Risk in the Scientific Process

Professor Tom McLeish [rtf version]

Abstract of a presentation to the 2003 Christians in Science Sheffield Conference.

Risk in science today enters a many levels. For the working scientist today the most immediate is not "will this project work" but, "will my efforts in preparing this grant proposal be commensurate with the likelihood of getting it funded?" The current ethical construction of peer review is shot through with examples of risk making and risk taking, some of them paradoxical in official moves to enshrine risk.
Doing theology of science is also a risky business. We are far from the texts, but a re-visiting of "science" as "natural philosophy" opens up a richer biblical seam of wisdom literature that inform a process of "reconciliation to the physical creation", including its inherent risk. We find an expectation of pain and failure implicit in this story.
Setting the current research climate against the backdrop of biblical and early-church (we have time for one example - Gregory of Nyssa's On the Soul and the Resurrection) material suggests some counter-cultural consequences of the Gospel.