Meta-physics = Metascience
The way toward
wisdom is through metaphysics
'What then about the fostering of Metascience in the modern university, since,
as I have argued, metaphysics since Descartes also requires a radical revision
if it is to really guide and unify the other disciplines without undermining
their proper autonomy? In most cultures there has not been a sharp distinction
between "philosophy" and "religion." Thus to exclude the
study of religion (theology) from our universities makes it automatically impossible
for them to be multiculturally open. These universities must come to recognize
the contextual limits that their own Western, Post-Enlightenment thought has
imposed on what they teach and the ways they teach it. Metascience in a broad
sense that does not exclude openness to forms of knowledge other than those
of western scientism must be developed in our universities and given the task
of enabling them to achieve genuine interdisciplinarity and multiculturalism.
Departments of "religious studies" which scrupulously avoid questions
of truth cannot perform this function adequately. What we need is not departments
in the university that are simply "philosophy" or "religious
studies." We need a major department of "Research in World Views"
that will inform students about the bases not only of their own culture but
of the others they will encounter. Then students will be prepared for serious
dialogue about what in these various cultures can provide common ground for
global culture, for an increasing unum in pluribus. Metascience independent
of particular faith commitments, as it has been described in this book, has
precisely that aim.
Christian universities represent a great international culture that is inevitably
a major player in any multicultural dialogue at the sapiential level. Christian
culture has played a leading role in the historical development of the university,
yet because its theologians and philosophers in the post-Galilean epoch withdrew
from active dialogue with developing natural science, it remains isolated. Christians
must now accept the laborious and even painful task of rethinking the foundations
of natural science and of a Metascience grounded in such a revised natural science.
It will then be effective in a mediating, ecumenical role between Secular Humanism
that threatens to reduce all cultures to its own ideological perspective and
the cultures of the world that recognize spiritual reality.
In this task a Christian university must not only promote dialogue with its
monotheist partners, the Jews and the Muslims, but it must also learn to dialogue
with the naturalist and spiritualist monism of most other cultures. No doubt
it will find in these cultures implicit tendencies to monotheism that will become
a common ground for dialogue. Such dialogue is possible, however, only if monotheists
are as open to the emphasis of monists on a deep spirituality and respect for
the natural material world and the human body. It must be admitted, however,
that universities with a religious orientation, such as the many Catholic institutions
in the Untied States, are under great cultural and economic pressure for secularization.
Most of the Protestant universities have already succumbed.' -- Benedict Ashley,
The Way toward Wisdom, pp.442-443.
Compendium
of Theology
Thomas Aquinas, trans. Cyril Vollert, S.J. (St. Louis & London: B. Herder
Book Co., 1947).
METASCIENCE Classroom Discussion Materials from the Special
Sciences
