F. H. George is Professor of Cybernetics at Brunel University in England. His book comprises eight chapters originally developed as lectures for a non-specialist audience. He points out the position of computer science among the sciences, explains its aims, procedures, and achievements to date, and speculates on its long-term implications for science in particular and society in general. Among the topics discussed are biological simulation and organ replacement, automated education, and the new philosophy of science. Each chapter concludes with a (...) brief summary. George's treatment of the technical details of his speciality is both illuminating and readable, thus serving as an excellent primer on one of the new technology's most important components. His wider forays into philosophy, economics, sociology, and religion are less happy, however; and unfortunately they take up a large part of the text. In general, they reveal that George identifies the methods of human advancement with the methods of the natural sciences in an equation whose rigidity would make even B. F. Skinner blush. Yet, the reader cannot claim that he was not forewarned; for in the introduction, D. J. Stewart, Chairman of the Rationalist Press Association, suggests that the current "swing of interest among young people away from the physical and biological sciences and towards the behavioural and social sciences... represents a symptom of disillusionment with science and technology and an attempted escape into irrationality."--J. M. V. (shrink)

This volume consists of seven contributions to a symposium held in 1970 to commemorate the centennial of Saint John's University. Carlo Giacon and Bernard Cohen explicate the relationship of philosophy and modern science. Joseph Owens and John E. Smith treat the question of God as it is posed in philosophy today. Richard McKeon interrelates humanism, civility, and culture; while Vernon Bourke evaluates humanism as a possible basis for moral philosophy. Finally, Paul Ramsey offers some pithy comments on the present trend (...) which abhors man's irreverence for the non-human environment but waxes enthusiastic over the prospect of man's limitless self-modification. Though these papers are brief, for the most part they are extensively footnoted; and thus they provide a handy survey of current thinking on the indicated issues.--J. M. V. (shrink)

In this, his first book, originally published in 1926, Henry Nelson Wieman sets forth a view on the relationship of religious experience and scientific method which in substance he has maintained ever since. According to Wieman, our knowledge of the concrete world consists of immediate sensuous experience as interpreted through some set of concepts. Religious experience is the richest form of immediate sensuous experience. It is our awareness of God, who is as much an object of experience as are tree (...) and hill and stone. And scientific method is the systematic procedure by which the conceptual network for interpreting immediate sensuous experience is clarified and corrected, with the experience-concept compound thus becoming "science." Religious experience, therefore, receives its most adequate interpretation in science; while science, in turn, receives its most stimulating input from religious experience. In principle, the highest of the individual sciences is theology; in fact, however, the very complexity of religious experience and the difficulty of distinguishing it clearly from other types of immediate sensuous experience have prevented more than merely minimal progress in achieving a truly scientific theology. On the whole our ideas about God are marked by confusion and controversy, therefore, despite the fact that some of these notions probably are true. Wieman’s book serves as an excellent example of the liberal thought which dominated much of theology and philosophy-of-religion during the last part of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth. The religious thinker with a liberal perspective conceives his primary challenge as developing a scientifically acceptable interpretation of religious experience, taking that experience itself as being obvious and almost universally recognized. One need not be particularly well read to know that current judgments regarding the obviousness of religious experience are hardly so sanguine, however, and that the religious thinker typical of our own age therefore conceives his primary challenge quite differently.—J. M. V. (shrink)

