The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S. Massa
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Theological Argument ◽  
The Church

This chapter presents a more detailed examination of Thomas Kuhn’s structure than that provided in the Introduction. The chapter explains how and why Kuhn’s book permanently rejected the idea of scientific “progress.” The author notes that although most Catholics experienced the widespread critique of Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical as a sudden (if welcome) rejection of the kind of theological argument that the Church had utilized in its moral teaching for several centuries, the cracks in the foundations of that older approach to natural law had appeared considerably before 1968. The emergence of a historicist approach to moral theology in the decades before the promulgation of the encyclical contextualized the rocky reception accorded it within a much larger historical framework. Further, even the guild of moral theologians had come to a much more nuanced understanding of what could be (and what could not be) “unchangeable” in Christian ethics.

Kuhn on architectural style

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-58
Author(s):  
David Wang
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Feminist Studies ◽  
Architectural Style ◽  
Logical Positivist ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Common Parlance ◽  
Work Structure

By any measure Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a landmark in recent influential ideas. The very term ‘paradigm shift’, now common parlance, derives from this 1962 work. Structure redirected its own domain, the philosophy of science, from a logical positivist orientation in its evaluation of scientific progress to one that accommodates a complex mix of sociological, linguistic and psychological factors. Perhaps because of this interdisciplinary inclusiveness, Kuhn's insights have informed theory in many disciplines. A survey of the recent literature includes works in anthropology, comparative literature, criminal justice, art history, education and feminist studies.

scholarly journals The Goods of Human Sexuality: Ethics and Moral Theology

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-30
Author(s):  
Ellen Wondra
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Behavior ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Human Sexuality ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Sexual Relationships ◽  
Sexual Ethics ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The Church

AbstractChristian ethics has always taken a complex view of the goods and purposes of human sexuality and its role in human relationships. Sexual desire and behavior have to be seen always within the overarching moral imperatives of love of God and love of neighbor. Such love entails self-giving and other-regard, and in longer-term relationships also some measure of commitment, fidelity, reciprocity or mutuality, truthfulness and generativity. Yet not all relationships with these characteristics do (or should) include sexual behavior. Nor do all sexual relationships include all these characteristics or virtues all the time. So we do better to base our moral evaluations of relationships on the exercise of these virtues than on more obvious criteria of sexual orientation or even status in the eyes of the church. At the same time, it is also possible for faithful and reasonable people to disagree faithfully and reasonably on sexual ethics, as on other things.

scholarly journals Descriptions of Scientific Revolutions

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-43
Author(s):  
Kyle Cavagnini
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Paradigm Change ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions

The twentieth century saw extended development in the philosophy of science to incorporate contemporary expansions of scientific theory and investigation. Richard Rorty was a prominent and rather controversial thinker who maintained that all progress, from social change to scientific inquiry, was achieved through the redescription of existing vocabularies. However, this theory fails to describe revolutionary scientific progress. Thomas Kuhn’s theories of paradigm change, as first described in his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, better portray this process. I attempt to show this by applying Kuhn’s and Rorty’s views to examples of scientific progress and comparing the results.

The Open Debate: Moral Theology and the Lives of Gay and Lesbian Persons

2003 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
James F. Keenan
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Gay And Lesbian ◽  
Open Debate ◽  
Theological Debate ◽  
The Church

[In this final section of the Notes on Moral Theology the author explores the extensive work of Catholic moral theologians reflecting on morality and the lives of gay and lesbian persons. He demonstrates that moral theologians not only critically engage a variety of statements by the different offices of the magisterium, but also investigate the topic by using the resources of the tradition: Scripture, the natural law, theological writings, and human experience. The result is a highly responsible open theological debate that studies not only the lives of some believers but the Church itself.]

scholarly journals Public Moral Discourse

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 255
Author(s):  
Robin Lovin
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Practical Interest ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Moral Discourse ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Christian Worship ◽  
The Church

