RALPH WENDELL BURHOE AND THE TWO CULTURES

Abstract. Ralph Burhoe developed his proposals for a social reformation at a time when the “two cultures” debate was still active. It is suggested here that Burhoe, sharing with his contemporaries an understanding of culture that was Western and normative in character, overlooked the distinction between the culture of the elites and popular culture, and consequently between religion as presented by theologians and church officials and popular religion. Therefore, his proposals for the revitalization of traditional religions, even if implemented, would not work. Some contradictions within his own program are pointed out, and the social role of the sciences after World War II, as well as the ambiguities of their presence in the so-called underdeveloped nations, is analyzed. As a positive conclusion, it is suggested that Burhoe's main contribution should be sought, not in his outline for a social reformation, but in his role as an organizer of the dialogue between religion and science.     

RALPH WENDELL BURHOE: HIS LIFE AND HIS THOUGHT

Abstract. This is the first of four installments by the author, presenting an intellectual biography of Ralph Wendell Burhoe. This first segment follows Burhoe from his college years at Harvard through the founding of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science in 1954. In this period, after his college and seminary study, Burhoe worked at Harvard's Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory and as executive officer of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Throughout his early life he had been concerned with how religion could maintain its credibility as a bearer of truth vis-à-vis the sciences, which were displacing religion not only among leading intellectuals, but also in other segments of society. The founding of IRAS provided an important instrument for dealing with this concern.     

The Heritage of Ralph Wendell Burhoe for the Dialogue between Science and Theology: A German Perspective

This paper begins with some reflections on my personal experiences with Ralph Wendell Burhoe during visits to the Chicago Center for Religion and Science. I learned to know Burhoe as an interested and kind person with enormous intellectual power. In this paper I argue that integration of different concepts was the chief focus of his thinking, expressing both an ethical and a dogmatic concern. If his theory of altruism contributes to the scientific investigations into the problem of trans-kin altruism, then his vision of a scientific theology gains credibility. Such an integration is made plausible through the interpretation of altruism in light of Christian love. In fact, Burhoe's neonaturalistic approach may be a fertile resource for the dialogue between science and theology in Germany, and serve as an exemplar of Burhoe's important impact on this dialogue in general.     

RALPH WENDELL BURHOE: HIS LIFE AND HIS THOUGHT

Abstract. This third installment in David Breed's intellectual biography of Ralph Wendell Burhoe focuses upon the impact of his thought on the Unitarian Universalist Association and that group's role in Burhoe's career. Dana McLean Greeley, elected president of the American Unitarian Association in 1958, was a key figure in Burhoe's eventual participation in the project, "The Free Church in a Changing World." Burhoe's emphasis on the need for doctrine that could communicate religious wisdom in terms of science stood in tension with free-church tradition. Nevertheless, the section of the project's final report, titled "Theology and the Frontiers of Learning," largely accepted Burhoe's program for a new natural theology based on science. This project brought Burhoe's program to the attention of the denomination and led to the invitation in 1964 from Malcolm Sutherland, on behalf of Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago, of which he was president, for Burhoe to implement his program in the new curriculum of that school. Burhoe accepted.     

BURHOE AND SHAPLEY: A COMPLEMENTARITY OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract. The development of Ralph Wendell Burhoe's philosophy of religion and science occurred in the shadow of the continuing dialogue about the place of science in American society. Like his friend and mentor, Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley, Burhoe was distressed and intrigued by the troubled postwar relations between science and religion. Unlike Shapley, however, Burhoe sought to create a new modernism, a blend of religion and science that would allow each to develop and complement the other.     

Burhoe's Second-Hand Influence

Many of us not part of the "old Burhoe gang" are nonetheless deeply influenced by the ideas of Ralph Wendell Burhoe, albeit in indirect ways. This remembrance summarizes six such ways: Three are "procedural" influences, namely (1) that dialogue is most valuable, especially in the science/religion interface, when carried on among those who may not agree; (2) that scholarship is necessary to refine and improve preliminary opinions; and (3) that organizations are crucial to accomplishing the first two tasks. The three "substantive" influences are (4) Burhoe's focus on human values; (5) his work in defining God; and (6) his contribution to defining what it means to be human. As is well known, his emphasis in all three substantive cases was on the power and nuances of biological and social evolution, especially on the dynamics of natural selection.     

RALPH WENDELL BURHOE: HIS LIFE AND HIS THOUGHT

Abstract. This fifth and final installment from the author's book-length study of Ralph Wendell Burhoe's life and thought covers the period 1966–1987, and it concludes with a summary of his thought. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science began publication in March 1966, the same year in which the Center for Advanced Study in Theology and the Sciences (CASTS) was founded. Both the journal and the center were made possible by Meadville/Lombard Theological School. After a brief period of flourishing, CASTS was succeeded in 1972 by the Center for Advanced Study in Religion and Science (CASIRAS). Burhoe married Calla Butler in 1969, two years after his first wife, Frances, had died. He retired from Mead-ville in 1974. The Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion was awarded to Burhoe in 1980. His thought is summarized under the topics of values, thermodynamics, the evolution of religion, the concept of soul, God, enculturation and freedom, and the Lord of History.     

