ABSTRACT
(with brief definitions of technical terms for reference)
Sustained scientific endeavour places special conditions on the social systems on which scientists rely. Such Science-Fostering Social Systems (SFSS) must include an industrial base to provide the technologies scientists need to probe the heights and depths of the cosmos. The availability of such technologies depends on corporate industries that are sustained by the demand for consumer goods and services. A market-driven system of production depends in turn on economic structures and legal codes that minimize the public role of spiritual practices and marginalize indigenous ‘peoples of spirit’. This secularizing of the technical professions may be judged to be good or evil, or a mixture of both. In any case, it results in a seemingly intractable paradox: the continued progress of scientific endeavour requires the sequestration of all spiritual experience and theological traditions from the infrastructures of industrial societies at the same time that it strengthens the case for the role of the spirit in the evolution of humanity (Chapter 2) and likewise for the role of creational beliefs in the history of science (Chapter 3). This ‘SFSS paradox’ calls for an eschatology of scientific endeavour. The resulting challenge to a theology of history is to explain how secularizing developments can be understood in terms of the attributes of God. A thick description of scientific endeavour, therefore, leads to a thicker, more dialectical view of history and the attributes of God.
