MERE SCIENCE: MAPPING THE LAND BRIDGE BETWEEN EMOTION, POLITICS, AND ETHICS: with Holmes Rolston, III, "Lame Science? Blind Religion?"; Sarah E. Fredericks, "Reacting to Consecrating Science: What Might Amateurs Do?"; Donovan O. Schaefer, "Mere Science: Mapping the Land Bridge between Emotion, Politics, and Ethics"; Courtney O'Dell-Chaib, "The Shape of This Wonder? Consecrated Science and New Cosmology Affects"; Colin McGuigan, "Wonder Opens the Heart: Pope Francis and Lisa Sideris on Nature, Encounter, and Wonder"; Mary Evelyn Tucker, "Journey of the Universe: Weaving Science with the Humanities"; and Lisa H. Sideris, "Wonder Sustained: A Reply to Critics."
Lisa Sideris's Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World (2017) proposes that the call by some science advocates for a new moral framework based on scientific wonder is flawed. Sideris develops a typology of wonder with two separate affective axes: true wonder that is the prerogative of a sort of dwelling with the overwhelming mystery of life, and curiosity that presses to resolve puzzles and break through into a space of total clarity. The former, Sideris writes, is an ethical resource that, by placing the human self against the backdrop of the unknowable cosmic expanse, prompts humility and genuine admiration for nature. The latter is the theater of mere science. This essay follows suit with Sideris's line of questioning, but also pushes back on the correlation of wonder with ethical attentiveness and proposes ways that science in its puzzle-solving mode can be brought back into the ethical conversation.
Univ Penn, Dept Religious Studies, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
Recommended Citation:
Schaefer, Donovan O.. MERE SCIENCE: MAPPING THE LAND BRIDGE BETWEEN EMOTION, POLITICS, AND ETHICS: with Holmes Rolston, III, "Lame Science? Blind Religion?"; Sarah E. Fredericks, "Reacting to Consecrating Science: What Might Amateurs Do?"; Donovan O. Schaefer, "Mere Science: Mapping the Land Bridge between Emotion, Politics, and Ethics"; Courtney O'Dell-Chaib, "The Shape of This Wonder? Consecrated Science and New Cosmology Affects"; Colin McGuigan, "Wonder Opens the Heart: Pope Francis and Lisa Sideris on Nature, Encounter, and Wonder"; Mary Evelyn Tucker, "Journey of the Universe: Weaving Science with the Humanities"; and Lisa H. Sideris, "Wonder Sustained: A Reply to Critics."[J]. ZYGON,2019-01-01,54(2):382-386