1467-9744 Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 1467-9744 Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/zygon.28794 Does science need theology? On Not Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth: Theological Advice to Quantum Fundamentalists https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7386-7743 Harris Mark mark.harris@theology.ox.ac.uk 1 Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK 30 09 2026 2026 61 3 1102 1119 Copyright: © 2026 The Author(s) 2026 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Articles published by the Open Library of Humanities may also contain other CC-licensed material, or material used or reproduced under an exception or limitation to copyright. Such material is not subject to the article’s license. It is either marked with its own license, or marked that it has been reproduced with permission or under fair-use.

In this article, I answer the guiding question of “does science need theology?” in three ways, pointing especially to the theological roots of scientific method. In my third answer, I argue in the affirmative, pointing out that scientific method can be seen as rooted in theological motifs concerning the giftedness of creation and of theological participation. Recognition of these motifs is helpful, I suggest, when facing some of the notoriously difficult metaphysical debates thrown up by modern science. I focus especially on quantum interpretation and make a theological argument to ground the ordinary scientist’s working instrumentalism, which is so often coupled with a vague but aspirational realism. This coupling, I suggest, is effective as a professional acceptance of the giftedness of creation, and it respects Thomas F. Torrance’s “theological warrant” of empirical enquiry. In the words of my title, I want to teach quantum fundamentalists how not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

 Introduction

“Does science need theology?” is my guiding question throughout this article. I can think of at least three answers, what I will call my first-, second-, and third-order answers, since they ascend a ladder of subtlety. I sketch out my first- and second-order answers in this introduction, and then spend the remainder of the article on the third-order answer, illustrating it with an example in the contested interpretation of quantum theory. My point is that theology is able to remind scientists—theistic scientists, at least—of the gifts that have been endowed to them as specialized recipients of the wider gift of creation.

My first-order answer: yes, of course. In much the same way that asking whether science needs philosophy is to pose a philosophical question about the scope of philosophy (Rovelli 2018), so too is asking whether science needs theology to pose a theological question about the scope of theology. And a well-informed discussion will accept that both philosophy and theology have totalizing tendencies born out of their subject matter. Just as it is possible to construe philosophy as the love of all wisdom—which includes all scientific reason and knowledge—so is it possible to construe theology as concerned with all that is created by the uncreated Source, which obviously includes every scientific interest there ever has been or ever will be. Therefore, we could answer, “Yes, of course science needs theology, since theology tells us about the Source of all creation.” But I regard this as a rather trivial answer. It evades the challenge of addressing the nature and scope of science by telling us about the nature and scope of theology instead. My first-order answer is, therefore, my least subtle.

More interesting are what I call my second- and third-order answers; more interesting because they engage with science as science, that is, with how and why science works as a family of knowledge-seeking enterprises and how it might continue to work as science.

My second-order answer (“no”) will not come as a surprise in this day and age, but my reasoning might. For, on the one hand, today’s general public and working scientist alike widely assume that religious faith is, at best, an irrelevance to scientific practice and, at worst, a hindrance. Indeed, modern scientific method assumes a working naturalism, whereby the supernatural and its possible influence on the natural is, by definition, excluded from scientific enquiry. But it was not ever thus. For, and on the other hand, the historian of science tells us that, until the mid-nineteenth century (approximately), scientific work was often steeped in theological language and thought; natural philosophers and natural historians were not shy of weaving theological claims into what they were discovering about the natural world, nor of justifying their discoveries in theological terms (e.g., Funkenstein 2018). We also learn that, in those crucial seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of early modern science, scientific practice relied heavily on theistic working assumptions concerning, for instance, the uniformity, intelligibility, and parsimony of nature, which in turn supported key scientific concepts such as the lawfulness of nature (itself with a venerable theistic history).1 Not only is it difficult to disentangle scientific from theological claims in much of this early work, but the practitioners themselves would sometimes use terms such as “physico-theology” and “natural theology” to signal that their scientific objectives were part of a wider theological vision. As this language implies, two potentially independent perspectives—natural enquiry and divine revelation—were being combined into a unitary synthesis (Gaukroger 2006, 493), which might, for instance, search for evidence of divine design in nature, present scientific arguments in support of biblical miracles, or, further, justify new scientific theories by calling upon the nature of the Creator God.

