WORSHIPPING AN UNKNOWN GOD

This paper examines the religious tradition of ‘negative theology’, and argues that it is doubtful whether it leaves room for belief in God at all. Three theologians belonging in different degrees to this tradition are discussed, namely John Scotus Eriugena, Anselm of Canterbury and Nicolas of Cusa, and it is argued that all three, in maintaining the ineffability of God, reach positions that are in effect forms of agnosticism. There is a paradox here: if God is inconceivable, is it not self‐refuting to talk about him at all, even to state his inconceivability? The final part of the paper examines the work of the nineteenth‐century poet Arthur Hugh Clough, two of whose poems, Hymnos Aumnos, and Qui Laborat Orat, explore the paradox of talking about the inconceivable Godhead. Clough gives eloquent expression to the idea that leaving God unnamed is not equivalent to disowning him. There is room for a devout agnosticism.     

HUMAN UNIQUENESS FROM A BIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW

This article seeks to provide some genetic perspectives on the question “Just How Special Are Humans—Really?” It begins with an introduction to how genetic variation can provide information about the past. It continues by discussing two ways in which genetic analyses has, on multiple occasions, shown that humans are less unique than we thought we are. We have a cognitive bias to toward thinking we are special. Our species has colonized an ecological niche not exploited by any other species on our earth, but how much of our adaptation to that niche is cultural rather than genetic?     

AN EVOLVING VISION OF GOD: THE THEOLOGY OF JOHN F. HAUGHT

The theology of God in the scholarship of John Haught exemplifies rigor, resourcefulness, and creativity in response to ever‐evolving worldviews. Haught presents insightful and plausible ways in which to speak about the mystery of God in a variety of contexts while remaining steadfastly grounded in the Christian tradition. This essay explores Haught's proposals through three of his selected lenses—human experience, the informed universe, and evolutionary cosmology—and highlights two areas for further theological development.     

THE NATURAL GOD: A GOD EVEN AN ATHEIST CAN BELIEVE IN

Abstract. In this paper, I attempt to dissolve the theism/atheism boundary. In the first part, I consider last things, according to mainstream science. In the second part, I define the Natural God as the Force of Nature—evolving, unifying, maximizing—and consider Its relation to last things. Finally, I discuss our knowledge of the Natural God and Its relevance to our personal lives. I argue that we can know the Natural God through scientific reason combined with global intuition, and that this knowledge, from the perspective of last things, may help us achieve universal love, ethical action, and personal salvation.     

A VIEW FROM ALBEMARLE1

This paper was originally delivered in July of 1975, within a few weeks of the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Albemarle Paper Company v. Moody. The law, of course, does not stand still. Less than a year after the Albemarle decision, the Supreme Court's decision in Washington v. Davis appeared to turn sharply away from the proposition that the EEOC guidelines are to be applied mechanically as the only legal touchstone of the job relatedness of a test. The Washington decision contains many obscurities and ambiguities, and at the time of writing (October 1976) it appears that at least one more Supreme Court case will be necessary in order to clarify this question. Though the present paper is outdated in some respects because of the Washington decision, it is hoped that it will continue to be of interest for the light it may shed on the interrelationship between the practice of industrial psychology and the judicial process in operation.     

THE VIEW FROM DOWN HERE

In this article, graduate students and one faculty member respond to the innovative methods presented in this issue. We identify three theoretical and methodological tensions that shape our interest in and willingness to work with these methods. The first questions whether the strengths of doing qualitative research outweigh the limitations. The second involves feminist research ideals and how attainable they are. The third explores epistemological tensions between qualitative and quantitative research. Although intrigued by the data these methods generated and by their underlying epistemology, we question the status of certain qualitative research in psychology. We contend that the criteria by which qualitative research is evaluated must be made more explicitly before quantitatively trained researchers will incorporate these methods into their own work.     

进化观点下的智力研究

综述了进化心理学探讨智力所取得的研究成果,内容包括智力的起源（如进化环境与智力的关系）、进化心理学视角下智力的分类。同时,该文认为一般智力是一种特殊的认知模块,即专门智力。最后,讨论了对智力进行进化心理学研究的重要意义与未来研究取向。     

ARGUMENTS FROM NOTHING: GOD AND QUANTUM COSMOLOGY

This essay explores a simple argument for a Ground of Being, objections to it, and limitations on it. It is nonsensical to refer to Nothing in the sense of utter absence, hence nothing can be claimed to come from Nothing. If, as it seems, the universe, or any physical ensemble containing it, is past‐finite, it must be caused by an uncaused Ground. Speculative many‐worlds, pocket universes and multiverses do not affect this argument, but the quantum cosmologies of Alex Vilenkin, and J. B. Hartle and Stephen Hawking, which claim that the universe came from literally nothing, would. I argue that their novel project cannot work for reasons both physical (their “nothing” is actually a vacuum state governed by eternal physical laws) and methodological (physical theory cannot explain the emergence of the physical per se). Thus my argument stands. However, as David Hume showed, a posteriori arguments like mine infer a creation, and Creator, of a certain character, namely, a stochastic concept of creation and a panentheistic, partly physical Creator lacking omniscience and omnipotence. Rather than undermining the cosmological argument, as Hume intended, these limitations liberate the concept of the Ground from unnecessary problems, as Hartshorne suggested.     

TURNOVER ANALYSIS AND PREDICTION FROM A CAREER DEVELOPMENTAL POINT OF VIEW

Demographic and psychological characteristics of 479 job leavers from two plants were processed, and work stability of 110 previously tested subjects was followed up for up to eight years. The study revealed that job quitting is a career decision depending upon career type, career stage and the characteristics of the organization, from the career development point of view. These variables make it possible to predict leaving decisions by employees, and also job stability.     

ON WEAK POSTPOSITIVISM: AHISTORICAL REJECTIONS OF THE VIEW FROM NOWHERE

Abstract: Postpositivists have lately joined post‐Husserlians in arguing that the deepest problem with Descartes' legacy is that it fosters the objectivist illusion that philosophers might actually come to think “from Nowhere,” or at least that they can self‐consciously choose whatever presuppositions they do accept. Yet this argument is easier to express than to incorporate into one's own thinking. It is perfectly possible to oppose the View from Nowhere, and even to criticize others for failing to understand its impossibility, and still do so … as if from Nowhere. This article is concerned with such compromised opposition—that is, with critics who reject, in ahistorical terms and from an ahistorical standpoint, an ahistorical conception of philosophy. It focuses on two figures from the empiricist‐positivist side of the Cartesian legacy, Rorty and Taylor, but their story is in important ways typical. Though their criticisms are certainly more radical and considerably more successful than those of many of their analytic colleagues, each retains in his own thinking more of the ahistorical or standpointless ideal than he realizes.     

THE DESIRE OF GOD

By exploring the contours of human longing and desire, particularly in its complex relationship with the body and material reality, the article shows that it is in the very nature of the humanum to seek after and promise the presence of a divinity whose arrival cannot be guaranteed (not from the human side, at least). Biblical poetry from the Psalms and the Song of Songs will be invoked and explored as exemplars of that psycho‐theological landscape. While human desire is not enough to guarantee God's arrival, desire perseveres on the basis of a mysterious sense of call or promise which, while experienced and apprehended within the self, nevertheless appears to emanate or broadcast as from another place.