Our Common Cosmos

The academic aspects of the tangled and largely misunderstood relationship between theology and science are themselves complicated further by the disciplinary fragmentation that has marked universities for the last two centuries. The apparently superficial change in usage from 'natural philosophy' to 'science' in the early nineteenth century has disguised, yet signifies linguistic, metaphysical and theological moves whose consequences for academic fragmentation have surfaced since. In this paper we examine these through the lens of a departure from the notion of 'wisdom,' as a complementary good to 'knowledge.' We trace a possible re-constitution of a contemporary natural philosophy and its consequences for recognition of a common narrative of creativity in scholarship and beyond, a renewed philosophy of interdisciplinarity, a transformed relation of science and theology, and a route to re-establishing a more democratic participation in the scientific process.