From the Foreword:
The following pages continue my book Science, Mind
and the Universe: An Introduction to Natural Philosophy
(Heidelberg 1995) to the topic of religion; however,
they can be read independently of that book.
Primarily I wrote them to order my own
ideas. Still, they might be of interest to
other people who like to think along similar
lines. So I decided to place the text
on the internet as a PDF file for easy download.
Since the 10 years from the time I
have written that book, I have tried to
study Karl Rahner and his philosophical forerunner, Immanuel
Kant, and to understand Hegel from a theological point of view.
I have been trained, by my background as
a geodesist occupied with highly precise observations, to
see inaccuracies and uncertainties, however small, in all
observations and all definitions, however accurate. Mathematics is
precise, but in its application to nature is
affected by uncertainties described by the error theory
basically developed by C. F. Gauss, the princeps
mathematicorum, when he performed geodetic observations.
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This basic uncertainty in human thinking pervades all
human language, all natural sciences in the forms
of Gauss and Heisenberg uncertainties, philosophy, and even
mathematics, in the form of Gödel's theorem. In
my opinion, it is present also in theology:
even divine revelation, when naturally expressed through the
imperfect medium of human language, becomes affected by
uncertainty. This may contribute to a better understanding
of the problem of tolerance.
I used English in which I have written
all my professional books, in order to reach
the international scientific community. I tried to be
as simple and readable as possible, so as
to address all people interested in the topic
(but not necessarily practicing a certain religion). A
general high-school background is amply sufficient.
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