1967 Geloof en Wetenschap : Orgaan van de Christelijke vereeniging van natuur- en geneeskundigen in Nederland - pagina 94

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WILLEM KUYK

world order, and which is itself an expression of the Scriptural idea of creation. Now, this admittedly short description is not meant as a recipe to prepare Christian science. For the scientist following this way is really in for big problems. He has to withstand a strong international tradition of thought. He has to take serious the many attempts made by other philosophers. He is in for misunderstandings and confusion of tongues. But without any doubt there are a lot of results to be obtained along these lines. Two things are of importance here, which have often led to misunderstanding. First of all, there is the question regarding the relation between the foundational theory of a science and the science itself. Here the present author may offer an opinion which is slightly different from the usual one. It is, according to the author not so that one may speak in any sense of the priority of the one to the other or vice versa. It is a practical fact that there are people with a genuine talent for a certain discipline without having any natural feeling for the foundational aspects of it, and vice versa. However, if one looks at a special science from the point of view of foundations, then one has to look at the science as a whole. It is then inconceivable that any worker in some subdiscipline will not come across questions which have an immediate bearing on the philosophical foundations of his subject. Therefore, precisely like the modern sciences developed parallel to their foundational theories, should the development of a Scriptural foundational theory run parallel to the development of science (and, like in the former case, influence it). So one can never speak of an „eternal" Christian science, which is fixed once and for all. What may be fixed is the determination to stay away from the absolutizations of humanist philosophies, thus from the idea of an autonomous science which does not bow for the Scriptures. In the second place, Dooyeweerd's theories are of a theoretical nature. They do not imply one special interpretation in denominational, theological or political terms. For instance, they do not give a recipe as to how solve exegetic problems. There is, however, throughout Dooyeweerd's work a line which suggests that the Scriptures should not be made the object or field of scientific investigation, as such an enterprise almost inevitably will be at the expense of a faithful listening to them. Characteristic for his philosophy remains the stripscientific-thought-of-its-myths-attitude. It is unfortunate that this

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