Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Conservative Texan Mom; betty boop
It has always seemed to me that science is a tool, but philosophy dictates the questions it is used to answer and how it is applied.

Indeed, Conservative Texan Mom!

204 posted on 10/31/2006 1:22:22 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 177 | View Replies ]


To: Alamo-Girl; betty boop

I hesitate to mention books that I haven't read myself, but I have often seen favorable references to the works of Stanley Jaki, who spent a lifetime working in this field.

I don't know if they are as good as some people consider them to be, but here's his website, where they can be found.

FYI, in case you haven't run into this already.

And again I recommend McInerny's book, "Aquinas and Analogy." It's somewhat tough sledding, because it is written in the language of philosophers, but it's one of the best explanations I know of the links between the eternal and the phenomenal worlds, or God and creation.

What he suggests, in fact, is that early interpreters of Aquinas in the next generation got his views about analogy wrong, and I think he makes an excellent case.

I was taught that analogy is a literary or rhetorical device--metaphor and simile--but in fact it is seemingly a central aspect of the nature of reality. I was also always taught that in the ancient world, middle ages, and Renaissance, people saw likenesses between various parts of the world, but again this was a quaint illusion or literary habit. Far from it. Very much worth a read.

So too, if you want to follow it up, a book on the Augustine Age by a former colleague of mine, Blanford Parker (Oxford). The working title of Blanford's book was "The Eclipse of Analogy." But I think he was afraid that would make him more academic enemies than he already had, so he published it under the title "The Triumph of Augustanism." Like Marjorie Nicolson's book, "The Breaking of the Circle," it traces the vanishing of a worldview during the seventeenth century, and persuasively suggests that the English 18th century was far more radically secular than commonly thought.


208 posted on 10/31/2006 1:48:37 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 204 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson