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Both Ratzsch and O'Hear talk about the "limits" of science. And science certainly does have its limits. I prefer, however, to speak of the focus of science, especially its explanatory focus. I am unwilling to draw artificial limits to science. The methods of any science follow from the aims of that science. Natural sciences aim to understand the physical world. The true limits of science come from the very thing that has caused its huge success: a focus on physical properties and things. Some authors on both sides of the religion-science debate argue that natural science must include a "methodological naturalism." I should like to propose a bold hypothesis: there is no such thing as methodological naturalism in natural science. Rather, the term "methodological naturalism" is always and everywhere a front for full-blown philosophical naturalism. Those who defend this "mere" methodology always end up re sorting to naturalism pure and simple. And those who attack it, like William Dembski or Phillip Johnson, are in fact attacking philosophical naturalism. There just is no such thing, then, as a merely "methodological" naturalism that is limited to the actual practice of modern natural science.
My own work on the problem of induction has led me to conclude that explanation in any of the sciences comes in particular traditions and "paradigms" which are part of the history of that discipline. To learn a science is, in part, to be inducted into a way of thinking about the world. The natural sciences have been successful because they have limited their interests to the natural world. They are interested in measurable properties, mathematical relationships, models and laws that are physical or natural in their province. Their focus is on the nature, properties, powers, and relations of physical objects (including energy and living things). Natural sciences explain things based upon this background knowledge and specific focus. The natural sciences explain natural events against the background of theories about physical properties and powers.
What is called "methodological naturalism" is in fact the tradition of inquiry that dates back to medieval scientists like Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon. This tradition of inquiry focuses on natural explanations and natural things, which can be known through empirical (rather than logical) analysis. Natural philosophy was thus distinguished from theology because of its focus, which in turn dictated a new, empirical method, combining experimental and mathematical reasoning. Almost all of the early Western scientists, from Grosseteste to Galileo, were Christians. The idea that they were involved in the advance of "naturalism" of any kind is historically absurd. Within their proper domain, the natural sciences have been immensely successful in expanding our knowledge of creation. But this should not be confused with "naturalism." Rather, it is the focus of the natural sciences that creates both its explanatory power and its explanatory limits.
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