492 - Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge

Transformation and Convergence
in the Frame of Knowledge
By Thomas F. Torrance
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1984. 355 pp. $24.95.

During the past few decades, a revolution has been taking place in our understanding of what it means to know something, or to be sure of something, or to be able to prove something-in other words, in our epistemology. As surely as the epistemology characteristic of the classical and medieval world gave way to that of Bacon and Galileo and of modern science, a new epistemology (sometimes confusingly called post-modern, but not in the book under review) is taking the stage. The situation is not without its disconcerting, even comical, contrasts. "Modernist" arguments about the scientific credibility of the biblical account of creation sit on book shelves with "post-modernist" announcements that the modern physicist's view of the world is surprisingly like that of the Chinese and Indian mystics. Although the general public seems to have as yet only a vague, but growing, tacit knowledge of what is going on, academic disciplines such as literary theory, philosophy and even the social sciences are rent with controversy over what to make of recent developments in science and in the theory of knowledge. And even though a considerable literature is developing within religious studies about the re-definition of religion and of such categories as myth, little

494 - Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge

Christian theology has been written to address the relevance to Christianity of these new developments in science and epistemology. It is thus with considerable enthusiasm that one greets Professor Torrance's new book.

Torrance is well known in this country. Towards the end of his tenure as Chair of Theology at the University of Edinburgh he was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize. Since his retirement be has continued writing as well as editing a series of books on Theology and Scientific Culture. In addition to his own writing, he has been one of the editors of the English language edition of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics. The present volume is a collection of essays written over the past decade. All but two of the eleven chapters in this book have been previously published, but in books and journals not easily available in this country.

The essays fall rather easily into three groups. The first three essays comprise about half of the book and are, taken together, a careful exposition of the development of the contemporary understanding of the philosophy of science and of the rise and fall of the "modern" mind. For readers unfamiliar with the developments alluded to in the first Paragraph of this review, these initial chapters are a clear, concise and relatively untechnical exposition of these developments. The third of them, "The Place of Michael Polanyi in the Modern Philosophy of Science," could stand alone as an excellent introduction to the thought of this important philosopher/ scientist. It is Polanyi, more than anyone else, who represents an up-to-date philosophy of knowledge for Torrance, and references to him recur in the middle essays of the book. These middle, shorter essays, continue the theme of the complementar ity of religion and science. Along with Polanyi, Albert Einstein, James Clerk Maxwell and Karl Barth are the subjects of individual essays or are frequently alluded to. It is only in the last three essays that theological themes are discussed at any length. "Truth and Authority In the Church," for example, is a cogent argument for a new understanding of truth and authority in the light of our revised understanding of science.

Following Polanyi, Torrance places great emphasis on the unlimited intelligibility of the world, upon tacit knowledge, and on the importance of the community of inquiry. He emphasizes that the framework of such an epistemology resembles that of Barth as well as that of the early Church Fathers and that such themes as creation and incarnation took their classical shape in a non-dualist framework that is better described by Einstein than by Newton. Other recent attempts to provide a contemporary understanding of knowledge, less congenial to classical Christianity, are missing from Torrance's argument. If the book has a fault, in fact, it is this omission. A confrontation with some of these alternate epistemologies, with Feyerabend, say, or Foucault, would have been welcome. That omission aside, however, this book will well repay a reader interested in understanding an emerging worldview in which

495 - Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge

religion and science will be seen as complementary rather than antagonistic.

Anthony Battaglia
California State University
Long Beach, California