This article identifies two trends in Dooyeweerd’s conception of ‘cosmic time’, and elaborates their consequences for the philosophy of history. The first trend, connecting time to modal diversity and the order of the modal aspects, prevails in Dooyeweerd’s analysis. The application of the second trend, emphasizing that in each relation frame the temporal order governs subject-subject relations and subjectobject relations, sheds a new light on the interpretation of history conceived of as development of the culture and civilization of mankind. The (...) distinction of faith and religion and the position of the aspect of faith in the order of the modal aspects play important parts in this discussion, in particular with respect to the possibility of transcending time. (shrink)

Objectivity in the sciences is a much-touted yet problematic concept. It is sometimes held up as characterising scientific knowledge, yet operational definitions are diverse and call for such paradoxical genius as the ability to see without a perspective, to predict repeatability, to elicit nature’s own self-revelation, or to discern the structure of reality with inerrancy. Here we propose a positive and general definition of objectivity based on work in the Reformational philosophy tradition. We recognise a suite of relation-frames–ways in which (...) things function and relate to each other, which can be analytically distinguished in the process of conceptual abstraction. These relation-frames also ground the diverse aspects of scientific analysis within which relationships and properties may be abstracted from entities and systems. We argue that objectivity can be understood as characteristic of representations that attempt to portray a subject in an earlier relation-frame than that in which it characteristically functions. In short, objectivity is projection. This proposal is exemplified from mathematics and the natural sciences and some possible objections to it are considered, as well as its extension to the social sciences. (shrink)

This is the last of three articles on the relationship between science, religion, and professional practice in psychology and psychiatry. The first article highlighted the importance of the distinction between four types of knowledge. In the second article the scope was broadened and amounted to an analysis of the normative structure of professional practices. I showed the relevance of this analysis by investigating its meaning for the notion of restoration, along the dimensions of structure and direction. The I-self relationship played (...) an important role in the conceptualization of the relationship between these two dimensions. In this article I will apply the notion of (normative) practice to science andphilosophy. After a discussion of the views on integration of Nancey Murphy and Ian Barbour (both Christian philosophers) I will briefly introduce some insights of the Dutch (Christian) philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd, who emphasized the primacy of everyday knowledge and experience. In the latter part of the article I will discuss and reject constructivist objections to both the idea of the primacy of everyday knowledge and the normative practice model. (shrink)