Truth in the Making: Creative Knowledge in Theology and Philosophy (Routledge Radical Orthodoxy)

Miner, Robert C.

ISBN 10: 0415276977 / ISBN 13: 9780415276979

Published by Routledge, 2003

About this Item

"Truth in the Making" represents a sophisticated effort to map the complex relations between human knowledge and creative power, as reflected across more than half a millennium of philosophical enquiry. Series: Routledge Radical Orthodoxy. Num Pages: 192 pages, black & white illustrations. BIC Classification: HPC; HRAB. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 234 x 156 x 20. Weight in Grams: 431. . 2003. 1st Edition. hardcover. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780415276979

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Truth in the Making: Creative Knowledge in Theology and Philosophy (Routledge Radical Orthodoxy)
• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415276977
• ISBN 13: 9780415276979
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Is knowing a purely passive reception of something concrete outside the mind, or when we know something, are we creating something too?
Spanning more than 500 years of philosophical enquiry from the Middle Ages to the present day, Robert Miner clarifies modern philosophical conceptions of knowing as making or constructing, and contrasts this view with the theological understanding of knowing as a participation in divine creation.
This study demonstrates how 'creative knowledge' has its roots in the theologies of Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas Cusanus. It explores the multiple ways in which this idea influenced the architects of modern philosophy, most notably Francis Bacon, René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes, despite their secular stance. Miner contends that, well in advance of Kant, one of these thinkers, Gaimbattista Vico provided a remarkably succinct formulation of the metaphysical and epistemological core of modernity in his principle verum et factum convertuntur: 'the true and the made are convertible'.
In Truth in the Making, Robert Miner challenges the standard assumption that Kant was the first thinker to conceive of knowing as constructive activity, and shows how contemporary theology can reclaim a concept of knowing that is both creative and participant in divine wisdom.

About the Author

Robert Miner is Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Honors College at Baylor University. He has published widely on the history of modern philosophy and is the author or Vico, Genealogist of Modernity.