De-Fragmenting Modernity

We live in a strangely fragmented lifeworld. On the one hand, abstract constructions of our own imagination--such as money, mere facts, and mathematical models--are treated by us as important objective facts. On the other hand, our understanding of the concrete realities of meaning and value in which our daily lives are actually embedded--love, significance, purpose, wonder--are treated as arbitrary and optional subjective beliefs. This is because, to us, only quantitative and instrumentally useful things are considered to be accessible to the domain of knowledge. Our lifeworld is designed to dis-integrate knowledge from belief, facts from meanings, immanence from transcendence, quality from quantity, and mere reality from the mystery of being. This book explores two questions: why should we, and how can we, reintegrate being, knowing, and believing?Modern science, focusing on facts and power, is neither coherent nor existentially adequate. Instead of this crumbling edifice, the author of this book erects a new one--which actually is the old one--founded on the wonder of existence and the appreciation of finding ourselves in a world that makes sense. The solution he offers is not only intellectually satisfying; it is even essential for solving the scientific, political, and moral challenges of our time.--Knut Alfsvag, professor of systematic theology, VID Specialized University, Stavanger, Norway; author of What No Mind Has Conceived? On the Significance of Christological ApophaticismPaul Tyson has a genius for entering into the everyday experience of the modern person. But rather than allowing the limits of that experience to dictate the ultimate meaning of things, he gently but compellingly opens it up to its forgotten roots and plants it in a healthier and more life-giving ground. In this case, that ground is an understanding of the great mystery of being and a robust, non-privatized faith.--D.C. Schindler, author of The Perfection of Freedom: Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel between the Ancients and the ModernsPaul Tyson is the Director of the Emmanuel Centre for the Study of Science, Religion and Society at the University of Queensland. He is author of Faith's Knowledge (2013) and Returning to Reality (2014).