Rationality and Wonder: From Scientific Cosmology to Philosophy and Theology

Abstract

Through astronomy, physics, cosmology, biology and the other sciences we have come to understand a great deal about nature and our amazing universe. We can sketch their main features in very broad strokes – evolution, relationality, nested levels of organization, complexity and potentiality for life and consciousness, contingency, transience and fragility, and order with some directionality. The universe itself has developed from a very simple, homogeneous system into one of incredible complexity – through the efficacy of the interactions which dominate it, and the emerging, highly differentiated relationships which operate within the macroscopic and microscopic systems and subsystems which form within it. But the universe, life and we ourselves are sources of wonder and inspiration – there is an enormous surplus of understanding, meaning, and significance which is nourished by scientific understanding but transcends it. They present themselves as inexhaustibly rich and deep – ultimately as Mystery. Though scientific rationality encounters limits to its capabilities to probe this Mystery more deeply, its incredible success within its competencies points to and validates our rational and personal quest for understanding and meaning beyond the cosmological limit – through the arts, philosophy, theology and the personal engagement from which they arise.