Science in Christian Perspective

 

 

Response to Leith

From: JASA 17 (September 1965): 96

May I venture a remark in connection with Thomas A. Leith's most instructive paper on Philosophy of Science in Volume 17, Number I of J. A. S. A.

On studying nature, analytical-constructive reason (or reasoning) finally arrives at empty, abstract concepts of magnitudes, relations and forms. Mathematics is a product of pure reason. Thus at the end of the road down at the atom and sub-atom level reason sees itself in a mirror as it were. It seems that to "geometrical" (Pascal) reasoning the respective equations are what the empirical outer world "is." Not so to the mind as a whole. Logic is just its tool. Philosophy of Science investigates and explains the scientific method of gathering, measuring, counting, weighing, integrating, dematerializing observational data. Philosophy of Nature incorporates analytical reasons' last word in gnoseology. Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature have little to offer Philosophy of Religion in its quest for meaning.

Thank you.

Gerhard Fedders, M.D., Staff Physician
Faribault State School & Hospital, Faribault, Minnesota