Thursday, December 20, 2018

Doing Theological Research

Kibbe, Michael. From Topic to Thesis: A Guide to Theological Research. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016, pp. 152.

It is good to think of research and writing as a process. Sometimes, professors assign a research paper and the emphasis is on it as a product. On such and such you will deliver this research paper (product) to me. Students struggle on how to get from the assignment to the finished product. Michael Kibbe's From Topic to Thesis: A Guide to Theological Research is a useful resource that can guide the student through the different steps of the process: picking a topic, narrowing a topic, finding resources, creating a thesis statement, and writing the paper.

Kibbe introduces his guide in an introduction. He discusses the process of research. The process should take you from topic to thesis, not topic to paper. Kibbe asserts, "It is a simple book designed to take you step by step from a research topic to a research thesis" (14). He suggests that the student should not move topic to a paper. He notes, "A research paper is not built around a topic, but a thesis" (15). Next, he provides a short history of theological research. He describes theological research as taking part in a conversation. It is not a one-person event. He thinks theological research is like any other research, but it is also not like any other research. It seems to be that certain principles of research can be applies across discipline, but each discipline has its own specificity. Kibbe states, "Every research process has a preparation component, a field component and an analysis component" (21). He makes a key point that the "goal of your research is new knowledge for you. You, and you only. No one else" (24). He ends the introduction by defining key terms: theological, primary sources, secondary sources, tertiary sources, and bibliography.

The main part of this book is "about the process of moving from topic (assignment) to thesis (argument)" (43). This process is divided into five steps. Each chapter discusses one of the steps, so there is a chapter for each step of the process.

Chapter one discusses finding direction. Kibbe provides keys to finding direction. First, do not begin your paper already knowing what you are "going to argue." Second, "research takes time." The third and fourth keys go together: do not depend on secondary sources in the beginning; instead, depend on primary and tertiary sources.

Chapter two discusses gathering sources. First, do not "spend too much time on any one source" (56). In the beginning you are skimming your sources to see if they will be relevant to your research project. Second, you need to distinguish between "redirecting and getting distracted." Third, not every source you encounter will be "well written." His last key argues that "research is first and foremost about primary sources" (57).

Chapter three discusses understanding issues. He states, "Your goal in this next phase is to learn as much as you can from your sources about the specific issues involved with your topic" (65). The first key is about reading your sources efficiently. Second, you must "allow yourself large time segments" for doing your work. In other words, you cannot be doing it in 15 minute time allotments. Third, your reading has a specific purpose: you are reading the source for information applicable to your thesis or paper. Fourth, "the specificity of your sources will determine the specificity of your topic" (69).The Fifth key is that research is not a linear process because it requires circling back at different times in the process.

Chapter four discusses entering into the discussion. The important point here is on the student speaking into the conversation or speaking into the discussion with his own argument. He needs to have been listening to the conversation before he is ready to speak. First, the student needs to "have something to contribute to the conversation." Second, he must speak at the appropriate time. Third, he needs to know how to communicate or speak his thesis that "fits into the discussion."

The final chapter discusses establishing a position. First, he states that the thesis is the "heart" of the paper. He asserts, "Every single word, phrase and paragraph in your paper should contribute to your thesis" (87). Second, do not start "writing your paper too soon" (88). He thinks the research should "mold the thesis" and the thesis should "mold the paper." Third, the paper should enter into a conversation already occurring about your "chosen topic."

After the final chapter Kibbe provides six appendices on the following topics: 1) things a student should never do in a paper; 2) helpful theological research tools; 3) scholarly resources; 4) How to use the ATLA religion database; 5) How to download and use Zotero bibliography; and a timeline for papers.

From Topic to Thesis is a short guide on doing theological research. It is well written and easy to read. One might want to start with the thesis earlier in the process than this guide, depending what one is doing research: theology, Biblical studies, Church history, and etc. Personally, I prefer having at least a preliminary thesis early in the process. This book is recommended for all those beginning theological research and those who need a refresher.   

