Empowering Climate-Change Strategies with Bernard Lonergan's Method

About this book

This book addresses the climate change crisis through scientific, historical, and spiritual lenses. Using Bernard Lonergan's functional specialization method, developed to facilitate collaboration among specialists, Raymaker and Durrani not only analyze data and rebut the claims of climate change deniers, but also look for inspiration to motivate and coordinate needed action by persons, groups, and nations. The book is wide-ranging in its historical examination of leaders who have shown us ways to work together constructively in finding solutions to problems. Lonergan's method helps us study the past with a view to change the future. To do so, we must first reform ourselves.

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Putting Climate Change Issues and Lonergan’s Method in Perspective
- Bernard Lonergan’s Approach to Collaborative Networking: Universal Values in the Face of Our Environmental and Other Crises; Toward Possible Solutions
- Historical Background to Insight’s Cognitional Theory: Its Originality and Importance
- Method in Theology’s Eight Functional Specialties (FS) and Its Two Phases
- How MiT’s Diphase Eight FS Can Open Up New Horizons in Climate Studies
- Rationale behind Method in Theology’s Eight FS Being Treated within the Two Phases

Part II: Analyzing Our Present Climate Crises with a View to Sketch a Remedy
- First Functional Specialty: Research and Gathering Relevant Data on Climate Change
- Second Functional Specialty: Analyzing and Interpreting the Data on Climate Changes
- Third Functional Specialty: Historical Perspectives on Climate Changes: Some Implications
- Fourth Functional Specialty: Dealing with the Implications of Climate Changes: The Strategic Roles of Operators, Dialectic, Wisdom, and Ethics
- The Pivotal Notion of “Complementarity” in Lonergan: Transition to Part III

Part III: Seeking Effective Ways to Remedy Impending Disasters Caused by Climate Changes (By Way of the Mediated Phase’s Last Four Functional Specialties)
- Monstrous Storms and a Need for Far-Reaching Remedies: A GEM-FS Key
- Fifth Functional Specialty: Reinstating the Foundations Neglected by Many
- Sixth Functional Specialty: Policies for Implementing Universal Values Today
- Seventh Functional Specialty: Dealing with Systemic Shortcomings in Caring for Our Climates
- Climate Changes and Conflicts If the Changes Become Too Great to Reverse—Some Proposals
- Eighth Functional Specialty: Sharing Human Universal Values across the Divides

Postscript
Appendix I: GEM Conjugates: How They Rethink Galileo
Appendix II: GEM Conjugates: How They Rethink Aristotle
Appendix III: The Notion of Judgment in Newman and Lonergan
Appendix IV: How Monsanto Is Planning to Profit from Climate Changes
Appendix V: Summarizing Notions of the Cosmic Common Good in Aquinas and Scheid
Appendix VI: Multinational Corporations (MNC’s)
Appendix VII: Monsanto and Reaching Climate Danger Threshold by 2036
Bibliography

Customer Reviews

Biography

John Raymaker holds a PhD in interdisciplinary social ethics. He has spent many years in Japan, working at the Oriens Institute for Religious Research and studying Buddhism. He has published on social ethics, Christian-Buddhist relations, and world spiritualties.

Ijaz Durrani is a scholar of Plasma Physics with more than four decades of teaching and research experience. He has published a number of books on physics both internationally and within Pakistan.