Although the terminologies of physico-theology and natural theology have fallen out of use in modern scientific discourse, the aspiration they signal has not: that a singular truth may be sought through the merging of scientific and theological perspectives, even if that latter perspective has become tacit or invisible today. In case of point, Peter Harrison (2024) argues that the modern worldview of scientific naturalism is the inheritor of exactly such a unifying aspiration, merging scientific and theistic understandings of the laws of nature into the metaphysical entity of “nature,” which is itself defined in terms of a hard nature/supernature dualism. I myself have made a similar argument, reflecting upon the varied history of calls upon naturalism and natural theology (Harris 2018, 1058): “[T]here is no sharp or uncontested boundary between naturalism and natural theology: not only do they overlap, but there is a sense in which they can become the very same thing, depending upon how one construes the metaphysical foundations of the natural sciences.” If this line of argument is correct—that scientific naturalism is entangled with natural theology—then “nature” (the arena of natural lawfulness) is effectively a theological construct, since it is reliant on theological conceptions of “supernature” and of the laws of nature. David Hume’s famous 1748 definition of a miracle as a violation of a law of nature by the Deity is clearly influential in this regard, effectively providing a tacit theology of nature for our modern times (Hume 2007, 79–95).

Modern scientists rarely reflect upon the theological genesis of their laws, but modern science still relies on assumptions about the universality, intelligibility, and reality of natural regularities just the same; the theism that once undergirded those assumptions is largely forgotten now, or, arguably, tacit (Harrison 2008, 30). My point is that while it might be widely assumed in secular society that the theism of early modern science is quaintly outmoded and quite unnecessary in today’s science, the modern theistic scientist is still able to take a richly theological view of her scientific methods and their grounding assumptions, inspired by the foundational arguments of her early modern forebears. Therefore, my second-order answer is: “No, science does not need theology, because science is already theological after a fashion, albeit tacitly so in this day and age.”

And now for my third-order answer. I will argue a definite “yes,” following on directly from my claim at the end of the previous paragraph that to the theistic scientist, science is richly theological. It is possible that this point may shed light on some of the notoriously difficult metaphysical questions thrown up by modern science. For, and not to put too fine a point on it, in certain areas of fundamental physics, the theory has advanced far beyond what is testable by experiment, at least for the foreseeable future, but perhaps even in principle. This mismatch between theory and experiment has prompted a virtual existential crisis in the fundamental areas of particle physics and cosmology. The problem is that key theoretical convictions regarding, for instance, the importance of supersymmetry and naturalness in particle physics, or the questions of string theory and universe origin in cosmology, cannot be established experimentally—probably even in principle—but must be justified by appeal to the grounding principles of scientific method mentioned in my second-order answer, many of which originally arose from theistic arguments. A number of critical voices working in and around physics, by no means theologians,2 suggest that theoretical physics has become so speculative in these areas, so detached from what is empirically testable, and so extravagant in its ontological claims that it is no longer clear that it still counts as scientific. Perhaps, but I suggest that in such areas, theological commentary might make all the difference to the way the science is perceived and interpreted, if not the actual doing of the science itself.

By way of illustration, I turn to a related problem in the interpretation of quantum theory, looking at one of the ways in which theology can contribute towards the longstanding question of how to interpret quantum mechanics (QM). Again, there is a mismatch between theory and experiment. As is well known, there are numerous conceptual interpretations of QM, most of which ontologically conflict with each other, and all of which introduce strange and counterintuitive views of reality, but that are nevertheless empirically equivalent (as far as we can tell in the present state of the quantum science). The consequence is that we currently have no empirical way of telling the interpretations apart, even though we would dearly like to know which of these unpalatable visions of nature is closest to the truth. There is still reason to hope for enlightenment yet: it is possible that nonscientific methodologies could shed light where the empirical science cannot, and indeed, philosophy has already proven its worth here in the quantum foundations area. I have suggested that yet more might be gained by introducing (reintroducing?) theology to the conversation (Harris 2024), and in this article, I outline some theological considerations around the Christian doctrine of creation that might help guide further interpretation of the quantum science. Specifically, I expand on three closely connected theological themes: giftedness, contingency, and participation. My point is that, if the quantum world is to be affirmed as creation—and if the quantum is truly fundamental—then the quantum comes to us as gift, mandating an attitude of grateful reception in the theistic scientist. Her training in empirical enquiry is a further part of the gift, a divine “warrant” (Torrance 1981). Receiving the gift in all its theological (and, indeed, Trinitarian) fullness therefore entails a participatory realism that nevertheless urges caution towards speculation beyond what her best empirical science can establish (founded on tacit theistic assumptions of intelligibility, uniformity, and parsimony, as I said). The giftedness theme therefore supports her emphasis on empirical enquiry, manifest in her working instrumentalism, which is coupled with what I refer to as a vague but aspirational quantum realism.

