Glossary

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Key
DR - Dictionary of Religion, Harper Collins 1995
WE - Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, Random House 1996
WI - The World of Ideas: A dictionary of important theories, concepts, beliefs, and thinkers. Chris Rohmann, Ballantine, 1999.
SW, # - Sophie's World, page number
[Instructor clarification]

Philosopher: Lover of Wisdom
Philosophical project:* Determined by the questions the philosopher is asking.
Philosophical system: An attempt to construct a philosophy from the ground up which finds explanations for all the
         central philosophical questions.
Transcendent:* Divine attribute, existing above and independently of the material world. (DR)
Immanent:* Divine attribute, present in the cosmos but not existing apart from it. (DR)
Fate: Idea that there is an inevitable necessity that controls everything. (DR)
         Predestination: God chooses in advance those who will be saved either through foreknowledge that they will
         respond grace, or without foreknowledge and response to grace is effected by God. Grace: Divine gifts without
         which human salvation would be impossible. (DR)
                  Purpose: The reason something is exists or is done; the desired results. (WE)
         Free will: Affirmation of the power of human choice to affect an individual's destiny. (DR)
         Determinism: See fate and free will. (DR) Also see definition below.
Metaphysics:* The branch of philosophy [philosophical project] that treats of first principles [the larger questions
         beyond and supporting physical reality] (WE)
Epistemology*: The study of knowledge. Asks what knowledge is and how we can know what we know. One of five
       classical fields of philosophical inquiry, along with aesthetics, ethics, logic, and metaphysics. (WI)
Archetypes:* The original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are
         based. (WE) [archetypal, archetypical, forms, ideas]
Rationalist:* (Rationalism) Someone who believes that human reason is the primary source of our knowledge of the
         world. (SW, 34)
Empiricist:* (Empiricism) An empiricist will derive all knowledge of the world from what our senses tell us. (SW, 262)
Continental Rationalist:* Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz
British Empiricists:* Locke, Hume, and Berkeley
Cosmological:* Everything that is caused must have a first cause.
Ontology*: A branch of metaphysics that studies the nature of existence or being as such. (WE)
Ontological:* God exists because we can conceive of God
Teleological: *The design inherent in creation implies a designer.
Atheist:* Denies the existence of superhuman beings, of any form of transcendent order or meaning in the universe. (DR)
Deist:* Believes God is the creator of the universe but does not thereafter exert control over creation. (DR)
Theist:* Believes in the existence of one or more divine beings [Usually associated with the divine being intimately
         involved in the world.] (DR)
Monotheism:* Belief that there is only one God. Associated with Semitic religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - and
        a linear, historical view of the world.
Polytheism:* Belief that there are many gods. Associated with Indo-European religions - Greek and Roman,
       Buddhism, Hinduism - and a cyclical view of the world.
Paradigm: An example serving as a model or pattern. (WE) For example, Newtonian mechanistic physics served
       as a pattern for, or paradigm of, a Western worldview of a clockwork universe with no place for God to act.
       Often the word paradigm is substituted for the worldview, so that the idea of a clockwork universe became the
       paradigm of Western thought for several hundred years until overshadowed by the paradigm of quantum physics.
Feudalism: Economy during the Middle Ages, based on barter, powerful land-owning nobles and very poor peasants
Hellenism: The successors of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle - a period of about 800 years from the death of Aristotle to
       the fall of the Roman Empire in 400 ce.
Extension:* One of two forms of substance - the property of a body by which it occupies space (WE) i.e. length, weight,
      duration, mass, etc.
Matter: The substance of which any physical object consist. (WE) (Enlightening, isn't it?)
Materialism:* The doctrine that only matter exist (WI). The world and all that is in it operates as a machine.
Determinism:* Applied primarily to physical laws - there is an unalterable chain of events in which each event is
      preceded, or caused by another. Laplace (a French physicist) speculated that a sufficient intelligence, knowing
      the laws of physics and the speed and position of every particle in the universe, would be able to predict its
      entire future. (WI)
Monism: The belief that the world consists of only one substance - such as atoms, spirit, etc.
Dualism: The belief that the world consist of two substance - mind/soul and body/matter - associated strongly with Descartes
Mathematics: The language in which many believe the book of nature to be written.
Primary qualities:* The qualities of objects with extension - weight, motion, number, etc. - that the senses can
     reproduce objectively (SW-364).
Secondary qualities: * Qualities produced only by the effect of the outer reality on our senses - color, smell, taste,
      sound. Cannot determine that they are inherent in the things themselves. (SW-364)