Front cover image for The way toward wisdom : an interdisciplinary and intercultural introduction to metaphysics

The way toward wisdom : an interdisciplinary and intercultural introduction to metaphysics

Working from a realist Thomistic epistemology, Ashley asserts that we must begin our search for wisdom in the natural sciences; only then, he believes, can we ensure that our claims about immaterial and invisible things are rooted in reliable experience of the material. Any attempt to share wisdom, he insists, must derive from a context that is both interdisciplinary and intercultural. Ashley offers an ambitious analysis and synthesis of major historical contributions to the unification of knowledge, including non-Western traditions. Beginning with the question "Metaphysics: Nonsense or Wisdom?" Ashley moves from a critical examination of the foundations of modern science to quantum physics and the Big Bang; from Aristotle's theory of being and change, through Aquinas's five ways, to a critical analysis of modern and postmodern thought. Ashley is able to interweave the approaches of the great philosophers by demonstrating their contributions to philosophical thought in a concrete, specific manner. In the process, he accounts for a contemporary culture overwhelmed by the fragmentation of data and thirsting for an utterly transcendent yet personal God
eBook, English, ©2006
University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Ind., ©2006
1 online resource (xxi, 617 pages) : illustrations
9780268074692, 9780268045654, 0268074690, 0268045658
607739836
The problem of the unification of knowledge
The historical varieties of "metaphysics" in Western culture
Natural science is epistemologically first
The culminating foundational theorem of natural science
The existence and essence of metascience
Unity, plurality, and efficient causality
Unity and plurality in other sciences
Truth and formal causality
Truth in the special sciences
Goodness and final causality
Finality in the special sciences
The absolute and/or nature
The one creating first cause
The way toward wisdom
Electronic reproduction, [Place of publication not identified], HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010