 My Third-Order Answer, or: Why Quantum Science Is a Miracle The Giftedness of Creation

Ever since I first read the great quantum theorist Eugene Wigner’s (1902–55) article on scientific method (“The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” Wigner 1960), I have been enthralled by his closing paragraphs. Having spent most of his article describing some of the great successes of mathematical physics to date, and having explained repeatedly that we do not know the deeper reasons why our physical theories in particular—and our mathematics in general—seem to work so well in describing the physical world, Wigner poses a troubling dilemma for future science. Wigner (1960, 13–14) points out that, despite the many successes of our mathematically framed physical theories to date, it is entirely possible that they may end up conflicting with future advances in biology, such as, for instance, an explanation for consciousness. In such a scenario, he says, we physicists would experience “a deep sense of frustration” as we interrogated “our faith in our theories” and their concepts (Wigner 1960, 13–14). We would question everything the physical sciences had told us so far in our search for truth. And the precise reason such a troubling dilemma is feasible is because, “fundamentally, we do not know why our theories work so well. Hence their accuracy may not prove their truth and consistency” (Wigner 1960, 14). In other words, and to emphasize the force of Wigner’s argument: since we do not know the reason why the physical sciences have been successful so far, it is entirely possible that they may fail spectacularly in the future as our wider scientific knowledge (beyond physics) advances, despite the apparent accuracy of our physical methodology in the present day.

Wigner has got to the heart of the matter. In explaining scientific methodology, we always emphasize that every scientific theory is provisional, destined to be revised or discarded by future science. But Wigner is reaching for a still deeper and more sobering truth: our confidence in the scientific methodology itself (or, at least, our reliance on the immense power of mathematics) is provisional and may collapse one day. We simply cannot be certain, because of the basic problem that we do not understand why our theories work in the first place; from that point of view, our mathematical methodology is, effectively, a black box. As the title of Wigner’s article makes clear: the scientific effectiveness of mathematics is “unreasonable.”

But there is more. I often tell my students that the title of the article captures the whole argument, but that is only true up to this point in the article. The next (and final) paragraph changes the complexion considerably (Wigner 1960, 14):

Let me end on a more cheerful note. The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.

Despite the potential devastation of the previous paragraph, there are grounds for optimism in our scientific methodology, Wigner thinks, since our reliance on mathematics is “a wonderful gift.” And here, Wigner is just as theological in referring to the scientific appropriateness of mathematics as was Galileo in his own way: it is a “miracle . . . a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.” Wigner does not say who is the giver of the gift, but his use of the term “miracle” is highly suggestive of the divine Giver, beyond nature. If this were the only instance of such theological language (“miracle”) in the article, we might pass it off as a closing rhetorical flourish. But Wigner uses the word miracle repeatedly throughout the article to refer to the unreasonableness of scientific methodology. It is therefore reasonable to conclude, I suggest, that Wigner is implying a very serious theological message about the source of our scientific successes: those successes are providential—as if from above—and they should be received as such in an attitude of humility and gratitude to the Giver of the gift.

If my reading of Wigner is correct—and if he himself is correct about the unreasonableness of scientific methodology—then we clearly have a significant further reason to acknowledge the fundamentally theistic basis to science: the giftedness of creation.

That creation is God’s gift to the creatures is a venerable theme in Judeo–Christian tradition, stretching from the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Psalm 139) to the present day (e.g., current theological discussions around environmental care and sustainability; Boulding 2025; Laracy 2025). Indeed, the theme of “gift” has been much discussed in recent years—it is “almost mantric in its repetition in recent continental and North American theology” (Coakley 2008)—and for good reasons, such is its efficacy. When seen in light of the creatio ex nihilo doctrine, that theme includes the very gift of being itself to every creature: the Creator created every thing from no thing as a purposeful act of love and grace, giving the creatures purpose, structure, and value. Creation need not be what it is in any respect, except by the free decision of its Creator; creation is therefore entirely contingent on the Creator for its past, present, and future as much as for its very form and function. And neither was the gift limited to the initial moment of creation, but it is continuous, free, and ongoing. God continues to sustain creation at every moment from falling back into nothingness.

