God's order, man's order and the order of nature.

Abstract

This paper describes a quiet but dramatic revolution in how science is to be understood that is now going on. In this revolution, long-standing ideas of science and nature as completely ordered under the rule of natural law are called into question by scientists, historians, philosophers and sociologists, each grappling with how science works in practice. As a result there has been a fundamental reexamination of how natural order can and should be understood. These new perspectives on nature have exciting, challenging implications for both science and theology, of which I hope to give a sense here.