Environmental Hermeneutics: a Science for Seminaries summer school at TCD

Guest post from Prof Cathriona Russell, School of Religion, Theology, and Peace Studies, TCD.

We held a Summer School in June as part of our Science for Seminaries project, in tandem with several curriculum developments, for the MTh and Certificate ministerial students at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, in collaboration with staff and students from the School of Religion, Theology, and Peace Studies at Trinity College Dublin.

The week began with a brief introduction to environmental hermeneutics, a reminder that reality is mediated – in language, in texts, in models. It ended with some realisation that if there is a heroically existentialist agenda for all scientia it may well be the cultivation of what John Feehan has described as a “slightly less inadequate” way of looking at the world, of “paying attention”. In his reading of Laudato Si’, to which his work also contributed, he acknowledges a “prophetic rupture”, profound and unexpected and now urgent. Creation theology rematerializes, in a thousand different ways, our belonging to each other, to the Earth, and as creatures, to God. What has been given to us, in our unique privilege and responsibility to care for the earth “is the garden God walks in, and we have been invited to walk with Him, to share in God’s own wonder and delight at his creation; ourselves alone perhaps, endowed with that gift of Mind that enables us to tend and nurture it as God wants us to tend it.” 

A whirlwind adventure through science and theology

The four day intensive-program took us on several adventures: to one of Ireland’s most illustrious astronomical research centers, the Dunsink Observatory, and the unparalleled delights of a tour with Sadhbh Leahy, Education Officer. We took a trip to the stars with Rev Dr Martin Poulsom, Roehampton, and back (to humanity) with Dr Tim Middleton, Oxford. We explored the Chester Beatty Library collection with Dr Jill Unkel, and TCD Genetics with the redoubtable Prof Dan Bradley. We learned about ancient genomic analysis of western European humans, particularly in Irish archaeological remains; and practiced ‘paying attention’ to the reverence for biodiversity to be found in the long history of Homiletics on creation, and in the unflappable dedication to understanding and explanation of the cosmos and life on Earth that is science, with the unmatched Dr John Feehan. On a Dublin Bay Biosphere boat trip we heard from soil scientist Dr Thomas Cummins, UCD, before a talk on Vegetable Theology with Rev Dr Lucas Mix. Finally, we returned to interpretations of Place, with Prof Andrew Pierce, and Habitability, with Prof Cathriona Russell.

The Observatory

The visit to the Dunsink Observatory on our first day unexpectedly set the tone for the week; it was a profound experience of lasting human endeavor in astronomical research and public engagement since its foundation in 1785 and is home to an historic telescope with its Grubb lens, engineered in Rathmines in Dublin in the 1850s.

The Observatory, originally part of TCD, was purchased by the state in 1947. It now belongs to the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, where research takes place into astrophysics, solar and stellar physics, space weather, planetary science, star formation, and instrumentation. Researchers also contribute to European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA projects, collaborating with universities and research institutes at home and around the world.

Many of us were surprised to learn that it was also enthusiastically patronised by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera at a time when only a minority of the population completed primary education, and university was the reserve of the privileged. In that way it can claim to be a symbolic reminder of the value attached in Ireland to research and scholarship.

Dublin as a nexus of nature and culture

In sharp contrast to skywatching from a hill above the city, later in the week we took a boat cruise down the Liffey from the quays through the seaport, past reclaimed docklands, south towards Dunlaoghaire and then sharply north across the shipping channel to the picturesque but active fishing port of Howth. Along the way, we were introduced to Dublin as a capital city located in a ‘biosphere’, a nexus of nature and culture, of coastal resource management and engineering, sea-faring and international transport, energy generation, recycling and incineration, biodiversity conservation, fishing, recreation and tourism for a whole region.

A diverse and united community

One participant commented: “The most impressive thing of all was the breadth and diversity of the group: we had academics from the sciences and humanities, masters’ students and undergraduates from four continents, and even a few activists, which is not something that happens all that often. Usually groups split along boundaries, but what we managed to do was to create a single community of enquiry.

“Everybody seemed to feel that they could contribute and knew enough to be an active participant. That made it a very significant and unusual experience for me, and I am sure for many others, too.”

It was very good, as convenor, to hear that many of the really valuable conversations — in  larger and smaller groups, and with other participants in a one-to-one — took place in the breakout sessions, over coffee and pastries, over meals in TCD’s Buttery Restaurant, with hor d’oeuvres on the cruise boat, and at the larger tables in the Lincoln Inn and at Findlater’s of Howth. Clearly, I had been unduly concerned about spending so much of the budget on hospitality!

These were just a few of the many highlights of the program.