The Mind of God and the Works of Nature
Laws and Powers in Naturalism, Platonism, and Classical Theism
By (author) J. Orr
Paperback (Published)
(February 2019)
ISBN: 9789042937628
Price: $85.00
On back order
Taking its cue from the repeated failure to find naturalistic alternatives to divine lawmaking, this book undertakes a retrieval and reappraisal of a high-scholastic philosophy of nature that grounds lawlike regularities in the conceptual and causal powers of God and, having done so, concludes that the metaphysical framework of classical theism yields a more powerful and parsimonious explanation of the rhythms and patterns of the natural world than its secular rivals.
Historians of science have long considered the very idea of a law-governed universe to be the relic of a bygone intellectual culture that took it largely for granted that a divine lawmaker existed. Many philosophers of science today insist that the claim that laws of nature are hardwired into the fabric of physical reality is laden with implausibly theological assumptions, preferring instead to treat them as theoretical axioms in an optimal description of nature’s regularities, or else as robust patterns of causal connections or causal powers whose status can be reconciled to the stringent demands of metaphysical naturalism. Yet the metaphor of lawhood has proven more difficult to dislodge than the theistic commitments it once presupposed, not least because it preserves the widespread intuition that the task of scientific inquiry is not to stipulate the difference between a lawful and an accidental regularity in nature, but to discover it. Taking its cue from the repeated failure to find naturalistic alternatives to divine lawmaking, this book undertakes a retrieval and reappraisal of a high-scholastic philosophy of nature that grounds lawlike regularities in the conceptual and causal powers of God and, having done so, concludes that the metaphysical framework of classical theism yields a more powerful and parsimonious explanation of the rhythms and patterns of the natural world than its secular rivals.
- By (author) J. Orr
Other Titles in this Series
The Art of Theology
Hans Urs von Balthasar's Theological Aesthetics and the Foundations of Faith
Volume 25
John Henry Newman’s Theology of History
Historical Consciousness, Theological 'Imaginaries', and the Development of Tradition
Volume 60
Levinas and the Greek Heritage followed by One Hundred Years of Neoplatonism in France
A Brief Philosophical History
Volume 32
The Limits and Possibilities of Postmetaphysical God-Talk
A Conversation between Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida
Volume 52
On the Meaning of ‘Miracle’ in Christianity
A Philosophical Evaluation of the Current Miracle Debate and a Proposal of a Balanced Hermeneutical Approach
Volume 68
Christian Theology and the Transformation of Natural Religion: From Incarnation to Sacramentality
Essays in Honour of David Brown
Volume 64
The Hammer of the Cartesians
Henry More's Philosophy of Spirit and the Origins of Modern Atheism
Volume 53
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