OVERVIEW OF THE STRUCTURE OF A SCIENTIFIC WORLDVIEW

Abstract. Understanding the structure of a scientific world view is important for the dialogue between science and religion. In this essay, I define comprehensive worldview and distinguish it from the more focused non comprehensive worldview. I explain that scientists and the public at large agree that modern research works in a scientific as opposed to nonscientific worldview. I give some of the essential elements of any scientific worldview that differentiate it from nonscientific ones. These elements are the general pre suppositions of science, the methods of science, and the articles of justification for the conclusions science puts forward. I question whether a scientific worldview can allow philosophical and theological tenets, which might appear to stand opposed to scientific paradigms, and conclude that the answer lies in the scope of its comprehensiveness.     

Rhetorical Argumentation in Italian Academic Discourse

The recent trend in institutional communication research seems to foster the image of the University as a private organization significantly oriented towards a policy of customer satisfaction. Following the concept of organizational culture, institutional settings too are conceived as organizational contexts, where discourse is a privileged vehicle to convey and spread values, traditions and artifacts, both through internal and external communication practices. Thus, within academic discourse organizational culture is shaped and perpetuated by specific devices of rhetorical argumentation. The corpus of data consists of two different examples of academic discourse: the self promotional endorsement letters of the academic candidates to the chancellor’s position on occasion of the elections and the inaugural speeches proclaimed by the chancellors in charge during the opening celebration of the academic year. The first kind of academic discourse could be meant as an example of political discourse since the candidates use communication strategically and manipulate their academic membership as a rhetorical device to support their aims. On the other hand, the second example is a mere celebration of academic culture which through linguistic rituals recalls and perpetuates the basic values of this microcosm. The data have been analysed with the critical discourse analysis and diatextual analysis which pay particular attention to the context of speech. Moreover, attention has been focused on the metaphors and on the meta-discursive cues. The results show that although with different purposes academic discourse use similar discursive and rhetorical strategies as both belong to the same organization.     

用批判性思维方法解决烧伤护理实践中的问题

批判性思维是护理界越来越注重培养并予运用的思维方法。在烧伤护理实践中用批判性思维方法解决临床护理实际问题,护理人员应正确理解批判性思维的概念并培养批判性思维能力、应具备良好的职业道德和敬业精神,最终能将批判性思维正确运用于护理程序的每一个步骤中。     

TRUTH, RELATIVISM, AND CROSSWORD PUZZLES

Abstract. Neither the correspondence nor the coherence theory of truth does justice to the truth claims made in science and theology. I propose a new definition that relates truth to solving puzzles. I claim that this definition is more adequate than either of the traditional theories and that it offers two additional benefits: first, it provides grounds for a theory regarding the relations between theology and science that may stand up better to philosophical scrutiny than does critical realism; and second, it blocks the move to relativism based on recognition of the plurality of perspectives and the historical and social conditioning of knowledge.     

Rationale for a pragma-dialectical perspective

Starting from a concept of reasonableness as well-consideredness, it is discussed in what way science could serve as a model for reasonable argumentation. It turns out that in order to be reasonable two requirements have to be fulfilled. The argumentation should comply with rules which are both problem-valid and intersubjectively valid. Geometrical and anthropological perspectives don't meet these criteria, but a critical perspective does. It is explained that a pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation which agrees with this critical perspective is indeed problem-valid and that strong pragmatic and utilitarian arguments can be given for its intersubjective validity. Thus, conventional validity is promoted for a code of conduct for discussants who want to resolve their disputes reasonably by way of a critical discussion.     

WIEMAN'S MISUNDERSTANDING OF DEWEY: THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY DISCUSSION

Abstract. An important issue in the development of the American school of philosophy known as critical naturalism was whether the naturalistic vision implied a humanistic or a theistic interpretation of religion. Is the divine a creativity within nature but more than human effort, or is it the human vision of ideal possibilities and the effort to realize them? This issue is clarified through a study of the concept of the divine developed by the leading naturalist John Dewey in A Common Faith, the misunderstanding of this book by Henry Nelson Wieman, and the discussion of this misunderstanding in the pages of Christian Century. The essay concludes that Wieman's misunderstanding of Dewey is instructive in that it reveals unintended possibilities in Dewey's thought.     

