2007 Press Releases
"Eyes or Ears? On Science's Sense of the Divine" - Public Lecture, 14 March
Although it is fundamental to modern science that experiments centre on
what scientists can observe and measure, scientists in the ancient
world speculated about what they could not see. Socrates complained
that he was not a philosopher of nature because his reverence for the
divine prevented him from speculating about things under the earth. Why
did scientists think that they could examine what they could not see?
At the next lecture of the Faculty of Science Public Lecture Series at
UCC on 14 March, Dr Fiachra Long will argue that religions argued about
things unseen, things "hidden since the foundation of the world"
because they valued hearing over seeing and based their sense of order
in the world on a sense of harmony more available to ears than to eyes.
What can modern science's sense of the divine be like if it values eyes
over ears?
Fiachra Long is a Lecturer in the Philosophy of Education at UCC. He
holds degrees from UCD and Louvain-la-Neuve where he completed a
philosophy doctorate on Augustinan influences in Blondel. He publishes
in the philosophy of education , philosophy and theology and has
published Maurice Blondel: The Idealist Illusion (2000).
The lecture takes place at UCC's Boole Lecture Theatre 4 at 8pm on
Wednesday, 14 March. The highly popular lecture series, organised
by Professor William Reville of the Faculty of Science, UCC, continues
weekly until 28 March 2007. Admission to the lecture is free, and
as always, members of the public are invited to attend.
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