Eliade Papers: Journal of Epistemology
“For religious man, space is not homogenous; he experiences interruptions, breaks in it; some parts of space are qualitatively different from others. “Draw not hither, says the Lord to Moses; “put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5).”
For Eliade, space is not homogenous- the profane is interrupted by the Sacred, through hierophanies and revelations. Analogous to this Eliadean geography, so is science: it separates the metaphysical assumptions, which are implicit and assumed, from the actual process of scientific investigation. Science is increasingly removed from philosophy, which practically and historically has a strong philosophical foundation: all the premises of current methodologies involve principles such as order, rationality and intelligibility of the universe, abstract concepts without which explanations and theories would not be possible. Philosophy is increasingly being removed from theology and religion, despite its own foundations being derivative of a religious worldview.
According to Eliade, homo religious represents the complete man. True knowledge about reality is obtained when science is not divorced from metaphysics, from the understanding that there is an irreducible complexity of the world, where the material and the immaterial combine.
To honour Mircea Eliade’s monumental work and continuing in the spirit of his intellectual posture, our journal encourages articles and essays exploring the ontological realm, the chains of causality, the abstractions and paradigms of modern academia and, if necessary, challenge them. We encourage a resistance to reductionism and replace it with a balanced approach, promoting systems thinking and interdisciplinarity.
Scientific advancement is achieved by the accumulation of knowledge through the development and refinement of the method and its associated instruments. Can we rely on a technical and mechanistic understanding of the observed phenomena to claim we have knowledge over them? Can the object of our observation truly be known by its literal or metaphorical dissection thus having access to each individual constituent part? Systemic thinking has been pushed gradually in recent years, as the foundational premise for complexity, which describes most of our universe, stipulates unequivocally that systems are more than the sum of their parts. We propose to take this stance more seriously and to expand it not just in the field of humanities but also to STEM. Thus, epistemology becomes a central interest in our journal, as we believe that knowledge is incomplete and conclusions inconsistent once science becomes purely materialistic and STEM and humanities are not complementary but contradictory.
We encourage articles that are focused on epistemology in humanities and STEM, examining the foundational assumptions of science, philosophy, and moral reasoning. We contend that the exclusion of Christian metaphysics from contemporary thought has led to conceptual inconsistencies and fragmentations, excessive reductionism, and the loss of meaning in the scientific process.
We believe that Christianity offers the most coherent and complete system of thinking that addresses all the important questions of life, including matters such as moral realism, human dignity, rational order, metaphysical meaning and intelligibility of the universe. We are happy to accept papers from non-theistic perspectives, evaluated on the strength of argumentation and clarity of writing.
The journal’s foundational principles are centred around some of Eliade’s core concepts:
I. In illo tempore: focus on the causal principles of phenomena studied, encourage systemic thinking in every disciplinary realm, from the mythological to the technical.
II. The Centre: the architectonic symbolism of the centrerwe take Christianity as the intellectual premise and foundation of Western scientific rationality. However, articles that are not explicitly Christian or author who do not adhere to Christianity but whose articles are consistent with the journal’s purpose and objective are encouraged.
III. Archetypes and patterns: “objects or acts acquire a value and in doing so become real, because they participate, after one fashion or another in a reality that transcends them”. We encourage the study of the currently existing constellations of thought, the identification of cultural and scientific symbols in contemporary academia.
IV. The point of reference: the journal encourages a systemic approach and systemic thinking and develops the ability to have an adequate reference point for the subject studied.
The journal is set to offer an opportunity to explore the metaphysical, and philosophical foundations of scientific knowledge from within the Christian intellectual tradition.
We believe that: science requires a philosophical foundation: philosophy of science is what allows us to build adequate heuristics and methodological frameworks for understanding the world. Science relies on immovable assumptions that are native to philosophy: the principle of cause and effect and the laws of logic.
Guest writers and contributors are encouraged to apply and discuss these principles to their disciplines, as well as answering the questions below.
Examples of questions we encourage our contributors to contemplate, not as prescriptive themes, but merely as points of departure and inspiration:
Is information a physical or metaphysical concept?
Is the world more than just what is empirically accessible?
Is there an immaterial component to existence and is the material the interface?
The concept of law: is this a scientific concept or a metaphysical inheritance?
