Summary: This project seeks to conduct a sociohistorical analysis of the relationships between science and religion in Roman Catholicism through the use of multiple case study analysis. In order to do this, we will explore the articulation among beliefs, scientific disciplines and theological perspectives by studying institutional spaces and the main trajectories1 of actors (both experts and believers) who promote and implement linkages between science and religion in specific cases at different points in time.
The study will begin with a comparative analysis of cases from six scientific fields, in the framework of global and local religious-epistemic communities. Our analysis will thus include the configuration of the following scenarios: a) the Pontifical Academy for Life, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Borja Institute of Bioethics, the STICB (Seminari de Teologia i Ciencia or Barcelona’s Seminar for Theology and Science) as global institutional spaces with local influence (case 1) and b) the trajectories of scientific-religious experts (case 2) and believers (case 3). We will look into the experts’ trajectories in disciplines such as epistemology, bioethics, genetics, reproductive medicine, embryology, psychiatry & neuroscience. The project further seeks to determine and analyse the beliefs and meanings attached to these processes, identifying negotiations, tensions and alignments with theological perspectives and how these become integrated into believers’ everyday lives in the health-illnesscare process in Argentina. We will focus particularly on therapeutic articulation and complementarity in connection with diagnoses and treatments in reproductive genetics and medicine (preconception and preimplantation genetic diagnosis, assisted reproduction techniques). Within the interpretive paradigm of social sciences, this project will follow a qualitative methodology with a combination of interviews, document analysis and observation.
The intended result is to generate knowledge of the positions, strategies and tensions of the various actors who interpret, negotiate and propose specific linkages between science and religion in different fields in Argentina. This project complies with CONICET’s guidelines for ethical behaviour in the Social Sciences and Humanities (Resolution 2857/2006), the Declaration of Helsinki (Fortaleza 2013), and the Human Rights laws and covenants currently in force in Argentina. It includes a data management plan which ensures participants’ anonymity. All of these items are part of the legal framework safeguarding the right to habeas data (Law N° 25326).
