Category Archives: Philosophy

It’s just astonishing how things fortuitously/providentially connect together. PNGarrison has kindly sent me a chapter of a difficult (oh dear…) book by Owen Barfield, which he has painstakingly transcribed for me. Thanks Preston. Barfield was C S Lewis’s great mentor – which has to be a recommendation – and the book, Saving the Appearances, is about the development of the way humans have viewed the world across history. The Amazon reviews tend in general to say, “This book has changed my life: I don’t understand much of it, but I keep coming back to it.” Having read one chapter, I see what they mean. It’s on my Amazon wishlist, and I’ll … Continue reading →

In a way the recent 2-part series on BioLogos, by Paul Julienne, is quite groundbreaking. It’s the first time in an article at BioLogos I’ve seen information cited as a fundamental constituent of the universe, in the way that Paul Davies and others have advocated for many years. Perhaps it is because, like Davies, Julienne is a physicist rather than a biologist – and a quantum physicist at that. He is particularly unusual, in the TE setting, in using DNA as an example of the same principle of the primacy of information, and in linking all those to the wisdom of God personified in Christ, the Logos. The articles could easily … Continue reading →

Michael Polanyi was one of the great polymaths of the twentieth century, contributing significantly to chemistry, philosophy, sociology and economics. He was also a devout Christian. His work included a thorough critique of the scientistic positivism of his age (raising its tattered standard again in the populist New Atheism in ours), arguing cogently for a far deeper and broader understanding of epistemology. A friend of Einstein and other great scientists, he wrote usefully on academic freedom too – again apparently foreseeing and warning against the political and ideological restrictions now seen in the research sciences.

The second part of TOF’s series on the dangers of (scientific) models is now up. It goes into more technicalities than the first part, but is pretty instructive. I’m not sure yet where he mainly wants to take the series, but some applications should be obvious – except for those whose models of knowledge won’t let them see it.

I can’t have been more than eight when a Sunday School teacher told me that God lights the stars in the sky at night to show the way. Mr Sutton, his name was. Even now I think he was being simplistic given the age-group – but then not all my fellows watched the Brains Trust on Sunday afternoons. I, however, had the Boys Book of Astronomy, and a mother with a strong skeptical streak, so with all the scientistic priggishness of my advanced years I told him he was wrong, and that the start were giant, distant balls of gas like the sun, and shone all the time rather than only at … Continue reading →