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Message in the Bottle Part 2

Percy, Walker. "The Message in the Bottle" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.


Island news is something the islanders can figure out on their own; news from across the sea can only be delivered by a divine messenger. Percy asserts, "It is news, however, this news from across the seas, and it is as a piece of news that it must be evaluated. Faith is the organ of the historical, says Kierkegaard" (144). Percy contrasts the different conceptions of faith as defined by Kierkegaard and Thomas Aquinas: Aquinas states, "The act of faith consists essentially in knowledge and there we find its formal or specific perfection." Aquinas is saying that faith resides in the intellect. Arvin Vos states that Aquinas's view of faith is that faith is an act of the intellect, for its goal is truth. However, the intellect is moved to this act "under the impetus of the will moving it to assent." In contrast, Kierkegaard argues, "Faith is not a form of knowledge; for all knowledge is either knowledge of the eternal, excluding the temporal and the historical as indifferent, or it is pure historical knowledge. No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the eternal is the historical." Stephen Evans asserts, that according to Kierkegaard, "Christian faith is understood to be a passion, a new or higher 'second' form of immediacy, what Kierkegaard sometimes calls an 'immediacy after reflection,' meaning that it is not simply a natural or spontaneous form of immediacy but a quality that must be developed, and that the individual has some role in developing."

Kierkegaard seems to be stressing that faith is a movement of the heart and will. It is not mere intellectual assent. Evans states that Aquinas's concept is a faith beyond reason. In describing Kierkegaard's view of faith, he says it is both above reason and against reason. Percy sides with Aquinas in believing that faith is knowledge, and he thinks Kierkegaard is wrong in setting up an "antinomy of faith versus reason." He argues that island news and news from across the sea "would correspond roughly with the two knowledges of Saint Thomas: (1) scientific knowledge, in which assent is by reason, (2) knowledge of faith, in which scientific knowledge and assent are undertaken scientifically" (107). Scientific knowledge for medievals is not restricted to modern day science, but all forms of knowledge. Percy wants to argue with Aquinas and the Catholic tradition that faith does not contradict reason. Percy thinks Kierkegaard sees faith as the "Absolute Paradox" and that embracing it is "setting aside reason." 

The castaway sees himself in a predicament in which island news will not help him. Because he knows that island news does not address his situation, he is open to a message from across the seas. Westkarp explains Percy's view on faith as knowledge: "Faith is news 'from across the seas' is, according to Percy, not Kierkegaard's embrace of the Absolute Paradox, not credo quia absurdem est, but a knowledge in which with Thomas Aquinas scientific knowledge and assent are undertaken simultaneously. . . Percy accepts Kierkegaard's definition of faith as 'the organ of the historical' but adds to it Aquinas's understanding of faith as a special kind of knowledge 'in which scientific knowledge [assent achieved by reason] and assent are undertaken simultaneously,' . . . combining in a magnificent way Kierkegaard's and Aquinas's thoughts about faith." 

Percy says that faith must be communicated to the hearer. For faith comes by hearing the message. Percy asserts, "Faith comes from God, but is also comes from hearing. It is a piece of news and there is a news bearer. But why should we believe a news bearer?" (146). Percy draws from Kierkegaard's distinction between an apostle and a genius. A genius would communicate island news, but an apostle would deliver news from across the seas. Westkarp states, "It is characteristic that Percy, in 'The Message in the Bottle,' presents his view of the revelation in a paradoxical form, since the scientist-philosopher-artist would expect the message about salvation to be presented as knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. But Percy shows that precisely the opposite is true, 'that salvation comes by hearing, by a piece of news, and not through knowledge sub specie aeternitatis.

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Meaning and Authenticity

Braman, Brian J. Meaning and Authenticity: Bernard Lonergan and Charles Taylor on the Drama of Authentic Human Existence. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008.

