Wednesday 26 June 2013

Split-brain

This article (not from a Christian viewpoint, and without having any deep analysis of the problem (or even recognising it as a problem at the deeper level)), captures the radical cleavage between the modern view of humanities and science:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/06/20/why-study-humanities-what-i-tell-engineering-freshmen/

Nancy Pearcey analyses the fundamental contradiction and analyses it from a Christian point of view really well in her "Saving Leonardo" - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Saving-Leonardo-Secular-Assault-Meaning/dp/1433669277.

Since the Enlightenment, sciences and the humanities have headed on radically contradictory paths. Science = certain, indisputable, universal truth. Humanities = nothing can be known, and perhaps nothing can even be communicated.

This feeds into the modern Western state of affairs, where Christianity (being assigned to the 'humanities' side) is treated as personal, private (weird) subjective preference (that hence has no relevance for fields such as the making of law); and secularism and atheism, assigning themselves (rather arbitrarily) to the 'science' side, demand to be treated as universal, public truth (and hence should rule the roost).

Christians need to understand more of the implications of Christ's universal Lordship in both creation and redemption, and avoid this split-brain approach to reality.

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