Moreover, in Christian theology the giftedness of creation flows from the very being of the Trinitarian God. Augustine famously describes the innermost dynamic of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in terms of both “love” and “gift” (De Trinitate 15). Both love and gift are to be identified with the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son and is their “common Gift,” providing for distinction within the “inseparable Trinity” (De Trinitate 15.29). Therefore, the giftedness of creation is made possible by—and is a token of—the inner dynamic of God the Holy Trinity.

Finally, the giftedness of creation is effective at capturing the theological relationship between the natural sciences and creation, especially if we reflect on the theme of contingency, which flows from the fact of giftedness. The science–theology discussion has focused extensively on the contingency of creation, considerably more so than on its giftedness (e.g., Mascall 1956, 93–96; Torrance 1981; Pannenberg 1988; Russell 1988; Barbour 1997, 211–14, Schwöbel 2004, 164; Jaeger 2018). The point here is that the form, structure, and dynamics of creation—including its supposed lawfulness—cannot be second guessed or predicted from first (logical) principles, since the ex nihilo doctrine indicates that creation’s form, structure, and dynamics are entirely contingent upon the Creator’s will in giving the gift. Therefore, the natural sciences can only gain understanding of nature by means of a grateful acceptance of the gift of creation in whatever form it comes to us, testing and probing it patiently by empirical means. Indeed, the contingency of the created cosmos is the very reason that the natural sciences are able to develop their own “autonomous modes of investigation” in the first place, according to Thomas F. Torrance (1981, 86); there is “theological warrant” for the empirical method of science, and, in fact, scientific investigation is “a duty toward God laid upon us by his work of creation.” In short, once we begin to explore the giftedness—and especially contingency—of creation, science becomes abundantly theological.

In case the reader is wondering at this point how I have advanced beyond my second-order answer, suspecting that I am merely arguing (again) that science is tacitly theological, I will now develop the themes of contingency and giftedness further by looking at a third theme—participation—before applying them to a live controversy in quantum science.

 Participation

Andrew Davison has set out a detailed theological account of participation in his 2019 book, Participation in God. His opening sentences are especially helpful (Davison 2019, 1):

Approaching the world in terms of sharing and receiving should be the bedrock of a Christian understanding of reality, and of Christian doctrine . . . The heart of that perspective, which often goes by the name of “participation,” rests in perceiving all things in relation to God, not only as their source but also as their goal, and as the origin of all form and character. In that way, notions of likeness and exemplarity lie close at hand, and an inclination to celebrate the variegated particularity of things, as a creaturely expression of the goodness and beauty of God.

The participation motif recognizes that all is God’s gift, but it goes further in expressing a mindset of “sharing and receiving”: a relational view that is able to “celebrate the variegated particularity of things.” Davison does not say so, at least not here, but such a mindset is well suited to a theistic construal of science. And, of particular relevance to my focus on quantum science, Davison (2019, 1) goes on immediately to point out that “people who think in these terms tend to be objective, or ‘realist’ over how we know things . . . their epistemology and ethics, that is to say, tend to be worked out in terms of recognition and reception rather than invention or projection.” The reason I am repeating Davison’s words here is that the categories of relationality, participation, objectivity, and realism are relevant to a major contention in quantum interpretation. Now, in the final subsection, I want to use these categories to provide theological advice to scientists caught up in the quantum realism/antirealism debate.

 A Working Instrumentalism Coupled with a Vague but Aspirational Quantum Realism

It is important to remember why the quantum realism/antirealism debate is so significant in science in the first place. Scientific realists are those individuals who tend to believe that our current best theories provide true (or approximately true) pictures of nature as it really is (e.g., Maudlin 2019, xii). Scientific antirealists, on the other hand, prefer to exercise caution or agnosticism towards claims concerning the ability of our theories to reveal the true ontology and properties of nature. Instead, such scientific antirealists often prefer forms of instrumentalism, where scientific theories are held to be effective “black boxes” rather than more-or-less true representations of nature’s deep ontology. The debate over quantum interpretation introduces a particularly sharp version of the realist/antirealist distinction, focused especially upon the significance of measurement; hence the infamous quantum “measurement problem.”

