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I am working on another book - about the relationship between Christianity and Evolutionary Theory (a subject on which I have posted here a few times - if you search 'evolution').
I may blog sporadically, and probably I will get back to daily blogging in a couple of weeks.
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You are a factory of insights, Dr. Charlton!
ReplyDeleteGood luck on the new book.
Really looking forward to it.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! Are you developing the "Evolution as a metaphysical system"-theme further? What about issues such as animal suffering and human distinctiveness?
ReplyDelete@k - I don't think I'll be covering those issues. I think the main thrust will be to describe the hierarchy of knowing top is Christianity, above theology, above metaphysics, above natural philosophy (science), above biology - of which natural selection is a type.
ReplyDeleteBut more interestingly, I am trying to say in what way natural selection is potentially true - true without being the truth.
This applies to all of science, and even mathematics, but with NS it is much more obvious and hits harder.
In the end, I think it boils down to common sense of those built-in experiental evaluations - so the validity of NS, science, maths - is ultimately a mater of common sense and not of professional or abstract consideration.
But let's hope I can get it clearer than that!
I am trying to say in what way natural selection is potentially true
ReplyDeleteHrm. You said the book was to be on the relationship between Christianity and "evolutionary theory", which is a much different and bigger topic than mere natural selection.
I suppose I will wait for the book rather than assuming I know what you're writing about.
Waiting for the book, Dr. Charlton. It seems very interesting.
ReplyDeleteImnobody
In the last chapter of the Discarded Image, CS Lewis compares the medieval viewpoint with the evolutionary viewpoint, noticing that the evolutionary viewpoint
ReplyDeletehad developed in 18C before the observations supporting the evolution were there.
He goes rather post-modernish saying that Nature answers according to our preconceptions. I didnt understand it very well, but it seems that per CS Lewis, if one queries Nature with any viewpoint, Nature will always give some answer in support.
@Gyan - a CS Lewis scholar once commented (I cannot recall who or where) that this last chapter of Discarded Image was the only place where he had caught CSL being dishonest: Lewis *did* believe in the medieval world view described in the book, he did not think that it had been show false. I think he was also perhaps being a bit disingenous in the passage you cite - we will *get* an *answer* when the preconceptions are false - but it will not be Nature speaking, only an echo.
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