Research Catalog

Title

From big bang to big mystery : human origins in the light of creation and evolution / Brendan Purcell.

Author

Purcell, Brendan M., 1941-

Publication

Dublin : Veritas, 2011.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

366 p.; 24 cm.

Subject

Human evolution > Catholic Church

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 334-362) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Machine generated contents note: 1. Quest -- 2. Who's questing? -- 3. drama of humanity -- 4. When did the drama begin? -- 5. Falling into the well of the past -- 6. Making philosophical sense of the mystery of human origins -- 7. Why the `big mystery' and why `origins', plural? -- 8. story this book will be telling -- pt. One conversation between myth, philosophy and revelation on the human and on nature -- ch. One Is there a barcode for humanity? -- 1. Greek discovery of human nature -- 1.1. Xenophanes (c. 565-470BC) -- human existence as capacity for wisdom reaching out to the One divine reality -- 1.2. Parmenides (c. 520-450BC) articulates the human mind as understanding existence beyond space and time -- 1.3. Heraclitus (c. 535-475BC) -- human being as possessing logos, reason, grounded in divine Logos -- 1.4. Plato (427-347BC) -- human existence as dynamically oriented to eternal beauty -- 1.5. Aristotle (384-322BC) -- human existence as quest for participation in the understanding of Understanding -- 2. exploration of the human in the Book of job -- 3. New Testament insight into the human -- 3.1. `Father' and `Son' in the gospels: John reports Jesus' statement `I and the Father are one' (Jn 10:30) -- 3.2. Agape as mutual and unconditional love (Jn 13:34) -- 3.3. Agape as personal and interpersonal love (Jn 15:9-15) -- 3.4. Agape as co-personal oneness (Jn 17:11, 21-4, 26) -- 3.5. Wewards: towards the essence of humanity in the friendship of God -- ch. Two `In the beginning ...' -- 1. wonder of nature -- 1.1. Nature in myth -- 1.2. Nature in mytho-speculation -- 1.3. Nature in philosophy -- 1.4. Nature in Genesis -- 1.5. St Francis' mystical appreciation of nature -- 1.6. Nature in art -- pt. Two scientific partners in the conversation: what science is and how it can complement rather than replace or invalidate philosophy and revelation -- ch. Three `The universe must have known we were coming' -- 1. Epistemological, ontological and historical presuppositions of natural science -- 1.1. cognitional structure underlying the natural sciences -- 1.2. What the natural sciences presuppose ontologically -- 1.3. historical origins of the natural sciences -- a. world as potentially meaningful -- b. world as actually defined -- c. world as contingent -- 2. World process and the sequence of sciences that map it -- 2.1. World process in terms of the anthropic principle -- 2.2. World process in terms of Aristotle's understanding of matter and form -- 2.3. World process in terms of emergent probability -- 2.4. Sequence of natural sciences correlative to sequence of levels of reality -- 3. How science can sometimes lose its way -- 3.1. Scientism -- 3.2. Reductionism -- 4. Towards a complementarity of natural science and philosophy -- ch. Four Darwin and the evolution of evolution -- 1. Darwin's mixed legacy -- 1.1. Darwin's scientific strength -- 1.2. Darwin's persistent failure to distinguish between natural science and natural theology -- 1.3. Darwin's own awareness of ontological order -- 2. Evolutionism as a `secular religion' -- 3. Creationism and intelligent design -- 4. evolution of evolutionary theory -- 4.1. Eldredge-Gould: Punctuated Equilibrium -- 4.2. Evolutionary-Developmental (evo-devo) Theory -- 4.3. Evo-devo and biological constancy at the level of animal body plans -- 4.4. Conway Morris on convergence -- 4.5. Denton on the role of animal consciousness in evolution -- 5. Lonergan on development -- 6. Complementarity of scientific, religious and philosophical modes of inquiry -- 6.1. Stephen Jay Gould's `Principle of Non-Overlapping Magisteria' -- 6.2. Aquinas on the complementarity between philosophy, revelation and natural science -- pt. Three How we belong and yet -- because of the `human revolution' -- don't fully belong to the hominid sequence -- ch. Five Hanging by our ancestors' tails? -- 1. hominid sequence -- 2. Neanderthals: continuity with earlier hominids, discontinuity with us? -- 2.1. Neanderthal DNA -- 2.2. Neanderthal brain size -- 2.3. Neanderthal toolmaking -- 2.4. Neanderthal burials yes, grave goods no? -- 2.5. Lack of Neanderthal symbolisation -- 2.6. Neanderthal language? -- 3. Where's the hominid sequence going -- what `breathes fire into the equations'? -- 3.1. How can the hominid sequence be explained? -- 3.2. Are hominid studies a branch of zoology or anthropology? -- ch. Six On the threshold of the Human Mystery: was there a `human revolution'? -- 1. Paleoanthropology on defining `human' -- 2. `Multiregionalism' and `Out of Africa': two approaches to human emergence -- 3. What caused the human revolution? -- 4. Is human emergence fully explicable by paleontology and archaeology? -- pt. Four seven grace notes in the `Sonata for a Good Man' -- ch. Seven first three grace notes in the human sonata: (1) the genetic `African Eve & Adam', (2) our culture-oriented body plan, and (3) our meaning-oriented brain and vocal tract -- 1. Human genetics -- 1.1. Aren't we 98% chimpanzee? -- 1.2. