Dear Fiona,
Thanks for the clarification.
My post focused on two specific issues. It would be a mistake to draw general conclusions from this on how I see imagination, intuition, creativity, design, embodied knowledge, or the general nature of knowledge.
Jinan made positive scientific claims. I addressed those claims. It is not possible to draw conclusions about my views on religion or mysticism from my comments on scientific truth claims and the evidence offered to support those claims. I don’t belittle religion or mysticism. I say that one cannot base a scientific argument on religious or mystical grounds.
In a speech to scientists and science students in Cologne, the late John Paul II (1980: unpaged) said: “The Church defends reason and science, recognising that science has the capacity to attain to the truth... defending the freedom of science which gives it its dignity as a human and personal good.” John Paul’s argument is that the religious teachings of the church neither contradict nor extend to scientific assertions. The freedom of science demands that scientific arguments stand or fall on scientific evidence. That’s the core of my comments opposing a religious or mystical justification for scientific claims.
This position doesn’t suggest that I “belittle religion and mysticism as the antithesis of scientific research.” I’m saying that religion and mysticism are different domains to the domains of scientific research – apart from those sciences that study religion or faith in some way.
The list focuses on doctoral education in design. We discuss research training and research issues here. Everyone here has personal beliefs, opinions, and positions. All of us choose among different intellectual and professional positions, as well as choosing among different possible interpretations of fact. What distinguishes a research conversation from a conversation in the local pub is a tradition of providing evidence and sound argument for the positions we take and the interpretations we choose.
My dispute was not with a religious or mystical perspective. It was with a scientific truth claim seemingly based on religious belief or mystical experience.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design> Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman
Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China
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John Paul II. 1980. Meeting of Pope John Paul II with Scientists and Students. Koln Cathedral, 1980 November 15. URL:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1980/november/documents/hf_jp_ii_spe_19801115_scienziati-studenti-colonia_ge.html
Accessed 2013 April 23.
For further examples, a selection of John Paul’s writings and speeches on this topic can be found at The Interdisciplinary Documentation on Religion and Science website maintained by the Advanced School for Interdisciplinary Research at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross:
http://www.inters.org/Teachings-from-John-Paul-II
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Fiona Jane Candy wrote:
—snip—
With hindsight, perhaps I referenced something specific as a way of making a very general point about what I saw as an over commitment to the cosmology of science and to words and to the fundamental difficulties of escaping this in the format of a discussion list, and to the difficulties of getting past the intellect - to consciousness and to experience. Perhaps this was a leap of imagination and I conflated the topics Jinan has been discussing with others I have been concerned with elsewhere.
You seemed so blithe to belittle religion and mysticism as the antithesis of scientific research in relation to design (that was what I thought this list is concerned with - design) and I was rather alarmed by this as imagination, spiritually, instinct and intuition are such huge personal and universal aspects of humanness.
—snip—
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