Abstract
This chapter looks critically at the prevailing modern understanding of miracle, adapted from David Hume, where a miracle is a transgression by the Deity of a law of nature. I suggest that this stock understanding informs the widespread secular naturalism of our day, where the metaphysical concept of laws of nature becomes, in effect, the benchmark of reality. I question the utility of this view for establishing a meaningful view of nature and of the natural sciences, and look again at David Hume’s philosophy of induction. This leads me to highlight the ‘uniformity of nature’ as a more flexible concept by which to unify the sciences and to define miracle. I use the example of contemporary earth science to discuss how uniformity has informed scientific practice and scientific unity, and I suggest some ways in which the concept of miracle is both transformed and is transformative in this view.
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Notes
- 1.
Clark (2016, p. 1), for instance, warns, “It is impossible to offer a single precise definition of ‘naturalism.’” Nevertheless, Clark’s ensuing discussion makes it clear that, while there are many kinds of naturalism, they tend to be characterized by a distancing of religious categories such as “supernatural” alongside an embracing of the natural sciences as providing the most secure path to knowledge. Similarly, Flanagan (2006, pp. 430–431) offers 15 meanings of the term “naturalism,” all of which appear to exclude the supernatural (either explicitly or implicitly) and to take a positive stance towards scientific forms of enquiry. And as a final example, Slagle (2016, pp. 31–33) cites the common threads of “any type of naturalism or physicalism or materialism,” all of which work to place the modern natural sciences and their methods at the forefront of our description of reality.
- 2.
For instance, Taliaferro and Evans (2011, p. 4) contest naturalism on the grounds that all of its various forms either assume or assert that theism is false.
- 3.
Fodor’s (1974) ironic use of the “disunity of science as a working hypothesis” as a challenge to the dominant Oppenheim and Putnam view is an early example of resistance to reductionism as the unifier of the sciences, although Fodor still wanted to retain a looser sense of unity for the sciences. Dupré’s is probably the best-known voice advocating a fully pluralist approach to the sciences. Other solutions exist, such as those that make a unifying virtue out of pluralism (e.g. Breitenbach & Choi, 2017). A useful review of the area is provided by Cat (2017).
- 4.
Section X, “Of Miracles,” in Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, first published 1748.
- 5.
And when I refer to “Enquiry,” I mean the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.
- 6.
The interpretation of Hume’s thought on causation has become a complex and controverted area in modern philosophy, but since I am concerned especially with miracle the issues are somewhat simplified by being able to focus on Enquiry alone. This allows me to adopt the “skeptical realist” reading of Hume here (Beebee, 2012, pp. 143–144).
- 7.
And indeed, in his discussion of miracles, Hume uses the terms “uniform experience” and the “common course of nature” in parallel to his use of the laws of nature. All three kinds of term operate as yardsticks of our common experience, for Hume to stand against miracle (Enquiry X.12).
- 8.
It is important to note that the modern earth sciences are a very diverse set of subjects, some of which (e.g., mineral physics) are more like typical laboratory-based sciences. Overall though, the classic core areas of geology, such as petrology, stratigraphy, and palaeontology, are overwhelmingly focused on interpreting evidence of the past, usually gathered in the field, even if analyzed in a laboratory afterwards.
- 9.
The main point is that the Grand Canyon exposes most of the last 2 billion years of North American geological history almost perfectly; it provides one of the earth’s most complete geological columns.
- 10.
This controversy was an important precursor to the Darwin debates of the second half of the nineteenth century, and, like the Darwin debates, is also susceptible to being represented (inaccurately) as an example of the conflict of science versus religion (Bowler, 1984, pp. 103–104).
- 11.
- 12.
The main contender at present incorporates very large-scale volcanic eruptions into the scenario, eruptions that are known to have occurred at the time in India’s Deccan Traps (Keller et al., 2009).
- 13.
It is, for instance, now widely accepted that much of the earth’s geological history is episodic and evolutionary, rather than smooth and cyclical (as Lyell’s original brand of uniformitarianism would have it).
- 14.
Note that this is much the same point as that made by the multiverse riposte to theistic interpretations of fine tuning. The gist here is that when there are many, many universes we do not need to call upon a Creator to explain fine tuning since one of the universes is bound to turn out right for life, even with the tiny probabilities involved. Geology is considerably more secure than cosmology though: the multiverse is (currently) an untestable hypothesis, whereas the immensity of geological time is one of the most secure empirical facts in the whole of science.
- 15.
While some commentators have concluded that these models “explain away” the miraculousness of the story, others argue that they confirm the historicity of the story and heighten its sense of miracle. Whether a miracle is to be acknowledged or not depends on many more factors—some of them subjective—than whether the event is deemed “impossible” in naturalistic terms or not. This last point is explored in the next section.
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Harris, M. (2022). Miracles and the Uniformity of Nature. In: Zwier, K.R., Weddle, D.L., Knepper, T.D. (eds) Miracles: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion. Comparative Philosophy of Religion, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14865-1_14
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