No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Scientific disciplines seek a truthful description of how things are. One way to think of the way that science does this is to say that science seeks to show how things fit together. In doing this the scientist implicitly makes use of aesthetic and ideal categories, such that aesthetic relationships of things to each other in thought somehow stand for the actual relationships (involving energy, charge, mass and the like). This relationship of ideal thought in the medium of human language to the reality of the world is remarkable. Why is it that we can know anything truthful about the world on the basis of the way we talk to each other? Why is there anything instead of nothing? Scientific practice suggests ways in which these are the same question. It may be that the createdness of the world underlies all truthful human discourses, whether artistic or scientific, mechanical or philosophical.
1 Willams, Rowan, Grace and Necessity. Reflections on Art and Love (Harrisburg PA/London: Morehouse/Continuum, 2005), p. 169Google Scholar.
2 Op. cit.
3 I am indebted to David Stuart for the observation that viruses are living in the sense that they have evolved.
4 Hunt, Gavin “Manufacture and use of hook-tools by New Caledonian crows”, Nature 379 (1996), pp. 249-251CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 David Baltimore, Nobel Lecture, 1976
6 Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar
7 Bamford, Dennis, Burnett, Roger and Stuart, David, “Evolution of viral structure”Theoretical Population Biology 61 (2002), pp. 461-470CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
8 Atiyah, Michael and Sutcliffe, Paul, “Polyhedra in Physics, Chemistry and Geometry”Milan Journal of Mathematics 71 (2003), pp. 33-58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Platonic Solids are demonstrated in Book XIII of Euclid's Elements and form the basis for Plato's discussion in Timaeus of the nature of the elements Earth, Air, Fire and Water along with a fifth, Quintessence.
9 Icosahedral symmetry for viruses was predicted before it was known. Crick, Francis and Watson, James, “Structure of small viruses”Nature 177 (1956), pp. 474-475CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Caspar, Don and Klug, Aaron, “The structure of small viruses”Advances in Virus Research 7 (1960), pp. 225-325Google Scholar. Crick and Watson actually claimed to have discovered the structure of DNA on ideal grounds, although of course the pre-existence of actual experimental data from Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins which Crick and Watson are known to have been aware of rather questions that claim; see Nature 171 (1953), pp. 737-738.
10 Luminet, Jean-Pierre, Weeks, Jeffrey, Riazuelo, Alain, Lehoucq, Roland and Uzan, Jean-Phillipe “Dodecahedral space topology as an explanation for weak wide-angle temperature correlations in the cosmic microwave background”Nature 425 (2003), pp. 593-595CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
11 Davies, Paul, The Cosmic Blueprint (London: Penguin Books, 1995)Google Scholar.
12 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973) §527Google Scholar.
13 cf Gilbert, Robert “The Riot of the Mind”New Blackfriars 87 (2006) pp. 357-363CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 McCabe, Herbert OP God Still Matters (London: Continuum, 2002) pp. 126-127.Google Scholar
15 “Sufficient Reason” in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 97 (1997), pp. 109-123CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Ibid. p. 113
17 Ibid. p. 113
18 Ibid. p. 118
19 Ibid. p. 120
20 Ibid. p. 121
21 Ibid. p. 123
22 Carr, Bernard and Rees, Martin “The anthropic principle and the structure of the physical world”Nature 278 (1989), pp. 605-612CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 McCabe God Still Matters pp. 15-16, 36-38; God Matters (Continuum: London, 1987) pp. 3-7Google Scholar.
24 Walker, p. 123, my italics
25 McCabe in the Preface to God Matters.
26 Radcliffe, Timothy OP, What Is the Point of Being a Christian? (New York: Continumm/Burns&Oates, 2005)Google Scholar.
27 Peacocke, Arthur, Theology for a Scientific Age (London: SCM Press, 1993) pp. 106-110Google Scholar.
28 Alison, James, The Joy of Being Wrong (New York: Crossroad Herder, 1998) p. 99Google Scholar.
29 Kerr, Fergus OP, After Aquinas (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002) pp. 187-200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Radcliffe, I Call You Friends (New York: Continuum, 2001) p. 100Google Scholar.
31 Radcliffe What is the Point of Being a Christian pp. 29-48; McCabe God Matters p. 15
32 Radcliffe op. cit. p. 121.
33 Girard, René The Scapegoat (Baltimore MA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986) p. 204CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Girard, with Oughourlian, Jean-Michael and Lefort, Guy Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1987) pp. 259 and 438-44Google Scholar1.
34 Harrisburg PA/London: Morehouse/Continuum, 2005
35 In preparation for a talk on science and religion at Magdalen College, Oxford; I am grateful to Michael Piret for the opportunity to give that talk.
36 Ibid. p. 167
37 Ibid. p. 135
38 Ibid. p. 150.
39 Ibid. p. 163.
40 Ibid. pp. 153-154.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid. p. 159
43 Ibid. p. 169
44 Ibid. pp. 169-170. And here it is worth mentioning Girard again: the release from a mythical worldview through revelation has given us the ability to do science.
45 Robert Gilbert op. cit.
46 Rowan Williams p. 135 et seq.
47 Ecclesiasticus ch. 1, vv 1-11.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.