Vladimir Katasonov

Science and Religion: New Methodological Opportunities

Vladimir Katasonov - Chair Professor of Philosophy, St. Cyril and Methodius Post-Graduate Institute of the Russian Orthodox Church; Professor at the Orthodox St. Tikhon's University of Humanities (Moscow, Russia). vladimir15k@mail.ru

The paper deals with logical and historical relations of science and religion. Science is dualistic: it seeks to learn the world and to dominate over it. Christianity sees the world, before all, as a display of the Divine; but faith is not just contemplation but also the way of salvation. Science is a sequence of falsified and verified theories. In religion, the knowledge of God is given in revelation, but refracted through a tradition, hence the importance of interpretation. Truth in science is a consensus of a competent community; truth in religion is also the consent with Church's dogmas but it is also ontological, a participation in God's life, a theosis. Religion and sciences have been in a constant interaction in history. The paper offers a positive strategy in dealing with these interactions - the so called "Leibnitz methodology" exploring metaphysical preconditions of scientific knowledge and finally producing a horizon for a certain natural religion.

Keywords: science and religion, science and metaphysics, problem of truth in science and religion, religious roots of science, phenomenological analysis of science.

We consider here the relationship between science and religion in different aspects: as an activity, as a teaching, in terms of understanding the truth, in an institutional aspect, in historical terms. At the end, the strategy of the new methodology of research on science and religion is discussed.

2. As an activity, science - we are now mainly talking about natural science-represents the desire to know the world.

Katasonov V. Nauka i religiya (vozmozhnosti novoi metodologii issledovaniya) [Science and Religion (opportunities for a new research methodology)]. 2015. N 1 (33). pp. 30-50.

Katasonov, V. (2015) "Science and Religion: New Methodological Opportunities", Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkou' v Rossii i za rubezhom 33 (1): 30 - 50.

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This desire is dual in nature. It has a pragmatic, applied component - the desire to learn, to use this knowledge to facilitate and improve life on earth. But there is also another, deeper and more disinterested component - the desire for knowledge in itself, joyful amazement, surprise at the wisdom of the world, surprise, which, according to Aristotle, serves as the beginning of philosophy (and therefore science). At different times, in different civilizations, these two components are emphasized differently. Thus, the ancient civilization builds a surprisingly harmonious and extensive edifice of science, almost without caring about its applied side. In the Modern European civilization, the applied significance of science is established from the very beginning ("knowledge is power" by F. Bacon, "The Faustian Spirit", etc.).

3. Religion as an activity, as an ability, is also partly aimed at knowing the world, but in the world it constantly sees - and wants to see! - reflection of the Creator of this world: to understand the connection of the phenomena of this world as a manifestation of the will of God, the participation of Providence in world history. Naturally, we are talking here about theistic religions and, above all, about Christianity. Behind all world events, faith wants to see the will of God as a Person, to see messages addressed to the person of man. It is not the eternal laws of nature that faith wants to discover in the world, as science does, but the manifestations of the Living God. In this sense, faith is essentially historical: it learns the history of the relationship between God and man in time. This focus on revealing the personal and historical meaning of world events even hinders the development of abstract scientific knowledge. Thus, for many centuries the Middle Ages could not turn to the study of nature in the sense that science began to understand it from the XVII century, and, as historical studies show, the concept of the law of nature appears only in the XIV-XV centuries.

4. But religion, faith, does not fruitlessly try to read the will of God in history and nature. God reveals himself to man in history, faith conducts a dialogue with God, faith knows God as the Creator and Savior of the world. Faith knows God as the Way to salvation from death, from the world's evil, as the Way to eternal blissful life in God. Therefore, faith, as A. S. Khomyakov said, " is both knowledge and life."

5. As a teaching, science appears as a sequence of scientific theories that succeed each other in the history of science. All procedures for falsification and verification of scientific theories are related to-

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with experimental verification, through the experiment, the theory is "hooked" to reality. Science cannot say that any of its theories is absolutely true. In the history of science, there have been examples where the truth of one side of an alternative was confirmed, then the other, and then the truth of both members of the alternative. Science is a developing enterprise. No scientific theory exists without certain philosophical and methodological prerequisites. They include: general ideas about space and time, methods of cognition, and the language of science. All these ideas come to science from outside-from philosophy, from religion, from culture - and represent a certain metaphysics of scientific knowledge. Galileo's thesis that "the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics" was due to the strong influence of neo-Platonic philosophy in the European Renaissance, while the hierarchical concepts of being characteristic of ancient thought blocked the development of mathematical physics for it. It is important to emphasize that without this metaphysical framework, science cannot develop. It is impossible to simply turn to the study of nature, as is sometimes preached by radical empiricists, without any prerequisites. In its historical development, science has to transform these premises (paradigms), but they always exist and are always pre-scientific in nature.