ALTRUISM AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE UNIVERSE: KIRTLEY FLETCHER MATHER ON SCIENCE AND VALUES

Abstract. Few American scientists have devoted as much attention to religion and science as Harvard geologist Kirtley Fletcher Mather (1888–1978). Responding to antievolutionism during the 1920s, he taught Sunday School classes, assisted in defending John Scopes, and wrote Science in Search of God (1928). Over the next 40 years, Mather explored the place of humanity in the universe and the presence of values in light of what he often called “the administration of the universe,” a term and concept he borrowed from his former teacher, geologist Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin. Human values, including cooperation and altruism, had emerged in such a context: “the administrative directive toward orderly organization of increasingly complex systems transcends the urge for survival.” He was also active in the early years of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, an organization created by his good friends Ralph Wendell Burhoe and Harlow Shapley.     

RALPH WENDELL BURHOE IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract. Ralph Burhoe has sought to preserve “traditional religious wisdom,” but he emphasizes science as a new revelation. His relation to philosophical positivism and his insistence on including in a scientific theology only views that reflect the scientific worldview constitute major philosophical and theological problems. This essay considers the influence of several historical precursors—Francis Ellingwood Abbot, George Burman Foster, and Shailer Mathews of the “Chicago School” of theology, Douglas Clyde Macintosh, and, especially, Henry Nelson Wieman—which has contributed to a favorable reception of Burhoe's ideas. Social problems such as the youth revolution of the 1960s and indifference to the lack of intellectual credibility of religious beliefs have, however, hindered reception of his ideas. The conclusion notes some tasks that must yet be accomplished in order to continue Burhoe's work, particularly that of increasing the general level of education in the sciences.     

Ralph Burhoe and Teilhard De Chardin: an Affinity in Mysticism?

Religious experience is conditioned and influenced by our understanding of reality, and scientific knowledge contributes to that understanding. Spirituality will be related to knowledge of nature in that experience of God will be mediated in and through a relation to the universe and out of the fulfillment of the creation. Thus a mystical knowledge of God is experienced in and out of a developing evolution of nature, society, and culture. Ralph Burhoe and Teilhard de Chardin share a vision of mystical unity with God as arising out of an integration involving the systems of nature and society.     

David Liberman's legacy

This article presents, in the author's own vision, his attempt to consider (and update) the work of an original thinker of contemporary psychoanalysis (in the present). Following a short overview of his biographical data and distinctive traits as maestro and man, it then tries to capture the implications and panoramic vision of Liberman's work, the prevailing questions and problems of psychoanalysis to which it responds. In the author's opinion this involves a serious attempt to systematize clinical psychoanalysis on the basis of singularity and of tolerance to human diversity, with the greatest precision and scientific rigour admitted by the psychoanalytic discipline – avoiding cliché on the one hand and what we might call the mystification of the Oracle on the other. The successive stages of Liberman's production are indicated in terms of the auxiliary disciplines (communication theory, semiotics and linguistics) which he used for his ever more precise systematization of clinical psychoanalysis finally leading to his proposals on ‘style’ and his vision of the psychopathology of over‐adaptation and psychosomatic instances. Other concepts which this paper highlights are: Liberman's conception of analytic dialogue as framed by human interaction; his theorization which stems from this particular empirical base making use of ‘operational definitions’ and ‘intermediary formulations’; his operational definition of transference; and the inclusion of setting inside the ‘analytic situation’.     

RALPH WENDELL BURHOE: HIS LIFE AND HIS THOUGHT

Abstract. This second installment from the author's book-length study of Ralph Wendell Burhoe's life and thought details the background of the establishing of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science in 1955 and its intellectual rationale. A group of clergy from the Coming Great Church Conference and scientists who were members of the Committee on Science and Values of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences came together to form the new Institute on Star Island, off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. From the beginning, with the guidance of Burhoe, the chief concern of these scientists and clergy was the need to regenerate a contemporary civilization that was on the brink of danger due to its inability to discipline its own burgeoning scientific and technological prowess. Revitalizing religion was deemed essential to this regeneration of society. Since religion is largely destabilized by science, the major task is to emphasize how contemporary scientific understandings support religious wisdom and accentuate its importance. This task is to be accomplished through a science-based theology which reformulates religious wisdom for a culture that accepts science as the most reliable form of knowledge. This rationale for IRAS also articulates the program to which Burhoe committed himself.     

TALKING THE WALK AND WALKING THE TALK: Stanley Hauerwas's Contribution to Theological Ethics

Stanley Hauerwas's contribution to the study of Christian ethics is analyzed in the course of offering an overview of his work, including (1) his early reflections on “vision,”“narrative,” and moral agency; (2) his continuing focus on Christian virtues and practices in contrast to the ethos of moral and political liberalism; and (3) his specific attention to the meaning of peaceableness and the rejection of violence. The essay concludes by considering Hauerwas's legacy as a postliberal theologian, a critical participant in American Protestant ethics, and a conversation partner with Roman Catholics.     

