Life Beyond Critical Realism: Developing van Huyssteen’s Transversal Approach to the Science/Theology Dialogue

Abstract

Despite its steady growth as an academic field, certain tensions relating to the nature and ultimate purpose of science-theology engagement remain, and with them the thorny question of whether and how theology can contribute to scientific thinking. This paper argues that a development of J Wentzel van Huyssteen’s transversal space dialogical model provides a possible way of addressing this issue. After outlining the model’s philosophical roots and key dynamics, I propose an extension involving the generation of additional ‘transversal’ dialogical outputs. These aim to actively knit together disparate material brought into the transversal space via a trajectory which lies not downwards into but outwards beyond the contributing disciplines. The resulting arguments or models are thus neither scientific nor theological in their formulation and expression but, just as with the dialogue from which they originate, exist and are supported in the shared rational space between the disciplines. Hence they too are answerable not to the domain-specific epistemic standards of the contributing disciplines, but to those which inhere in postfoundational rationality itself. I suggest that this development is both a natural extension of the model’s basic dynamics, and demanded by the imperatives of the epistemic quest which it serves. Moreover it provides one possible way in which theological insights can make an equal contribution to the science-religion dialogue.