6. Religion as a teaching appears in the form of theology. Theology is a logical ordering of the experience of faith, of religious experience. Theology relies on revelation in two forms: Scripture and Tradition. Tradition is a continuous tradition of communion with God, recorded in various forms. Within the framework of Tradition, the canon of Scripture is also formulated - as a collection of the most authoritative, recorded parts of the Tradition. Theology appears as a kind of knowledge about God, but knowledge revealed to us by God Himself. In this sense, this knowledge is absolute, it is not some theory that can be replaced by an improved theory, as it happens in science. Nevertheless, the problem of an adequate understanding of the Bible and biblical hermeneutics is always relevant for the Church. A person cannot contain all the knowledge about God, but it, as revealed by God Himself, is absolutely reliable and formulated in the form of dogmas. Dogmas do not express the fullness of religious life, but they are those "milestones" that do not allow us to believe in it.-

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those who wish to avoid the wrong paths of spiritual life. The Church asserts its dogmas as a definite synthesis of Scripture, Tradition, and direct religious life. The desire to know God more deeply runs into human sinfulness, the elimination of which is a necessary condition for human knowledge of God. In the words of the Savior himself, only " the pure in heart will see God." Therefore, the Gnostic tendency in the knowledge of God is essentially subordinated to the ascetic one, to the correction of the very instrument of this knowledge - the sinful human soul. In principle, this task was solved by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Mastering this victory over sin and death is the task of every Christian's life's struggle. But it cannot be said that only following the path of asceticism, regardless of dogmatic ideas about the Deity, gives a deeper knowledge of God. False dogmatics also lead to damage to the spiritual life, to falling away from God. Dogmas, the conciliar knowledge of God, are the soul's guides on the path of salvation.

One more point is important. If, as already mentioned, scientific constructions always presuppose some metaphysical framework that acts as the foundation of a scientific theory, then theology does not build any metaphysics. The doctrine of God in Himself, the creation of the world, the Incarnation of God, and the future Second Coming does not require any special metaphysics. More precisely, the dogmatic teaching of the Church is compatible with different metaphysicians and, consequently, with different scientific theories. The absoluteness of dogmatics does not contradict the relativity of scientific hypotheses about the world.

7. If we talk about natural science, then truth is understood here as the agreement of the competent core of the scientific community on certain scientific propositions. These scientific statements should provide for the possibility of experimental verification of the proposed theories and obtaining similar results. However, this is not enough, since the results of experiments often allow for different interpretations, different theoretical explanations. Therefore, this hermeneutical moment of concrete interpretation of the obtained scientific facts cannot be circumvented. Only after the authoritative core of the scientific community develops a certain consensus on interpretation can this understanding be included in the corpus of scientific knowledge, in textbooks.

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A characteristic feature of the scientific understanding of truth is its relativity. Explanatory theories change over time, which inevitably raises the question of their complementarity. Some theories are falsified by historical developments. Therefore, as already noted, science cannot say about any of its theories that this is the ultimate truth. However, considering the four-century experience of the development of New European science, as well as taking into account the results of scientific and natural philosophy understanding of nature in European civilization for two and a half thousand years, one cannot fail to notice a certain repeatability in the change of scientific paradigms. Discreteness and continuity, short-range and long-range action, continuity and vacuum, unity and multiplicity, etc. remain the fundamental presuppositions within which the human mind tries to understand nature. The so-called scientific revolutions do not take us beyond a certain logical matrix, which may have been defined by the Pythagoreans. In science, such determination manifests itself as the presence in the foundation of scientific theories of a more or less consciously formulated metaphysics, without which no scientific theory can exist. Purely philosophically, this raises the question of the Kantian (and neo-Kantian) nature of scientific knowledge (for example, in the spirit of E. Meyerson or E. Cassirer).

8. Truth in religion - I mean Christianity here-is in the proper sense not a system of ideas, not a theory, but a participation in true being. True being is the being of God Himself, and participation in Him is being in God, deification by Divine energies. In this ontological sense, the truth in Christianity is Jesus Christ himself, God incarnate and a full-fledged human being. And communion with the truth is, in the closest sense, belonging to the Church as the Body of Christ. This communion with the truth, as a person enters into the depth of church life, is revealed as a transfiguration of the human being, as deification. Deification is also manifested on a phenomenal level: the acquisition of supernormal abilities (insight, insight in general, the gift of healing, clairvoyance, etc.), including changes in the physical properties of the body (permeability, levitation, walking on water, etc.). Christian communion with the truth is the ontological "growth" of a person into the Kingdom of God and the" germination " of the latter into the Kingdom of God. peace through a given person (cf. likening the kingdom of God to a grain

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in Mark 4: 26-32). After the death of a person, the Church determines the degree of deification of the deceased, classifying some of them as saints. The latter means, first of all, the possibility of their intercession before God for other people through prayers to them.

