Not Practising Theology

Many pastors are prepared for a vocation they do not practice while they are performing a ministry they have not learned. While providing pastoral care they are eager to help, support, and comfort but they hesitate to theologize, to practice theology. At least three considerations may offer an explanation for this paradoxical fact: 1. Most pastors consider theology to be static and historical instead of dynamic and interactional; 2. Students of theology never learn to practice theology, therefore, as a minister, they prefer to listen and refuse to speak; 3. Many ministers mask a lack of courage and motivation in publicly professing what they privately believe, by providing therapeutic help to those who are in pastoral need.     

科学与文化心理转型

在多种文明密切交往,不同信仰并存的世界 上,以现代科学思想为基础重塑我们的价值观念是 中国和平崛起过程必须面对的一个重大文化问题。 这反映在三个方面: 首先,从传统到现代心理转型是社会转型的一 个重要侧面。改革开放以来,伴随着文化生活的活 跃和丰富,各种迷信思潮也沉渣泛起。这种现象令     

Toward an Interdisciplinary Science of Culture

The Psychological Record - Cultural events are of interest to scientists working in many scientific domains. Given this, an interdisciplinary science of culture may provide a more thorough...     

Practising the Space Between: Embodying Belief as an Evangelical Anglican Student

Abstract

This article explores the formation of British evangelical university students as believers. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with a conservative evangelical Anglican congregation in London, I describe how students in this church come to embody a highly cognitive, word-based mode of belief through particular material practices. As they learn to identify themselves as believers, practices of reflexivity and accountability enable them to develop a sense of narrative coherence in their lives that allows them to negotiate tensions that arise from their participation in church and from broader social structures. I demonstrate that propositional belief—in contexts where it becomes an identity marker—is bound up with relational practices of belief, so that distinctions between ‘belief in’ and ‘belief that’ are necessarily blurred in the lives of young evangelicals.     

Science as Structured Imagination

This paper offers an analysis of scientific creativity based on theoretical models and experimental results of the cognitive sciences. Its core idea is that scientific creativity — like other forms of creativity — is structured and constrained by prior ontological expectations. Analogies provide scientists with a powerful epistemic tool to overcome these constraints. While current research on analogies in scientific understanding focuses on near analogies, where target and source domain are close, we argue that distant analogies — where target and source domain differ widely — are especially useful in periods of intense conceptual change. To argue this point, we discuss three case studies from the history of science: early physiologists like Harvey, early evolutionary biologists like Darwin, and recent theorists on the evolution of the human mind like Mithen.     

Education as a Science

Developmental differences in recall were investigated as a function of mode of presentation (blocked vs. random), recall condition (cued vs. noncued), and time of recall (immediate vs. delayed). Ninety-six second graders and 96 fourth graders were the subjects, and the stimuli were 20 pictured items from five categories. Data on three dependent variables (item recall, category recall, and clustering score) were analyzed. Immediate recall was better than delayed recall, the fourth graders' overall performance was superior to that of the second graders, and the blocked presentation of items and the presence of retrieval cues at recall enhanced recall and organization in recall. Furthermore, an analysis of a three-way interaction on two dependent measures indicated that, in the noncued condition, immediate recall was better than delayed recall for children in both grades. However, in the cued condition, the fourth graders performed better during delayed recall than during immediate recall, whereas the second graders did better during immediate recall than during delayed recall.     

首届"科学文化研讨会"述要

近年来 ,科学文化一词频频出现在大众传媒。而对于什么是科学文化 ,如何理解科学文化、如何更好地从事科学传播 ,存在着各种意见和看法。 2 0 0 2年 1 1月 2 1～ 2 2日 ,京沪两地从事科学文化研究的学者聚集上海 ,举行了首届“科学文化研讨会” ,就科学文化的一些基本问题进行了讨论。科学文化具有思想和实践两方面的意义。对科学文化的理解固然可以不同 ,但是与会学者一致认为 :需要从思想层面 (包括人文的和科学的角度 )和社会实践层面对科学和技术的文化意义进行反思 ;需要发展多角度、多层面的科学文化 ,包括传统科普(知识性科普 )、“…     

On the Place of Culture in Psychological Science

Based on a positivist-empiricist mode of inquiry, mainstream psychology has been vigorously engaged in characterizing human lives in terms of mechanistic and individualistic constructions, with the aim of predicting and controlling the behaviour of acultural and decontextualized others. Committed to a belief in psychological universals, this enterprise is directed at verifying a peculiarly Western intelligibility. In doing so, it ignores the possibilities of other systems of understanding grounded in different cultures and “culture” remains marginalized in the psychological discourse. Viewed in terms of enablements and constraints, differing cultures may contribute a range of psychological intelligibilities, thus enriching the capacities for human relationship. This position is explored by contrasting an Indian with a Western conception of human functioning, with respect to grounding assumptions, and implications of a culturally informed psychology are discussed.     

