Genetic science and pastoral care

Important advances in the field of genetic science have raised new and challenging pastoral issues. This article describes the nature of genetic screening and artificial fertilization and follows each with the relevant pastoral implications.     

Learning from the past: Reflections on the role of history in the philosophy of science

In recent years philosophers of science have turned away from positivist programs for explicating scientific rationality through detailed accounts of scientific procedure and turned toward large-scale accounts of scientific change. One important motivation for this was better fit with the history of science. Paying particular attention to the large-scale theories of Lakatos and Laudan I argue that the history of science is no better accommodated by the new large-scale theories than it was by the earlier positivist philosophies of science; both are, in their different ways, parochial to our conception of rationality. I further argue that the goal of scientific methodology is not explaining the past but promoting good scientific practice, and on this the large-scale methodologies have no obvious a priori advantages over the positivist methodologies they have tried to replace.     

Good science and good philosophy of science

I argue against the assumption that the influence of non-cognitive values must lead to bad science, opening the way for the thesis that non-cognitive values are compatible with good science. This, in turn, allows us to answer feminist questions, principally, How do gender politics influence science? without (1) having to reject the question a priori because theories of science assume that political values cannot influence good scientific work and (2) having made a case for the influence of gender politics upon a particular bit of scientific work, being put into the ludicrous position of saying that it is bad science after all, even though the relevant community of scientists say it is good. Nevertheless, moral and political neutrality is held to be a norm of good science and a tacit metaphilosophical norm governing good philosophy of science, viz., a good philosophy of science reveals and analyzes the morally and politically neutral production of good science. This metaphilosophical norm insures that the philosophy of science (1) is blind to the influence of non-cognitive values on good science if and when these are present and so (2) acquiesces in the moral or political arrangements supported by the science in question.     

Incarnation and pastoral care

This essay is an examination of the usefulness of incarnation as a theological metaphor for pastoral care and counseling. Understanding the incarnation as both an event and as a paradigm of God's relationship to the world provides a theological perspective for examining four interrelated questions about identity and the helping relationship frequently asked by the pastoral care-giver. The incarnation metaphor finally frees us to care in the confidence that in God the Incarnating One, all things, including our care for the sick, are held together.Dr. Anderson is Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Counseling at Wartburg Theological Seminary, 333 Wartburg Place, Dubuque, Iowa 52001.     

Phenomenology and pastoral care

The author discusses phenomenology as a potential resource for pastoral care generally and then illustrates its implications in two specific areas of pastoral care. After a brief discussion of the development of phenomenology, he defines pastoral care and identifies its methodological problem. Phenomenology, it is argued, offers potentially helpful methods and interpretative categories in its attitude, its attempts at self-aware, ordered discernment, and its anthropology. It serves to militate against the temptation in pastoral care to understand human problems in terms of individual and social pathology, in the case of individuals, and to illumine the ways the community functions as a dimension of pastoral care.He is the author ofEcclesial Man.     

Phenomenology and philosophy of science

This article examines human systemic condition and its evolved cultural organization from the perspective of information. The aim is to discuss general, tentative hypotheses on the nature and role of information in human systems. As a framework, the article considers information as the underlying parameter of growth on the general evolutionary trajectory. Information growth experienced an unprecedented increase at the appearance of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, which, as is well known, implies the trajectory's close relation to our species. This has led to the notion of post-organic evolutionary era in which humankind, through cultural evolutionary means, is in the process of supplanting biological determinants. Development, understood generally as victory over nature, has always been the measure by which our species has defined its success; humankind persists in faith in technical solutions to all problems.     

关于另类科学哲学的思考

A prominent phenomenon in contemporary philosophy of science has been the unexpected rise of alternative philosophers of science. This article analyses in depth such alternative philosophers of science as Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, and Michel Foucault, summarizing the similarities and differences between alternative philosophies of science and traditional philosophy of science so as to unveil the trends in contemporary philosophy of science. With its different principles and foundation, alternative philosophy of science has made breakthroughs in terms of its field of vision, scope, and methodology, and its relationship with science has become more humanistic and pluralistic. Attention should be given to alternative perspectives in the contemporary philosophy of science, and research should be expanded into the fields of the epistemology of science and cognitive science, the sociology of scientific knowledge and scientific anthropology, the scientific cultural philosophy, and scientific ethics.