Braman acknowledges that the quest for authenticity began among the new left in the 1960s. However, Bramas asserts, "This quest for authentic human existence does not, however, just spring up with the radical left of the 1960s" (3). It has roots in the 18th century with Rousseau and John Locke. The jargon of "self-fulfillment, self-actualization, self-realization, and authenticity is now common linguistic currency in contemporary culture" (4). It does have its critics: Christopher Lasch speaks of the quest for authenticity as another form of narcissism. Other critics are Alan Bloom, Robert Bellah and Theodor Adorno. Braman accepts the criticisms of these authors, but in "spite of the ongoing criticism, however, the idea of human authenticity persists" (6). Like the argument of Charles Taylor in A Secular Age, Braman argues for a middle position between "uncritical acceptance" and "wholesale condemnation of the idea of authenticity" (6). Braman sets out to just this in his book, Meaning and Authenticity by putting two Canadian thinkers in Conversation, the Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan and the Catholic philosopher and public intellectual, Charles Taylor.

Before beginning this conversation, he introduces the topic of authenticity by discussing some of Heidegger's key ideas in chapter one. Although Rousseau and Herder are influential in the history of "self-determining freedom," Braman thinks that Martin Heiddegger is the "most instrumental in making this question of human authenticity prominent within and without philosophical circles" (4). For Heidegger, authenticity has to do with one's historicity and one's being-to death. This chapter provides detailed descriptions of key terms used by Heidegger: dasein, care, thrownness, everydayness, fallenness, guilt, etc. Braman appreciates Heiddegger's ideas, but he believes it falls short: "in the end, Heidegger's position closes off the possibility of transcendence and leaves death as the only horizon" (73). Both Taylor and Lonergan will argue for the transcendence that Braman thinks is important.

Chapters two and three provide Taylor's and Lonergan's accounts of authenticity. Taylor gives us a "genealogical rehabilitation of what is best and viable in modernity's approach to human authenticity" (7). Taylor seeks to discover the moral sources of the self. Taylor emphasizes the "facticity" of our lives and that one's "identity is always constructed linguistically, socially, and historically" (34). We are engaged agents which means that we "find ourselves (individually as well as culturally) within a lived background of past judgments" (37). Heidegger's view of authenticity related it to the horizon of death, Taylor's account relates it to the life of fullness. Taylor's account relates authenticity to higher goods, constitutive goods, and hyper goods. Taylor even talks about how nature and art can act as an epiphany and  be considered a moral source. Taylor asserts, "The central nature of epiphany is not just one's praxis, but also the intimate transactions that take place between one's self and one's world" (45).

Chapter three covers Bernard Lonergan's hermeneutical and existential account of authenticity. Authenticity for Lonergan is "self-transcendence, and self-transcendence involves intellectual, moral, and religious conversion. This path to authenticity is not just for the elite, but for everyone. This conversion is not a one-time experience, but continues life-long. Lonergan states, "Authenticity is a lifelong commitment, both individually and culturally, to the imperatives to be attentive, reasonable, intelligent, and responsible" (48).

Chapter four compares Taylor's account of authenticity with Lonergan's account. Braman compares the two through exploring three themes: art, cognitional theory, and the human good. Braman thinks the two share much in common: "Lonergan and Taylor have shown that human existence and human understanding are historically dynamic and complex relationship between the person and culture. Both stress the historicity of the human subject, and both dismantle Cartesian certitude and the Kantian transcendental ego. Lonergan and Taylor have de-centered the subject by showing to what degree our self-understanding is conditioned from above downwards by the facticity of human existence. Both have articulated, in response to postmodernism's critique of what Heidegger called 'humanism,' how indeed the person is not truncated, neglected, or immanentist, but existential, and each has done so from a particular but complementary viewpoint" (74). Braman definitely appreciates both thinkers, but Lonergan's view is probably more like his own because in the last part of the chapter is a sectioned called: "Lonergan Beyond Taylor" (95). The author successfully shows the how bot Taylor and Lonergan have provided ways to retrieve authenticity in an acceptable way. He does think that Lonergan's account might add certain depth to Taylor's account with his concept of self-transcendence.

