science, religion, metaphor, and history 125
fail, since the direction of the steps will be unknown. Without an idea of where
we wish to go, we will end up—not probably but inevitably—reaching no goals
other than those of our momentary, changeable wishes. The practical need for
healing cosmos is to forestall a century that may be even more lethal than the
last. The more important, essential need for healing cosmos is that a purpose
for the human race is needed that transcends the diverse, incoherent, and often
pointless purposes of individuals, social groups, economic interests, and pro-
fessional technicians; a purpose that aims toward, and is consistent with, the
meaning of the universe and of its Great Poet and Maker.
The ultimate shape of this new cosmos is not yet known. But if it is both
to be true, and to work, it will not lack these components: it will be consistent
with truth; it will embrace both the rational and the imaginative; it will rec-
ognize both the limitations and the expansions of its metaphors; it will give
proper due to both the spiritual and the physical; it will embrace the painfully
won wisdom of the past along with new ways of seeing; it will incorporate all
manifestations of truth in science, religion, history, and every other mode of
understanding; it will open up vistas beyond those of science and religion; it
will be open to entirely new insights that promote understanding while exer-
cising critical judgment as to their purpose and particulars; it will tend to unite
rather than to divide humanity and will not be based on the interests of any
one part of society against any other part; it will face the problem of evil
squarely; it will recognize justice as an absolute rather than as an engine to
promote limited interests; it will recognize human limitations as well as hu-
man potentiality in both intelligence and will; it will be neither forced or co-
ercive; by recognizing human limitations it will be practicable; it will help fulfill
everyone’s human potential for understanding and joy; it will increase the good
of each by increasing the good of all; it will increase the love of each by the
love of all.
Although reconstruction of cosmos requires a generosity and openness so
far uncommon in humanity, we cannot assume failure, and we can hope.Dum
spiramus speremus: while we breathe, let us hope.
notes
- John Polkinghorne,Belief in God in an Age of Science(New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1998), 10–11.
- Arthur O. Lovejoy,The Great Chain of Being(Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1936), 3–23; Arthur C. Danto,Analytical Philosophy of History(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1968).
- Jeffrey Burton Russell,Witchcraft in the Middle Ages(Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1972);The Devil(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977).
- Stephen Toulmin,Human Understanding(Princeton: Princeton University
