Public Theology in Forum

Sociological Epilogue (4)

Sociological Epilogue: Biology as Ideology Sociobiologists spread a discourse of neurogenetic determinism, in which there are genes available to account for every aspect of our lives (health, illness, criminality, violence, abnormal sexual orientation, racial inequality, etc). It ranges from personal success to existential despair, finally to the domination of the powerful, justifying the status..

Sociological Clarification (3): A Cellular Theory of Punctuated Equilibrium

http:// https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Kirschner                                                                   Cell Network and Complex Mechanism A cell, the smallest living system, is a dissipative structure, which reproduces itself (DNA replication), developing, and differentiating. A living system is an organization that preserves itself as a result of its organization, because it pro..

Sociological Clarification (2): Theory of Lifelines

Communication and Systems The neuron biological research finds its apex in Luhmann’s systems theory of communication, utilizing Husserl’s phenomenology. Luhmann emphasizes Husserlian correlation between intentionality of consciousness (noesis) and its regime of meaning (noema) into the social systems theory. In Luhmann’s view, Husserl had utilized a theory of second-order cybernetics, operationa..

Sociological Clarification (1): Autopoiesis and Embodied Lifelines

Systems Sociology and Embodied Lifelines  Paul S. Chung. Dr. Habil. Paradigm Shift and Sociology of Science Thomas Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shift implies a structure of scientific revolution from our current understanding of standard science to a new model in solving anomalies, challenging the existing scientific model. Epistemological rupture takes place in the entire constellation of beliefs,..

Punctuated Equilibrium and Dissipative Structure

Structure of Evolutionary Change   An ecological-systemic approach to the autopoietic network is undertaken in connection with the physiology of organisms. This view takes on the questions of how the organism could change its phenotype without changing its genome. A study of  physiology gives impetus to a significance of facilitated variation.       Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart utilize a theo..

Introduction  In my discussion on Karl Barth and Ted Peters in the previous section ("Proleptic Suite: Karl Barth and Ted Peters"), a theology of divine speech act (or divine action) comes to encounter a theology of prolepsis in the framework of postmodern holism.        God’s first act in the original creation (t=0) bestows upon us and the world the gift of an open future through the blessing o..

My Intellectual Odyssey  In Postcolonial Pubic Theology (2016), I was involved in hermeneutically mediating Barth's theology of speech events with Peters' proleptic theology of nature. One of my other concerns is a study of systems sociology (Niklas Luhmann) and the structure of evolutionary theory (Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin).          During my postdoctoral studies at the GTU and UC Be..

Phenomenology and Prolepsis  The science of complexity facilitates a theological reformulation in seeking a radical expression of freedom of God, which allows a gift of creativity to a self-organizing universe to come into being. A divinely created universe is a self-organizing system with freedom and creativity, implying a proleptic view of continual creation from God’s future.        A notion ..

Dissipative Structure and Non-Equilibrium The biological concept of autopoiesis is not separated from the study of thermodynamic processes and dissipative structures, as described by Ilya Prigogine, the Russian-born chemist and physicist. He was Nobel Laureate and professor of physical chemistry at the Free University of Brussels.       If the Santiago theory focuses on the organizational closur..

Review by Paul S. Chung   This book introduces a Catholic theological endeavor in articulating Liberation-Postcolonial ethics in the Philippines. The term ‘postcolonial’ refers to an umbrella discourse, but its theory is typically taken from French post-structuralism (Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan) to which postcolonial theoreticians such as Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, and Gay..