Is knowing a purely passive reception of something concrete outside the mind, or when we know something, are we creating something too?
Spanning more than 500 years of philosophical enquiry from the Middle Ages to the present day, Robert Miner clarifies modern philosophical conceptions of knowing as making or constructing, and contrasts this view with the theological understanding of knowing as a participation in divine creation.
This study demonstrates how 'creative knowledge' has its roots in the theologies of Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas Cusanus. It explores the multiple ways in which this idea influenced the architects of modern philosophy, most notably Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes and Thomas Hobbes, despite their secular stance. Miner contends that, well in advance of Kant, one of these thinkers, Gaimbattista Vico provided a remarkably succinct formulation of the metaphysical and epistemological core of modernity in his principle verum et factum convertuntur: 'the true and the made are convertible'.
In Truth in the Making, Robert Miner challenges the standard assumption that Kant was the first thinker to conceive of knowing as constructive activity, and shows how contemporary theology can reclaim a concept of knowing that is both creative and participant in divine wisdom.

About the Author
Robert Miner is Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Honors College at Baylor University. He has published widely on the history of modern philosophy and is the author or Vico, Genealogist of Modernity.

Reviews

'The book ... can be recommended as an important historical perspective that is vital to any informed understanding of contemporary discourse concerning the source(s) of our knowing.' - The Expository Times

' ... [Robert Miner] has written a book that is as careful as it is ambitious ... the delight of this book is in the details.' -

' ... Truth in the Making offers useful expositions of important thinkers ...' - Church Times

'...Truth in the Making tells a compelling story.'- The Thomist

Book Information
ISBN 9780415276986
Author Robert C. Miner
Format Paperback
Page Count 192
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 360g