A theological understanding of truth means, first of all, its agreement with the dogmatic teaching of the Church. In addition, the correlation of the propositions expressed with the tradition of the Church, with the opinions of authoritative theologians on the issue under study, is taken into account.

9. In terms of the relationship between science and religion, the key question is the relationship between the Christian understanding of truth and the scientific one. As the "age of Christ" increases, the Christian acquires a new worldview, sees the world in a new way, becoming more and more aware of what he meets as God's replicas in the life dialogue. The question arises: does this new vision have any analog in science, in scientific creativity? The scientist who creates a new theory also gets a new vision of the world. It has been repeatedly testified that scientific discoveries are also made as a result of some spiritual inspirations and inspirations. Some of the scientists, who are by no means the most religious, have repeatedly testified that they intuitively imagined the world as a kind of being capable of dialogue (cf., for example, the "central order" of the creator of quantum mechanics V. Heisenberg). It should be emphasized that the ascent of the spiritual ladder in the Church is performed with constant prayer to God and under the spiritual control of tradition, usually under the guidance of experienced teachers (confession, elders, etc.). The scientific "church" also has its own teachers and its own control (scientific community, scientific seminars, etc.), but here not yetprayers as a direct invocation of God's help. Thus, scientific creativity is a self-willed acquisition of secret, undiscovered knowledge about the properties of things and the world, a kind of occultism. The genetic connection of Modern European science with occult traditions is quite well known. In this connection, it is also no coincidence that Modern scientific knowledge is linked to utopian teachings (from Bacon's "New Atlantis" to the utopian projects of Soviet communism). Modern technological civilization, built on the basis of New European science, largely represents the creation of a new artificial world, which increasingly separates man from the natural world (the problem of the ecological crisis).

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10. Moral qualities in science do not play such a fundamental role as in the knowledge of God. There are many examples of successful scientists whose moral image is far from perfect. However, science also requires a certain minimum of honesty and responsibility, without which no scientific community exists. Twentieth-century science, after the discovery of quantum mechanics, seriously raised the question of analyzing the very tools of cognition. It was realized in principle that what we get as experimental data in science is not the characteristics of the studied reality itself, but only traces of the interaction of this reality and devices. In a broader sense, the characteristics of the observer itself begin to enter essentially into the description of reality itself. This is seen as a certain convergence of natural science knowledge with the knowledge of faith ("only the pure in heart will see God"). At the same time, science in its current phase is always aimed at finding a theory, some logically consistent and expressed in mathematical language representation of reality. Science solves problems by giving them a speculative explanation in its own language. Theology, on the other hand, knows in advance that the mysteries of God are in their depth incomprehensible to the human mind; knowledge of God on the highest levels of spiritual life appears as a sacrament, as communion with Divine energies, as an apophatic entry into Divine darkness, as knowledge that cannot be expressed in any language.

11. The essential difference between knowledge in religion and scientific knowledge is that in faith a person acts in his freedom, a fundamental characteristic of personal existence. It is impossible to make a person believe, faith and freedom are inseparable. Only inner freedom from the compulsive laws of this world can allow us to dream of getting rid of them, of "shifting mountains into the sea". Only the courage of faith allowed the martyrs of Christianity to show their freedom in the face of the cruelest tortures and bear witness to a different, better world... The believer knows this other world in his freedom: he desires this world, he already transfers it to this world of suffering and tears. Science studies the world in its necessity, it looks for the laws of this world, that unshakable system of relations between the parameters of matter, in terms of which it would be possible to describe the whole world. In particular, science constantly bases its theories on the laws of conservation of mass, energy, momentum, etc.,

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what is the basis for writing mathematical equations. Science is tied to the paradigm of transformation of something into something, provided that the laws of conservation are correct. The idea of free creation from nothing is alien to science (compare the dichotomy of Kushite and Iranian cultures in A. S. Khomyakov).

12. From an institutional point of view, science is a hierarchy, whose members occupy their position in it depending on the level of scientific competence: bachelor, master, candidate of science, doctor, academician. Science has within itself a system of methods for determining the level of competence of its members, for establishing and maintaining this hierarchy. Usually these are some public debates on scientific topics: exams, defense of qualification papers, dissertations. The Institute of Science is internally inspired by the pathos of the scientific ethos, the main articles of which are (according to R. Merton): universalism, collectivism, selflessness and organized skepticism. It is the latter proposition that is very important: science consciously cultivates an atmosphere of doubt and criticism. Any new scientific statement is accepted only after critical consideration, any old one is true only as long as it is not falsified. If this proposition is such that it cannot in principle be falsified, then it cannot belong to science. In science, in principle, there are no authorities, but only proven and unproven positions.

13. Christian believers are organized into a Church. The Church, according to her own understanding, is a mystical unity of believers, the Body of Christ, whose head is the Divine founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ. The Church is a hierarchical unity, the place of everyone in the hierarchy is determined by the system of initiations and sacraments established by God himself. The essence of the Church is love: "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another"(Jn 13:34-35). The Church, united by the divine grace of love, embraces not only the living (the militant Church), but also the dead (the triumphant Church). As the Body of Christ, the Church, of course, goes far beyond any institution in the earthly sense.