Braman has shown that the quest for authenticity can be retrieved in a way that is not narcissistic. He has also shown how Taylor and Lonergan"s ideas on authenticity is complementary. The introduction to the book by reviewing key ideas of Heidegger is helpful to those not familiar, and Heidegger was an important author since both Taylor and Lonergan have been influenced by Heidderger and interact with his in their own ideas. The book is readable and makes these philosophers understandable to the non-specialist.

Source: Book review by Randall S. Rosenberg

Monday, December 17, 2018

Charles Taylor's A Secular Age

Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Taylor's A Secular Age tells the story of secularization in Western society. Throughout the book, Taylor is critiquing the mainstream secularization thesis which he calls secularization2: This characterization of secularity has to do with "the falling off of religious belief and practice, in people turning away from God, and no longer going to church" (2). Taylor argues for hos own definition of secularization in his book, secularization3. (Secularization one has to do with religion in public spaces.) Secularization3: It is a "move from a society where belief  in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace" (3).

Taylor's book is divided into five parts. Part 1 discusses religious reform; Part 2 is the "turning point" the move toward exclusive humanism; Part 3 is the "Nova Effect" the multiplying of possible positions; Part 4 covers different narratives of secularization (Taylor's own arguments against secularization2); part five analyzes the immanent frame and possible stances to transcendence.

Part 1: The Work of Reform

Taylor's key question: "The question I want to answer . . . why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God, in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?" (25)

God's presence retreated in three areas: 1. The people did not see natural events as acts of God. 2. Society was no longer "conceived as grounded in something higher" (25). 3. People now live in an disenchanted world.

Five major changes from 1500 to 2000:
1. The First major change was disenchantment.
2. The second major change was the creation of the buffered self: this self can disengage itself from anything external to it.
3. The third major change was the breaking of the equilibrium of duties to the state and duties to God.
4. The lost of holy time, plural concepts of time to only clock time.
5. The final change was losing the view of a cosmos and exchanging it for a universe.

Another cause of secularization was the creation of a disciplined society. One part of it came from the Renaissance "notion of civility." A second part came from combining civility with piety. Basically the call for the moral order in society without God.

A big emphasis in the book is how these changes changed the "social imaginary."

James K. A. Smith says that Taylor allows you to feel what it is like to be open to the transcendent and what it feels like to be closed to the transcendent.

Part 2: The Turning Point

This part tells how exclusive humanism "became a live option for large numbers of people" (221).
Four major shifts: First, the shift from the idea that God has a purpose for us outside this world. Second, a shift from the need for grace to accomplish God's purposes. Third, now believing reason can discover everything. No need for mystery. Deists are a transitional stage to exclusive humanism.

Part 3: The Nova Effect

Three stages: First, the development of exclusive humanism as an alternative to the Christian faith. It was followed by the diversification of the nova effect: the creation of many options are particular worldviews in the world. Third, it spread from the elites to the general population. Art became an option for unbelievers.

Part IV: Narrative of secularization:
The Ago of Mobilization from 1840 -1960. The Age of Authenticity began in the 1960s. This is the age we live in. Taylor describes it as a "culture of authenticity," which emphasizes individual expressivism: each person is on a search to find themselves. Emphasis on spirituality, rather than organized religion. Loosening of sexual restrictions. Emphasis on subjectivism. We have seen the end of Christendom. A minimal religion is practiced by the many. Emphasis on tolerance and intolerant of intolerance. We are not to judge how people live. LGBT become an option.

Part V: Conditions of Belief

We all now live in an immanent frame. Taylor asserts, "We come to understand our lives as taking place within a self-sufficient order" (543). There is no need for God in the immanent frame. Taylor distinguishes the immanent frame from two possible spins open to the transcendent or closed to the transcendent. Taylor's "understanding of the immanent frame is that, properly understood it allows for both readings" (550).

