科学与世俗化

Science and Secularization

世俗化理论为我们理解西方现代性的出现提供了主要模型。关于科学在世俗化进程中的作用,相关论述往往走向两个极端。一种常见的观点是,科学是世俗化的主要动力,因为它不断向关键的宗教信念提出挑战,为我们提供了一种另类的理性的看待世界的方式;另一种极端是对世俗化的相对复杂的理解,认为科学在这个过程中几乎不起什么作用,更重要的是诸如历史批评、历史意识的出现、中世纪晚期的唯名论、社会分化、信仰多元化、物质繁荣、资本主义等因素。本文提出一种更为复杂的立场,试图将科学重新确立为世俗现代性出现过程中的一个重要因素:在思想层面上,现代早期的自然哲学孕育了一种新的因果关系观念,打破了自然与超自然的区分,使人们很难谈论神在自然或历史中的行动;自然哲学和自然哲学家的地位在不断变化,自然哲学家能就神学问题发表权威看法;17世纪自然哲学与神学之间的亲密关系促进了一种对宗教的现代的命题式理解,这是'世俗'产生的必要条件。

Theory of secularization offers the main model to comprehend the emergence of modernity. Accounts of the role of science in the processes of secularization have tended to one of two extremes. On a common view, science is the main driver of secularization, since it has continually thrown up challenges to key religious beliefs and offers us an alternative, rational way of looking at the world. At the other extreme are relatively sophisticated understandings of secularization that propose that science plays little or no role in the process, and which gives more weight to factors such as historical criticism, the emergence of historical consciousness, to late medieval nominalism and conceptions of univocity, or to less direct causes such as social differentiation, the existence of a plurality of beliefs, or material prosperity and capitalism. I have offered a broad sketch of a position that seeks to reinstate science as a significant factor in the emergence of secular modernity: at an intellectual level, natural philosophy in early modern times bred a conception of causation that canceled the distinction between natural and supernatural, and made it difficult to speak about divine action in nature or history;the status of natural philosophy and its practitioners was constantly changing, such that the latter were able to make authoritative pronouncements on theological matters;the intimate relationship between natural philosophy and theology that characterized the seventeenth century was one factor that promoted a modern, propositional understanding of religion, and this was itself a necessary condition for the coming into being of “the secular”.