|
|||||
|
|
REALISM AND OPENNESS IN SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY |
|
| Authors: | Thomas F Torrance |
| Institution: | Thomas F. Torrance is emeritus professor of Christian dogmatics, University of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the British Academy, and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was awarded the Collins Prize in 1969 and the Templeton Prize in 1978 for his work on the relations of theology and science. This paper was presented to the Académie Internationales des Sciences Religieuses;at Khania, Crete, 17 September, 1985. His address is 37 Braid Farm Road, Edinburgh, EH 10 6LE, Scotland. |
| Abstract: | Abstract. Intrinsic to rigorous knowledge of God is the recognition that positive theological concepts and statements about God arising under the compelling claims of God's reality upon the human mind must have an open revisable structure. A similar combination of critical realism and ontological openness is apparent in the profound change that has taken place in the rational structure of rigorous science from the radical dualism and closed causal system of classical mechanics to the unifying world view and open dynamic field-theories of modern physics. It is argued that the intersection of theological and natural science in their epis-temological foundations can enhance their ontological commitment and heuristic thrust. |
| Keywords: | conceptual assent epistemological realism/ontological openness intrinsic intelligibility theological/natural science true/not certain propositions unifying field-theory |