In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object while others analyze the world as a complex made up of many parts. In scientific cosmology the world or universe is commonly defined as "[t]he totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Theories of modality, on the other hand, talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. Phenomenology, starting from the horizon of co-given objects present in the periphery of every experience, defines the world as the biggest horizon or the "horizon of all horizons". In philosophy of mind, the world is commonly contrasted with the mind as that which is represented by the mind. Theology conceptualizes the world in relation to God, for example, as God's creation, as identical to God or as the two being interdependent. In religions, there is often a tendency to downgrade the material or sensory world in favor of a spiritual world to be sought through religious practice. A comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it, as is commonly found in religions, is known as a worldview. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world while eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world.
Herman Dooyeweerd was a professor of law and jurisprudence at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam from 1926 to 1965. He was also a philosopher and principal founder of Reformational philosophy with Dirk Vollenhoven, a significant development within the Neocalvinist school of thought. Dooyeweerd made several contributions to philosophy and other academic disciplines concerning the nature of diversity and coherence in everyday experience, the transcendental conditions for theoretical thought, the relationship between religion, philosophy, and scientific theory, and an understanding of meaning, being, time and self.
Wilfrid Stalker Sellars was an American philosopher and prominent developer of critical realism, who "revolutionized both the content and the method of philosophy in the United States".
Josiah Royce was an American Pragmatist and objective idealist philosopher and the founder of American idealism. His philosophical ideas included his joining of pragmatism and idealism, his philosophy of loyalty, and his defense of absolutism.
Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised Protestant, he was agnostic before converting to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive Thomas Aquinas for modern times, and was influential in the development and drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Pope Paul VI presented his "Message to Men of Thought and of Science" at the close of Vatican II to Maritain, his long-time friend and mentor. The same pope had seriously considered making him a lay cardinal, but Maritain rejected it. Maritain's interest and works spanned many aspects of philosophy, including aesthetics, political theory, philosophy of science, metaphysics, the nature of education, liturgy and ecclesiology.
Reformational philosophy of society is a neo-Calvinistic movement pioneered by Herman Dooyeweerd and D. H. Th. Vollenhoven that seeks to develop philosophical thought in a Reformed Christian direction. It is related to the idea of a political community and can be traced back to 16th-century monarchomach thinking. This school of thought had a particular influence in the Netherlands and contributed to the country being the first modern nation state. Freedom of Conscience and the fight against tyranny have a special place in the Reformational philosophy of society.
Dirk Hendrik Theodoor Vollenhoven was a Dutch philosopher.
Jacob Klapwijk was a Dutch philosopher, and Emeritus Professor of Modern and Systematic Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, known for his work on Ernst Troeltsch and historicism, Reformational thinking, the transformational task of Christian philosophy, and the theory of emergent evolution.
Bernard Zylstra was the principal and the professor of political theory at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His influence on the development of Christian scholarship extended to the US, UK, South Africa, and Australia.
Calvin George Seerveld received a BA from Calvin College in 1952 and an MA in English literature and classics from the University of Michigan in 1953. He then went on to study under D. H. Th. Vollenhoven at the Free University (VU) in Amsterdam, where his doctoral dissertation dealt with Croce's aesthetics. It was supervised by Vollenhoven and Carlo Antoni. He then taught philosophy and German at Trinity Christian College and went on to teach philosophical aesthetics at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto.
James W. Skillen is a Christian political philosopher and author. He was the executive director and then president of the Center for Public Justice from 1981 to 2009, when he retired from the organization. He helped found the organization in 1977. From 1973 to 1982 he taught political theory and international relations at three Christian colleges. Today, Skillen speaks regularly both domestically and internationally and writes primarily in areas of biblical studies and political philosophy and practice. He also mentors a number of advanced students.
A religious ground motive (RGM) is a concept in the reformational philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd. In his book Roots of Western Culture Dooyeweerd identified four great frameworks or value-systems that have determined human interpretations of reality with formative power over Western culture. Three of these are dualistic and may be described in the terms of Hegelian dialectic as antitheses of opposite poles of reference that are eventually resolved by synthesis, only for the synthesis to draw out, inexorably, a new opposing pole and so a new antithesis.
Brad Stephan Gregory holds the Dorothy G. Griffin Collegiate Chair in European History at the University of Notre Dame. After spending the spring 2002 semester as a visiting scholar with the Erasmus Institute at Our Lady's University, Gregory came to Notre Dame in 2003 after teaching at Stanford University, where he received early tenure in 2001. He became a full professor of history at Notre Dame in 2012. Gregory formerly served as the director of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies, which was founded in 2008, from 2013 to 2019. Together with Randall C. Zachman, Gregory also serves as the North American editor of the Archive for Reformation History.
Mary Brenda HesseFBA was an English philosopher of science, latterly a professor in the subject at the University of Cambridge.
Philosophy of matter is the branch of philosophy concerned with issues surrounding the ontology, epistemology and character of matter and the material world. The word matter is derived from the Latin word materia, meaning "wood", or “timber”, in the sense "material", as distinct from "mind" or "form". The image of wood came to Latin as a calque from the ancient Greek philosophical usage of hyle (ὕλη).
Christian Stephen Smith is an American sociologist, currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Smith's research focuses primarily on religion in modernity, adolescents and emerging adults, sociological theory, philosophy of science, the science of generosity, American evangelicalism, and culture. Smith is well known for his contributions to the sociology of religion, particularly his research into adolescent spirituality, as well as for his contributions to sociological theory and his advocacy of critical realism.
Cornelius Van Til was a Dutch-American reformed philosopher and theologian, who is credited as being the originator of modern presuppositional apologetics.
Sensus divinitatis, also referred to as sensus deitatis or semen religionis, is a term first employed by French Protestant reformer John Calvin to describe a postulated human sense. Instead of knowledge of the environment, the sensus divinitatis is alleged to give humans a knowledge of God.
Johan Peter Albertus Mekkes was a Dutch philosopher. Having started his career as an officer in the Dutch army, he later studied law and philosophy. His active life as a publishing philosopher started around 1947. In 1949 he became a professor of philosophy at the University of Leiden. Due to a scarcity of translated works he is little known in the English-speaking world but he was influential for a number of other Dutch philosophers. He was one of the second generation of reformational philosophers arising from the Free University (VU) in Amsterdam, after the first generation of Herman Dooyeweerd and D. H. Th. Vollenhoven. Other second generationers were: Hendrik van Riessen, S. U. Zuidema and K. J. Popma.