In classical (i.e., pre-quantum) physics, we were able to assume—in fairly realist terms, calling upon the success of our best physical theories before the quantum revolution of the early twentieth century—that a physical entity such as a particle possesses definite properties such as energy, position, and momentum quite apart from whether or not it is being observed; that is, that an observer is able to measure such properties “objectively.” But the measurement problem of QM puts much of this objectivity into question. As Philip Ball (2019, 11) puts it so effectively, “quantum mechanics doesn’t say anything about ‘how things are’. It tells us what to expect when we conduct particular experiments.” Therefore, if we want to go beyond the quantum formalism to make claims about the reality of the unexamined quantum state, we must apply a metaphysical interpretation. But there are many of these, and they all treat the measurement problem in different ways. Some interpretations—those typically referred to as “antirealist” interpretations—refuse to grant objectivity to the quantum state until it is observed, at which point determinate physical properties will be measured. The so-called Copenhagen interpretation is the prime example of such a view, but others, such as QBism and quantum pragmatism, are often classified as antirealist (Wallace 2020, 78). In each case, emphasis is placed on the act of measurement for establishing the reality of the quantum state. Other interpretations—those typically referred to as “realist”—downplay the role of measurement by granting full objectivity to the quantum state and its properties, quite apart from whether an observation has been made. This move requires ontological commitments to be made that go beyond the “antirealist” interpretations. Thus, while the three main realist interpretations—de Broglie-Bohm, Hugh Everett’s “Many-Worlds Interpretation,” and objective collapse—all understand the ontology of the quantum state differently from each other, they nevertheless all maintain that the quantum state has an ontology of some sort, and that it possesses a basic objectivity independently of measurement.3

Significantly for this article, the debate over the role of the observer in determining the reality of the quantum state can be translated into participatory language. Seen in light of the theistic underpinnings of the history of science mentioned in my second-order answer, the secret of classical science’s success was its ability to bracket off all participatory influences on an entity (a creature)—including those of its Creator—so that those influences could be neglected. Hence, classical science was able to operate, as I argued in my second-order answer, without reference to the theism that informed its working presuppositions, and it was able to isolate its objects of enquiry in order to determine their properties “objectively.” But in quantum science, we now find that the participatory framework cannot be so easily neglected, since that framework represents the observer and the supposed “object” of her measurement, the quantum state. Observer and object are now bound together in a quantum participatory framework that cannot be neglected as easily as in classical physics. The quantum interpretations—whether realist or antirealist—can now be seen as different metaphysical accounts of the participatory framework, and with different physical ontologies. I will say more about this participatory angle on quantum interpretation towards the end of this section.

For now, it is important to point out that there is no widespread agreement in physics generally, nor in the quantum foundations area particularly, over which is the correct quantum interpretation; the fact that the empirical science cannot distinguish between the interpretations does not help matters. And yet there is widespread agreement in physics that the quantum science is revelatory of true fundamentals of our cosmos and that even though our future science will continue to evolve, it will most likely be thoroughly quantum.

I have already explored the mindset of quantum fundamentalism at some length (Harris 2023, 2024) and have introduced some of its theological challenges and opportunities. Recall that quantum fundamentalism is the belief—widespread in the physical sciences—that the quantum, including all its strangeness and the vastly open questions it introduces about the nature of reality, captures that which is most fundamental about our physical world. Also recall that quantum fundamentalism cannot be established on empirical grounds; it is a worldview, which moves in the same cognitive territory as a theistic belief, and indeed is constructed on those same theistic grounding principles of science I mentioned in my second-order answer, such as the uniformity of nature, along with the universality, parsimony, and coherence of our best mathematical descriptions of the physical world. In light of the analysis I have developed in this article, I suggest that quantum fundamentalism is tacitly theological and may therefore be informed and critiqued by wider theological perspectives such as those I have outlined regarding giftedness, contingency, and participation and will develop further shortly. Likewise, if quantum fundamentalism is of theological merit in its own right—if it faithfully captures something of the Creator’s mind for our cosmos—then the theologian has need of reflection on it. I will say more shortly.

