“Andreas Osiander and Darwinism”
I would analyse what lies behind the approach affirming that when some particular biblical text seems to be in conflict with well established scientific theories, our interpretation of that text changes in order to reduce the gaps between the two postures: a confidence about why we give the certainty we give to science. Of course, that confidence is not without foundation: we consider scientific theories as good explanations of natural phenomena; they have empirical support; many of them show unification power; have useful technological applications; and/or show some other epistemic virtues. For all this, we feel that it is wise that a biblical scholar listens to what science has to say every time he or she is about to interpret a biblical passage that deals with the natural world. Thinking about this privileged knowledge (but with not relation at all with biblical issues), and mainly during the decade of 1980, a debate took place in analytical philosophy. This debate was over what was called “scientific realism”, over how much confidence we can have in what science teaches us about the natural world, which I will analyse in this paper.