released 8/2/2019

The word “form” refers both to the perceptible shape of things and to the inner essence of things. The discipline of “natural philosophy” once paid attention to the form of things in both senses. But natural philosophy has been displaced by modern science, which focuses attention on the external aspects of the things it studies at the expense of their interiority, their nature. Science has thus eclipsed concern for form-as-essence (what things really are) in favor of form-as-structure (how things work). Since science has pride of place as our only publicly acknowledged source of knowledge of the world, its inattention to the nature of things effectively promotes the assumption that the things within the natural world have no nature. In this archive interview from Volume 121 of the Journal, Michael Hanby talks about why we shouldn’t assume that science can ever be philosophically and theologically neutral.

32 minutes

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