SCIENCE, THEOLOGY, AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL HORIZON: EINSTEIN, KANT, AND TILLICH:American Academy of Religion Series in Religion 67 by ROY D. MORRISONReview by: Carl TrindleSoundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Summer 1995), pp. 355-358Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41178708 .

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READINGS FOR ST. BREWS

ROY D. MORRISON II SCIENCE, THEOLOGY, AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL HORIZON: EINSTEIN, KANT, AND TILLICH American Academy of Religion Series in Religion 67 Atlanta: Scholar's Press, 1994

What if Leonardo were to appear among us? We would want to bring him up to date, of course, since he had predicted or con- ceived of so many things we have brought into being. How amaz- ing, even fascinating he would find our aircraft, our automobiles, our telephones, our. . . the list would be endless! And he would say to us in a fever of excitement, "Now you must explain to me how it all works."

Few of us would be able to reply to this innocent request with any detail or plausibility. The human race seems to have accumu- lated so much knowledge of the world; more, certainly, than any other member of the hive can ever encompass. And yet how dis- comfited we are (some of us) to realize that there are things be- yond human comprehension, not just for practical reason of bulk or profusion. Those things lie forever beyond our reach, beyond the "Transcendental Horizon."

A lifetime of reflection on the hard problem of the limitations of human knowledge informs Roy D. Morrison's Science, Theology, and the Transcendental Horizon. This mature vision is stoical, know- ing, tolerant, and humble.

From his earliest years Morrison has sought understanding of difficult things by the recognition and use of typologies. These, he finds, permit a sense of full understanding of an intellectual system, an effective means of teaching the most important fea- tures of systems, and a helpful means for their comparison. In Morrison's usage, "typology" gives attention to the largest catego-

Soundings 78.2 (Summer 1995). ISSN 0038-1861.

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356 SOUNDINGS Trindle/Burstein

ries in an endeavor. Even rather schematic remarks about the presence or absence of a category or the attention it is given in a system can be informative. To give a flavor of this approach, con- sider the promise to treat the systems of Kant, Tillich, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Einstein. He will treat each system with atten- tion to its cosmology, its metaphysics (or ontology), its under- standing of ultimate reality, its treatment of origins, its "anthropology" where appropriate, and its eschatology. Of cen- tral concern will be whether, where, and how each figure at- tempts to cross the transcendental horizon. A tall order! It would be no surprise that the treatment is rather skeletal; but that, after all, is characteristic of the approach Morrison has found so fruitful.

Morrison's work shares some of the uncompromising charac- ter of mathematical argument. This may be necessary. It is by no accident that the author appeals to Einstein's remark that among all the possible pictures of the world, that of the theoretical phys- icist ". . .demands the highest possible standard of rigorous preci- sion. . . such as only the use of mathematical language can give." Suitably warned, we are first supplied with a largish number of definitions and working models which "afford some semantic clarity for the following chapters."

It is in this rather uninviting section (a mistake to skip!) that we hear of the central example of a "Transcendental Horizon." Such an horizon divided the human-scale world so thoroughly captured by classical physics from the microscopic world which required a radically different account, the quantum mechanics. The philosophical implications of that account - the assump- tions it requires on causality, the role of the observer, its degree of completeness - is and was a matter for dispute; but it cannot be denied that the world of the small is very different from what was expected when physicists were hoping for little more than more precise measurements of well-understood behavior. Sum- mary and analysis of the debate between those physicists whom Morrison refers to as "classical," Einstein being the foremost ex- ample, and those whom he calls "neo-classical," i.e., the propo- nents of the Copenhagen interpretation, occupies a large portion of this book.

The quantum to classical transition, which takes place at about the scale of clusters of many molecules ("many" is variable, with

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Readings for St. Brevis 357

the experimental situation), is about the best defined of the sev- eral transcendental horizons dealt with here. But a clear hint that one is near is a drastic change in the method of investigation, and more significantly the abandonment of some of the philo- sophical tenets which informed the work on this familiar side of the boundary. Often one observes a change from formal logic to dialectical logic, in which the integrity of categories is breached. This abrupt change is a feature of the work of all who attempt to cross the boundary, Bohr and Heisenberg, Tillich and Heidegger.

Morrison poses four central questions: * What is the role of critical philosophy in the relation between

religion and science? * What role was played by philosophical issues in the thirty-year

controversy between Einstein and the Copenhagen physicists, Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg? * What equipment do humans possess for acquiring knowledge and what, in fact, are the limitations of that knowledge? * What was the fundamental philosophical intention of the German philosophers and theologians who employed the ontological approach - including dialectical ontology, phe- nomenology, and existentialism?

Morrison provides the following answers (which I must only sketch):

* Critical philosophy is the major publicly accessible means for the technical analysis of the constructs and issues that produce tension between religion and science.

* Philosophical decisions on the nature of reality and its order, the achievement of meaning, and the limits of human knowl- edge preceded the crisis presented by puzzling experimental data and the provisions of the quantum theory. Prior convic- tions, in other words, shaped the philosophical positions taken in the debate.

* German philosophers and theologians (Heidegger, Tillich) were attempting to overcome the limits of Enlightenment-glori- fied reason, to re-enchant the world, to deny the impenetrability of Kant's boundary.

I think that it is fair to say that the second of these questions receives the most thorough treatment, and the second of the an- swers is most convincing and complete.

Morrison does not offer us a convincing case for any of the standpoints he summarizes so fairly. His sympathy is obviously with Einstein, whose generosity and humility (". . .he offered no

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358 SOUNDINGS Trindle/Burstein

answers for that which is unanswerable.") are so admirable. He salutes the Einstein who accepted the existence of a transcenden- tal horizon, required no anthropomorphic God who "interferes in human affairs," nor personal immortality. In a similar spirit, Morrison feels no need, nor claims the special authority, to ex- clude points of view over the broad spectrum that he finds in science and theology.

It is a minor point, but one that stays with me as I mull the questions discussed by Morrison. He has benefitted enormously by the careful efforts of biographers of scientists (A. Pais receives special applause) and the sincere if sometimes naive and seldom honored efforts of scientists to grapple with the philosophical tangles into which their disciplines lead. The gift from his daugh- ter of Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind was an important and knowledgeable as well as affectionate gesture. May we all be so well-cared-for.

Carl Trinale The University of Virginia

LOUIS A. RUPRECHT, JR. TRAGIC POSTURE AND TRAGIC VISION: AGAINST THE MODERN FAILURE OF NERVE New York: Continuum, 1994

In this short but ambitious book, Ruprecht offers a restruc- tured view of tragedy that will call into question postmodern cyni- cism and offer a reply to the Nietzschean derogations of Christianity as romantic, sentimental, and decadent. To his credit, in a text that is erudite, readable, and deeply felt, Ru- precht largely succeeds.

In the preface, Ruprecht lays his foundation: he describes the tragic posture as the pessimistic view that our story is an apoca- lyptic one of a rise and fall, a decaying of the glories of the Greek polis to a broken world without unifying values character- ized by nightmarish technology and feckless egotism. He argues

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