viruses. Direct somatic gene therapy is an-

other entirely new possibility, stirring the hopes of

sufferers from otherwise incurable conditions such

as Huntington’s disease. And, beyond curing indi-

viduals, the way is opening to modification of the

their offspring, and their offspring’s offspring, by

engineering the germline itself to eliminate un-

wanted genetic conditions, either in sperm or egg,

and either before conception or in the fertilized egg.

Finding adequate religious responses to these,

and vastly many other, completely new human

powers is the primary challenge for the future. For

religions depending upon ancient scriptures to

provide divine commands, there is the challenge to

avoid objectionable eisegesis and special pleading

when clear textual guidance is simply lacking.

There is a similar challenge to avoid the common

fallacy of begging the question against a techno-

logical novelty by (correctly) identifying the new

as artificial, therefore (correctly) as unnatural,

and therefore (fallaciously) as wrong. Simply to be

artificial, the partial product of art or intelligence

(and to that extent unnatural), is not necessarily to

be illicit. All major religions have come to terms

with the interventions of human intelligence and

practical purpose in ways that alter nature. Some,

like agriculture, are universally recognized as licit.

Eyeglasses and hearing aids are also in this inof-

fensive sense unnatural. The challenge for religious

thinking in radically novel cases is to wrestle with

what, specifically, it is about practical interventions

led by theoretical intelligence—from in vitro fertil-

ization to germ line therapy or even cloning—that

makes them unnatural in a bad sense.

Such careful thinking, in order to be relevant

and responsible, will need to become well in-

formed about the sciences that lead new high tech-

nologies to conceive their novel technological pos-

sibilities. In this lies still another challenge for the

future relations of technology and religion, since

the values and belief-systems of the great religions

have not hitherto been forced to take serious ac-

count of the values and belief-system of the modern

sciences. Modern science has made thinkable, and

modern technology has made practical, many gadg-

ets that have been used for religious purposes in-

imical to the values and beliefs of science. A prime

example is the use of electronic tape recorders by

the Ayatolla Ruhollah Khomeini (1900–1989) in

sending his fiery sermons of Islamic fundamental-

ism from his home in Paris, rousing the Iranian pop-

ulace to overthrow Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi

in 1979. Neither the scientific understanding of the

electromagnetic universe, nor the scientific methods

and values that made this technology possible, is

compatible with the content of those sermons or

with the methods and values they espoused. But it

is likely that using technologies without appreciat-

ing their intellectual and valuational foundations

(especially if high technologies are to be manufac-

tured worldwide) will become increasingly difficult.

Perhaps gradually, over the current millennium, if

religious leaders are forced increasingly to think

deeply about the unprecedented technological pos-

sibilities being opened to their followers by the

practical embodiments of scientific theory, there

may be an increased coming to terms with the be-

liefs and values of science itself.

Such a global coming to terms would require

wrenching reforms but not necessarily the aban-

donment of essential symbols in the great religions

of the world. Though it has not been easy, many

Christians since Galileo have found ways of ac-

commodating their defining beliefs to established

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science, and it is not impossible to conceive a sim-

ilar process globally, spurred by the spread of high

technology with its implicit scientific content. If

this should occur, a new basis for interfaith ecu-

menical dialogue might gradually emerge, as well.

Such a dialogue could be accelerated by common

concerns shared by the great religions for global

justice among persons and for the protection of

our vulnerable planet against technological hubris.

See also BIOTECHNOLOGY; BUDDHISM; CHINESE

RELIGIONS, CONFUCIANISM AND SCIENCE IN CHINA;

HINESE RELIGIONS, DAOISM AND SCIENCE IN

CHINA; EINSTEIN, ALBERT; HINDUISM; HUMAN

GENOME PROJECT; INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY;

SLAM; JUDAISM; REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY;

ECHNOLOGY; TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS; VALUE,

CIENTIFIC

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Barbour, Ian G., ed. Earth Might Be Fair: Reflections on

Ethics, Religion, and Ecology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:

Prentice-Hall, 1972.

Callahan, Daniel, ed. The Secular City Debate. New York:

Macmillan, 1966.

Cobb, John B., Jr. Sustainability: Economics, Ecology, and

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Cox, Harvey. The Secular City: Secularization and Urban-

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York: Macmillan, 1966.

