Appreciating Faith and Culture in an Age of Scientific Reasoning: On Constructive-Critical Realism

Abstract

Given its societal influence today, science is often thought to be more than just a technical approach to establish empirical observations that work. Although interpretations may vary, what generally is at stake since Galilei is the question of truth, of revealing the way the world we live in really is. Are science and theology hence dealing with the same question? Are they competing on the same territory or can they complement each other? The idea of critical realism assumes a fruitful relation and even parallelism between the two. It needs to be modified to constructive-critical realism to give the domain of culture its due weight in the concert of disciplines. This is important for theology as a cultural discipline.