14. Historically, the connection between science and Christianity is more obvious: Modern European science originated in the bosom of Christian culture, and history does not know any other science that has reached the same degree

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development, as it is modern for us. Over the last century and a half, historians of science have convincingly shown that, although the first mature fruits of this science date back to the XVII century, its roots lie in the previous time, in the late Middle Ages. It was then that Christian scholastic scientists prepared everything necessary for the emergence of a new scientific method. A significant role in understanding the genesis of Modern European science was played by the works of the remarkable French physicist, historian and philosopher of science P. Duhem. He was able to discover and convincingly show the existence of a whole chain of intellectual continuity: late Scholasticism - Renaissance (especially the works of Leonardo da Vinci) - Galileo, Descartes, Newton.

The history of the formation of the scientific method is closely connected with the history of the incorporation into Christian culture of the heritage of Aristotle, whose works and, more importantly, whose methodology have become a model of science for the Western European world. In the West, Aristotle has been translated from Arabic and Greek since the end of the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century, the study of Aristotle's works (his" Logic "and especially his" Physics") became the norm for the art faculties of the universities of Paris, Oxford, and Bologna. However, Aristotle's philosophy contained propositions that could not be reconciled with Christian ideas: the thesis of the eternal existence of the cosmos, the denial of the immortality of the soul, the non-existence of infinity, and a number of others. The main thing was that Aristotelian physics was confronted with the Christian idea of an infinitely powerful God, capable of creating at will everything that does not contain a logical contradiction, including what was impossible from the natural (Aristotelian) point of view. This ambiguity (which even led to the formulation of the concepts of "double truth" - Boethius of Dacia, Siger of Brabant) could not last long. Indeed, since 1210, we have seen a whole series of ecclesiastical decisions either condemning certain provisions of Aristotelian philosophy, or prohibiting its study at the university altogether. Of crucial importance was the decree of the Bishop of Paris, Etienne Tampier, of 1277, which condemned 219 propositions related to the philosophy of Aristotle. Among them were theses on the eternity of the world, on the impossibility of the existence of other worlds, on the impossibility of the existence of a vacuum, on the impossibility of the existence of accidents without substances, etc. With the acceptance of this condemnation.-

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the industrial climate in universities is changing. The truths of Aristotelian physics can no longer be regarded as ultimate truths: divine omnipotence can also create the impossible from the point of view of natural philosophy-a vacuum, a multitude of worlds, accidents without substances, etc. The condemnation of 1277 shatters Aristotle's metaphysical dogmatism and creates entirely new intellectual possibilities. The practice of philosophical constructions secundum imaginationem (according to the imagination) is spreading, that is, arguments whose initial premise was propositions approved on the basis of faith in divine omnipotence (for example, the existence of several worlds, a vacuum, etc.), conclusions from which were drawn according to "natural reason". These arguments represent, as it were, the first attempts at the mental experiments so familiar to us in twentieth-century physics. Such speculative constructions gradually developed the modern idea of physical theory as a kind of descriptive scheme, more or less "adjacent" to reality. This view differs from the ancient understanding of theory. For Greek philosophy, there is a vision of the ultimate reality, of what is. In the late Middle Ages, however, a modern nominalistic understanding was gradually developed: a theory is only a more or less successful scheme of reality, the predictions of which need to be tested in an experiment.

A direct consequence of the 1277 condemnation was the concept of radical empiricism by William Occam (c. 1285-1349). Occam taught that because of the absolute nature of divine power, a priori reasoning about nature is fruitless. If God can create accidents without substances - for example, make fire cool-then our speculative constructions about fire have little power. Cognition can only be based on intuitive, immediate discretion, and philosophical speculations about nature have only a probabilistic meaning. Occam's concept was one of the origins of the experimental method in physics. However, due to its radicalism, it was of little use in itself for building a science of nature. Gradually, more moderate approaches emerged, such as the methodology of Jean Buridan (c. 1300 - 1358), who, while fully recognizing the divine omnipotence, nevertheless believed that a person can receive reliable knowledge about nature, in the sense of the usual course

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communis cursus naturae), not connected with direct divine intervention. This attitude opened the way for the study of secondary causes (i.e., natural causes - the primary cause was God himself) that take place in the world of phenomena. On this path, Buridan formulated, in particular, his concept of impetus, which significantly influenced later on the constructions of Galileo and Newton. In the late Middle Ages (especially in the fourteenth century), decisive steps were also taken to bridge the gap between physics and mathematics - a characteristic feature of Aristotelian science. Oxford calculators (W. Burley, J. Dumbleton, W. Heytesbury, R. Swinshead, T. Bradwardine), considering changes in the "degrees of qualities" of things, begin to apply mathematical methods for this, both in arithmetic and geometric form. They actively discuss the properties of infinitesimals and the continuum. All this had a significant influence on the theoretical constructions of Galileo, on the emergence of differential and integral calculus in the XVII century.

