Metaphysics Commons^™

Rethinking Reverence For Life, Mike W. Martin

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Albert Schweitzer’s ethics of reverence for life is more complex and interesting than first appears. It contains themes relevant to contemporary environmental ethics, including a virtue-ethics approach that emphasizes personal responsibility and tolerance, empathy for living organisms, and the fundamental unity of life. Not surprising, then, Schweitzer has recently been acknowledged for pioneering a biocentric (life-centered) ethical theory.

At the same time, Schweitzer’s ethic has four unpalatable features: pantheism, anthropomorphism, excessive subjectivity, and guilt mongering. I trace these features to the metaphysical framework in which Schweitzer develops his ideal of reverence for life. I also show how the framework can …

Dialectical Laws And Elementary Catastrophes, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the newly developed Catastrophe Theory of Rene Thorn and E.C. Zeeman, it is possible to find mathematical interpretation of certain aspects of Hegelian and Marxist dialectics. Specifically, the three "classical" dialectical principles, (1) the transformation of quantity into quality, ( 2) the mutual interpenetration(or - the unity and struggle) of opposites, and (3) the negation of the negation, can be modeled using the seven "elementary catastrophe " given by Thom , especially the catastrophe known as the "cusp." Far from being an empty metaphysics or scholasticism, as critics have argued , these principles embody genuine insights into a class …

The Reconciliation Of Science And Religion In Symbolo-Fideism, Shirley Brown Moon

Wayne State University Dissertations

From the publication in 1859 of On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, religion was in open warfare against science. By the end of the century the war was not going well for religion. Biology, anthropology, archeology, the "higher criticism" united in an attack on Christian premises, while "applied science" — technology-provided, the materialistic comforts which made Christian promises utopian and unnecessary. The reaction of some Protestant and Catholic leaders to this threat from science was a retreat into funda­mentalism. Others hastened to show that the recent discoveries were not really in conflict with religious truths at …