Is Nature Enough? Yes

Abstract. Religious naturalism encompasses thinkers from Baruch Spinoza, George Santayana, John Dewey, Henry Nelson Wieman, and Ralph Burhoe to recent writers. I offer a generic definition of religious naturalism and then outline my own version, the “minimalist vision of transcendence.” Many standard issues in the science‐and‐religion dialogue are seen to fade in significance for religious naturalism. I make suggestions for our understanding of science, including the importance of transcognitive abilities, the need for a revised notion of rationality as an alternative to extreme versions of postmodernism, the value of rational dissensus, and the education of appreciation. Finally, I suggest ways to interpret the religious traditions of the world by religious naturalism.     

OF EAGLES AND CROWS, LIONS AND OXEN: Blake and the Disruption of Ethics

Why focus on the work of William Blake in a journal dedicated to religious ethics? The question is neither trivial nor rhetorical. Blake's work is certainly not in anyone's canon of significant texts for the study of Christian or, more broadly, religious ethics. Yet Blake, however subversive his views, sought to lay out a Christian vision of the good, alternated between prophetic denunciations of the world's folly and harrowing laments over the wreck of the world's promise, and wrote poetry as if poetry might mend the world. Setting imagination against the calculations of reason and the comfort of custom, Blake's poems inspire questions about the relationship of ethics to prophecy, and open the possibility that ethics itself would be markedly enriched could it find a place for what Thomas J. J. Altizer has called Christian epic poetry.     

René Magritte: coping with loss--reality and illusion

René Magritte was profoundly influenced in his painterly style and in the content of many of his paintings by his mother's suicide when he was fourteen. This paper explores the influence of this traumatic event on his work. My thesis is that the nighttime suicide of Magritte's mother by drowning: (1) had a profound impact on the form and style of his paintings; (2) his paintings represented an effort, mostly successful, to contain and master through intellectual control with isolation of affect the trauma of this experience, which must at the time have evoked helplessness and despair; (3) the contents of a series of his paintings directly reconstruct the traumatic experience under control and in the service of mastery; and (4) there are paintings, mostly painted at the time he clearly developed his own style (1926-1930), that reveal a breakthrough of projected primitive aggressive impulses and unconscious representations of the aggressive mother. In these latter paintings, both form and content are dramatically different from the main corpus of Magritte's work.     

W H R Rivers (1864-1922): the founder of research in cross-cultural perception.

This paper presents a brief review of Rivers's contribution to psychology, especially to his cross-cultural studies of the basic perceptual processes of vision, and examines the lasting influence of his findings. It reports briefly on the scientific milieu in which Rivers carried out his work and traces the growth of his interest in the psychology of perception from the early days of his medical work to his appointment as a foundation lecturer of two English universities, London and Cambridge. It is argued that Rivers's contribution has been undervalued by psychologists.     

Pattern as Inspiration and Mode of Communication in the Works of Van Gogh

A close study of specific patterning in Van Gogh's drawings (revelatory because of their absence of his celebratory color) provides new insight into pattern as a direct expression of nonverbal meaning. A study of his articulation of pattern through form, plus a close reading of his writings about difficulties he encountered because of his unique vision, show how Van Gogh's creativity reflects a need to express the inexpressible that derives from an idiosyncratic way of perceiving self and the world. We apply critical theories of modern art as a manifestation of unconsciously expressed meaning and explications of differences between the experience of color versus form, and indices of how nonverbal meanings are noted and anchored. We conclude that Van Gogh's unique and personal perceptual style both served his developmental needs and exacerbated his distress, contributing both to his mental instability and his artistic greatness.     

Jewish Blood: Reality and Metaphor in History,Religion, and Culture

Although Rodney Stark is best known for his work on religious economies, he has recently turned his attention to the social effects of monotheism. If we look carefully on the theoretical trajectory evident in this recent work, what we find is a social-evolutionary approach to religion that was prevalent in the 19th century, but long ago assumed by most academics to be discredited. Furthermore, as becomes increasingly evident going through this series, the particular social-evolutionary sequence that Stark constructs has been shaped by a vision of Protestant triumphalism, and a privileging of evangelical Protestantism, that also belongs to an earlier time. While it would easy to ignore Stark's work (and the last two books in this series do seem to have been ignored in academic circles), there are reasons (which include the popular appeal of his work and his treatment of Islam) for taking his work seriously.     

Let my people go! Sayyid Qutb and the vocation of Moses

Moses is a great figure of moral and social liberation. His role in the Muslim tradition has been as multifaceted as in Judaism and Christianity. This essay attempts to explore his importance in the ideology of radical Islam by exploring Sayyid Qutb's responses to a number of the Moses scenes of the Qur'an in his work Fi zilal al‐qur'an. Qutb's treatment reveals aspects of the ideological structure that informs his writing, his love of Egypt and his spirituality. It shows, also, how he had a vision of Islam that went far beyond the boundaries of a nation state and regarded Nasser as a betrayer of this vision. He saw the Egyptians suffering under him as they had suffered under Pharoah.