Throughout the book Taylor has analyzed different positions in the unbelievers' camp. In the last chapter, Taylor provides examples, exemplars, of people who broke out of the closed frame of the immanent domain: Vaclav Havel, Ivan Illich, Charles Peguy, and Gerard Manly Hopkins.

Taylor has written an impressive book that has provoked much discussion. One must be aware that Taylor is Roman Catholic and his religion does influence some of his interpretations. In other words, some Protestants might disagree with some of his conclusions about how Protestants have influenced secularization. Taylor writes in good, readable prose. It is almost like reading a novel because he is telling the story of secularization.

Smith's Guide to Taylor's A Secular Age

Smith, James K. A. How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014.

James K. A. Smith, professor of philosophy at Calvin College, has written a guidebook for Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. It could be helpful for those unable to read Taylor's book which is almost 800 pages. It could also be used to guide one as one reads through Taylor's book. Smith's purpose is not criticism, but outlining Smith's argument in the book. He also includes questions for applying it to current Evangelicals.

Smith's, How (Not) to Be Secular is divided into five chapters to go alongside Taylor's five parts in A Secular Age. Chapter one describes the reforming of Christianity which led to secularization. Chapter two describes the path from Deism to Atheism. Chapter three analyzes the "Malaise" of the Secular Age. The next chapter covers Taylor's arguments against secularization 2. The last chapter describes people who broke out of immanence to transcendence.

Smith describes Taylor's book as a map of our current age. Smith thinks our age is "haunted." Even the immanent frame is haunted. Unbelievers are tempted by belief, and believers or faith "is haunted by an inescapable sense of its contestability" (4). What Taylor describes as secularization is a "situation of fundamental contestability when it comes to belief, a sense that rival stories are always at the door offering a very different account of the world" (10). Taylor's question is : "Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God, in say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable (19)?" Taylor's book is basically a history of this change.

Taylor looks at religious reform as responsible, in some sense, for bringing about secularization. Some other changes contributing to secularization were disenchantment from the premodern view of the world, to development of a buffered self, and going from a cosmos to a universe. Some other causes are Deism, excarnation, the disengaged self, and others. Providential Deism provided a path for exclusive humanism. Taylor believes that we all live in an immanent frame. In this frame, we can be either open or close to the transcendent.

Taylor believes that we now live in the Age of Anxiety in which expressive individualism is prominent. An important part of this age is the quest for the self or authenticity. Taylor believes there are both pros and cons to this movement.

Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a good guide of Taylor's book. It could be used alone as a summary of Taylor's argument or read alongside Taylor's book to keep the overall argument in mind. I read Smith's book a few years ago, then, I read it alongside Taylor's book, then I read it a third time after finishing Taylor's book. I believe Smith's book helped me to better understand Taylor's book.




Friday, December 14, 2018

Bernard Lonergan

Roy, Louis. Engaging the Thought of Bernard Lonergan. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-7735-4707-0.

Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) was a Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian, taught in the United States, Canada, and Rome. His two major works are Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in Theology (1972), they attempt to "discern how knowledge is advanced in the natural sciences, the human studies, the arts, ethics, and theology." Lonergan is a great fit for the Great Books program since he is a critical realist and a Christian humanist. In addition, he engaged most of the great thinkers in Western civilization: Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Heidegger, Gadamer, Kierkegaard, and others. He is a good companion to Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age. I will be reading through an anthology of his writings next semester.

Louis Roy is a professor of theology at Dominican University College, Ottawa.

In Engaging the Thought of Bernard Lonergan, Louis Roy "stresses the empirical aspect of Lonergan's cognitional theory in relation to the role of meaning, objectivity, subjectivity, and historical consciousness." I like the way that Roy has organized this book. Instead of giving a broad overview of Lonergan's writings, he provides fifteen different studies that engages Lonergan with the following topics: empirical method, integrating method of different fields, religious belief, faith and reason, meaning and truth, mysticism, liturgy, education, and God's providence. He even has a study which compares Lonergan with Gandhi. Roy not only engages Lonergan's thought, but also its implications for many fields. 