IAN BARBOUR: THEOLOGIAN'S FRIEND, SCIENTIST'S INTERPRETER

Abstract. Ian Barbour's work, especially Religion in an Age of Science, is a comprehensive, balanced, and theologian-friendly guide to relations between science and religion. As a physicist and a theologian, Barbour is one of a handful of people who know both areas in depth and hence provide a bridge for others who are not dually educat ed. This is a very substantial accomplishment. His own position, however, is presented tentatively and, in the opinion of this author, is less radical than that demanded by his overt commitments vis-à-vis the contemporary scientific worldview. At two points, especially, his position appears modernist when it should be postmodern, in light of his own stated theological and scientific convictions: (1) his critique of the feminist and two-thirds-world position on the social construction of science, (2) his preference for a unified worldview at the cost of slighting issues of diversity and particularity. Nonetheless, he has made an immense contribution by providing the best and deepest survey of the sciences of astronomy, physics, and biology and their implications for Christian theology; it makes him one of the premier thinkers in the twentienth-century discussions of science and religion.     

THE RELIGION OF A SCIENTIST: EXPLORATIONS INTO REALITY (RELIGIO PHILOSOPHI NATURALIS)

Abstract. Sir Thomas Browne's reflection on the synthesis between his Christian religion and his practice as a medical doctor, made over three centuries ago, leads into reflections on the present relation between religion and science in the personal experience of the writer. An account is given of how the actual practice of scientific investigation led the author to theistic inferences and how the study of DNA provoked questions concerning reductionism and emergence. This evoked the need for a map of knowledge, and an attempt is presented in a figure which also serves to clarify what kind of realistic reference is involved in both scientific and humanistic contexts–especially with respect to personal language. Theological investigations thereby receive at least provisional legitimization and, with this encouragement, the article pursues the questions of the nature of the divine Source ("God") of the world's being and becoming, of God's interaction and communication with the world, especially with human beings in that world. The penultimate section outlines why the writer considers an explicit communication from God to humanity in Jesus of Nazareth is coherent with the foregoing and what this implies for human fulfillment, individually and corporately. The article concludes with a plea for humility before God and nature in our inquiries in the spirit both of Sir Thomas Browne and of the arch "agnostic" T. H. Huxley.     

Critical Consciousness: An Alternative Pathway for Positive Personal and Social Development

This paper presents a conceptual model of the integrative psychological construct of critical consciousness (CC), defined as a moral awareness which propels individuals to disembed from their cultural, social, and political environment, and engage in a responsible critical moral dialogue with it, making active efforts to construct their own place in social reality and to develop internal consistency in their ways of being. The ontogeny of CC is analyzed in terms of the synergistic interaction between its two main components, structural developmental and moral motivation. The paper describes the cross-cultural interview research which allowed the elaboration of the CC developmental pathway. It posits the dimension of moral motivation as distinguishing the CC pathway, and illustrates the continuum between predominantly moral and expediency motivation through brief case vignettes. The paper differentiates three developmental macrolevels of CC, and illustrates through case vignettes two alternatives of social consciousness at the level of conventional morality—CC and non-CC. Some possible sources of moral motivation in personal history and biography are discussed.     

Reflections of a reluctant clinical ethicist: Ethics consultation and the collapse of critical distance

The obvious appeal and growing momentum of clinical ethics in academic medical centers should not blind us to a potential danger: the collapse of critical distance. The very integration into the clinical milieu and the processes of clinical decision making, that clinical ethics claims as its greatest success, carries the seeds of a dilution of ethics' critical stance toward medicine and medical education. The purpose of this paper is to suggest how this might occur, and what potential contributions of ethics to medicine might be sacrificed as a result. Medical sociology will be used for comparison. Sociologists have found that they may function either as students and critics of established medical practices and educational philosophies, or as collaborative participants in them — but rarely both. It may be that professional ethics is most effective when it plays the role of stranger rather than insider, and is continually able to question the most basic assumptions and values of the enterprise with which it is associated. As with medical sociology, ethics and humanities must ask to what extent their desire for acceptance in the clinic requires their acceptance of the clinic: specifically, acceptance of basic assumptions about optimal ways of organizing medical education, socializing physicians-in-training, providing care, and even of defining medical ethics itself. The paper concludes by recommending that ethics reassert its strangeness in the medical milieu even as it assumes a more prominent role within the medical center.