Is science policy a theological matter?

With his latest statement on science, technology and the environment, Pope Francis has sought to change the debate on climate change. But his statement has broader significance for the way we think about the future

The Encyclical Letter Laudato Si' released by Pope Francis last week has generated a wide range of reactions ranging from enthusiastic praise to uneasy criticism. For some, the Pope's key message was about climate change, for others about the downsides of economic growth, and some saw in it a reconciliation of science and religion. But the Encyclical also lays bare a debate much larger than each of these perspectives, one that is fundamentally about what kind of world we want to inhabit. The Pope's message is just the latest intervention in a debate over technologies that has been going on for centuries.

Pope Francis writes of the "human roots of the ecological crisis" defined in terms of deference to a "technocratic paradigm" which contains "the deepest roots of our present failures, which have to do with the direction, goals, meaning and social implications of technological and economic growth."