Beyond Science Wars Redux: Feminist Philosophy of Science as Trustworthy Science Criticism

Bruno Latour is not the only scholar to reflect on his earlier contributions to science studies with some regret and resolve over climate skepticism and science denialism. Given the ascendency of merchants of doubt, should those who share Latour’s concerns join the scientists they study in circling the wagons, or is there a productive role still for science studies to question and critique scientists and scientific institutions? I argue for the latter, looking to postpositivist feminist philosophy as exemplified by Alison Wylie and Lynn Nelson, among others, as a guide. Feminist philosophers of science who ground their analysis in a detailed understanding of scientific practice are not science’s champions nor its antagonists, but they do stand in a distinct relationship to science. If not merchants of doubt, are they scientific gadflies or perhaps in scientific loyal opposition? Though these notions can underwrite useful approaches to science studies, neither captures the distinctive interdependency and interestedness of feminist philosophers and science. I suggest that we would be better served by the notion of trustworthy science criticism, building on the analyses of trust and trustworthiness by Annette Baier, among others, attendant to the dynamics of interdependency in trust relationships.     

Science as if situation mattered

When he formulated the program of neurophenomenology, Francisco Varela suggested a balanced methodological dissolution of the hard problem of consciousness. I show that his dissolution is a paradigm which imposes itself onto seemingly opposite views, including materialist approaches. I also point out that Varela's revolutionary epistemological ideas are gaining wider acceptance as a side effect of a recent controversy between hermeneutists and eliminativists. Finally, I emphasize a structural parallel between the science of consciousness and the distinctive features of quantum mechanics. This parallel, together with the former convergences, point towards the common origin of the main puzzles of both quantum mechanics and the philosophy of mind: neglect of the constitutive blindspot of objective knowledge.     

The Special Science Dilemma and How Culture Solves It

I argue that there is a tension between the claim that at least some kinds in the special sciences are multiply realized and the claim that the reason why kinds are prized by science is that they enter into a variety of different empirical generalizations. Nevertheless, I show that this tension ceases in the case of ‘cultural homologues’—such as specific ideologies, religions, and folk wisdom. I argue that the instances of such special science kinds do have several projectable properties in common due to their shared history of reproduction, and that the social learning involved means that we should also expect these kinds to be multiply realized.     

科学精神与中国先进文化的发展

江泽民同志在庆祝中国共产党八十周年大会上的讲话中指出:"在当代中国,发展先进文化,就是发展有中国特色社会主义文化,就是建设社会主义精神文明."又指出:"大力发展科学文化事业,加强科学知识、科学方法、科学思想、科学精神的宣传教育."可见,科学和先进文化之间具有某种内在的联系,尤其科学精神的弘扬对先进文化的发展起着极大的推进作用.     

古代预测文化对科学认知的负面影响

我国古代预测文化观念大多属于假言推理的预 卜学,谈不上真正意义上的预测科学。但是其预测 的文化观念深刻地影响着一部分人的社会实践活 动,使一些人当作认知事物的演算工具,试图从中 寻找自然现象和社会现象的未知迹象。由于其预测 观念不是建立在科学的知识体系基础上,不能经过 实践反复检验,只是用偶然性判断社会现象的必然 性,用单一模式去解释错综复杂的社会现象,难免     

Christ as Culture 2: Christ as Art

Abstract: Art can be understood as experimenting with possible worlds. There is, however, a real world underlying the possible worlds – the world created by God. We do not have unmediated access to this world, and so must, and can, continue to be artists, and a loss of faith in the existence of the real world leads to a loss of the possibility of art. If Christ is to be understood as art, then the Father is the artist who experiments with a possible world, which is thus defined as the real world, through his Son, the Logos.