Naturalism- designates any of several philosophical stances that make the assumption that nature is governed by objective laws,

which can be understood through observation and experimentation without recourse to super-natural or extra-natural reality. Any method of inquiry or investigation or any procedure for gaining knowledge that limits itself to natural, physical, and material approaches and explanations can be described as naturalistic.Naturalism does not distinguish the supernatural (including entities like non-natural values, and universals) from nature. It equates nature with reality, insisting that all phenomena and hypotheses can be studied using the same methods. Naturalism implies that all knowledge of the universe can be arrived at through scientific investigation, and that a meta supernatural phenomena can be studied through their detectable influence on natural phenomena. Anything labeled supernatural is either nonexistent, unknowable, or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses. Naturalistic philosophy is typically associated with materialism and pragmatism, and does not give much consideration to metaphysics.Naturalism also designates -ethical position in ethics, which holds that ethics can be derived from and are reducible to non-ethical, natural, descriptive facts, and that ethical terms can be defined by non-ethical, natural terms. (See Meta-ethics)

History-The ideas and assumptions of philosophical naturalism were first seen in the works of the Ionian pre-Socratic philosophers. Thales, often regarded as the founder of science, was the first to give explanations of natural events without resorting to supernatural causes such as the actions of the Greek gods. Jonathan Barnes's introduction to Early Greek Philosophy (Penguin) describes these early philosophers as subscribing to principles of empirical investigation that strikingly anticipate naturalism.During the twelfth century, after the works of Aristotle became available to European scholars in Latin, scholastic thinkers began to formulate a rational explanation of the universe.By the late Middle Ages the search for natural causes had come to typify the work of Christian natural philosophers. Although characteristically leaving the door open for the possibility of direct divine intervention, they frequently expressed contempt for soft-minded contemporaries who invoked miracles rather than searching for natural explanations. The University of Paris cleric Jean Buridan (ca. 1295-ca. 1358), described as "perhaps the most brilliant arts master of the Middle Ages," contrasted the philosophers search for "appropriate natural causes" with the common folks erroneous habit of attributing unusual astronomical phenomena to the supernatural. In the fourteenth century the natural philosopher Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320-1382), who went on to become a Roman Catholic bishop, admonished that, in discussing various marvels of nature, "there is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we believe are well known to us."Enthusiasm for the naturalistic study of nature picked up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as more and more Christians turned their attention to discovering the so-called secondary causes that God employed in operating the world. The Italian Catholic Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), one of the foremost promoters of the new philosophy, insisted that nature "never violates the terms of the laws imposed upon her." [1]During the Enlightenment, a number of philosophers including Francis Bacon and Voltaire outlined the philosophical justifications for removing appeal to supernatural forces from investigation of the natural world. Scientific investigation culminated in the development of modern biology and geology, which rejected a literal interpretation of the prevailing origin beliefs of the revealed religion.In the 1930s and 1940s, naturalism enjoyed a resurgence in the United States among philosophers such as F. J. E. Woodbridge, Morris R. Cohen, John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, and Sidney Hook.NATURALISM AND PHILOSOPHY OF MINDThere is currently some dispute over whether naturalism altogether rules out certain areas of philosophy which are constructs of the human mind, such as semantics, ethics, aesthetics, or excludes the use of the mentalistic vocabulary ("believes," "thinks") employed in philosophy of mind. Some recent thinkers have argued that even though mentalistic descriptions and value judgments cannot be systematically translated into physicalistic descriptions, they also do not need to presuppose the existence of anything other than physical phenomena.Donald Davidson, for example, has argued that individual mental states can (must, in fact) be identical with individual states of the physical brain, even though a given kind of mental state (belief in materialism) might not be systematically identified with a given kind of brain state (a particular pattern of neural firings): the former weakly "supervenes" upon the latter. Recently developed technologies which allow the observation of human brain activity have shown that specific areas of the brain activity are associated with certain types of mental states.The implication is that naturalism can leave non-physical vocabulary intact where the use of that vocabulary can be explained naturalistically; McDowell has dubbed this level of discourse "second nature." THEOLOGICAL NATURALISM The theoretical core of evolutionary thought is naturalism. Evolutionists dogmatically insist that the world must have arisen strictly via 100% naturalistic processes. This extreme position is in the minority, but it dominates academia today and is now taken as a given by elites and opinion makers. Not surprisingly this extreme position on naturalism has fueled atheism. If creation arises on its own, then what need is there for a creator? But ironically naturalism arose not from atheism, but from the exact opposite: theism. In fact it is the underlying religious ideas that give evolutionists their strong convictions. This is why evolutionary thought and the Enlightenment arose from the highly religious culture of 17th century western Europe, and it is why religious people do most of the evolutionary apologetics, even today. From the Roman Catholic Ken Miller to the protestant Francis Collins, religious people are insistent that evolution must be a fact. Atheists such as Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers help out on the fringes, but even their arguments are religious. They have been fooled by religion. When it comes to evolution, there is no difference between the theist and atheist. Hence when we speak of the naturalism that drives evolutionists, we are speaking of theological naturalism. Here is how I described theological naturalism in my boThis term theological naturalism reminds us that the assumption of naturalism in science is neither a result of atheistic influence nor an empirically-based scientific finding. It is a consequence of

metaphysical reasoning, and the implications for science are profound. Theological naturalism provides science with well defined universal criteria to which it conforms. Instead of merely following the data where ever it may lead, science has a framework already in place. The answer, to a certain extent, is already in place. This is a move toward rationalism and away from empiricism. The result is that science has a powerful philosophy of science but, as we explore in Chapter Three, it does not come without cost. Theological naturalism brings with it a blind spot.ok Sciences Blind Spot: Sigmund Freud is the of psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic approach to psychology. This school of thought emphasized the influence of the unconscious mind on behavior. Freud believed that the human mind was composed of three elements: the id, the ego, and the superego. Freud's theories of psychosexual stages, the unconscious, and dream symbolism remain a popular topic among both psychologists and laypersons, despite the fact that his work is viewed with skepticism by many today.Many of Freud's observations and theories were based on clinical cases and case studies, making his findings difficult to generalize to a larger population. Regardless, Freud's theories changed how we think about the human mind and behavior and left a lasting mark on psychology and culture. Another theorist associated with psychoanalysis is Erik Erikson. Erikson expanded upon Freud's theories and stressed the importance of growth throughout the lifespan. Erikson's psychosocial stage theory of personality remains influential today in our understanding of human development. Ma.Teresa R. Talagtag BEED-GENERALIST 1-A BIOLOGY