A comprehensible universe : the interplay of science and theology / George V. Coyne, Michael Heller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Coyne, George V., 1933-2020.

Contributor:

Heller, Michał.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rationalism.

Religion and science.

Science--Methodology.

Science.

Physical Description:

xiv, 160 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Springer, [2008]

Summary:

Why is our world comprehensible? This question seems so trivial that few people have dared to ask it. In this book we explore the deep roots of the mystery of rationality. The inquiry into the rationality of the world began over two-and-a-half-thousand years ago, when a few courageous people tried to understand the world with the help of reason alone, rejecting the comforting fabric of myth and legend.

After many philosophical and theological adventures the Greek concept of rationality laid the foundations of a revolutionary way of thinking: the scientific method, which transformed the world.

But looking at the newest fruits of the world's rationality - relativity theory, quantum mechanics, the unification of physics, quantum gravity - ... the question arises: what are the limits of the scientific method? The principal tenet of rationality is that you should never stop asking questions until everything has been answered ...

Contents:

Part I The Drama of Rationality 1

Chapter 1 Discovery That the World is Rational 3

1 The Great Mutation

2 Order and Necessity

3 The First Conflict between Reason and Belief

4 The Presence of Myth

Chapter 2 Should the Astronomer Look into the Sky? 11

1 Plato's Philosophy of Physics

2 Platonic Inspirations

Chapter 3 Seven Fighters Against Thebes 15

1 The Wrath of Aristotle

2 Mathematics and Physics

3 The Nature of Mathematics

Chapter 4 How to Count the Grains of Sand 21

1 The Number that is Greater than Any Other Number

2 The Method

3 Three Great Traditions

Chapter 5 Is the World Rational? 27

1 Questions about Rationality

2 Our Preliminary Hypothesis

3 Against Rationality

4 The Kant Effect

Part II The Input of Christianity 33

Chapter 6 Christianity on the Scene 35

1 Greek Philosophy and the Biblical Tradition

2 Foolishness to the Greeks

Chapter 7 Theology and Science in the Epoch of the Church Fathers 41

1 Greek Rationality and Christian Theology

2 The Church and the Academy: Jerusalem and Athens

3 The Challenge of Greek Cosmology

4 Christian Revolution

5 Evaluation

Chapter 8 The Medieval Contribution 53

2 High Scholasticism

3 The Method

4 Transmitting and Transforming Rationality

Part III Discovery of the Method 61

Chapter 9 Achilles and the Arrow 65

1 The Dialectic of Motion

2 Achilles and the Tortoise after Twenty-Five Centuries

3 The Miracle of the Method

4 Antinomies of Transience

5 The Evolution of Problems

Chapter 10 The Dynamics of Aristotle 73

1 Philosophical Background

2 Two Laws of Aristotelian Dynamics

3 The Principle of Inertia

4 Dynamical Standards

Chapter 11 Three Generations: From Tartaglia to Galileo 79

1 Stroke over s

2 Science and Artillery

3 Falling Stones

4 Galileo the Relativist

5 The Greatest Discovery of All

Chapter 12 Birth of the Method 89

1 The View from the Shoulders of Giants

2 Definitions and Laws of Motion

3 Calculus

4 Concepts Well Known to All

5 The Elimination of Matter

6 To Calculate or to Explain

7 Experimental Philosophy

Chapter 13 Is the World Mathematical? 101

1 The Method

2 Non-Mathematical Universes

3 What Can We Learn from the Examples?

4 The Natural Selection of Physical Theories

5 The Justification of Induction

Chapter 14 Mathematics at Work 111

2 Mathematics Sees More than Our Eyes Do

3 The Idea of Field

4 Relativistic Revolution

5 Quantum Revolution

6 The Mathematization of Chaos

7 The Mathematization of "Everything"

8 The Planck Threshold

9 Limits of the Method

10 A Field of Rationality

2 God's Mathematics

3 Mathematics as a Morphology of Structures

4 Structural Realism

5 Structure of the World

6 The Mind of God and the Mind of Man.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 143-151) and index.

ISBN:

9783540776246

3540776249

9783540776260

3540776265

OCLC:

245537542