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IAN BARBOUR: THEOLOGIAN'S FRIEND, SCIENTIST'S INTERPRETER
Author(s) -
McFague Sallie
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
zygon®
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.222
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1467-9744
pISSN - 0591-2385
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9744.1996.tb00004.x
Subject(s) - postmodernism , position (finance) , preference , sociology , interpreter , diversity (politics) , philosophy , epistemology , theology , computer science , anthropology , mathematics , statistics , finance , economics , programming language
. Ian Barbour's work, especially Religion in an Age of Science , is a comprehensive, balanced, and theologian‐friendly guide to relations between science and religion. As a physicist and a theologian, Barbour is one of a handful of people who know both areas in depth and hence provide a bridge for others who are not dually educat ed. This is a very substantial accomplishment. His own position, however, is presented tentatively and, in the opinion of this author, is less radical than that demanded by his overt commitments vis‐à‐vis the contemporary scientific worldview. At two points, especially, his position appears modernist when it should be postmodern, in light of his own stated theological and scientific convictions: (1) his critique of the feminist and two‐thirds‐world position on the social construction of science, (2) his preference for a unified worldview at the cost of slighting issues of diversity and particularity. Nonetheless, he has made an immense contribution by providing the best and deepest survey of the sciences of astronomy, physics, and biology and their implications for Christian theology; it makes him one of the premier thinkers in the twentienth‐century discussions of science and religion.