Rational Consilience

Author(s):  
Alister E. McGrath

This final chapter focusses on the question of how insights gained from multiple disciplines can be brought together or colligated into a deeper and more satisfying vision of the world. It specifically engages the question of whether it is irrational to hold beliefs which are developed through the use of different rational strategies and criteria—for example, the scientist who is also a socialist, or a theologian who is also a natural scientist. It is argued that any form of interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary engagement requires working with multiple rationalities and learning to live with the tensions this creates. In arguing for the need for integration and dialogue, the chapter criticizes the influential approach to consilience developed by E. O. Wilson on the grounds that it it is excessively dependent on the intellectual framework provided by the Enlightenment, and gives too prominent a place to the natural sciences. A more open approach is suggested in its place.

1956 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-209
Author(s):  
George L. Mosse

The purpose of this paper is to examine several aspects of the relationship between Christianity and the rise of the new rationalistic spirit of the eighteenth century. It is in this connection that we intend to examine the thought of the French Huguenot preacher Jacques Saurin (1677–1730). Historians have held that the two leading ideas of that century, Nature and Reason, derive their meaning from the natural sciences. Such a point of view tends to ignore the greater realism towards nature and politics which developed within the Christian theological framework itself. From the sixteenth century on, we find orthodox theologians emphasizing the need for dealing with the world on its own terms. It was not so much the new sciences but rather the conflicts of the Reformation which brought out this increasingly rational attitude on the part of both Protestant and Catholic theologians. This development went on side by side with that secularized idea of reason which is of specific scientific inspiration. The means which theologians used to make room for a greater realism in their Christian framework of thought was casuistic divinity.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Раиса Николаевна Афонина ◽  
Татьяна Степановна Малолеткина

В статье рассматриваются психодидактические аспекты освоения студентами-гуманитариями содержания естественнонаучных дисциплин. Специфика обучения естественнонаучным дисциплинам студентов-гуманитариев определяется наличием у данной группы обучающихся особенностей восприятия и переработки информации. Для гуманитариев в большей мере характерно превалирование ассоциативного, образного мышления, эмоционального восприятия информации, отторжение формализованных, доказательных способов рассуждений, доминирование реального восприятия окружающего мира над абстрактным, идеализированным. Современные педагогические методики в основном ориентированы на левополушарное восприятие, именно поэтому правополушарные учащиеся оказываются в невыгодном положении. The article deals with psychodidactic aspects of mastering the content of natural sciences by humanities students. The specificity of teaching the natural science disciplines of humanities students is determined by the presence of features of perception and processing of information in this group of students. For the humanities, the prevalence of associative, figurative thinking, emotional perception of information, the rejection of formalized, evidence-based ways of reasoning, the dominance of the real perception of the world over the abstract, idealized, are more characteristic. Modern pedagogical methods are mainly focused on left hemisphere perception, which is why right hemispheric students find themselves at a disadvantage.


Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.


Author(s):  
Amy Strecker

The final chapter of this book advances four main conclusions on the role of international law in landscape protection. These relate to state obligations regarding landscape protection, the influence of the World Heritage Convention and the European Landscape Convention, the substantive and procedural nature of landscape rights, and the role of EU law. It is argued that, although state practice is lagging behind the normative developments made in the field of international landscape protection, landscape has contributed positively to the corpus of international cultural heritage law and indeed has emerged as a nascent field of international law in its own right.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 330-334
Author(s):  
Octavio A. Chon Torres

AbstractThere is a record of the positive effects of astrobiological research for the natural sciences and eventually for their technological use on Earth. However, on the philosophical effects, this is not as visible as the other sciences, which is why it can be assumed that it is a waste of time speculating on astrobioethics or also on the philosophy of astrobiology. This is the reason why this work seeks to identify and sustain the philosophical utility of astrobioethics. To achieve this, this article focuses on three essential aspects: teloempathy, education and astrotheology. Russell's argument about the value of philosophy will be used as a fundamental basis for the usefulness of astrobioethics.


