It is safe to say that I am fairly unfamiliar with these issues that are being discussed. I am examinging this material for the first time. Therefore, I realize that I have been influenced by Ratzsch's presuppositions and beliefs on the issues he discusses. However, coming from a Christian point and having some background on what the faith generally believes on some of these issues, for the most part his ideas seem rational and understandable. After his discussions on a subject, he raises questions and voices his opinion on that particular topic. The opinions and doubts he has on the subject were pretty convincing and I found myself taking his stance on most, if not all of the subjects at hand.

The next part of the book deals with the debate over realist and anti-realist theories. The author gives us examples of why theories can neither be proven true or false according to scientific law. Instead science uses generalizations that project patterns, although one can't prove these generalizations, the uniformity of our world makes the projection possible.

The most important issue that Ratzsch deals with is how Christianity and science can and have coexisted, and the limitations of what science can say. It has been a myth that the two contradict each other on a majority of issues and have butted heads for years. To an uneducated Christian it would seem that all of science is contradicting scripture. As Ratzsch points out, even if some theories run contradictory to scripture, it is ridiculous to throw out science as a whole. We as humans are programmed to be interested in finding out why things are the way they are. This according to Ratzsch and Proverbs 25:2 (Ratzsch 134) is glorifying God not condemning him or his teaching. Science is the easies way to find out natures mysteries.

For this reason according to Ratzsch most realists adopt softer views, including Limited realism, Metaphoric Realism and Approximate truth. With limited realism, some theories may be interpreted literally, while some may not be. The metaphoric train of thought would see mistakes in theories as inevitable because of human limitations. Approximate truth claims that while we are not getting everything right, there has been serious progress over the years and we are now closer to the truth of understanding then anyone has been in the past. All of these theories according to Ratzsch depend on confirmation.

While Kuhn and postmodern views seem to have many flaws, they did start a movement away from traditional train of thought. While their views have not been upheld they did help show society that traditional thinking was unacceptable to today's standards.

In the 1960's, an era where humans were at the center of science, the writings of Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions were very influential. Kuhn argues that science must be defined in terms of paradigms and that in the absence of paradigms there was no such thing as science (Ratzsch 41). He was struck by the fact that scientists assumed that a paradigm (scientific work is conducted and evaluated) was the correct approach to nature and seemed not to be concerned with verifying its correctness or with trying to falsify it.

The first discussion is on Baconianism which was developed by Francis Bacon (1561-1626). His view held that science began by collecting data in an objective form, which would be free of all prejudices on the issue at hand. This idea would include being free of any religious influences. The data that was collected was then organized and then the correct explanations would emerge out of the organized data (Ratzsch 18).

Realism on the other hand, believes that theories can be true and accurate descriptions of objective reality (Ratzsch 82). As with anti-realism there are sections of realism as well. The first discussed by Ratzsch is hard realism. This is the thought that our theories are or can be true, that the thought of a theory is exactly the way we humans understa

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Approximate Word count = 2215
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)