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Berkeley, scientific realism and creation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

P. A. Byrne
P. A. Byrne
Affiliation:
University of London, King's College
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Extract

‘That a corporeal substance, which hath absolute existence without the minds of spirits, should be produced out of nothing by the mere will of a spirit hath been looked upon as a thing so contrary to all reason, so impossible and absurd, that not only the most celebrated amongst the ancients, but even divers modern and Christian philosophers have thought matter co-eternal with the Deity.’

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , September 1984 , pp. 453 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

page 453 note 1 Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous: Works of George Berkeley, ed. Luce, and Jessop, , III (London, Nelson, 1948), 1, p. 256Google Scholar. All subsequent references to Berkeley give volume and page number of this edition.

page 453 note 2 See paras 924 of The Principles of Human Knowledge: Works, II, 81–2.

page 454 note 1 Boyle, Robert, ‘A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature’, in Robert Boyle on Natural Philosophy, ed. Hall, M. B. (Indiana University Press, 1965), pp. 150–153.Google Scholar

page 454 note 2 See Bk II, ch. 23, 7–11, and Bk III, ch 3, 15–18.

page 455 note 1 Works, I, p. 54. In the above remarks, as elsewhere in this paper, I have ignored some of the complications in Berkeley's scheme provided by the limited powers granted to finite spirits.

page 455 note 2 For this phrase see Harre, R. and Madden, E. H., Causal Powers (Oxford, Blackwell, 1975), p. 5.Google Scholar

page 456 note 1 Philosophical Commentaries: Works, I, p. 95.

page 457 note 1 See Munitz, M. K., The Mystery of Existence (New York, Appleton, 1965), Pp. 204–5.Google Scholar

page 457 note 2 Works, I, p. 99.

page 457 note 3 See Mabbott, J. D., ‘The Place of God in Berkeley's Philosophy’, in Locke and Berkeley, ed. Martin, C. B. and Armstrong, D. M. (London, Macmillan, 1968), pp. 364–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 458 note 1 Alciphron, Dialogue IV: Works, in, p. 159.

page 459 note 1 Trans. Geach, P. T. and Anscombe, G. E. M., in Descartes' Philosophical Writings (London, Nelson, 1954), p. 88.Google Scholar

page 459 note 2 Concepts of Deity (London, Macmillian, 1971), p. 10.

page 460 note 1 See, for example, Peacocke, A. R., Creation and the World of Science (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979), pp. 77–8Google Scholar. Houston's, JamesI Believe in the Creator (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1979) contains a dissenting voice: see pp. 106–7.Google Scholar

page 460 note 2 Op. cit. p. 9.

page 461 note 1 See Owen, , op. cit., pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

page 462 note 1 The Essence of Christianity, trans. Eliot, George (New York, Harper and Row, 1957), p. 101Google Scholar. A similar conclusion, from a different standpoint, was reached by Hodge, Charles in his Systematic Theology, 1, pp. 579–89Google Scholar – referred to and discussed by Houston, James, loc. cit.Google Scholar

page 463 note 1 See Owen, , op. cit., p. 10Google Scholar, and Peacocke, , op. cit., p. 79.Google Scholar