Public moral discourse encompasses open discussions in which moral concepts of good and right are brought to bear on questions of public policy and on broader issues of basic rights and the goals and rules that guide social institutions. These public questions also raise practical, apologetic, and political concerns that are central to Christian ethics and moral theology. Public discourse frames legal and political understandings of religious freedom, and Christian ethics has a practical interest in ensuring that these choices do not limit Christian worship and formation or unduly restrict the institutional life of the church. Public discourse also engages apologetic theology in a moral task because the questions raised in public discourse involve conceptions of human good, human nature, and human community that have been discussed in Christian theology across the centuries. Christians have a distinctive understanding of persons in society that they hope to make effective, or at least to make understood, in a wider public discussion. Finally, public moral discourse gives rise to a moral responsibility for Christian participation in politics to create a public consensus on the creation of shared human goods.

On How and Why Theology Changes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S. Massa
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Paradigm Change ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Over Time

The Introduction provides an overview of the argument of the entire book. The author introduces the essential questions explored in the book concerning how theology changes over time. Also discussed is Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the work in the history of science that this book utilizes to understand changes in theology. The author draws on Kuhn’s term, “paradigm shift,” to explore ideas about theological paradigm change. The concepts of micro-traditions (specifically, natural law) and macro-traditions in theology are examined. This author explains that the book proceeds in an analogously historical fashion, moving from earlier paradigms of natural law to later ones.

A KUHNIAN INTERPRETATION OF THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF ACCOUNTING

1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry E. Cushing
Keyword(s):  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Model Following ◽  
Entry Model ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
Double Entry ◽  
Dominant Paradigm

Distinct parallels exist between the historical evolution of scientific disciplines, as explained in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and the historical evolution of the accounting discipline. These parallels become apparent when accounting's dominant paradigm is interpreted to be the double-entry bookkeeping model. Following this interpretation, the extensive articulation of the double-entry model over the past four centuries may be seen to closely resemble the “normal science” of Kuhn's theory. Further parallels become apparent when Kuhn's concept of the disciplinary crises that precede scientific revolutions is compared to developments in the accounting discipline over the past 25 years. This portrayal of accounting's evolution suggests an uncertain future for the accounting discipline.

Lisa Sowle Cahill and the Search for a “Functionalist” Paradigm of Feminist Global Ethics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S. Massa
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Global Ethics ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
The Real ◽  
Boston College ◽  
Moral Duties

This chapter presents an examination of the thoughts and writings of Lisa Sowle Cahill, a moral theologian at Boston College. Taking issue with both Germain Grisez and Jean Porter, Cahill seeks to construct a new paradigm of natural law that addresses feminist and poststructural scholars. Cahill believed that any paradigm of intercultural or interreligious ethics that purported to be describing moral duties in the real world must begin by exploring how ethical questions are intimately tied to the concrete experiences in specific (often religiously diverse) communities. Her paradigm addressed the concerns of feminist and postimperialist scholars in moving beyond the “false universalism” offered by paradigms like that of neo-scholasticism, while offering a “realist” understanding of social ethics that remained true to the realist impulses in Catholic moral theology.

Christ Existing as Community

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Mawson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
Human Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theological Study ◽  
Sanctorum Communio ◽  
The Church

How can theologians recognize the church as a historical and human community, while still holding that it has been established by Christ and is a work of the Spirit? How can a theological account of the church draw insights and concepts from the social sciences, without Christian commitments and claims about the church being undermined or displaced? In 1927, the 21-year-old Dietrich Bonhoeffer defended his licentiate dissertation, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church. This remains his most neglected and misunderstood work. Christ Existing as Community thus retrieves and analyses Bonhoeffer’s engagement with social theory and attempt at ecclesiology. Against standard readings and criticisms of this work, Mawson demonstrates that it contains a rich and nuanced approach to the church, one which displays many of Bonhoeffer’s key influences—especially Luther, Hegel, Troeltsch, and Barth—while being distinctive in its own right. In particular, Mawson argues that Sanctorum Communio’s theology is built around a complex dialectic of creation, sin, and reconciliation. On this basis, he contends that Bonhoeffer’s dissertation has ongoing significance for work in theology and Christian ethics.

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