"Science" in Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature 2005

"Science." Pages 1494-1497 (Volume 2) in Bron R. Taylor, editor-in-chief, The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. London and New York: Thoemmes Continuum Publishers, 2005. Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/171451

Nature is both a scientific and a religious challenge. Nature must be evaluated within cultures, classically by their religions, currently also by the sciences so eminent in Western culture. Religious persons often find something "beyond," discovering that neither nature nor culture are self-explanatory as phenomena; both point to deeper forces, such as divine presence, or Brahman or Emptiness (sunyata) or Tao underlying. Religions often detect supernature immanent in or transcendent to nature, perhaps even more so in human culture, though some religions prefer to think of a deeper account of Nature, perhaps enchanted, perhaps sacred.