Daly, Herman E., and Cobb, John B., Jr. For the Common

Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community,

the Environment, and a Sustainable Future. Boston:

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FREDERICK FERRÉ

TEILHARD DE CHARDIN,

IERRE

The thought and works of Pierre Teilhard de

Chardin represent the widest and deepest attempt

to reconcile Christian theology and the scientific

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TEILHARD DE CHARDIN,PIERRE

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worldview of biological evolution. Teilhard de

Chardin noted the peculiar contributions of modern

science to the vision of creation. Arguing that evo-

lution moves toward complexity and conscious-

ness, he noted that the order implied by creation is

in the future and is achieved as a result of both the

mechanisms of evolution and the action of hu-

mankind. The theological vision of the movement

of creation toward unity, redemption, and salvation

is now referred to as the evolutionary universe.

Early life and influences

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born in Sacernat in

the French region of Auvergne in 1881, a year be-

fore the death of Charles Darwin. Teilhard died in

New York in 1955. He entered the Society of Jesus

in 1899 and was ordained a Roman Catholic priest

in 1911. A year later he started his scientific train-

ing in natural science with a special interest in pa-

leontology at the Institute of Human Paleontology

in Paris, under the direction of Marcellin Boule,

one of the most eminent human paleontologists of

that time. There Teilhard completed all his scien-

tific training until the doctoral thesis.

Teilhard de Chardin’s vocation became clear to

him during the first world war; he wrote in his diary:

“I would like to reconcile with God what is good in

the modern world—its scientific intuitions, its social

desires, it proper criticisms” (Journal, pp. 90–91).

For Teilhard, one of the great novelties of the mod-

ern world was evolution: the theory that life, Earth,

and the whole universe are subject to a nonre-

versible change over time. From his point of view,

evolution was not only a theory to be investigated,

but also the scientific description of a peculiar way

of creation, which required new approaches from

theologians and philosophers “The adoption of the

evolutionary mode for the formation of the world

implies a particular mode of appareance ‘ex nihilo

subjecti’ and suggests that this world has a deep on-

tological reason” (Journal, p. 264).

After completing his doctoral degree, Teilhard

became chair of geology at the Catholic Institute of

Paris. There, together with the French philosopher

Edouard LeRoy and the Soviet geochemist Vladimir

Vernadskij, he coined the word Noosphere, which

he defined as the totality of all thinking creatures,

“the psychically reflexive human surface.” Accord-

ing to Karl and Nicole Schmitz Moormann in Pierre

Teilhard de Chardin, L’oeuvre Scientifique, Teil-

hard also started to envision a new global ap-

proach to evolution as a matter concerning the

whole biosphere.

Darwin and evolution

In the meantime, he wrote a private note on origi-

nal sin, in which he suggested that, in an evolving

universe, order is not to be found at the beginning,

only to be ruined by human sin, but order will

come in the future and has to be constructed by

human action. According to Teilhard, there is no

gap in the history of life, no nature uncorrupted

before sin and corrupted after sin. The mechanism

of biological evolution, which involves the unde-

terministic and dramatic events first elucidated by

Darwin, are present from the very beginning of life

and are a general characteristic of the evolution of

the universe.

Teilhard’s unconventional views resulted in his

removal from his academic chair and his invitation

to stay in China. Yet his theological revolution was

only beginning. Because the promise of order re-

sides in the future, he speculated, Christians are not

only asked to reach their own eschatological salva-

tion in paradise, but also to construct the Earth and

a new type of human on Earth. At the end of the

process of evolution humankind will reach a single

point of convergence, the Omega Point, where

there will be the second and final coming of Christ.

A new ontological value is suggested in this scien-

tific description of nature: evolution as movement

toward an endpoint, a goal. The deep meanings of

the universe, from both the theological and philo-

sophical points of view, are related to this idea of

movement toward something: of matter toward life,

of life toward consciousness, of consciousness to-

ward the thinking creature and the Noosphere, the

Noosphere toward the Omega Point. Teilhard con-

sidered this movement the result of the complexity-

consciousness law and he argued that it recovers

the theological necessity for the emergence of

humankind.

Teilhard was well aware of new research and

discoveries in evolutionary biology. He was most

interested in the aspect of Darwinism in which

chance plays a central role, but he thought that

a correct scientific analysis would be able to

demonstrate the presence of canalisation (the

determination of a direction to evolution in a -

particular phyletic branch) and parallelisms

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TEILHARD DE CHARDIN,PIERRE

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(phyletic branches that separate off a common

branch evolve in parallel and develop similar char-

acteristics). In fact, Teilhard discussed the paral-

lelisms of primates toward increasing brain size in

his first scientific papers as a trained palaeontolo-

gist. For Teilhard, if there is a general movement

that characterizes evolution, this movement has to

be evidenced from an experimental point of view.

