DOES AN INKLING BELONG IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION? HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS, EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE IMAGINATION With Bethany Sollereder, "Introduction to Essays in Honor of Alister McGrath"; Peter Harrison, "What is Natural Theology? (And Should We Dispense with It?)"; John Hedley Brooke, "Revisiting William Paley"; Helen De Cruz, "A Taste for the Infinite: What Philosophy of Biology Can Tell Us about Religious Belief"; Michael Ruse, "The Dawkins Challenge"; Donovan O. Schaefer, "The Territories of Thinking and Feeling: Rethinking Religion, Science, and Reason with Alister McGrath"; Andrew Pinsent, "Alister McGrath and Education in Science and Religion"; Andrew Davison, "Science and Specificity: Interdisciplinary Teaching between Theology, Religion, and the Natural Sciences"; Victoria Lorrimar, "Does an Inkling Belong in Science and Religion? Human Consciousness, Epistemology, and the Imagination"; and Alister E. McGrath, "Response: Science and Religion-The State of the Art."

How do we come to know things, and how are such epistemological questions treated in the field of science and religion? Recent critiques of science and religion methodology argue for an anti-essentialist approach to science and religion that acknowledges their different epistemic territories and promotes interdisciplinarity. This article operates in such a vein, considering the contributions of Owen Barfield, member of the Inklings, an Oxford literary group, to the study of human consciousness, epistemology and metaphysics, and apologetics, all topics with particular relevance to science and religion. Barfield's understanding of the evolution of human consciousness as revealed by the history of language has scientific import, and may be developed by more intentional cross-disciplinary collaborations between psychological and cognitive scientists and humanities scholars. His approach to mythopoesis and the imagination resists scientific reductionism, and can inform epistemological dialogue between science and religion, as well as contemporary apologetics.