This religious and philosophical motif - the infinite power of the Christian God as the basis for relativizing any non - creationist metaphysics and putting forward a nominalist strategy for understanding nature-was further reinforced by new theological trends associated with Protestantism. Protestant theology - both in general and in its particular incarnations-placed special emphasis on divine omnipotence to the detriment, perhaps, of other divine attributes (omniscience and omnipotence-love). In the Thomist version of Catholic theology, a certain synthesis of Aristotelianism and Christian dogma was achieved: the Aristotelian natures were understood here as created by God himself, who "respects" the properties of these natures and uses them to achieve his goals. In Protestant theology, however, the significance of natural qualities before the emphasized infinity of divine omnipotence was erased; the entire universe before the fact of this omnipotence was transformed into a single homogeneous whole - passive matter, on which the laws of nature were imposed from outside. This aspect of the Protestant worldview helped formulate the basic laws of classical mechanics, in which the concept of passive inert matter plays an essential role. It is interesting that the main articles of Protestant theology ("passive righteousness" through faith, not works in Luther or doc-

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trine of predestination in Calvin) speak all about the same passivity of created beings, an analogue of which in classical mechanics is the concept of inert matter.

All the creators of classical mechanics and physics in the seventeenth century were religious people; their scientific theories are not just present in the traditional perspective of Christian culture, but also provide additional evidence of God. Descartes is generally a voluntarist. For him, the truth 2x2=4 is true only because God put it that way; if he put 2x2=5, then we would have a different mathematics (and a different world). In Descartes, God not only created the world, but also supports it in existence: the world could not exist for a single moment without this support. For Descartes, God is also the guarantor of the reliability of human knowledge: according to this philosopher, just because the good God (of Christianity) cannot be a deceiver, our clear and distinct ideas give us reliable knowledge about the world. Newton, in the General Homily that concludes his famous book The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, clearly writes::

Such an elegant union of the Sun, planets, and comets could not have taken place except by the intention and authority of a powerful and all-wise being... He rules everything not as the soul of the world, but as the ruler of the universe, and according to his rule should be called the Lord God Almighty Leibniz was not only busy formulating the laws of mechanics (for example, the laws of impact), but tried to find a justification for the principles of mechanics themselves. According to Leibniz, the wisdom and all-goodness of God the Creator also have certain consequences for creation. The All-good God must create the best possible world. Out of all the many possible worlds, our world is distinguished by special architectonic principles: the principle of sufficient foundation, the principle of continuity, the principle of law-permanence. According to Leibniz, the universal significance of these principles is the evidence of creation about its Creator.

Although, apparently, science, which was developing progressively in the XVII century, is in harmony with the Christian faith, but in reality, the erosion of Christianity in the views of the creators of the new religion is very important.

1. Newton I. Matematicheskie nachala naturel'noi filosofii [Mathematical principles of Natural Philosophy].

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science at this time has not only already begun, but has also advanced far. In the pages of his writings, Descartes repeatedly swears allegiance to the church's doctrine of a Triune God, but it is characteristic that by questioning everything, he tacitly bypasses the main articles of the Christian faith: God the Trinity and the two-unified nature of Christ. While admitting, again verbally, that God created the cosmos and all things in it ready-made and perfect (and even Adam and Eve as adults), he nevertheless believes that we can better understand God's creation if we consider its natural origin... out of the chaos of primordial matter.

Newton's Arianism is well studied and widely known today. In fact, the creator of the law of gravitation deprived Christ of even the intermediate divinity that he had in the teaching of Arius. For Newton, Christ was not the founder of a new religion, but simply a prophet sent to correct the chosen people, to restore the old true religion of the Old Testament. The trinitarian doctrine of Athanasius of Alexandria was invented by the latter, according to Newton, specifically for the conversion of pagans and included all the legends, false miracles and superstitions peculiar to these peoples. The world was for Newton the "seat of God," but this God was not the God of Christianity, but the one God of theism.

In Leibniz's Monadology, which describes the best of all worlds created by God, the position of God himself is not entirely clear. This fact leads many researchers to consider Leibniz's God as one of the monads - although the highest, it is ontologically identical with all the other monads that have not yet been "awakened", the ladder of which goes from the" dormant " monads of minerals, through the monads of plants, animals, and man to the highest spiritual beings. There is no ontological leap between Creator and creature... This peculiar personalistic pantheism is supplemented by a special teaching about sin. In Leibniz's world, there is, generally speaking, no need for the redemptive feat of Christ, since "sin had to be included in the best possible order of things"2. Leibniz's speculative theology destroys the possibility of Divine Providence: the perfection of God, according to Leibniz, means that He has "calculated" everything in advance, that He is ready for it.

