Highlighted below is that which really jumps out at me. Excellent observation and an explanation why we should constantly seek out the continued counsel of other opinions and understandings -- why this thing we call "learning" remains an exciting circumstance.
Keep these cards and letters coming. vERY MUCH APPRECIATED.
jOHN
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Sent: June 30, 2005 10:43
Subject:
T. F. Torrance's concept of 'imageless images' is basic to his epistemology, in particular, his concept of the relation of language to being. In his book, Reality and Evangelical Theology (InterVarsity, 1999) for example, he talks about the way in which symbolic thinking leads to dualism (p. 27). That is, we use symbols to construct in our minds 'imges' of reality which we draw out of our experience and observation. He argues that this leads to epistemological dualism. Torrance's own view is that the images we use (words/ symbols) point beyond themselves to realities for which our 'images' are inadequate, but necessary. He often used the illustration in class that the relation between words and that which words represemnt cannot be expressed in words! Also, the relation between that which a picture seeks to represent if it is a 'picture of something' and the 'thing itself' cannot be expressed by 'drawing another picture' (image). There is a 'zero point' he used to say in such an endeavor where we surrender our minds to the reality of the thing itself that exists beyond the images we use to represent it.
Torrance argues that this is exactly what the physicist must do when using images to depict the invisible reality of sub atomic particles. "This involves the disciple of thinking in such a way that, through highly refined symbolic or formal structures, images are made to refer imagelessly to the realities intended." (p. 63} "That is to say, all our theoretical statements fall short of the reality they indicate and are constantly revisable in the light of it." (p. 66).
