General Metaphysics / Worldviews

 


Aquinas, Thomas. Selected Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas: The Principles of Nature, on Being and Essence, on Free Choice. Translated by Robert P. Goodwin, Prentice Hall, 1965.

Aristotle, Metaphysics. In Complete Works of Aristotle. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984.
The classic work on Metaphysics. UR is matter plus form plus motion. Introduces ideas of Unmoved Mover and Uncaused Cause.

Armstrong, David M. Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989.
A review of six different theories of natural kinds. A defense of a limited form of Platonism.

Armstrong, David M. Universals and Scientific Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Armstrong, David M. What is a Law of Nature? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Armstrong argues for a Platonic view of natural law as the necessary relationship of universal properties. It holds that only in this way can we understand how laws function in explanations and predictions.

Aune, Bruce. Metaphysics: The Elements. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1985.

Baker, Lynn Rudder. Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.

Bohm, David, F. David Peat. Science, Order, and Creativity: A Dramatic New Look at the Creative Roots of Science and Life. New York: Bantam Books, 1987.

Bohm, David. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. New York: Routledge, 1995.
A distinguished physicist develops a meta-theory beyond quantum physics that encompasses whole reality including matter, consciousness, cosmology.

Bradley, F. H. Appearance and Reality: A Metaphysical Essay. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1925.

Chance, Janet. The Romance of Reality. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1934.

Choi, Hyung S., David F. Siemens, Jr., Shirley E. Williams, eds. Naturalism: Its Impact on Science, Religion and Literature. Phoenix, AZ: Canyon Institute for Advanced Studies, 2001.

Craig, William Lane, J. P. Moreland. Naturalism: A Critical Analysis. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Argues that an eternal universe is incoherent, pointing to a transcendant source beyond space and time.

Davis, Joel. Alternate Realities: How Science Shapes Our Vision of the World. New York, NY: Plenum, 1997.

Del Re, Giuseppe. The Cosmic Dance: Science Discovers the Mysterious Harmony of the Universe. Radnor, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2000.

Denkel, Arda. Object and Property. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Develops a general ontology of objecthood, essences and causation, claiming that individual things are only properties jointly present at a particular time and place. Thus there are no objective universals.

Deutsch, Eliot. Humanity and Divinity: An Essay in Comparative Metaphysics. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1970.

Eddington, Arthur Stanley. Science and the Unseen World. New York: MacMillan Co., 1930.

Eddington, Arthur Stanley. The Nature of the Physical World. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1944.

Einstein, Albert. The World As I See It. New York: Citadel Press, 1993.

Gobár, Ash. Philosophy as Higher Enlightenment: Paradigms Toward a New Worldview from the Perspective of Dialectical Realism. New York: Lang, 1994.
Argues that philosophy leads to a "higher enlightenment" and is a "cultural healer." Presents this from the outlook of dialectical realism.

Haeckel, Ernst, Heinrich Philipp August. Monism as Connecting Religion and Science: The Confession of Faith of a Man of Science. London, UK: A. and C. Black, 1895.

Hartshorne, Charles. The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1962.

Henle, R. J. Method in Metaphysics: Aquinas Lecture. Milwaukee: Marquette Univ. Press, 1951.
An excellent, brief introduction to knowledge beyond experience in the Thomistic tradition.

Hick, John. The Fifth Dimension: An Exploration of the Spiritual Realm. Oxford: Oneworld, 1999.

Hoffman, Joshua, Gary S. Rosenkranz. Substance: Its Nature and Existence. New York: Routledge, 1997.
A comprehensive survey of ancient and recent views of substance, with a novel analysis of substance in terms of a kind of independence not possessed by insubstantial entities.

Holmes, Arthur F. Contours of a World View. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1983.

Jaki, Stanley L. The Absolute Beneath the Relative and Other Essays. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988.

Jones, L. Gregory, Stephen E. Fowl. Rethinking Metaphysics. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995.
Several essays range across ancient and modern views, confronting post-modern criticisms of philosophy and theology.

Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1950.
A classic statement on the limits of human knowledge of UR. Kant argues that we can only know the world of experience (phenomena) not the world as it is in itself (noumena). Thus he declared that metaphysics is impossible.

Kim, Jaegwon, Ernest Sosa. eds. Metaphysics: An Anthology. Malden, Massachusetts and Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1999.

Koyré, Alexandre. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Univeristy Press, 1968.

