There is truth in this statement. However, the viewpoint that truth is
relative and, therefore, not reachable, seems to be promoted from an
intellectual basis only. My experience is that many students and faculty,
while schooled in this philosophy, still have a (intuitive perhaps?)
yearning to explore metaphysical questions. For instance, I invite our
graduate students to gather in the evening once a week where we explore
these types of questions--what is science, what are the limits of science,
why do we do science. We invariably move into questions about the nature of
truth and knowing. By and large the students very much enjoy this and have
asked me to to make it into a formal course. I don't think that, as humans
made in the image of God, we can really divorce ourselves from such
questions. We can only deceive ourselves that there are no answers.
Finally, I think that the desire to search for truth is alive and well in
the university, regardless of what some of my colleagues may teach their
classes.
>The "way of knowing" is limited to the empirical.
This is not correct. For instance, how do you know that God exists? This
type of knolwedge is different from the knowledge I have that my coffee is
cold. The latter is empirical, the former is not.
Cheers,
Steve
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Steven S. Clark, Ph.D. Phone: (608) 263-9137
Associate Professor FAX: (608) 263-4226
Dept. of Human Oncology and email: ssclark@facstaff.wisc.edu
UW Comprehensive Cancer Ctr
University of Wisconsin
Madison, WI 53792
"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings
to search out a matter." Proverbs
"What, then is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that
nobody asks me" Augustine 'Confessions'
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