PO Box 440140 Aurora CO 80014-0140
Title: The Sciences and the Fullness of Rationality
Author: Alberto Strumia.
Philip Larrey, Ph.D. and Peter Waymel, trans.
Imprint: The Davies Group, Publishers
soft cover
164 pp.
$20.00 US
ISBN 978-1-934542-20-0
January 2010
A confrontation with scientific thought — an evaluation of the path it has followed and of the research it has led to today — Fides et Ratio [Latin: faith
and reason], an encyclical promulgated by Pope John Paul II on 14 September 1998 dealing primarily with the relationship between faith and reason. One the one hand, we are
dealing with a didactic perspective, which suggests a new approach to the epistemological problem, one that goes far beyond the usual, not to mention tiresome, popular
prejudices. On the other hand, we are dealing with a research proposal that is philosophically and scientifically interesting. If, in the first Christian centuries, the cultural work
believers faced (and some authors and schools of thought knew how to do it very well!) was that of confronting Greek philosophy and Roman law, which were presented as both
theoretical and practical models of rationality, is it not true that Christians today must face the scientific model on an objective plane? And precisely at a time in which decisive
questions about its foundations are emerging? We must hope that there are today, as there were in the Christian centuries of the past, intellects capable of addressing these
questions positively, persons who have matured in the unity of knowing and living.
Contents
Presentation
1.
Introduction
2.
Examination of Some Texts of the Magisterium
3.
Terminology and Changes in the Conceptions of Science
4.
Aspects of the Epistemological Reflection of the 20th Century
5.
Reflections on “Science and Truth”
6.
Reflections on the Problem of the Foundations of Mathematics
7.
The Emergence of Complexity: the Whole and the Parts
8.
Minimal Bibliography
Author
Alberto Strumia is Professor of Mathematical Physics in the Department of Mathematics of the University of Bari (Italy) and invited professor of Philosophical and
Theological Epistemology at the F.T.E.R. (the Catholic Theological Faculty) in Bologna. Beside being concerned with scientific topics (non-linear wave propagation, relativistic
theories, irreversible extended thermodynamics, field theories and strings) his research was always especially addressed to interdisciplinary investigations comparing
Aristotelian-Thomistic logic and metaphysics with the recent problems involving the theory of complexity, formal ontology and the problem of foundations. He is the author
of several scientific and interdisciplinary articles and author and editor of more than twenty books, co-editor of the Interdisciplinary Dictionary of Religion and Science
(Dizionario interdisciplinare di scienza e fede, Rome 2002), is now vice-director of the on-line Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science. This ttle is a translation of Le
scienze e la pienezza della razionalità, Siena: Cantagalli, 2003