Beyond Reductionism: Reinventing the Sacred.
We have lived under the hegemony of the reductionistic scientific worldview since Galileo, Newton, and Laplace. In this view, the universe is meaningless, as Stephen Weinberg famously said, and organisms and a court of law are “nothing but” particles in morion. This scientific view is inadequate. Ph...
| Publicado en: | Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science Vol. 42; no. 4; pp. 903 - 915 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Open Library of Humanities
Dec2007
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=27609190&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 27609190 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 05912385 ZYG jtl: Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science issn: 05912385 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2007 vid: 42 iid: 4 pid: 15576 pub: Open Library of Humanities artinfo: ui: 27609190 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2007.00879.x ppf: 903 ppct: 12 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 50KB tig: atl: Beyond Reductionism: Reinventing the Sacred. aug: au: Kauffman, Stuart affil: Founding Director of the Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics at the University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada. su: Reductionism Emergence (Philosophy) Attributes of God Western civilization Evolutionary theories -- Social aspects Holy, The History sug: subj: Reductionism Emergence (Philosophy) Attributes of God Western civilization Evolutionary theories -- Social aspects Holy, The History keyword: Darwinian preadaptations emergence God as the creative universe reductionism ab: We have lived under the hegemony of the reductionistic scientific worldview since Galileo, Newton, and Laplace. In this view, the universe is meaningless, as Stephen Weinberg famously said, and organisms and a court of law are “nothing but” particles in morion. This scientific view is inadequate. Physicists are beginning to abandon reductionism in favor of emergence. Emergence, both epistemological and ontological, embraces the emergence of life and of agency. With agency comes meaning, value, and doing, beyond mere happenings. More organisms are conscious. None of this violates any laws of physics, but it cannot be reduced to physics. Emergence is real, and the tiger chasing the gazelle are real parts of the real universe. We live, therefore, in an emergent universe. This emergence often is entirely unpredictable beforehand, from the evolution of novel functionalities in organisms to the evolution of the economy and human history. We are surrounded on all sides by a creativity that cannot even be prestated. Thus we have the first glimmerings of a new scientific worldview, beyond reductionism. In our universe emergence is real, and there is ceaseless, stunning creativity that has given rise to our biosphere, our humanity, and our history. We are partial co-creators of this emergent creativity. It is our choice whether we use the God word. I believe it is wise to do so. God can be our shared name for the true creativity in the natural universe. Such a view invites a new sense of the sacred, as those aspects of the creativity in the universe that we deem worthy of holding sacred. We are not logically forced to this view. Yet a global civilization, hopefully persistently diverse and creative, is emerging. I believe we need a shared view of God, a fully natural God, to orient our lives. We need a shared view of the sacred that is open to slow evolution, because rigidity in our view of the sacred violates how our most precious values evolve and invites ethical hegemony. We need a shared global ethic beyond our materialism. I believe a sense of God as the natural, awesome creativity in the universe can help us construct the sacred and a global ethic to help shape the global civilization toward what we choose with the best of our limited wisdom. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science is the property of Open Library of Humanities and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science holder: Open Library of Humanities dt: @attributes: year: 2007 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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