Redefining Reality: The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

mind-and-cognition

• Laplace's demon is the ultimate statement of the Enlightenment: given true laws and complete information, the universe would be completely transparent to a mega-intellect.

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• Reality proceeds from atomistic objects, to relations among objects, to an interconnected web in which the whole is what is real.

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self-and-identity

• Behaviors are sometimes predictable independent of the individuals involved — one can have free will and still be predictable in the way that will is exercised.

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• What emerged was the intricate study of ways in which the brain is part of a larger environmental system; human consciousness is not reducible to brain talk.

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faith-and-doubt

• Darwin's suggestion that species developed over time challenged the church's account in radical ways; the Great Chain, fixed and immutable as God who created it, was undone.

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• The missing part from the picture Glashow, Weinberg, and Salam produced was the Higgs boson — the universe's architecture kept demanding one more hidden piece.

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