Lonergan’s invitation to intellectual conversion anticipates a position in the philosophy of biology similar to Piaget’s ‘process structuralism.’ It is difficult to hold together structure and process, and Lonergan invites us to make this...
moreLonergan’s invitation to intellectual conversion anticipates a position in the philosophy of biology similar to Piaget’s ‘process structuralism.’ It is difficult to hold together structure and process, and Lonergan invites us to make this discovery, in the first place, using examples from mathematics, though very definitely with biology in mind. I give a broad presentation of this perspective. I show the convergences between Lonergan’s recurrence schemes (influenced by Le Blond?) and Waddington’s cybernetics and indicate the viability of the project which, as his oblique criticism of Maritain shows, Lonergan held to be of great import for theology.