Larmore, Charles E. The Morals of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Argues against other mainline moral philosophers (such as John Mackie, Gilbert Harman, and Bernard Williams) that we must reject the naturalistic view that moral norms are not part of the fabric of the universe.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology. Translated by George R. Montgomery. Prometheus Books, 1992.
The philosopher who is called 'the most comprehensive thinker since Aristotle' discusses metaphysics, conception of physical substance, the motion and resistance of bodies, and the role of the divine within the "dynamic and relational" universe.

Lines, Timothy Arthur. Towards the Formulation of a Systemic World View: The integration of philosophy, religion, and science through general systems theory. Louisville, KY: University of Louisville, 1983.

Martin, Gottfried. General Metaphysics: Its Problems and Its Methods. London: Allen & Unwin, 1968.

Nagel, T. The View from Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
A book concerning human perspectives.

Nash, Ronald H. World-Views in Conflict: Choosing Christianity in a World of Ideas. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992.

Neville, Robert Cummings. The Dialectic of Being in Cross-cultural Perspective. Albany, NY: SUNY press, 2000.
Analyzes being in terms of the one and the many as seen through Western, Indian and Chinese eyes.

Neville, Robert Cummings. The Human Condition. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001.

Neville, Robert Cummings. ed. Ultimate Realities. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001.
A comprehensive survey of the idea of ultimate reality in world religions

Papineau, David. Philosophical Naturalism. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993.
Defends naturalism in metaphysics and epistemology, arguing that consciousness is physical. Presents a justification of knowledge against skeptical challenge.

Papineau, David. Reality and Representation. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987.

Plantinga, Alvin. The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Popper, Karl, John C. Eccles. The Self and Its Brain: Materialism Transcends Itself. New York: Springer International, 1977.

Ramsey, Ian T. Prospect for Metaphysics: Essays of Metaphysical Exploration. London: Allen & Unwin, 1961.

Rescher, Nicholas. The Nature of Understanding: The Metaphysics and Method of Science. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001.

Richardson, C. A. The Supremacy of Spirit. London: Kegan Paul, 1922.
Pluralism, mind and body, and reality.

Richmond, James. Theology and Metaphysics. New York: Schocken Books, Inc., 1970.

Robinson, Howard. Objections to Physicalism. New York: Clarendon/ Oxford Press, 1996.
Contains several papers noting problems with the view that has become a de facto orthodoxy.

Russell, Robert John, William R. Stoeger, George V. Coyne. eds. Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory, 1988.

Schumacher, E. F. A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Harper Collins, 1978.
Schumacher, a high-ranking economist in the British government for over 30 years, shares the sum of his reflective insights on life, meaning, reality. Quantifiable and observable knowledge are phantoms of true knowledge, and technology has displaced a deeper reality.

Shimony, Abner. Search for a Naturalistic World View, Volume II: Natural Science and Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993.

Singer, Irving. The Harmony of Nature and Spirit. Laurel, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Sire, James W. The Universe Next Door: A Basic World View Catalog. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988.

Smart, John J. C. Our Place in the Universe: A Metaphysical Discussion. Oxford, UK: Blackwell's Publishers, 1989.

Stern, Robert. Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects. Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford Press, 1999.
14 papers on transcendental arguments, the philosophical approach of arguing that what is doubted or denied is actually necessary to what is doubted or denied.

Suppes, Patrick. Probabilistic Metaphysics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984.

Taliaferro, Charles. Consciousness and the Mind of God. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Defends person-body dualism and theism, with an integration of person-body and God-world relationships.

Van Inwagen, Peter. Metaphysics. Boulder & San Francisco: Westview Press, 1993.

Vitzhum, Richard C. Materialism: An Affirmative History and Definition. Amherst: Prometheus, 1995.
Presents a comprehensive history of materialism and argues that contemporary reductive materialism is correct. Also argues that the probablilistic determinism of quantum physics should replace the mechanical determinism of earlier times.

Weiss, Paul. Being and Other Realities. Chicago: Open Court, 1995.
Argues that the task of philosophy is to provide an account for the primary realities. He provides a comprehensive analysis of persons, humanized realities, nature, and cosmos, with a new approach to ultimate Being.

Weiss, Paul. Reality. Princeton: Princeton Univ Press, 1938.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality. New York, NY: Free Press, 1978.
The most extensive—and many believe the most coherent and adequate—metaphysical cosmology produced in the 20th century; the major basis of the school of thought generally known as process philosophy and theology.

Williams, Trevor. Form and Vitality in the World and God: A Christian perspective. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Young, Louise. The Unfinished Universe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.