>>>Their accounts of the world are as distinct (and each as legitimate) as an
>>>artist's portrait and an anatomist's diagram, of which no composite picture
>>>will be satisfactory, for their common ground is only in the total reality
>>>to which they both attend.
As I read this, the point is that the *reality* is one and indivisible; the
modes of perception and understanding are partial and complementary. Either
mode of knowledge has to be tested back against the reality that it claims
to represent, and the complementarity of the two modes can only be
appreciated by understanding that each mode is partial. Simone Weil wrote
that science was "an implict form of the love of God," which (I would
guess) is something that most readers of this list would agree with; she
went on to point out that religion is also an implicit form of the love of
God, because the forms of religion are always partial and contingent,
shaped to our own ability to receive and respond. Our knowledge of God will
always be partial, with respect to his totality, though it is our hope that
it will be complete with respect to our capacity.
>The idea that two realms of knowledge are independent and do not need to
>be consistent
I don't think that the claim was that the two realms could be inconsistent
in the terms of each realm; rather that what kinds of knowledge the two
realms dealt with were complementary. I agree with you; truth is one. But
to represent that underlying truth even partially may take several
different representations, each of which captures several dimensions of the
truth, and none of which captures them all.
Peace-
Alice