I remember somewhere that another interpretation of that, because of the way Hebrew tenses work, is “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE” … which makes the statement

A' = A'

(heh)

Hmmm… in what way does science favor horizontal thinking? As a reductionist enterprise it's typically pictures as a prime example of vertical thinking (just specialize enough and eventually everything will all make sense), with a good deal of analogical thinking used in practice.

heh.

1. modernist scientific thinking and theological thinking both utilize horizontal thinking and consilient thinking, but

2. modernist scientific thinking favors horizontal thinking and theological thinking favors consilient thinking.

Typically speaking, I mean. Or metaphorically speaking.

Even when looking at energy and forces, modernist scientists tend to see *things* that are separate from concrete things but just happen to interact with what they've already known to exist. Hence, we have the “graviton”. When science can't quite understand the relationship between things, it creates new things in order to fit their observations into their known categories — because, science doesn't like a vacuum. Science may want to “kill metaphor,” but it's only because scientists do not want to believe that there are a-physical (or metaphysical) domains…which are really perhaps just domains that don't operate according to their limited physics. They leave much space unexplored or else fill it with hypothetical particles and energies.

I think that both, scientists and religionists, can take whatever they've observed and attempt to abbreviate it or abridge it, draw a vertical line. Modernist science certainly utilizes reductionism, but this occurs while or after using horizontal thinking to find the patterns between disparate things.

I think you nailed a basic contradiction in the scientific enterprise.

“Even when looking at energy and forces, modernist scientists tend to see *things* that are separate from concrete things but just happen to interact with what they've already known to exist.”

Exactly! Scientific theories are idealistic “ghosts” that exist in some realm beyond what is physical. The forces that effect the universe are hardly more concrete. Science at its heart is not an epistemology for seeing what concretely is, but would could be in an idealized future given an idealized past (that is the essence of a predictive theory).

“Science may want to “kill metaphor,” but it's only because scientists do not want to believe that there are a-physical (or metaphysical) domains…which are really perhaps just domains that don't operate according to their limited physics.”

Exactly. Most science v. religion attacks are one branch of metaphysical idealists attacking another. I'm often bothered by such scientific hypocrisy, as religionists are more open in their “superstitious” metaphysical beliefs.