Personal Reality, Volume 2: The Emergentist Concept of Science, Evolution, and Culture
Ebook
Western civilization was built on the concept of God. Today modern science, based on the critical method and so-called objective facts, denies even the existence of our soul. There is only matter: atoms, molecules, and DNA sequences. There is no freedom; there are no well-grounded beliefs. The decline of Western civilization is not the simple consequence of decadence, hedonism, and malevolence. Modern critical science has liberated us from the old dogmas but failed to establish our freedoms, values, and beliefs. However, human knowledge is not objective but personal. We are the children of evolution. Everybody sees the world from his own personal point of view anchored into his/her body. We use our billions-of-years-old evolutionary skills and thousands-of-years-old cultural heritage to recognize and acknowledge the personal facts of our reality, freedom, and most important natural beliefs: respect and speak the truth. In reality, even science itself is based on our personal knowledge. Only our false conceptual dichotomies paralyze our thinking. God or matter?--there is a third choice: the emergence of life and human persons. This is the only way to defend our freedoms and the Christian moral dynamism of free Western societies.
“Addressed to current controversy concerning the origin and
explanation of biological life and human culture, Hungarian
philosopher Daniel Paksi aims to establish a coherent,
scientifically grounded concept of evolutionary emergence as a more
viable alternative to both reductionist materialism(s) and
ontological dualism(s), providing a sounder conceptual foundation
for cultural meaning. Paksi's argument draws on
philosopher-scientist Michael Polanyi's Personal
Knowledge and Samuel Alexander's Space, Time, and
Deity. Developed in dialogue with previous efforts toward this
goal, Paksi articulates a hopeful intellectual vision for humankind
in the twenty-first century.”
—Dale Cannon, Western Oregon University
“This is a thorough examination of Neo-Darwinism’s denial of the
reality and significance of emergence, using and developing Michael
Polanyi’s and other philosophies plus more empirical detail,
followed by an account of the meaning and reality of the emergence
of genuinely new orders of existence and how they can be related by
the boundary conditions of a lower level being determined by the
next higher. Perhaps how emergence is itself possible is more open
than Paski allows.”
—R. T. Allen, author, The Necessity of God
- Title: Personal Reality, Volume 2: The Emergentist Concept of Science, Evolution, and Culture
- Author: Daniel Paksi
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2019
- Logos Release Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781532676710, 9780227177174, 9780227907184, 9781532676697, 9781532676703, 1532676719, 0227177177, 0227907183, 1532676697, 1532676700
- Resource ID: LLS:9781532676710
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T14:53:11Z
Daniel Paksi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics where he received his PhD in history and philosophy of science in 2010. His primary goal with Personal Reality is to establish a coherent concept of emergence based on Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge and Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time, and Deity.