| This dissertation examines the convention known as 'methodological naturalism' which holds that scientific explanations can refer only to natural (as opposed to supernatural) processes, entities, laws, causes, and so on in explaining natural phenomena. That is, scientific explanations must avoid any 'God talk' if they are to be properly 'scientific.' In particular, the dissertation analyzes key texts that defend methodological naturalism during pivotal episodes in the history of science and religion: Boethius of Dacia's On the Eternity of the World, written during the height of the controversial assimilation of Aristotle's natural philosophy with Christian theology in the thirteenth century, Francis Bacon's The Advancement of Learning, Novum Organon, and Great Instauration, books which shaped the image of science during the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century (and beyond), Charles Darwin's famous Origin of Species which touched off the modern revolution in biology in the nineteenth century, and Michael Ruse's crucial testimony in the McLean v. Arkansas case, a legal and educational watershed in the late twentieth century. The principle claim of the dissertation is that the 'standard view' of methodological naturalism's origin and development requires revision, particularly its claim that the convention originated during (or just after) the scientific revolution. Instead, a more complete intellectual history of methodological naturalism is in order. This dissertation begins that task by examining the convention in its social, political, theological, and personal contexts; in doing so, the dissertation suggests that while the convention has enjoyed purely intellectual defenses, it has also been conceptualized, justified, and deployed as it served various extra-scientific goals, sometimes starkly so. |