2. Leibniz G.-V. Collected Works in four volumes, vol. 4. Moscow: Mysl', 1989, p. 482.

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there is no need to interfere with the world to correct its shortcomings, the "world clock" is started by its Creator once and for all...

The progressive development of natural science based on new mathematical methods gradually leads to a deformation of the very image of science: The "God of gaps", God as an explanatory tool for incomprehensible natural phenomena, is becoming unacceptable (and even" indecent") for the science of the XIX century. Despite many unsolved fundamental problems, the self-consciousness of science is full of optimism and "does not need the God hypothesis" (Laplace). This understanding of science finds its philosophical form in the system of O. Comte (1798-1857) , who identifies three successive stages in the development of scientific knowledge: theological, metaphysical and positive (actually scientific). However, a characteristic feature of the dialogue between science and religion is the ambivalence of scientific theories regarding the affirmation or denial of the existence of God. An example of this is the famous controversy surrounding the thesis of the so-called "heat death" of the universe. Regardless of the fact that this thesis itself was a consequence of the incorrect application of the second law of thermodynamics to the Universe as a whole (although we do not know whether it is a closed system - the Universe as a whole), it is curious that the opposite consequences were obtained from it. If for atheists this conclusion was evidence of the absence of a Creator and the development of the world according to its natural laws, then among Christian theologians there were people who saw in the fact of the thermodynamic death of the world confirmation of prophecies about the end of history, refutation of the idea of progress and biological evolution. So, an influential Anglican theologian, rector of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, William R. W. R. Inge (1860-1954) wrote that the second law of thermodynamics once again confirms that "this world has never been conceived as a pleasure garden."3
The ambivalent nature of science in its relation to theology largely persisted in the twentieth century. This is not contradicted by the occasional atheistic attacks of unbelieving scientists, or the sweeping anathema to science by individual theologians, or the often optimistic statements (or projects) about the "union of science and religion". All these

3. См.: Lindberg, D.C., Numbers, R. L. (1986) God and Nature. Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, p. 427. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

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epiphenomena explained by personal and ideological biases usually do not reach the point. Science, which emerged from Christianity, is moving on its own path. However, it cannot raise itself to the idea of God that is given by Christian Revelation on its own. This is understandable from a theological point of view, because theology in its proper sense - as a doctrine of the life within God - speaks of God in Himself, of what exists outside of creation and of what we know only because it has pleased God to reveal it to us. In terms of economy, that is, actions, manifestations of God in the world, the very identification of these manifestations depends on faith and, consequently, on human freedom and allows for a wide range of interpretations, up to the" non-God " of a mad heart... Einstein wrote about the cosmic religious feeling in which great scientists draw inspiration for their scientific work, but he was only talking about a belief in the rational structure of nature. One of the founders of quantum mechanics, W. Heisenberg, argued about a certain central order that exercises its power both through physical laws and through social ones. The German scientist even believed that this central order can be correlated in the same way as "with the soul of another person"4. However, all this remains for him only a hypothesis, a kind of philosophical lyrics, without becoming a distinct element of scientific knowledge.

In the theory of the so-called "Big Bang", modern scientific cosmology has presented a scenario for the emergence of the Universe, which, apparently, fully corresponds to the picture of the creation of the world, as described in the biblical book of Genesis. And this was immediately picked up by journalistic circles and partly by Christian journalism. But they soon noticed that Friedman's cosmological equations have other solutions that describe not only the expanding universe, but also "collapsing" and oscillating (cyclic expansion and collapse), and even "turbulent universes".5
Another example is the controversy surrounding the so-called anthropic principle. The fundamental constants included in the description of our universe are so chosen that they guarantee the emergence of life and, ultimately, man. Our Universe is empty-

4. Heisenberg V. Fizika i filosofiya [Physics and philosophy]. Part and Whole, Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1986, pp. 326-327.

5. See, for example: Burke U. Space-time, geometry, cosmology, Moscow: Mir Publ., 1985.

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In this sense, it is called "well-tuned". From this, some conclude that there is an Adjuster-Creator. However, nothing prevents the fact that our universe is only one of a whole range of possible ones that exist alongside it, and therefore the existence of man will then no longer be a consequence of the plan laid down in the basis of creation, but a random and "natural"fact...

