Spiritual and Scientific Inquiry as ways the East and the West have sought to understand the nature of Reality

DIALOGO ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-43
Author(s):  
Srinivas Arka
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
Future Science ◽  
Current Science ◽  
Ultimate Purpose

Western and Eastern philosophical cultures have different perspectives on inquiring about the nature of reality. These influences have shaped the approach to what qualifies as science in the West and Spiritual Inquiry in the East. These perspectives are intimately related to the topic of the reliability of scientific theories and spiritual inquiry and the ultimate purpose of both approaches. This paper mainly examines whether there is something to be gained from an Eastern way of thought and presents its benefits given that our current science has largely been influenced by Western thought. However, any evaluation of both perspectives must also contemplate how future science may be advanced by incorporating these complementary approaches.

Aquinas on the Foundations of Knowledge

1991 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 125-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonore Stump
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Classical Foundationalism ◽  
The Middle Ages

Aquinas is sometimes taken to hold a foundationalist theory of knowledge. So, for example, Nicholas Wolterstorff says, “Foundationalism has been the reigning theory of theories in the West since the high Middle Ages. It can be traced back as far as Aristotle, and since the Middle Ages vast amounts of philosophical thought have been devoted to elaborating and defending it‥ ‥ Aquinas offers one classic version of foundationalism.” And Alvin Plantinga says, “we can get a better understanding of Aquinas … if we see [him] as accepting some version of classical foundationalism. This is a picture or total way of looking at faith, knowledge, justified belief, rationality, and allied topics. This picture has been enormously popular in Western thought; and despite a substantial opposing ground-swell, I think it remains the dominant way of thinking about these topics.”

The Old Rhetoric

2019 ◽  
pp. 27-68
Author(s):  
Anthony Ossa-Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Persuasive Communication ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
The Third ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Persuasive Speech

This chapter discusses the Old Rhetoric, sketching the long persistence in the West—from Aristotle to the early twentieth century—of a ‘single meaning model’ of language, one that takes ambiguity for granted as an obstacle to persuasive speech and clear philosophical analysis. In Aristotle's works are the seeds of three closely related traditions of Western thought on ambiguity: the logicosemantic, the rhetorical, and the hermeneutic. The first seeks to eliminate ambiguity from philosophy because it hinders a clear analysis of the world. The second seeks to eliminate ambiguity from speech because it hinders the clear and persuasive communication of argument. The third, an extension of the second, seeks to resolve textual ambiguity because it hinders the reader's ability to grasp the writer's intention. The chapter then considers Aristotle's two types of verbal ambiguity: homonym and amphiboly. The solution to both—whether their presence in a discussion is accidental or deliberate—is what Aristotle calls diairesis or distinction, that is, the explicit clarification of the different meanings involved.

The Scope of Reason: An Epistle to the Persians

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 195-208
Author(s):  
Renford Bambrough
Keyword(s):  
International Symposium ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
World Views ◽  
Limits Of Knowledge ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Dialogue Among Civilizations

‘Does the planetary impact of Western thought allow for a real dialogue among civilizations?’ This arresting question was set to the lecturers at the first international symposium of the Iranian Centre for the Study of Civilizations, which took place in Tehran in October 1977. Plans were made for a second symposium to be held in January 1979 under the title ‘The Limits of Knowledge According to Different World-views’. The Director's letter of invitation amplified the theme in a series of questions:For instance, is the agnosticism which has now extended to a world-wide level the consequence of the destruction of objective reason, namely the universal logos, as conceived earlier in the great metaphysical doctrines of the East and the West? Is there any organic link among these: the creation of modern political myths, the individual's fragmentation and the reduction of thought to its mere instrumentality? Is knowledge limited solely to our calculating reason or can it lead to spheres raising us above the limits determined by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason?

scholarly journals MEMAHAMI SEJARAH INTELEKTUAL ISAIAH BERLIN (1909-1997)

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 279
Author(s):  
Kamaruzzaman Bustamam ◽  
Ahmad Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
Western Thought ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
The West ◽  
Isaiah Berlin ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Intellectual Foundations

