There is a need for "continued dialogue and cooperation between the worlds of
science and of faith in the building of a culture of respect for man, for human
dignity and freedom."
Indeed, recent developments in science "directed to the
study of nature as a unified, intelligible and harmonious reality in its
undoubted complexity" show "fruitful points of contact" with the Christian
vision of the universe, said Benedict XVI in his address to the members of the
Pontifical Academy of Science who are meeting in the Vatican in plenary session
to discuss the "Complexity and Analogy in Science: Theoretical, Methodological
and Epistemological Aspects".
For the pope,
there is "a new vision of the unity of the sciences," for the latter tend "to
reduce the various forms of energy to one elementary fundamental force". In modern
research, an elementary force explains both simple and complex systems, showing
that the "sciences are not intellectual worlds disconnected from one another
and from reality but rather that they are interconnected and directed to the
study of nature as a unified, intelligible and harmonious reality in its
undoubted complexity. Such a vision has fruitful points of contact with the
view of the universe taken by Christian philosophy and theology [. . .] in
which each individual creature, possessed of its proper perfection, also shares
in a specific nature and this within an ordered cosmos originating in God's
creative Word."
For the pontiff, in this Year of Faith, men of science and
faith must therefore work together.
If "The
universe is not chaos or the result of chaos," but rather "an ordered
complexity," we can thus rise, "through comparative analysis and analogy" to "a
more universalizing viewpoint".
The dialogue
between science and faith shows that it is necessary to build "a culture of
respect for man, for human dignity and freedom, for the future of our human
family and for the long-term sustainable development of our planet. Without
this necessary interplay, the great questions of humanity leave the domain of
reason and truth, and are abandoned to the irrational, to myth, or to
indifference, with great damage to humanity itself, to world peace and to our
ultimate destiny.