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American Behavioral Scientist
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The Pyramids of Sciences and of Humanities

Implications for the Search for Religious "Truth"

RICHARD L. GORSUCH

Fuller Theological Seminary

The 1900s' truth criteria were easily met in science but not easily met in the humanities and religions. This approach was founded in the classical view of science: describing the research so that others may replicate it. This new approach gave science a major way of establishing truth not available to humanities and religion. Physics was seen as the base of science, with natural and social sciences built upon it as in a pyramid. The advent of postmodernism called the notion of "finding the truth" into question. Exegesis of a radical postmodernism shows that science provides nomothetic truth, that is, truth based on replication, whereas the humanities and revelation provide idiographic truth, that is, truth based on a unique experience, and each has separate rules for justifying a belief. The resulting dual pyramid, one for science and one for humanities, provides bases of beliefs in truths in the sciences, including psychology, and in the humanities, including religion.

American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 45, No. 12, 1822-1838 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764202045012005
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R. W. HOOD Jr.
Comments on Symposium: Theobiology: Interfacing Theology, Psychology, and Other Sciences for Deeper Understanding
American Behavioral Scientist, August 1, 2002; 45(12): 1854 - 1861.
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