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the children of Eve -- 1.3. human Y-chromosome and an African Adam -- 2. Human culture is built into our body plan -- 3. Our brain and vocal tract as material basis of language, understanding and freedom -- 3.1. human brain -- 3.2. Our vocal tract -- ch. Eight Two more grace notes in the human sonata: (4) symbolisation and (5) language -- 1. Symbols -- 1.1. Their cognitive and ontological meaning -- 1.2. degradation of the symbol -- 1.3. Mircea Eliade and Marie Konig on Paleolithic symbols -- 1.4. Voegelin's `depth grammar' of human symbolisation -- a. four basic partners in human existence -- b. Participation in existence -- c. Lasting and Passing -- d. Attunement -- e. From compact to differentiated symbolisations -- f. constancy of human nature as quest for mystery -- 1.5. Lascaux as symbolising the drama of cosmic destruction and renewal -- 1.6. Human burial rituals as expressing desire to overcome death in new life -- 1.7. Earliest human symbols -- 2. Language -- 2.1. Theories about the origins of language -- 2.2. Language as carrier of meaning -- 2.3. Language and infinity -- 2.4. Animal communication yes, language no -- 3. modern reminder of the richness contained in symbol -- ch. Nine last chords in the human sonata: (6) understanding and (7) freedom -- 1. Understanding -- 1.1. `strict standard for recognising human cognition in prehistory' -- 1.2. Are `memes' ideas? -- 1.3. Lonergan on understanding -- 1.4. Living in the truth -- a. John Henry Newman -- b. Socrates' readiness to die as witness to truth -- c. last days of Sophie Scholl -- 1.5. problem of the lie: living in untruth -- 2. Freedom -- 2.1. Two scientists' and a philosopher's case for our unfreedom -- 2.2. But they also say we can rebel against our genes -- 2.3. Lonergan on human freedom -- 2.4. priority of freedom over its denial or its evasion -- 2.5. Freedom as lived unselfishness -- 2.6. mystery of evil -- ch. Ten human person's limitless orientation to horizons of beauty, meaning, truth and goodness -- 1. Our orientations towards beauty, meaning, truth and goodness -- 1.1. Mythic and artistic symbolisation: expressing the inexpressible -- a. Mythic symbolisation -- b. Artistic symbolisation of beauty -- 1.2. Language and the lie, building and destroying relationship -- 1.3. Why must our affirmation of truth be beyond space-time conditioning? -- 1.4. Etty Hillesum's choice of the other person as unlimited you -- 1.5. Albert Speer's choice of evil -- pt. Five Meeting you face to face -- the human person as communion -- ch. Eleven From Big Bang to Big Mystery -- 1. Who am I? The human person as Wewards -- 1.1. human person as intrinsically relational -- 1.2. My interrelationship with you by giving myself -- 1.3. From interrelationship to communion -- 1.4. refusal of communion -- 2. What am I? The nature of the human person -- 2.1. person as unity-identity-whole -- 3. How do we come into existence? The question of the origin of each human being -- 3.1. How does a human being come into existence? -- a. moment of conception -- b. zygote acts as a unity-identity-whole -- c. Does human existence only begin at fourteen days with the emergence of the `primitive streak'? -- d. Does twinning mean there can't be a new life until after twinning could have occurred? -- 3.2. What does it mean to say that a zygote is human? -- 3.3. `It is only with one's heart that one can see clearly' -- 3.4. Creation and pro-creation -- a. Edith Stein on personal contingency and its necessary ground -- b. Creation and pro-creation: the intersection of the timeless with time -- c. Genesis on creation and pro-creation -- 4. How did humanity come into existence? The question of human origins -- 4.1. Humanity as both continuous and discontinuous with cosmic and evolutionary process -- 4.2. What is `humanity' -- a species or simply humankind? -- 4.3. So, what is the origin of humanity? -- 4.4. What is the meaning of humanity in history? -- a. Unity in diversity -- b. person as `still point of a turning world' uniting both cosmic and human history into one narrative -- c. story of humanity in history as primarily a kenotic relationship -- d. Towards a truly universal dialogue -- e. Is there a way beyond humankind's failure to be human?.

ISBN

• 9781847302717
• 1847302718

LCCN

^^2011486750

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library