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Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Philosophy at large

I was reading the comments on this quiz in Fr Bryce's comment box. A Catholic with some smattering of an education in the faith really is living in a different conceptual world from everyone else. Have a shot of the quiz and when the questions become unanswerable, because they don't make sense, you will see what I mean.
Back to metaphysics and evolution.
  1. I have yet to see how any evolutionary theory necessitates the development of a new metaphysics.
  2. I have never been interested enough in the whole thing to read anything in depth. No-one has ever said anything to me that makes me think there is much to get more excited about than there was with heliocentrism.
  3. Lack of interest, perhaps my bad. But if you can't get your point across in an essay the length of a long newspaper article, then perhaps you need to reconsider your point. By getting across, I mean showing why what you have to say is worth the hassle of reading tens or hundreds of pages.
I've never intended to do anything on this blog that takes a great deal of time or effort, but perhaps this would be worth considering. Bearing in mind that I have exams until the end of June, and that I have no English-language bookshops or libraries within several hundred miles (though access to one poor university library and possibly one each of decent university and seminary libraries), what should I read that will explain to me the challenge the perennial philosophy faces from a version of the evolutionary theory? Perhaps I should start with something explaining the varieties of e.t. and their metaphysical implications.
In the meantime, perhaps "Aumgn" could furnish an initial presentation of the problem? Bearing in mind that I am not a philosopher, and that another of my fellow bloggers is likewise no more than an educated punter in this field, and that what little philosophy we have is likely to be of a decidedly old-fashioned thomistical flavour, why should we keep the notion of "pure reason" safely buried? Do we have to go and read the Critique, or can someone post the Ladybird version?
I don't understand the comment "Unless the Church starts teaching Whitehead and Hartshorne it'd better come up with a metaphysic that can integrate theories of evolution". Or else what? Why not the other way round?