In previous work, I have described the position in which most ordinary working physicists like myself find ourselves with regards quantum interpretation (Harris 2023, 188–93). In the very large subdisciplines of particle physics and condensed matter physics (my own)—those disciplines that are numerically dominant in physics, involve a close relationship between theory and experiment, and are thoroughly reliant on quantum theory—there is rarely much need to ask “what is really going on” in the unobserved quantum world. There is an old joke that, when a new student asks what is really going on, they are told by their professor to “shut up and calculate!” After all, the mathematical quantum formalism is exceptionally powerful in addressing our empirical problems of interest and guiding new avenues of concrete research. We little need to ask in general terms why the formalism works when its predictive power is so dazzling at the level of our particular interests. This leads to a highly pragmatic attitude in the ordinary quantum physicist that is, in effect, a kind of working instrumentalism. This instrumentalism respects the authority of the Copenhagen interpretation most of us are taught as students,4 but it does not buy into Copenhagen’s stricter forms of antirealism. In fact, our instrumentalism is rather half-hearted, since we tend to think of ourselves as scientific realists overall.5 Indeed, we ordinary physicists would be horrified if you branded us “antirealists” merely on account of our working instrumentalism; most of us assume that the quantum world is somehow real—it is a “world”, after all—while remembering that we are duty bound not to claim too much about that world in its unobserved state. For all that, our realism is also rather half-hearted, insofar as we do not commit to any particular realist quantum interpretation on account of their baroque and unpalatable ontologies and/or their hidden and untestable additions. For, despite the attractions of scientific realism in general for the working scientist, the particulars of each realist quantum interpretation are, frankly, deeply unattractive when seen from the perspective of everyday human experience. The upshot is that the ordinary working scientist—while exercising a deep-felt conviction towards realism in her heart of hearts—is simply not convinced by any single interpretation, especially not the realist interpretations. The everyday world is strange, we say—the quantum world admittedly much more so—but surely not that strange. Hence, in the spirit of pragmatism, we retain our working instrumentalism for now, while nurturing what I refer to as a vague but aspirational quantum realism, assuming that deeper clarity will emerge in time.6

The quantum foundations area of research, on the other hand, engages with the realist interpretations themselves, enthusiastically and in every particularity. There has been a definite turn towards realism in quantum interpretation (French and Saatsi 2020, 1), to such an extent that philosophers in the area are not unknown to articulate a deep-felt exasperation with the tacit instrumentalism of mainstream physicists and with our deference to the authority of the Copenhagen interpretation, even if, as I indicated in the previous paragraph, that instrumentalism/deference is only skin deep. Here is a selection of comments from philosophers critical of the dominance of Copenhagen instrumentalism in mainstream physics. Tim Maudlin (2019, x-xi, 2–5) lambasts the Copenhagen position. It cannot qualify as a physical theory since it does not address either the ontology or the dynamics of the physical world; Copenhagen is more a “quantum recipe” for making observational predictions. Worse still, Copenhagen stifles the scientific imagination: “The contemporary Copenhagen Interpretation is just an attitude: the refusal to ask, much less attempt to answer, foundational questions about quantum theory” (Maudlin 2018, 954). Travis Norsen (2017, 305) is even more forthright: Copenhagen is “increasingly recognised as . . . a lot of vague and philosophical hand-waving” which covers up for a failure to explain the physical world. Jeffrey A. Barrett (2019, 3) is more measured but still sees the standard approach adopted by working physicists as a serious mistake: “[T]he standard theory is either incomplete in an empirically significant way on the most charitable reading or logically inconsistent on an uncharitable but natural reading.”

Clearly, we have a major difference in attitude towards quantum interpretation between two different kinds of expert. One (the ordinary working physicist) is reluctant to commit to any of the realist quantum interpretations: on the face of it, she appears antirealist/instrumentalist, but in her heart of hearts, she maintains a vague but aspirational quantum realism that is repelled by the distinct particularities of each realist interpretation. The other (the philosopher working in quantum foundations) insists that the metaphysics matters, and must be explored in all its gory detail, no matter how unpalatable it might be. To the philosopher, the scientist’s realism is simply not realist enough.7