In general, we can say that throughout the history of Christianity, we have a picture of intensive interaction between science and religion. Moreover, religion, which has a great ontological depth and speaks not only about what is, but also about what should be, has generally had a greater influence on the development of science in history than vice versa. Scientific theories, as we have already said, carry out their constructions within the framework of a certain metaphysics, they must take their fundamental propositions, their "axioms"from somewhere outside. If we talk about Modern European science, the foundations of which are laid in the period of late scholasticism, then the influence of Christian theology on the emergence of science was deeply explored in the twentieth century. Overcoming the Aristotelian paradigm in natural science, the very beginnings of the experimental method, and the formulation of the law of inertia were closely linked to the theological discussions of late scholasticism (XIV century). The most amazing example of the influence of Christianity on the development of science is the legalization of the concept of actual infinity in mathematics and physics of modern European science (since the XVII century)6. The development of hermeneutical methods in philology and historical knowledge was closely connected with the tradition of biblical criticism, which received a new impetus with the emergence of Protestantism. The reverse influence of science on theology was reflected in the fact that the understanding of classical theological terms and biblical events - such as "heaven", "creation", "time", "Earth", "flood", etc. - is significantly deformed under the influence of scientific discoveries and scientific cosmology. Of particular importance is the tradition that emerged in the twentieth century of considering theological theories from the point of view of modern philosophy of science (V. Pannenberg, A. Mcgraf, etc.).

6. See the works of V. N. Katasonov, for example: V. N. Katasonov Who struggled with the Infinite. Philosophical and religious aspects of the genesis of G. Kantor's set theory, Moscow: Martis Publishing House, 1994.

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Science, according to the testament of its founders, strives to operate with clearly and distinctly (Descartes) posited statements. Proofs, thanks to its ideals and methods, acquire the character of compulsion and repetition. And although the picture of the universe discovered by science impresses any unbiased person with its structure, harmony and beauty, which really suggest the idea of the Creator, it is hardly possible to consider this guidance as proof. In the dialogue between science and religion, everything happens as if God does not want people to come to Him, driven by rational compulsion and mechanical inevitability. God wants from man the free exercise of love and faith - "things of hope of revelation, things of reproof unseen" (Heb 11: 1).

15. A new methodology for the dialogue between science and religion. Currently, there are favorable circumstances in Russia for new approaches and developments in the framework of the topic of science and religion. This topic, however, has many dimensions, and it should be discussed with extreme caution, so as not to fall into either flat scientism, fruitless occultism, or unprincipled "theological" agreement with science. Natural science studies reality as being (in the mode of what is), and it has developed its own mathematical language for this purpose. Religion (in the form of theology) is aimed at the world not only in the interest of what is, but also of what should be, with an appropriate moral assessment. Therefore, religion and science lie, generally speaking, on different levels of the experience of being. Science sees the world as an impersonal entity, religion as the creation of God as a Person, the creation of every thing, as a phrase addressed to man. Religion has an advantage here in the sense that it not only knows what exists, but also evaluates it from the point of view of what is due and true.

However, as mentioned above, science is impossible without some metaphysics, a pre-scientific worldview framework within which hypotheses are put forward and scientific theories are proposed. The formation of a metaphysical picture is a rather mysterious thing, but it is clear that just here the human mind acts as a unity of explanatory and evaluating principles, identifying in being not only what is, but also what is due. Science proceeds from the existence of nature-the totality of everything that exists, subject to laws. When we try to imagine what is the mode of existence of these laws in nature, what is, so to speak, the "executive mechanism" of the law-conforming behavior of natural objects, we, as Kant perfectly showed, come to the idea of God.

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However, in reality, as the same philosopher shows, the idea of God remains here only a regulative principle of reason, which seeks the fullness of conditionality for its conclusions; it remains "The God of philosophers and scientists" (B. Pascal). Nevertheless, the existence of science and the pursuit of science are impossible without this hidden premise of the existence of a system of laws, a Logos that rules the world. Einstein wrote:

I can't find a better expression than "religion" to describe a belief in the rational nature of reality (emphasis added - V. K.), at least in that part of it that is accessible to human consciousness. Where this feeling is absent, science degenerates into impotent empiricism.7
This connection between natural science and the fullness of human thought was emphasized by many pioneers of modern European science. Leibniz spoke about the so-called architectonic principles of reason, which govern not only the field of natural science, but also the field of theology, morality, politics, art, etc. Such in his system are, for example, the principle of the best of worlds, the principle of sufficient reason, the principle of continuity, the principle of isonomy, etc. These principles are due to Leibniz's idea that the world was created by a good and wise God, and this wisdom dictates that everything should happen in an optimal way, that everything should be provided for - on the basis of what arises and on what depends. It is known from the history of science that the principle of the best of worlds was the forerunner of the principle of least action in physics - the fundamental principle of modern natural science, from which almost all known physical laws are derived. In other words, the idea of the all-wise Creator of the universe was a heuristic basis for building physical knowledge.

Similarly, in Descartes, the path to the construction of science, which is blocked by the idol of total doubt about everything, opens only when the philosopher recognizes the certainty of the existence of a good God, who, by definition, could not create me so that I would be wrong about everything. Only by being convinced of the existence of such a Creator, Descartes believes, can we logically flawlessly build the edifice of science. And without this, everything "hangs in the air", everything is only probable and guessing. Anyone, not even a philosopher-

7. Einstein A. Sobranie sochineniy v 4-kh tomakh [Collected Works in 4 volumes], vol. 4, Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1967, p. 564.