Part one provides a broad overview of Lonergan's contribution to methodology, philosophy, and theology. Study 1 characterizes Lonergan's method as empirical. Study 2 "adds that his method is integrative" because it connects philosophy and theology with the major disciplines of knowledge. Part 2 analyzes religious experience. Study three describes Lonergan's view of religious experience how he connects it with the working of the human mind. Study four explains the process of human intentionality. Study five analyzes faith and belief and where Lonergan stands, with Schleiermacher and Wilfred Cantwell Smith or Aquinas. Study six "highlights the paramount import of Lonergan's distinction between meaning and truth in regard to divine revelation." Study 7 examines the weaknesses of traditionalism and relativism. Part Three "draws out implications of Lonergan's cognitional theory in four quite different areas: theology, mysticism, liturgy, and education." Study 8 examines Rahner's misreadings of Aquinas. Study nine applies Lonergan's view of consciousness to mysticism. Study 10 uses Lonergan's cognitional theory to explain the liturgical experience. Study 11 applies Lonergan's epistemology, ethics, and theology to the field of education. Lonergan emphasizes asking questions in the learning experience. It made me think of the emphasis of asking questions in reading the Great Books. Part 4 is concerned with ethics. Study 11 compares Lonergan with John Macmurry. Study 13 examines Gandhi and Lonergan's critique of Western society. Study 14 analyzes human rights and discusses Lonergan's his three conversions: intellectual, moral, and religious. Study 15 examines Aquinas's teaching on providence.

This book is quite readable. The chapters are about 15 pages which makes it easy to read in one sitting. I have read many books on Lonergan, and this seems like a perfect one to introduce the reader to Bernard Lonergan's thought.

Monday, December 3, 2018

The Message in the Bottle Part 1

Percy, Walker. "The Message in the Bottle" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.

Percy, probably, refers to this essay in his writings more than any other essay he wrote which indicates it was important to him. It is one of the most important essays he wrote. In it, he divides information into two categories: knowledge and news. He also portrays the nature of human beings as castaways on an island.

He begins the essay with quotes from two different authors: Kierkegaard and Aquinas.

"The act of faith consists essentially in knowledge and there we find its formal or specific perfection.--Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate"

Now, the quote from KIerkegaard's Philosophical Fragments:

"Faith is not a form of knowledge; for all knowledge is either knowledge of the eternal, excluding the temporal and the historical as indifferent, or is it pure knowledge. No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the eternal is the historical."

Aquinas seems to be saying faith is knowledge and Kierkegaard that it is not. Do they contradict each other? Why does Percy includes these two quotes? Do they have something to do with The Message in the Bottle? What is Percy's relationship to Aquinas? Kierkegaard?

Percy begins the essay by asking us to imagine a man being a castaway on an island. Percy says that he is a "special sort of castaway" (119) because he has amnesia, and he does not know who he is or where he came from. He only knows that he was "cast up onto the beach" (119). The Island turns out to be a good place to live and it is inhabited with other people. All in all, it is a "pleasant" place to live. He finds out that the island is blesses with a "remarkable culture with highly developed social institutions, a good university, first-class science, a flourishing industry and art" (119). The castaway is welcomed by the people of the island. The castaway quickly assimilates to the island: he "gets a job, builds a house, takes a wife, raises a family, goes to night school, and enjoys the local arts of cinema, music, and literature" (119). He becomes a contributing "member of the community" (119).

The castaway becomes "well educated and curious about the world, forms the habit of taking a walk on the beach early in the morning" (119-20). On his walks, he notices different bottles washed up on the shore. The bottles are "tightly corked and each one contains a single piece of paper with a single sentence written on it" (120).

