April 2023 Blog

Obituary: Thomas Charles Buckland McLeish FRS, FRSC, FInstP, FISSR (1962-2023) One of the most energetic and creative figures in the fields of both theoretical physics and science-and-religion, Prof Tom McLeish, died on the 27th February 2023. Tom’s vivacious mind, fuelled by both wonder and curiosity, defied modern disciplinary boundaries. Even his primary specialism, soft matter physics, sits at the intersection of physics, biology and chemistry— but his interests reached far wider than this. Tom’s extraordinary success in pursuing a diverse range of interests is well captured by his final job title, which he told me he could not quite believe had been permitted to choose and often delighted in sharing, ‘Chair in Natural Philosophy’ in the Department of Physics and the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University

What is Wisdom? Voices from Psychology and Christian Faith

Throughout history, one tends to find at least two categorically different ways in which wisdom is understood. These might be described as a wisdom of knowing, and a wisdom of unknowing.   In Christian terms, we might call these a cataphatic wisdom, and an apophatic wisdom. A cataphatic wisdom relies on knowledge, texts, and accumulated wisdom – what is known and declared to be known. An apophatic wisdom, which recognises what one cannot know, relies on a direct and open kind of awareness. This is what John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul”, where one leaves one’s knowing behind and plunges into the darkness of the ineffable. The former wisdom relies on longstanding traditions of meaning and knowledge – it represents a tried and

By |2017-06-12T14:19:05+01:00June 12th, 2017|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , |

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