Alfred North Whitehead's SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD, originally published in 1925, redefines the concept of modern science.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith, maintained in this vastly important work that Westerners have misperceived religious life by making "religion" into one thing.

A classic of phenomenology and existentialism and arguably Jonas's greatest work, The Phenomenon of Life sets forth a systematic and comprehensive philosophy -- ...

In a careful re-evaluation of the works of Lévy-Bruhl, Wiebe establishes the coherence of Lévy-Bruhl's classic distinction between primitive, or mythopoeic, and scientific thought, maintaining that religious thinking is mythopoeic in nature while theology -- which thinks about religion -- is related to modern Western scientific thinking. The pre-Socratic philosophers, Wiebe shows, developed a form of rational thought radically different from the religious-mythopoeic thought that preceded it. Although Plato was concerned with recovery of the pre-philosophic wisdom of ancient Greece, he (...) attempted this within a rational, philosophic structure. Wiebe argues that Christian thought, originally mythopoeic, changed rapidly under the influence of Hellenistic culture, and that the Platonization of Christianity introduced an element of philosophic thinking which would eventually undermine its mythopoeic essence. In clarifying the nature of religious thought and its relation to religion, Wiebe provides a sound basis for the development of a general theory of religion. While of particular interest to philosophers, theologians, and students and scholars of the study of religion, Wiebe's study draws upon sources as diverse as philosophy, history, anthropology, and sociology and will therefore interest anyone involved in these disciplines as well. (shrink)

To honour the memory of Sir Karl Popper, I put forward six elements of his philosophy which might be of particular interest to biologists and to philosophers of biology and which I think Popper would like them not to ignore, even if they disagree with him. They are: the primacy of problems; the criticizability of metaphysics (and thus the dubiousness of materialism); how downward causation might be real; how norms should matter to scientists; why dogmatism should be avoided; how genuine (...) science is recognizable. I preface these six things with a brief discussion of Popper's early (but later recanted) mistakes concerning biology. (shrink)

At one level, this paper is a lament and a warning. I lament biologists borrowing well-known terms and then drastically and awkwardly changing their meanings, and I warn about the mischief this does. Biology''s public image is at stake, as is its general usefulness. At another level, I attempt to clarify the misnamed concepts, beyond what has been achieved in recent philosophical writings. This helps to account for the mischief, and to see how it might be avoidable. But the most (...) important thing about the paper is that, at a third level, it is an argument against physicalism and materialism, especially those variants which deny the autonomy of organisms and the existence of intrinsic goods. Interpreting biology from the point of view of those denials leads to unsatisfactory and even bizarre results. (shrink)

That is the short title. The long title is: ‘How a deterministic interpretation of quantum theory would, if correct, show that compatibilism is not true; and some implications of this for theodicy’. Let us start with what people think they mean by freedom who, like myself, reject both determinism and compatibilism. Freedom-fans, we might call them. Better, let us start with what they do not mean, since proponents of determinism too frequently saddle them with views they do not hold. Freedom-fans (...) do not doubt causality. (shrink)

The essays in this volume represent an approach to human knowledge that has had a profound influence on many recent thinkers. Popper breaks with a traditional commonsense theory of knowledge that can be traced back to Aristotle. A realist and fallibilist, he argues closely and in simple language that scientific knowledge, once stated in human language, is no longer part of ourselves but a separate entity that grows through critical selection.

This essay contains a partial exploration of some key concepts associated with the epistemology of realist philosophies of science. It shows that neither reference nor approximate truth will do the explanatory jobs that realists expect of them. Equally, several widely-held realist theses about the nature of inter-theoretic relations and scientific progress are scrutinized and found wanting. Finally, it is argued that the history of science, far from confirming scientific realism, decisively confutes several extant versions of avowedly 'naturalistic' forms of scientific (...) realism. (shrink)

Hick addresses many of the major issues posing challenges to contemporary Christian belief, and offers his much-debated proposal for a Copernican revolution in our understanding of Christianity and the wider religious life of humanity.

Discusses the ethical implications of modern technology and examines the responsibility of humanity for the fate of the world.

In this cross-cultural, interdisciplinary study, John Hick draws upon major world religions, as well as biology, psychology, parapsychology, anthropology, and ...

Donald Wiebe critically examines the pervasive assumption that theology is a form of religious thought that is both compatible with and supportive of religious faith. The irony, he argues, is that theology is in fact detrimental to religion and the religious way of life.

1. Causal knowledge is an indispensable element in science. Causal assertions are embedded in both the results and the procedures of scientific investigation. 2. It is therefore worthwhile to investigate the meaning of causal statements and the ways in which we can arrive at causal knowledge.