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Therefore, a scientist will agree that you can only look for patterns in nature by assuming that they are there. But this assumption entails many others that answer fundamental questions of cognition: who put them there? how do they exist there? Why am I sure I can recognize them? Cartesian construction is so valuable for the history of human thought that it reveals everything (rather, almost everything...) prerequisites of the cognitive attitude and shows that you can't do without God here. Descartes was a believer, but the existence of God was for him not only a matter of faith, but also the subject of his metaphysics. It is in this sense that Pascal spoke of such a God- "The God of philosophers and scientists."..

Thus, we see that the discussion of the metaphysical presuppositions of scientific knowledge 8 leads us to theological problems, even if they are problems of natural theology. This way of correlating science and religion seems to be the most organic and optimal. This was the path taken by the philosophy of science of the twentieth century, beginning with P. Duhem, E. Burt, A. Coire, T. Kuhn and others. What is needed is not fantastic plans for the "synthesis of science and religion" or the creation of some "Christian science", which usually lead either to fruitless projects or to occultism, but concrete projects for the study of the metaphysical prerequisites of various scientific disciplines, a phenomenological opening of the theological component in these metaphysics and finding out its significance for science itself. Phenomenology is not mentioned here by chance. Husserl's (and Heidegger's) concept of the horizon turns out to be extremely relevant here.9 I think that such studies will largely echo the tradition of phenomenological research in specific sciences. Reinach, D. von Hildebrand, M. Scheler, R. Ingarden, and others).

8. Kant's critique of metaphysics is not an insurmountable obstacle here. It is well known how tirelessly Russian religious philosophy criticized this criticism.

9. In The Crisis of European Sciences, the philosopher wrote: "Usually we do not notice the whole subjective aspect of the ways things are presented, but in reflection we are surprised to learn that there are significant correlations that are part of the universal a priori that extends even wider... In one or another perception of a thing, a whole "horizon" of irrelevant, but nevertheless also functioning ways of phenomena and syntheses of significance is implicated" (Husserl E. Crisis of European Sciences and transcendental Phenomenology, St. Petersburg: Vladimir Dal Publishing House, 2004, p. 214).

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It is natural to call such a methodology of dialogue between science and religion Leibnizian, insofar as this great German scientist and philosopher consciously developed it and did much to establish it. It is this methodology that promises, if applied systematically, not only a deeper understanding of the relationship between science and religion, but also certain advantages for strategic scientific planning...

In my opinion, the most immediate way is to develop a methodology for pedagogy and psychology. It is here, where the subject of research is an integral person, in the fullness of his spiritual and material unity, that traditional research methods are insufficient, since they do not take into account the role of faith and correlation with the Transcendent. Religious traditions here have the advantage of centuries-old experience, which, if carefully analyzed, could enrich the scientific understanding of the processes in consciousness that form the cognitive structures of science.

Bibliography/References

Burke W. Space-time, geometry, cosmology, Moscow: Mir Publ., 1985.

Heisenberg V. Fizika i filosofiya [Physics and Philosophy]. Part and Whole, Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1986.

Husserl, E. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, St. Petersburg: Vladimir Dahl Publishing House, 2004.

Katasonov V. N. Struggling with the infinite. Philosophical and religious aspects of the genesis of G. Kantor's set theory, Moscow: Martis Publishing House, 1994.

Leibniz G.-V. Collected Works in four volumes, vol. 4. Moscow: Mysl', 1989. Newton I. Matematicheskie nachala naturel'noi filosofii [Mathematical principles of Natural Philosophy].

Einstein A. Collected Works in four volumes, vol. 4. Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1967.

Burke, W.L. (1985) Prostranstvo - vremia, geometria, kosmologia [Spacetime, Geometry, Cosmology]. M.: Mir.

Heisenberg, W. (1986) Fizika i filosofia. Chast i zeloe [Physics and Philosophy. Part and Whole]. M., Nauka.

Husserl, E. (2004) Krizis evropeiskih nauk i transzendentalnaja fenomenologia [Crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology], SPb., Izdatelstvo "Vladimir Dal".

Katasonov, V.N. (1994) Borovshiysja s beskonechnim. Filozovsko-religioznie aspekti genezisa teorii mnogestv G.Kantora [He who struggled with the Infinite. Philosophical and religious aspects of G. Cantor's theory of set genesis]. M.: Izdatelstvo "Martis".

Leibniz, G.W. (1989) Sobranie sochineniy v chetireh tomah, T.4 [Collected works in 4 v., V. 4]. M.: Misl.

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Lindberg, D.C., Numbers, R.L. (1986) God and Nature. Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

Newton, I. (1989) Matematicheskie nachala naturalnoi filosofii [Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy]. M., Nauka.

Einstein, A. (1967) Sobranie sochinenii v 4 tomah. T. 4 [Collected works in 4 v., V. 4], M.: Nauka.

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