The messages are different "in form and subject matter" (120). He notices that "some of the messages convey important information" (120). Being an educated man, he wants to evaluates the messages "properly and so take advantage of the information they convey" (120). The bottles that washes up on the shore are in the "thousands." The Islanders has joined in his quest to evaluate these messages. They are confronted with two questions: Where did these bottles originate? Second, How can we categorize or divide the messages? Which are important and which are not? Some of the messages make sense; others do not.

Here are some of the messages:

Lead melts at 330 degrees.
2+2=4.
Chicago, a city, is on Lake Michigan.
Chicago is on the Hudson River or Chicago is not on the Hudson River.
At 2 p.m., January 4, 1902, at the residence of Manuel Gomez in Matanzas, Cuba, a leaf fell from the banyan tree.
The British are coming.
The market for eggs in bora bora [a neighboring island] is very good.
If water John Brick is.
Jane will arrive tomorrow.
The pressure of a gas is a function of heat and volume.
Acute myelogenous leukemia may be cured by parenteral administration of metallic beryllium.
IN 1943 the Russians murdered 10,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest.
A war party is approaching from Bora Bora.
Is it possible to predict a supernova in the constelleation Ophiuchus next month by using the following technique--
The Atman (Self) is the Brahman.
The dream symbol, house with a balcony, usually stands for a woman.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Truth is beauty.
Being comprises essence and existence. (120-21)

As the castaway looks at these messages, he divides them into two different groups. Certain sentences "appear to state empirical facts which can only be arrived by observation" (121). Other sentences "refer to a state of affairs implicit in the very nature of reality" (121). Percy states that these are "synthetic" and "analytic" sentences. He does see other ways of diving them. Some of the senses could be divided into those making sense, and those that do not. He thinks it is possible to divide the sentences in a completely different way. He thinks they could be divided into "knowledge" statements and "news" statements.

He states that some of the sentences "which are the result of a very special kind of human activity, an activity which the castaway, an ordinary fellow, attributes alike to scientists, scholars, poets, and philosophers" (122). Though these thinkers are different, they "are alike in their withdrawal from the ordinary affairs of the island, the trading, farming, manufacturing, playing, gossiping, loving--in order to discover underlying constancies amid the flux of phenomena, in order to make precise inductions and deductions, in order to arrange words or sounds or colors to express universal human experience" (122). Basically, the leaders of the development of the sciences and arts in human culture. This group is pursuing "science" in the broadest sense of knowing, the sense of the German word Wissenschaft" (122). This is different from modern scientism which would include only a small group as pursuing knowledge, would accept only certain types on knowing as true knowledge. The islanders would accept the sentences of this large group as one big group. 

The second group of sentences would be what Percy calls "new." Percy says, "In the second group the islander would place those sentences which are significant precisely in so far as the reader is caught up in the affairs and in the life of the island and in so far as he has not withdrawn into the laboratory or seminar room" (123). Percy is saying news would be particularly relevant to the day-to-day situation of the islander. Percy gives two examples: "A hostile war party is approaching. The British are coming [to Concord]" (123). If one asked what might be the problem with the first group of sentences, the islanders might reply that "it unconsciously assumes that this very special posture of 'science' (including poetry, psychoanalysis, philosophy, etc.) is the only attitude that yields significant sentences" (123). To the castaway, it seems that you "cannot abstract from the concrete situation in which one finds himself" (124). Percy seems to be criticizing  the excessive objective posture of science. The idea that we separate ourselves completely from the data that we are analyzing. Percy asserts that we need to be able to consider the situation of the hearer when he hears the news, and distinguish between the important piece of news and the insignificant news. Percy does not think that we have to "throw away the hard-won objectivity of the scientist. We have only to take a step further back so that we may see objectively not only the sentences but the positive scientist who is examining them. After all, the objective picture of the scientist is in the world and can be studied like anything else in the world" (125).

In summarizing so far, Percy says that we have two types of sentences in the bottles, two "kinds" of ways of reading them, two "kinds" of ways to verify the messages to "act upon them," and two "kinds" of "responses" to the messages in the bottle.