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Religious Metaphor and Scientific Model: Grounds for Comparison

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Iris M. Yob
Iris M. Yob
Affiliation:
PO Box 6595Bloomington, Indiana 47407.
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Extract

Human beings make sense of their world by employing symbol systems which pick out, organize and arrange elements of their experiences. With these symbol systems, they sort and order the world, make predictions, give explanations and venture new insights. In this process, a number of identifiable ways of understanding have emerged, ranging from the scientific and mathematical through the artistic, musical and literary to the religious and mythical, each with its own body of knowledge, methodology and focus, and each expressed in its own ‘language’, that is, its own semantically and syntactically differentiated symbol system.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 475 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Soskice, Janet, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. x.Google Scholar

2 Goodman, Nelson, Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1976), pp. 71–4.Google Scholar

3 Black, Max, Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), pp. 34–47.Google Scholar

4 Scheffler, Israel, Beyond the Letter: A Philosophical Inquiry into Ambiguity, Vagueness and Metaphor in Language (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. 107–30.Google Scholar

5 Black, Models and Metaphors, p. 239.

6 Goodman, Languages of Art, p. 73.

7 Barbour, Ian G., Myths, Models and Paradigms: A Comparative Study of Science and Religion (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1974), p. 16Google Scholar. This description is drawn from Max Black's suggestion that a model is much like a ‘sustained and systematic metaphor’, a suggestion picked up also by Sallie McFague.

8 Barbour, Myths, Models and Paradigms, pp. 12–14.

9 McFague, Sallie, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), p. 15.Google Scholar

10 Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language, p. 59.

11 Ibid. pp. 50, 51.

12 Ibid.

13 Barbour, Myths, Models and Paradigms, p. 30.

14 McFague, Metaphorical Theology, pp. 83, 84.

15 Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language, p. 101.

16 Ibid. pp. 102, 103.

17 Ibid. p. 101.

18 Goodman, Languages of Art, pp. 69, 70.

19 Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language, pp. 55, 56.

20 Ibid. pp. 64–6.

21 Goodman, , Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1978), p. 121.Google Scholar