Abstract
The conversation of theologians and natural scientists has surely been one of the more enduring in the western tradition of thought. Bound together in conflict as in cooperation, each partner is directed by the search for truth as each suffers the strenuous demands of its pursuit. Given the many public and unedifying instances of a dialogue of the deaf, when neither can or will hear the other, it is particularly gratifying when their mutuality manifests itself and something new is brought to light from their common effort. So it happened in May 2012, when a symposium was held at Wolfson College Cambridge that provided the occasion for presentation of the papers in this issue. Hosted by the Faculty of Divinity of the University of Cambridge and with generous sponsorship from the McDonald Agape Foundation, the symposium afforded an opportunity to consider the impact of advancements in evolutionary studies upon our understanding of the phenomenon of cooperation and some of its many ramifications. Gathered under the title, Evolution, Cooperation and Ethics, members of the symposium came from a broad range of disciplines, in each of which questions of cooperation arise – what it is, in what form it shows itself, how it works, how it is to be explained and what is to be learned from its appearance.
The event was initiated by Professor Sarah Coakley, in consequence of her Gifford lectures in Aberdeen on the topic, Sacrifice Regained: Evolution, Cooperation and God, and of her collaboration with Professor Martin Nowak, a mathematician and biologist who directs the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University, and who gave the opening public lecture, ‘The Evolution of Cooperation’, co-hosted by the Faraday Institute. These two set the stage for what was to follow, for their lively exchanges on the theological and philosophical assumptions at stake in this conversation and on the empirical evidence for cooperation in human affairs both stimulated the debate and opened up much wider considerations.
Discussions were enhanced by the participation of a number of people who brought their specialist expertise to the table, often illustrated, and always with enthusiastic and fascinating presentations of their own to make. These included the Hon David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science, whose understanding of political theory and social policy has been influenced by Prof Nowak’s studies; Prof Simon Conway-Morris of the Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge, who studies the emergence of complexity in evolution and the phenomenon of evolutionary convergence; Drs Anna Dreber Almenberg and Johan Almenberg, both economists from Sweden examining the impact of evolution on cooperative and competitive behaviours in the economic sphere; and Prof Timothy Clutton-Brock of the Zoology Department, Cambridge, who studies the evolution of cooperation within animal breeding systems as part of a wider interest in behavioural ecology. It was a privilege to have these scholars present for so much of the symposium and to hear their various thoughts about how cooperation is to be understood.
The papers published in this issue are indications of continuing theological and philosophical reflection on cooperation, with especial attention to its moral and political implications. Readers will recognise here some recent expressions of natural law thinking that have a distinct though not unquestioned force in the context of this debate. Whether and in what way descriptions of human nature provide a common ground for social life and morals, how the end of life comes to be grasped and made manifest, in what sense the flourishing of life is a good-in-itself – these and other questions press theological ethics up against its own limits, both in relation to the natural sciences on the one hand, and on the other, in relation to that future which comes upon all things from without, by the grace of God. Our gratitude then to the symposium participants for attending to these things so thoughtfully and charitably, and to the benefactors who made this gathering possible.