He grappled with the question of how to reconcile

this vision with the revision of Darwinism called

modern synthesis, which was in vogue at the time

Teilhard was working in palaeontology and which

seemed to deny any epistemological meaning to

evolutionary direction.

Teilhard de Chardin believed that only a global

experimental approach could demonstrate the di-

rectional movement of evolution. Most palaeontol-

ogists relied on fossil records, and the lack of a

broader global approach by the proponents of the

modern synthesis, who used a reductionistic ap-

proach based on genes and populations, was the

epistemological reason for their rejection of the

idea of evolution as moving toward a goal. Some of

the innovations of biology, for example, the global

approach and the definition of biology as the sci-

ence of complexity, were developed by Teilhard in

an attempt to answer questions posed by theology.

Global approach

Central to the evolution of Teilhard’s thought was

his move to China in 1923, where he worked on

the geology, palaeontology, and paleoanthropol-

ogy of the Asiatic continent. Here, he was able to

study evolution on a large scale, both in time and

space, and the possibility of a global approach to

evolutionary biology became more possible. He

intended such a global approach to be part of his

program of studying the biosphere, and the conti-

nental evolution that he had in mind at the time

was an epistemological tool, by which he could

study the evolution of the biosphere on a reduced

scale but without distortions.

A new model of the interaction of science and

theology became apparent: Some of the character-

istics of theology, such as the eschatological move-

ment toward an endpoint, and some level of ne-

cessity of the thinking creature, are recovered as

the metaphysical frame of a true scientific research

program. In addition, research that describes the

evolution of the universe and its mechanisms can

form a starting point for a new theological program.

The epistemological model of Teilhard, presented

in the introduction of The Human Phenomenon

(1955), is that there are points where science, phi-

losophy, and theology converge, and these points

must be handled in the correct way. The main

philosophic frame is that of totality because it is the

concept of totality that requires general connec-

tions, but totality is also the way to propose the

global view in construction of evolutionary theories

concerning the biosphere. The peculiarities of the

whole can be lost in a reductionistic approach.

Teilhard wrote these ideas in letters from China just

after an expedition in the Gobi desert, where he

envisioned the mystical experience of totality and

where he was inspired to write the “Mass on the

World.” There is the possibility that mystical knowl-

edge, or at least mystical experience, was at the

very basis of his research program.

Geobiology

From these connections, Teilhard de Chardin de-

veloped the notion of “complexity” and proposed

a new science called geobiology, the science of

continental evolution, which he intended as part of

his global program to study evolution. He was able

to develop an experimental approach to fossil evo-

lution that showed that evolution is characterised

by canalisation and parallelisms. The main paral-

lelism, at least in animals, was the moving of dif-

ferent evolutionary branches toward increasing

cerebralization, which Teilhard saw as experimen-

tal proof of the directional movement of evolution.

The present day discussion about the increasing in

complexity of life evolution has in Teilhard one of

its forerunners.

Finally, developing Teilhard’s vision, evolution

is moving toward complexity and consciousness

with mechanisms not strictly deterministic: There is

room for chance and blind movements. Teilhard

looked for philosophical and theological meanings

of these mechanisms, and found them in the idea

of freedom. He believed that freedom is the third

ontological characteristic of the universe suggested

by modern science.

These mechanisms are not proof of the lack of

purpose or design, but they are compatible with

the idea that design implies freedom and that the

nondeterministic structure of the universe is the

only way to allow room for the free action of the

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TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

— 876—

thinking creature. The lack of order at the begin-

ning of the universe gives the thinking creature

room for free action in order to conduct general

movement toward the Omega Point. The creation

and evolution of the Earth is owed to (or thanks

to) the freely accepted alliance of creator and the

created. The synthesis of interaction of science and

faith finds here its climax.

See also CHANCE; CHRISTIANITY, ROMAN CATHOLIC,

SSUES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION; COMPLEXITY;

ONVERGENCE; DARWIN, CHARLES; EMERGENCE;

VOLUTION; FREEDOM; INCARNATION; MYSTICISM;

ALEONTOLOGY

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LUDOVICO GALLENI

TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

According to the teleological argument, the order

and complexity exhibited by the world are properly

attributed to a purposive cause rather than a blind,

undirected process. Historically, in looking for evi-

dence of purpose, the argument has focused on

the world as a whole, its laws, and structures within

the world (notably life). The teleological argument

has two recent incarnations. One employs the An-

thropic Principle and focuses on the fine-tuning or

“just-so” aspects of the physical universe required

for human observers. The other constitutes a re-

vival of design-theoretic reasoning in biology and is

known under the rubric “intelligent design.”