Romany.
By “sympathetic” I mean that some things have to be accepted on trust in order to proceed in any intellectual endeavour. While it may seem that this is not needed in natural science, in that hierarchies of knowledge are built on firm foundations, this is not the case. It is rather the case that the foundations are more like piles driven into a swamp that become firm enough to support other structures. There is no bed rock. Foundationalism has had a hard time of it in theology as well, there is no way we can build a rational structure from the ground up. Anselm coined the phrase “faith seeking understanding” to describe the discipline of theology. For example one must accept that God has revealed himself as Father , Son and Holy Spirit, or as Barth would have it “The revealer, revealed, revealing”. This is dogma in a similar way that the theory of evolution has become dogma for biology. This is not to say that it is suspended in mid air, with no visible means of support, there is a rational basis, the piles are driven into the swamp.

Academic theology is not as denominational as you suppose. At Murdoch Catholics take the same lectures as Protestants. This is not to say that there are no denominational differences, but at the level of academe, these tend to be minimal. For example at the Melbourne College of Divinity Catholics and the Uniting Church share facilities and teaching in a very peaceful fashion.

Apsis.
There is no doubt that the philosophers of the early modern age had an over optimistic understanding of the power of reason. Reason in maths was fine but how do you decide whether to follow the Duke of Monmouth or Charles II

Although could suggest how the commentaries give great insight into our Western progress since Christianity was lifted out of the Dark Ages not long after the turn of the first Millineum AD - do find that as with the RC Church, vey little credit is given to St Thomas Aquinas who heralded the change with his acceptance of earthly progress as being impossible without the infusion with faith of both philosophical and scientific reasoning.

Further, pleased to have John Locke given mention as one who gave prelude to the American War of Indpendence with his statement after the English 1688 Glorious Revolution that any proleriat has the right to rise up against autocratic elitism - as such.

Sells,

You have managed to rattle my cage again. This time on the subject of biology and mathematics.

You cant study populations without counting. Statistics is fundamental to the study of behaviour. Calculus is fundamental to understanding nephrology. Hydraulics (physics with strong mathematical underpinnings) is surely necessary in vascular studies. And so on and so on.

Although we are still a fair way from connecting all the dots there is a growing sense that the mathematical study of complexity is going to make significant contributions to our study of biological systems.
Again it is a fairly long chain of argument but surely an understanding of chemistry is fundamental to understanding physiology and metabolism.An understanding of physics is fundamental to understanding chemistry and maths to understanding physics.

If studies in symmetry do not make a major contribution to biology in the future then I will eat my calculator. It will only happen, however,when biologists with facility in algebra bring those skills to bear on their work.

Is there no relation between the study of neural networks and our understanding of the nervous system?

My medical friends assure me that those aspiring to study medicine should skip biology and concentrate on chemistry, physics and maths. What does that say about biology?

I would venture to suggest that those biologists who have no need of mathematics in their work simply have not YET made the necessary connections to bring mathematical studies to bear on their work. (The fact that some attempts to do this have failed hardly invalidates the enterprise.) Perhaps that is because so many biologists dropped out of maths too early.

This thread, focussed as it is on theolgy, history and philosophy, revolves around a discussion of the likes of Newton, Lebniz and Newton. . . Mathematicians. There is something about the 'rediscovery' of mathematics and the historical shift commonly designated the 'enlightenment'.

Philolaus, a student of Pythagorus, said it well when he said "Were it not for number and its nature, nothing that exists would be clear to anybody either in itself or in its relation to other things.. ."

Oops.. I should proof read my posts more carefully that should be "Newton, Lebniz and Descartes"

Romany,

I think Sells has a point, in that someone with a Christian background and strong theological understanding is more likely to have insight into the many theological views and their significant impact through European history. That said, any sympathetic view holds the potential for biased influence and hence any analysis or conclusions should be done from a neutral stance.

apis,

I agree that the "Enlightenment" could certainly be called the "Re-enlightenment". Logic and reason are tools used to link or create relationships between different concepts or ideas. Yes, you need to start somewhere, make some assumption to seed the process with an idea(s). However in order to have a meaningful discussion or form a worthwhile argument, it would be best to make assumptions that a reasonable to all involved. This is where epistemology comes into it, in identifying the ideal 'pure' basis for arguments, an assumption that should be common to everyone.

Your examples of 'bad' science simply highlight the assumption of the absolute value of science. It is the failure to challenge this assumption that leads to scientific work that can cause harm.

The common misapplication of statistics is not the fault of the discipline itself, but of those that misuse it. In the same way that common misquoting of the bible wouldn't imply the bible is at fault. When properly applied (through thorough logic and reasoning, challenging assumptions, etc), statistics do provide evidence of 'truth'.

I guess to summaries my view on morals would be to suggest that they represent empirical knowledge that has evolved over the generations that can be better understood with a rational/logical approach, rather than merely accepted as absolute truth.

Waterboy.
I think you are overoptimistic about the power of maths in the biological sciences. It reminds me of a similar optimism in Locke’s time, after the dazzle of Newton’s Principia many got on the bandwagon of maths, thinking that the certainty it offered in all manner of fields would bring in a new age. Samuel Clarke prefaces his first Boyle lecture with his desire for his demonstration of the being and attributes of God be as mathematical as possible. The result was unoriginal rubbish. But you have made me pause. A colleague of mind who has an engineering and therefore mathematical background did some work years ago on the phenomenon of temporary threshold shift produced in the human subject (himself) after exposure to loud sound. His mathematical analysis of this phenomenon was groundbreaking. However, a similar attempt at modelling the behaviour of a single outer hair cell has limped along and finally, I think, petered out without result. There are many biological phenomena that do not yield to a mathematical treatment. They are just too complicated, they contain unimaginable processes.

But having said that I rue my poor mathematical background that I think has limited my perception of certain phenomena.

While we are on the subject of reason I have been reading Alasdair MacIntyre’s “Whose justice? Which rationality”. He makes the point early on that it is not a matter of rationality but rationalities. Rationalities cannot be divorced from the historical traditions that nurtured them. Reason was not invented by Enlightenment figures, Medieval philosophy and theology were eminently rational, that was their whole point. As has been pointed out, Aquinas used Aristotelian logic. What we have in the early 18th century is a rationality without a tradition, it is a word that is used to bludgeon every one else senseless while having itself feet of clay.

Again we come up against propaganda, it was not the “age of reason” it was the age when reason was disconnected from any historical tradition that engendered it.