Integrative Epistemology and the Search for Meaning

1993 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-140
Author(s):  
F. LeRon Shults ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Relational Model ◽  
Search For Meaning ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Interdisciplinary Dialogue ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Open Structures ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Practical Implications

The dis-integration of the arts and sciences is evidence of a cultural and psychological split in the contemporary frame of mind. The roots of this separation may be traced to the dualist epistemology of the modem period in philosophy. The emergence of an integrative epistemology through interdisciplinary dialogue may assist in healing this dualism, illustrated in the convergence of kinetic thinking in theology, natural science, and other disciplines. This essay emphasizes the creaturely nature of the search for meaning and the need for humility and integrity toward open structures of the universe. This relational model serves as a heuristic framework which discloses interdisciplinary invariances in the knowing event. The practical implications of this paradigm for theological inquiry are explored in the context of its personal, ecclesial, and ecumenical dimensions.

scholarly journals Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe by Brian Greene

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 667-675
Author(s):  
George Robert Williams III
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Search For Meaning ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Universe

Brian Greene’s Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe, as the title suggests, is an ambitious work.  Greene takes the reader on a vast tour which begins with the birth of the universe and ends with its (likely) dissolution.  The staggering timescale that Greene considers here is perhaps unique among science books aimed at a wide audience.  And Greene uses the backdrop of the universe’s emergence and demise as an effective platform to explore human meaning in a relatively wide range of inquiry.  These subjects include consciousness, religion, language, and the arts.  It appears significant for Greene that these, as important as they are, all play out in a relatively brief time in the context of the evolution and demise of the universe.  At the end of the day, Greene submits that life is likely ephemeral.  He provides a quote from Nabokov that characterizes human life as a “brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” (p.13) 

Abdelkébir Khatibi

2020 ◽  
pp. 261-278
Author(s):  
Lucy Stone McNeece
Keyword(s):  
Modern World ◽  
Continuous Transformation ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Abdelkebir Khatibi ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
Rational Individual ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Church

Despite the considerable acclaim that Khatibi’s work has received, critics are frequently challenged to describe it. It is often considered « hybrid, » because it cannot be contained by the genres and categories of thought that we associate with Literature. I will argue that Khatibi’s work is less hybrid than « hermetic, » and that the difficulty felt in classifying or even analyzing his writing, is due to the presence of echoes and traces of archaic traditions. Khatibi devoted years of his life to studying other cultures as well as his own, finding that it was a rich fabric of varied influences, just as he found that other cultures bear material traces of many buried encounters. The influences present in Khatibi’s writing include Sufism, the traditions of Asia, such as the Tao and the Vedas, but also the esoteric sciences originating in Mesopotamia and Egypt that found their way to Greece, and which were revised and translated by Arabs and Eastern Christians. These entered into Europe from Andalusia and also through Italy, under the sponsorship of the Medicis, and contributed substantially to the revolution in the arts and sciences of the Renaissance. These cultures entertained a different relation to signs and images than that which has predominated since the Enlightenment in Europe. They also had a less binary and hierarchised conception of the world and man’s place in it. They imagined the universe as the space of a continuous transformation of diverse elements, a view opposed to that of the rational individual as master of his environment. Ostracized by the Church and the State, they remained in shadow, treated as heresies. I will try to show that many of the unorthodox traits of Khatibi’s thought and writing can be attributed to the influence of these archaic traditions, whose poetic and ethical values have much to teach us in the modern world.

Life in the Open with Charles Frederick Holder

2014 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-221
Author(s):  
Jane Apostol
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Children's Books ◽  
Children’S Books ◽  
Sport Fishing ◽  
Prolific Author ◽  
Natural Scientist ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Santa Catalina Island

Natural scientist Charles Frederick Holder settled in Pasadena in 1885. As a prolific author, lecturer, and editor, Holder was a key promoter of the region, sport fishing, and natural science. He wrote popular children’s books as well. He is also remembered as an influential figure in education and the arts and as a founder of the Tuna Club on Santa Catalina Island and the Valley Hunt Club in Pasadena and its Tournament of Roses.