2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELVIRA WAKELNIG

Textual evidence preserved in two still unpublished manuscripts strongly suggests that there once existed an alternative version of Miskawayh’s Fawz al-aṣghar, the Minor Book of Triumph. The article discusses possible explanations for why Miskawayh may have composed two recensions of his Fawz and compares structure and content of the alternative version with the edited standard version. The one passage which is contained in the alternative Fawz only is presented in Arabic with an English translation. Part of this additional material is parallel to al-Fārābī’s Iḥṣā’ al-‘ulūm, namely its division of natural sciences, and may ultimately derive from a no longer extant treatise by Paul the Persian. An appendix provides the Arabic text and English translation of a hitherto unknown fragment of al-Balkhī in which he discusses Plato’s saying that the world has a causative, but no temporal beginning.


1967 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-188
Author(s):  
Alexander Lipski

It is generally accepted that even though rationalism was predominant during the eighteenth century, a significant mystical trend was simultaneously present. Thus it was not only the Age of Voltaire, Diderot, and Holbach, but also the Age of St. Martin, Eckartshausen and Madame Guyon. With increased Western influence on Russia, it was natural that Russia too would be affected by these contrary currents. The reforms of Peter the Great, animated by a utilitarian spirit, had brought about a secularization of Russian culture. Father Florovsky aptly summed up the state of mind of the Russian nobility as a result of the Petrine Revolution: “The consciousness of these new people had been extroverted to an extreme degree.” Some of the “new people,” indifferent to their previous Weltanschauung, Orthodoxy, adopted the philosophy of the Enlightenment, “Volter'ianstvo” (Voltairism). But “Volter'ianstvo” with its cult of reason and belief in a remote creator of the “world machine,“ did not permanently satisfy those with deeper religious longings. While conventional Orthodoxy, with its emphasis on external rites, could not fill the spiritual vacuum, Western mysticism, entering Russia chiefly through freemasonry, provided a satisfactory alternative to “Volter'ianstvo.”


Author(s):  
Bibi van den Berg ◽  
Ruth Prins ◽  
Sanneke Kuipers

Security and safety are key topics of concern in the globalized and interconnected world. While the terms “safety” and “security” are often used interchangeably in everyday life, in academia, security is mostly studied in the social sciences, while safety is predominantly studied in the natural sciences, engineering, and medicine. However, developments and incidents that negatively affect society increasingly contain both safety and security aspects. Therefore, an integrated perspective on security and safety is beneficial. Such a perspective studies hazardous and harmful events and phenomena in the full breadth of their complexity—including the cause of the event, the target that is harmed, and whether the harm is direct or indirect. This leads to a richer understanding of the nature of incidents and the effects they may have on individuals, collectives, societies, nation-states, and the world at large.


2014 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 859-866 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Djokic-Ostojic ◽  
Tomka Miljanovic ◽  
Tijana Pribicevic ◽  
Snezana Parezanovic-Ristic ◽  
Marina Topuzovic

At this moment in time, which is marked by extremely negative human influences on the environment, and when a sustainable development of nature is needed, school has a significant role in developing students? knowledge, skills and attitudes towards natural sciences. In European countries, students gain biological knowledge during primary school either through integrated or specific subjects. This paper contains the results of a comparative analysis of the biological content in teaching programs and curricula in three European countries - Serbia, Finland and England. In Serbia, biological contents are included in two integrated subjects (The World Around Us and Nature and Society) during the first cycle of compulsory education, while during the second cycle they are included in a separate subject - biology - and are linearly arranged. Throughout compulsory education in Finland and England, biological contents are concentrically arranged and are realized through the students? research work in their surroundings in several school subjects.


Conservation ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 361-400
Author(s):  
Charles Perrings

The final chapter considers the factors likely to influence the value of species and ecosystems to individual users and the wider community in the future, including the factors likely to drive a wedge between the value of ecosystems to individual users or individual communities and to the rest of the world. It reviews environmental trends identified by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and economic trends identified by organizations such as the World Bank. Using the European Union’s subsidiarity principle as a guide, the chapter discusses the optimal scale at which to manage future conservation challenges, and the implications this has for governance. It concludes by applying the discussion to four issues of particular concern: forest conversion, the loss of landraces and crop wild relatives, marine capture fisheries, and emerging infectious zoonoses.


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