Thursday, September 10, 2015
By Dr. Gary Habermas
“Idealism was the dominant philosophy in the Western world in the early 20th century, a holdover from its prominence in the previous century. Stressing the metaphysical reality of mind or spirit and the epistemological centrality of ideas, idealism stood in stark contrast to naturalism, which took its position as the dominant school of thought in the middle of this century. Naturalistic convictions often included the supreme reality of matter, the belief that nature could potentially explain all phenomena, and faith in the empirical, scientific method as the chief means of discovering facts. Such beliefs continue to exercise control on many areas of study.
One interesting facet of the history of ideas is the possibility that either new data or new ways of interpreting the data will encourage new paradigm (or world view) shifts in thinking.1 Many trends indicate that just such a major shift may now be taking place. Just as idealism gave way to naturalism earlier this century, naturalism may now be losing its position of supremacy as a world view.”
For the rest of this article please read: http://garyhabermas.com/articles/Bibliotheca-Sacra/habermas_BtS_paradigm-shift.htm