This article aims to examine the biography of Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), a philosopher from Oxford University. Berlin is a thinker who against the Enlightenment, which he made several criticisms to Western thought. To do this, he has produced some written works that edited by Henry Hardy. The editor has contributed to introduce the ideas of Berlin to the West. This study is an introduction on Berlin by looking his works and his intellectual foundations. Finally, it is argued that Berlin has authored many works and using the analytical philosophy as his intellectual foundations.

scholarly journals Signifikansi Teori-Teori Popper, Kuhn, dan Lakatos Terhadap Pengembangan Ilmu-Ilmu Keislaman

ULUMUNA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-196
Author(s):  
Ahmad Choirul Rofiq
Keyword(s):  
Future Development ◽  
The West ◽  
Current Science

One of the contemporary problems being experienced by Muslims is their backwardness in current science development. The progress of science in general is currently dominated by the West. Theme of this paper is the development of science and emergence of theories around it. To elaborate the theme the author will first briefly review the sequence of the development of science in the path of history to show the positive contributions of Muslims. Next is the analysis of theories proposed by Popper, Kuhn and Lakatos. After that, this paper attempt to describe the significance of these theories to the development of Islamic sciences while connecting them with Fazlur Rahman’s view about normative Islam and historical Islam in order to obtain an alternative portrait of the direction of future development.

scholarly journals Some philosophical bases of civilizational discourse in modern Russia

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-231
Author(s):  
Yuriy M. Reznik ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge System ◽  
Russian Philosophy ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
The Subject

The author of the article shares, on the whole, the conclusions reached by A.V. Smirnov. First, the West, with its claims to the universality of its own civilizational project and the policy of globalization, is not suitable for Russia. The latter cannot be the West due to the logic of the development of its culture (cultures). Russia expresses the universal in its own form and claims to be a universal project. Secondly, Russian philosophy, according to the speaker, is in many respects «secondary metaphysics» in relation to Western thought, using its methodology and conceptual apparatus. And yet she has a chance to turn towards her own project and formulate her agenda. Thirdly, since Russia cannot be the West, it means that it must be guided by its own reason, correlating it with the minds of other peoples and cultures. To expand the capabilities of the Russian mind, it is neces­sary to gradually overcome the colonial nature of the knowledge system, incl. philosophy, and initiate new projects and discourses. Fourthly, in Russia there are several large cul­tures and religions that arose in it from the very beginning and are united by a common historical destiny. It is possible to unite within the framework of a civilizational project only if there are integrative values, as well as a unifying idea (“all-humanity”) and a spe­cial way of the subject-predicate complex (for example, “all-subjectness”).

scholarly journals 一個氣功科學工作者的札記: 氣功科學的問題與思考

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-121
Author(s):  
Peihua NI
Keyword(s):  
Human Health ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Scientific Attitude ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Scientific Investigations ◽  
Digital Commons ◽  
Scientific Experiments ◽  
Take All

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.修煉氣功大有益於人的健康。但對於氣功那些令人震撼的效應，還沒有提出一套比較完整的氣功科學理論來加以解釋。然而，無法用當代已接受的科學理論來說明的現象不應一概斥之為迷信。當我們說“氣功科學”時，我們並不是說氣功已經是一門科學，而是說要以科學的態度、方法、手段和精神來對待氣功，研究氣功，努力開創一個科學探索的新領域。在這一探索中，還要注意從氣功的理論、世界觀和方法論出發來設計氣功科學實驗，而不是以常規科學的方式為萬能的或唯一正確的研究方式。Many people have noticed that practicing qigong is beneficial to human health. However, how does it work is not quite clear. Especially, there is no way to use the contemporarily accepted scientific theories to explain some strikingly impressive effects and phenomena that qigong practitioners have brought out. But we should not take all of them as superstitious simply because they cannot be brought to light by currently accepted scientific theories. Instead, we should seriously explore qigong science.When we speak "qigong science", we do not mean qigong is already a science. Rather, we mean that we ought to study qigong through scientific methods and in scientific attitude and spirit in order to open a new area for scientific inquiry. The basic spirit of science is honesty: truth is truth, and false is false. Science is not static. It is always developing. In scientific investigations of qigong, we must take notice to the special characteristics of qigong: its own theories, worldviews as well as methodologies. In designing scientific experiments on qigong, we should not take currently common scientific designing procedures and rules as absolute and universal standards. Rather, we should adapt them in ways of suiting the peculiar features of qigong practice so that useful information and results can be brought about.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 46 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