Butchvarov is chairman of the department of philosophy at the University of Iowa. His book, a contribution to a new series, the Northwestern University Publications in Analytical Philosophy, deals with "the conceptual foundations of epistemology." It is divided into four main parts. The first undertakes an account of the general concept of knowledge. The second treats the objects of a priori knowledge; the third, the nature of primary a posteriori knowledge. The fourth part regards nondemonstrative inference and the nature of (...) derivative knowledge in general. The focus of the book is upon fundamental epistemic concepts rather than such particular issues as knowledge of the future, of bodies, of other minds, etc. Butchvarov urges that such specialized problems be treated only after the general conceptual framework has been investigated, lest one's common-sense opinions on the former unduly influence his philosophical conclusions as to the latter. For the inherent demands of the discipline itself must be respected: "In philosophy, as in any other purely theoretical discipline, it is better to be wrong as the result of inquiry and argument than to be right as the result of mere conviction." One of the author's central conclusions concerns evidential criteria. One unquestionable criterion of evidence is the impossibility of mistake, the "demonstrative" criterion. Is there, in addition, any "nondemonstrative" criterion of evidence, with the consequent possibility of nondemonstrative derivative knowledge or at least nondemonstrative rational belief? While not ruling out the possibility of such a criterion, Butchvarov judges that at least one has not yet been brought forth. Particular criteria proposed as nondemonstrative, such as inductive and behavioral, either presuppose the demonstrative criterion or else lack intelligible content. More generally, the nondemonstrative criterion either would or would not possess something in common with the demonstrative criterion, such that both could be understood as species of the same genus, "criterion of evidence." But no successful attempt has thus far been made in showing just what this shared trait might be; and the thesis that there can be multiple criteria of evidence without any generic commonality equivocates on the very notion of evidence. It follows, therefore, that knowledge and rational belief are much more restricted than one would ordinarily surmise. This book manifests both the scholar's mastery of his field and the teacher's concern for clear, well-structured presentation. It reads well, employs good examples, and includes the all-important index.--J. M. V. (shrink)

Anders Nygren is widely known among English-speaking readers for his subtle and scholarly analysis of the forms of love, Agape and Eros, first published in 1930. Important facets of his far-ranging thought, however, have remained largely inaccessible to those who do not read Swedish. The present volume is a significant step in reducing that inaccessibility. Nygren's work is treated by seventeen different contributors in essays grouped under the following headings: Philosophy of Religion, Motif Research, The Meanings of Love, Systematic Theology, (...) Ethics, and Cultural and Ecumenical Concerns. Yet the book is more than merely a Festschrift. Over ten years in preparation, it aims at criticism as well as interpretation; and it includes an introductory "intellectual autobiography" by Nygren himself, a concluding response by Nygren to each of his critics, and a complete bibliography chronicling the 372 items published by Nygren from 1918 through 1970. Nygren's investigations fall on both sides of the line between philosophy and theology. The interest which unifies these inquiries is the philosophy of religion. "It is above all in the philosophy of religion that the great decisions are finally made." Nygren's earliest work was an attempt to establish the philosophy of religion on a purely scientific basis. It was in this regard that he developed his characteristic method of "motif research." Just as the supreme theoretical, aesthetic, and ethical categories are the true, the beautiful, and the good, respectively, so the supreme religious category is the eternal. All these categories are merely formal, however, and one must turn to the particular for content. Now, content in the theoretical domain consists of factual relationships; but content in the remaining three, "atheoretical," domains consists of the values or "fundamental motifs" which have been chosen from among a limited number of basic alternatives by a given historical group. The scholar forms a hypothesis regarding the fundamental motifs of the group in question; and if this hypothesis is verified by historical research, it then serves as a principle for organizing additional data concerning the group. Thus, the philosopher-historian of religion studies groups in an effort to determine their answers to the question, "What is the eternal?" It is chiefly in this domain that Nygren has applied his method, concluding, for example, that "agape" and "eros" are the characteristic Christian and Greek answers, respectively, to the fundamental religious question. Nygren maintains that this approach provides the means for treating the religious question systematically while simultaneously respecting the vast historical diversity of specific religious content. Just as the method of motif research is central to Nygren's work, so the discussion of that method and its applications constitutes, in effect, the central matter of this book. The project is carried off well. Nygren's final commentary is especially welcome, confirming or correcting positions presented by the contributors as his, and accepting or rejecting positions advanced by the contributors as their own.--J. M. V. (shrink)