How should the theologian adjudicate? Considering what I have developed so far in this article, we can make some headway. I am speaking now as a scientist with theistic beliefs to other scientists with similar beliefs and theologians with interests in scientific practice. An emphasis on the theological giftedness and contingency of creation indicates, I suggest, that we (all of us) should favor a realist attitude, as theologically aware scientists (and scientifically aware theologians), towards the gift of the physical world. We receive the gift from the Giver as it is given, in whatever form it comes to us. Strong antirealism in QM, on the other hand, emphasises the role of the observer in determining reality. The very givenness of creation would seem to weigh against such an approach and favor quantum realism instead. Does that mean we are obliged to face up to the strongly realist quantum interpretations and commit to one of them, such as Everett or de Broglie–Bohm, in all their technicolor strangeness? Not necessarily, I say. When we consider the gift of the physical world to us as scientists, we must remember that the empirical scientific method is our primary means of receiving the gift; that method is, in its own way, a gift to us. Or better, we must remember that to exercise the empirical method is our vocation; it is both our “theological warrant” and our “duty toward God” (Torrance 1981, 86). Therefore, in this particular case of quantum interpretation—when conceptual interpretation of the gift is massively underdetermined by the empirical science and significantly troubling to boot—speculation above what the empirical science can establish would seem to go beyond our warrant. Christoph Schwöbel (2004, 164) made a similar point in his discussion of the giftedness of creation: the “‘givenness’ [of the world] is a challenge to deal with it as far as we can and to adopt a fatalistic attitude to those aspects we cannot deal with: the characteristic marks of a ‘naturalistic’ understanding of the world.” His point is that the gift is a challenge to us scientists. We do not know what it contains, nor its scope. We must exercise restraint in receiving it: we must explore what we can within our means and let go what we cannot, since that is beyond science. This is a method—it is the “‘naturalistic’ understanding of the world”; that is, it is the empirical scientific method, which is itself learnt from theology’s reflection on the givenness of the world. It is a powerful method, but it is a limited method: restrained and cautious. Often referred to as “methodological naturalism,” the theistic scientist might better understand her working restraint more as a kind of “methodological gratitude.”

All of this is to say that there are sound theological reasons for the working physicist’s caution in committing to metaphysical speculation while she maintains a vague but aspirational quantum realism in her continued focus on concrete and particular physical problems. But there is more to be said when we return to the participation theme.

As I mentioned earlier in this subsection, the realism/antirealism debate in quantum interpretation can be recast in participatory terms. Ali Barzegar and Daniele Oriti (2024) have done just that, exploring the ontological commitments of what they refer to as the “epistemic–pragmatist” interpretations, those that do not posit any hidden variables or extra mechanisms beyond the basic quantum formalism, nor countenance the possibility of an objective quantum state beyond the observer. These are commonly referred to as the “antirealist” interpretations, and they include the classic Copenhagen position and the mainstream approach I described earlier: a pragmatic/tacit instrumentalism coupled with a vague but aspirational realism. Significantly, Barzegar and Oriti (2024, 4–8) point to the “weak realism” that arises within this family of interpretations once we acknowledge their relational emphasis. All of these interpretations share three commitments, they say, that form a wider epistemic–pragmatist framework when combined. These commitments are first, an epistemic (rather than ontic) view of the quantum state—which means that the interpretations do not postulate hidden structures or extra detail beyond the bare quantum formalism; second, a metaphysics of participatory realism—which means that reality is not objectively “out there” waiting to be discovered but is, in effect, created by the interaction and relations between two physical systems (e.g., the observer and observed); third, an epistemology of perspectival objectivity—that is, a weak objectivity where facts (about a physical system) are related to the perspective of a relating system.

Barzegar and Oriti’s study contains a great deal of theological potential, I suggest. In particular, their analysis of the “weak realism” in the so-called “antirealist” quantum interpretations shares the same kind of metaphysical commitment as that which arises from the giftedness of creation, namely, a participatory commitment. Quantum interpretation, of course, looks to relationality on the physical level alone, while the giftedness theme is theological. But since the giftedness theme concerns all creatures and all of creation, it embraces all manifestations of participation, including the physical. Barzegar and Oriti’s epistemic–pragmatist framework for quantum interpretations therefore chimes with the participatory metaphysics that arises from theological treatments of giftedness and relationality. The ordinary working scientist with Christian beliefs can take encouragement in her own professional embrace of a working instrumentalism (for the present) with a vague but aspirational quantum realism (for what is to come), seeing the combination as falling within the context of a theological account of participatory realism that reflects the giftedness of creation, and, ultimately, the innermost being of the Trinitarian God. This may not be a vision of reality that chimes with the harder kind of realism pursued by many (especially philosophers) who work in the quantum foundations area; nevertheless, it is a faithful and faith-enriching Christian vision that informs the scientist’s vocational “warrant” using the tools and assumptions of scientific method, many of which, as I pointed out in my second-order answer, are tacitly theistic anyway.