Understanding

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Grimm ◽  
Michael Hannon
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Science Understanding

Understanding is a kind of cognitive accomplishment, and the objects of understanding—from people, to languages, to scientific theories, to logical proofs—are strikingly varied. As this variety suggests, debates about the nature and value of understanding occur across philosophy. In the philosophy of science, understanding is typically taken to be one of the main goods at which scientific inquiry aims; it is therefore intimately related to issues concerning scientific explanation and to debates about what it is that makes scientific inquiry distinctive. In epistemology, the interest lies in characterizing what kind of cognitive accomplishment understanding is, exactly, and how (if at all) it differs from other cognitive accomplishments such as knowledge and wisdom. In the philosophy of language, a central concern is characterizing what is involved in understanding (or grasping) linguistic items like words, sentences, or languages as a whole; similar questions about what is involved in our understanding or grasp of concepts are crucial to the philosophy of mind. Debates in additional areas will be discussed in this article, but one overarching question is whether the sort of understanding we have of scientific theories, languages, people, and the like are similar in name alone or whether they share certain essential traits. For example, one common thought is that across all of these areas understanding involves the discernment of structure of some kind. It is also commonly thought that to achieve understanding this structure must not be discerned in just any old way, but that it must be “seen” or “grasped.” Just how to understand the metaphors of “seeing” and “grasping” has been a central issue in work on understanding across disciplines.

Turk’s-Head Knots

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-218
Author(s):  
Alexandra Gillespie
Keyword(s):  
Global Network ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
The West

This chapter begins by discussing the often-remarked connection between textual and textile technologies, before focusing on a style of knot called a “Turk’s-head” knot by modern codicologists, and commonly found on medieval book fastenings and girdle book chemises. The codicologists’ term has evaded scrutiny, I suggest, because the image—of a Moorish head hanging from the hand or belt of a premodern European reader—fits Western thought about books a little too well. The legacies of violence and conquest latent in the term “Turk’s-head” knot are latent in Western histories of the book, where they form the overlooked background for endless, triumphalist narratives about the “rise of the West.” My chapter tries to reorient these narratives by demonstrating that knot work found in and on medieval European books is closely tied to many other cultures’ bookbinding practices. Such books can be resituated, by way of their knots, in a global network for the exchange of text technologies in the premodern period.

Imaginative Frames for Scientific Inquiry

2019 ◽  
pp. 304-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Camp
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Model Construction ◽  
Cognitive Tools ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Scientific Representations ◽  
The World

Philosophers of science in the last half century have emphasized that scientific theories are not sets of transparently interpretable, logically connected true descriptions; rather, they involve implicit appeal to only partially articulated theoretical, practical, and empirical assumptions, and depart from stating the truth in various ways. One influential trend treats scientific theorizing as largely a process of model construction, and analyzes models as fictions. While this chapter embraces the increased role accorded to imagination and interpretation in scientific practice by the models-as-fictions view, it argues that different scientific representations relate to the world in importantly different ways. It distinguishes among a range of distinct representational tropes, or “frames,” all of which function to provide a perspective: an overarching intuitive principle for noticing, explaining, and responding to some subject. Starting with Max Black’s metaphor of metaphor as a pattern of etched lines on smoked glass, the chapter explains what makes frames in general powerful cognitive tools. It then distinguishes metaphor from some of its close cousins, especially telling details, just-so fictions, and analogies, first in the context of ordinary cognition and then in application to science, focusing on the different sorts of gaps that frames or models can open up between scientific representations and reality.

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