The following is a short extract from Herman Dooyeweerd's book:
“Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options” (pdf file 11 meg).
Gheibhear íoslódáil (an asgaidh) dhen leabhar air fad aig:
The entire book can be downloaded (for free) at:
http://www.reformationalpublishingproject.com/rpp/search_books.asp
Separation of Science from Faith
We have sketched the development of humanism's world view from its beginnings to its first inner crisis. We have seen that humanism was rooted in the religious ground motive of nature and freedom, a motive containing an irresolvable dualism.
Unquestionably, the freedom motive was humanism's deeper driving force. This motive embodied itself in the modern ideal of the personality, the cult of the human person understood as an end in itself. Freed from all faith in given authority, human personality attempted to establish the law for itself in complete autonomy and according to its own rational standards.
The new view of nature was rooted in the freedom motive. It was not inspired by the Greek motive of form and matter. It also withdrew itself from both the ground motive of divine revelation and the roman catholic ground motive of nature and grace. Modern man saw "nature" as unrelated to and uninfluenced by "supranatural" powers; "nature" was conceived of as reality within space and time to be completely controlled by natural science and technology. Man believed that his freedom would achieve its highest expression in his mastery over nature. It was this belief that called forth the classical humanistic science ideal, which declared that the natural-scientific method could analyze and reconstruct reality as a completely determined and closed chain of cause and effect. This assumption was the basis of the classical humanistic motive of nature.
But we also saw that the consistent application of the nature motive left no place in reality for human freedom and autonomy. From the outset "nature" and "freedom" stood in an irreconcilable conflict. It was the growing awareness of this conflict that caused the first crisis of humanism. In solving the tensions between "nature" and "freedom," some attempted to moderate the pretensions of the old ideal of science by limiting the validity of the laws of nature to sensorily perceivable phenomena. Above this sensory realm of "nature" there existed a "suprasensory" realm of moral freedom which was not governed by mechanical laws of nature but by norms or rules of conduct which presuppose the autonomy of human personality.
This was the solution to the basic religious issue of humanism prepared by the great German thinker Immanuel Kant [1724-1804] near the end of the eighteenth century, the "Age of Enlightenment." Like Rousseau, Kant gave religious priority to the freedom motive of the modern personality ideal. Freedom, according to Kant, cannot be scientifically proven. For him science is always bound to sensory experience, to "natural reality" as understood in the limited context of Kant's own conceptions. Freedom and autonomy of personality do not lie in sensory nature. They are practical ideas of man's "reason"; their suprasensory reality remains a matter of faith. Such a belief is not the old faith rooted in ecclesiastical authority or in divine revelation; for faith subject to authority does not agree with the motive of freedom in modern humanism. Rather, as Kant formulated it, this is a "reasonable faith." Rooted in autonomous reason itself, it is entirely in keeping with the autonomy of the human personality.
In Kant's thought the chasm dividing science and faith runs parallel to the chasm separating nature from freedom. This deserves special attention because it clearly demonstrates that the modern division between faith and science, which in line with Kant many accept as a kind of gospel, is itself religious throughout. This must be clearly understood because this division between faith and science is used to disqualify every attempt at a biblically motivated inner reformation of scientific thought as an "attack on science itself." But the separation itself is religious. Inspired by humanistic faith, this pretended division clashes with the true state of affairs. Wrestling to find his religious anchorage and to locate the firm ground of his life, modern man sought ultimate meaning in his autonomy and freedom as a rational, moral being. But this religious ground threatened to sink from under his feet since the classical science ideal left it no room. The first attempt to escape from this religious crisis consisted therefore in the separation of faith from science.
The religious passion that characterizes today's defence of the "neutrality of science" reveals the true origin of this modern attitude toward science. The latter is rooted in the humanistic motive of freedom and constructed a "realm of nature" according to the view of reality prescribed by the classical science ideal.
The science ideal—even in Kant's limited sense— had simply taken the place of the divine creation order in the modern humanistic consciousness. It proceeded from a conception which denied the given nature of the many aspects of reality, their particular character and the different laws which govern these respective aspects. This science ideal gave rise to the construction of a "mechanistic world view" which, though in recent years discredited by the facts themselves, still vitally shapes the outlook of many. The mechanistic standpoint rests on an overestimation and an absolutization of the mechanical phenomena that present themselves only in the aspect of motion, and then only in the so-called macro-processes, the large-scale processes which in an objective sense are accessible also to sensory perception. But when one conceives of the other distinct aspects of reality — such as the organic, the logical, the historical, etc. —in terms of mechanical motion, then the unrealistic picture of the classical science ideal results. One is then predisposed to think that all other sciences must operate according to the methods of mechanical physics, believing that organic processes, emotional feeling, the historical development of culture, logical processes, economic processes, and so forth must be scientifically approached and explained as processes of mechanical motion which are determined entirely within the chain of cause and effect. Under these assumptions the humanistic nature motive indeed has a free hand in the unfolding of science and will leave no room for the humanistic freedom motive. The classical ideal of science does not take into account the order
of reality set by God the creator. In this order we detect the great diversity of aspects, each with its own irreducible nature and law, which proclaims the astonishing richness and harmony of God's creative wisdom. The classical science ideal rejects this great diversity in the order of reality.
When Kant called a halt to the further expansion of the science ideal by keeping it out of the "suprasensory realm of freedom" —the shelter of the humanistic personality ideal—he was motivated not by a respect for God's creation order but by the humanistic freedom motive. This freedom motive could tolerate limits no more than the classical ideal of science could.
The ideal picture of reality designed in accordance with the mechanistic science motive was colourless and monotonous. It was as it were a modern moloch which devoured whatever became a victim of its suggestive power. Even the rarefied atmosphere of Kant's world of ideas in the suprasensory realm of freedom could not withstand the influence of this view of reality. Under a different guise, the science ideal regained its former supremacy in the nineteenth century. (Herman Dooyeweerd)