Technology and Truth is a masters-level seminar examining the nature and history of the concept of truth from Plato to pragmatism. The course will analyze its metaphysical and theological presuppositions, its transformation under the conditions of technological society, and anticipate the future implications of this concept as it operates in our culture. Students should expect to read roughly a book per week and to write a medium length paper at the end of the course.
Selected Texts
Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will.
Francis Bacon, The New Organon.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, Vol. I: The Truth of the World.
Allan Bloom (trans.), The Republic of Plato.
Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy.
John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy.
William James, Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
Richard McKeon (ed.), The Basic Works of Aristotle.
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.
Faculty
Michael Hanby
Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy of Science
Dr. Hanby is author of No God, No Science?: Theology, Cosmology, Biology (Wiley-Blackwell 2013) which reassesses the relationship between the doctrine of creation, Darwinian evolutionary biology, and science more generally. He is also author of Augustine and Modernity (Routledge 2003).
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