Science and Religion as Conceptual Schemes

Abstract

It is claimed sometimes that science on the one hand, and metaphysics and religion on the other, are incompatible conceptual schemes, in the sense that their statements are not inter-translatable. Our view, instead, is that science and religion deal with fundamentally diverse aspects of human experience. This means that, when each field stays within its proper domain, they can get along without problems. We must deny the still popular opinion that science is the only instrument which allows us to know nature. And we must also question the idea that science has acquired the exclusive right to speak about nature by progressively expelling metaphysics from the field. In order to do this one should, however, reject the neo-positivist characterization of the relations among science, metaphysics, theology and religion.