The Poetry and Music of Science

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom McLeish
Keyword(s):  
School Leaver ◽  
Creative People ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
Personal Accounts ◽  
Poetry And Music

‘I could not see any place in science for my creativity or imagination’, was the explanation, of a bright school leaver to the author, of why she had abandoned all study of science. Yet as any scientist knows, the imagination is essential to the immense task of re-creating a shared model of nature from the scale of the cosmos, through biological complexity, to the smallest subatomic structures. Encounters like that one inspired this book, which takes a journey through the creative process in the arts as well as sciences. Visiting great creative people of the past, it also draws on personal accounts of scientists, artists, mathematicians, writers, and musicians today to explore the commonalities and differences in creation. Tom McLeish finds that the ‘Two Cultures’ division between the arts and the sciences is not after all, the best classification of creative processes, for all creation calls on the power of the imagination within the constraints of form. Instead, the three modes of visual, textual, and abstract imagination have woven the stories of the arts and sciences together, but using different tools. As well as panoramic assessments of creativity, calling on ideas from the ancient world, medieval thought, and twentieth-century philosophy and theology, The Poetry and Music of Science illustrates its emerging story by specific close-up explorations of musical (Schumann), literary (James, Woolf, Goethe) mathematical (Wiles), and scientific (Humboldt, Einstein) creation. The book concludes by asking how creativity contributes to what it means to be human.

scholarly journals Ascertaining Consciousness in Identity Formation: Best Medical Practices in Dementia Care

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 567-567
Author(s):  
Angel Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dementia Care ◽  
Medical Practices ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Testing Case ◽  
Clinical Research Trials ◽  
Common Misconceptions

Abstract This session identifies common misconceptions about identity for persons living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Going beyond diagnostic brain imaging and neurocognitive testing, case studies and research in creativity from around the United States highlights consciousness of persons living with ADRD. Reviewing and discussing artworks is aimed to set dialogue in the question of where memory deposits emerge when engaged in creativity. Through art therapy techniques, this type of self-expression may provide new avenues in treatment for dementia care. Exploring the arts from those with Mild Cognitive Impairment to late stage Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, such as frontotemporal dementia, consciousness seems to remain intact despite neural death. This session aims to discourage poor spending allocations and establishing meaningful care. From clinical research trials to creativity of self-expression, the importance of why the arts and sciences matter are demonstrated as effective modalities that enhance quality of life.

Hooke recommemorated

1996 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-140
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Personal Interaction ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
History Of

Richard Nichols, The Diaries of Robert Hooke, The Leonardo of London, 1635-1703 . Lewes, Sussex: The Book Guild, 1994, Pp. 185, £15.00. ISBN 0- 86332-930-6. Richard Nichols is a science master turned historian of science who celebrates in this book Robert Hooke’s contributions to the arts and sciences. The appreciation brings together comments from Hooke’s Diaries , and other works, on each of his main enterprises, and on his personal interaction with each of his principal friends and foes. Further references to Hooke and his activities are drawn from Birch’s History of the Royal Society, Aubrey’s Brief Lives , and the Diaries of Evelyn and of Pepys. The first section of the book, ‘Hooke the Man’, covers his early years of education at home in Freshwater, at Westminster school and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he soon joined the group of experimental philosophers who set him up as Curator of the Royal Society and Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, Bishopsgate. Hooke’s domestic life at Gresham College is described - his intimate relationships with a series of housekeepers, including his niece, Grace Hooke, and his social life at the College and in the London coffee houses.

The Flight from the Arts and Sciences: Trends in Degrees Conferred

Science ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 250 (4980) ◽  
pp. 517-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. E. Turner ◽  
W. G. Bowen
Keyword(s):  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
The Arts

Talent Developed: Conversations with Masters in the Arts and Sciences

1997 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-317
Author(s):  
Rena F. Subotnik ◽  
Vladimir Feltsman
Keyword(s):  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
The Arts
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