There is also a possible avenue here for further theological work. Theology provides many reasons to take relationality and participation seriously, offering a sophisticated view of reality that might enrich the quantum participatory view. Of course, theologians have long invoked particular quantum themes—indeterminism, complementarity, and entanglement—as metaphors to explore divine mysteries, but they have done little in reverse mode, using theology to shed light on the quantum science. Hence, not only may theologians find that Barzegar and Oriti’s participatory quantum metaphysics provides a new set of quantum themes to apply to divine mysteries, but those theologians may also be able to shed theological light on the metaphysics itself.

My third-order answer to my guiding question then is an enthusiastic “yes,” especially if it looks as though theologians are able to provide support for the working hunches of physicists and guide them into the richer metaphysical implications of their scientific work. Quantum science is a gift, I suggest, and if we take Wigner’s words to heart, it is a miracle too. As physicists, we do not know why it works, but perhaps theology can help.

 Conclusions

I have addressed my guiding question of “does science need theology?” in three ways, with increasingly complex answers. Throughout, I have been concerned to expose the theistic roots of modern science, roots that are by no means obsolete (at least for the scientist who herself has theistic beliefs), but that come to the surface in certain areas of fundamental physics. In my third-order answer, I have tried to go further in order to support the subtle metaphysical hunches displayed by working physicists towards their quantum science. As I have explained, ordinary working scientists in mainstream physics take a distinctively cautious view to quantum interpretation, which is surprising given the enthusiasm shown in the quantum foundations field for strong quantum realism. I have provided theological reasons to support the stance of ordinary working physicists, especially those physicists who, like me, see their science as a manifestation of their religious faith. My point is that if the scientist affirms the quantum world as creation—and if she also maintains that the quantum is truly fundamental—then the quantum comes to her as gift, which implies that a degree of grateful and trusting realism should be exercised instead of untestable metaphysical speculation beyond what our best empirical science can establish. Such a realism provides “theological warrant” for the vague but aspirational quantum realism of many working scientists who are also theists, allowing them to take their “duty toward God” seriously (to echo Torrance) by prioritizing empirical research over metaphysical distraction. This cautious restraint, I suggest, is the scientist’s most effective professional and faithful response to the gift of creation. In the words of the main title of this article, I want to support theistic quantum fundamentalists in not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

For further reading, Joshua M. Moritz (2017) provides a comprehensive survey of many of the ways in which the foundational assumptions of scientific method can be shown to derive from Judeo–Christian theism.

It is sufficient merely to register the titles of some of the book-length critiques of modern theoretical physics to see that what is at issue here concerns the very nature of science: The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science and What Comes Next (Smolin 2008); Higher Speculations: Grand Theories and Failed Revolutions in Physics and Cosmology (Kragh 2011); Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe (Penrose 2016); Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (Hossenfelder 2018); The Dream Universe: How Fundamental Physics Lost Its Way (Lindley 2020).

Excellent accounts of the quantum interpretations—and of the intricacies of the measurement problem more generally—can be found in a number of introductions; for instance, Travis Norsen (2017), Adam Becker (2018), and Jeffrey A. Barrett (2019).

The reader will recall that the Copenhagen interpretation is usually categorised as an antirealist interpretation, since it emphasizes the observer’s role in determining reality, or at least our inability to pronounce on the unobserved properties of the quantum state.

A belief borne out by a recent survey of physicists as compared with philosophers, which found the former to tend towards belief in scientific realism, more so than the latter (Henne et al. 2024).

David Deutsch (1997, 329) makes a similar observation about the “typical physicist,” pointing out that we have given up on quantum interpretation and adopted a “pragmatic instrumentalism” instead. We use the phenomenal predictive power of QM as a “black box” in our everyday work, but we do not rely upon what its various interpretations tell us about the reality (or otherwise) of our quantum states.

Note that Hasok Chang (2022) makes a similar distinction, pointing out that philosophy of physics has a tendency to promote an impossibly elevated form of scientific realism compared with that of scientific practitioners. His point is that philosophers often do not take account of how scientific practice informs the realism of an ordinary scientist. Chang himself endorses a form of pragmatism not unlike my account of the everyday quantum physicist’s working instrumentalism coupled with a vague but aspirational quantum realism.

 Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the Templeton World Charity Foundation for their financial support that enabled me to write this article, and also to my colleagues in The Quantum Worldviews Project for helpful discussions. This publication is based on research supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc. (funder ROR https://ror.org/00x0z1472) under the grant https://doi.org/10.54224/33681.

 Competing Interests

The author declares that they have no competing interests.

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