Science and Religion in Schools: A View from the Classroom in England
All of us are shaped by forces, even in the supposedly free thinking academy, which we perhaps only understand and evaluate years later.
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Delusions, Myths, and Wars: Review of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Bantam Press, 2006. 416 pages. $27.00. This book is one of many that celebrate an allegedly bitter warfare between Science and Religion, two epic figures representing rival forces between which we must choose. Different people understand this myth differently. In the USA today, the default alternative—the attitude of normal people—is increasingly…
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Education
Pictured above is the central panel of “Education” (1890), a thirty-foot-wide stained glass window by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Tiffany Studios. Located in Linsley-Chittenden Hall at Yale University, it depicts Science (personified by Devotion, Labor, Truth, Research and Intuition) and Religion (personified by Purity, Faith, Hope, Reverence and Inspiration) in harmony, presided over by the…
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Vichian Reflections on Self-Forgetfulness and Dehumanization
In the light of the explorations we have conducted in Vico’s speculation on Man’s humanity, I’d like to offer some personal Vichian reflections on the subject. The ancient Greeks warned us that the unexamined life is not worth living; that man needs to ask the question what does it mean to be human and only…
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The Golden Paradox: If we always sacrificed for each other, no one would ever have to make sacrifices
You know me. I’ve got hardly any moral principles; I’m all about moral dilemmas. I made the case a while ago (see Liar’s Paradox Moral Litmus Test) that if you can come up with a Liar’s Paradox-like statement regarding some moral principle, then it really isn’t a moral principle. Instead, it’s a moral dilemma. In…
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The Windows of Perception
IntroductionA driving conceit of modern psychology is that the brain somehow creates consciousness. Of course, no one is quite sure how this is possible. However well one’s theory of consciousness explains the still developing data, there still remains the nagging question as to why that thing or process could result in true mental states. For…
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Johannes Kepler – A Life for Science and Religion (Dedicated to Walter Thirring for his 80th Birthday
I. INTRODUCTION In western science Johannes Kepler was the turning point from a magical-alchemistic to a rational-mathematical conception of the laws of nature. In his life he worked on both sides, but what earned him eternal fame are his three laws of planetary motion. Johannes Kepler was both a scientist and a religious man. In…
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Mathematics, Science, and Spirituality
For a layman, mathematics started with the numerals. It is the science of numbers and their operations. We associate mathematics with arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and at advance level to calculus and field of computers. So much so that it is called “Mother of all Sciences”. Mathematics is a thread by which we may know the…
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Environmentalism and the opposition ‘science versus religion’
1. The earliest culture formed a uniform system where what today we define as science, magic, mythology and religion, interlaced each other and in reality formed some indivisible whole. These components of the spiritual culture were practically undistinguished especially on cognivistic level that is in aspects of description, explanation and foreseeing. Such a system formed…
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Metaphysics Matters
Part One: Metaphysics as the Science of Presuppositions R.G. Collingwood, in his An Essay on Metaphysics (1940), attempts to defend metaphysics from attacks upon it leveled by early analytic philosophers. To make his defense, Collingwood has to separate two Aristotelian propositions regarding “first philosophy.” On page 11 of his text, Collingwood notes them: 1. Metaphysics…