Sequels that take over a decade to make generally don't fare well. Dumb and Dumber 2, Zoolander 2, Psycho 2, yes that sadly exists. Thankfully Incredibles 2 proves there's still life left in this franchise, but is it better than the original? We're gonna find out today on this episode of Movie Feuds. Sounds remarkably close to the first, which is impressive considering there was a 14-year hiatus in between films. Equally impressive as the original cast came back. Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter effortlessly bring Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl back to life. Sarah Vaughn may have aged, but she still manages to hit the same notes for Violet, too. Spencer Fox's Dash is the only one who didn't come back for the sequel, now voiced by Huck Milner. Samuel L. Jackson was a fan favorite in the first as Frozone. The sequel recognizes this by giving him more to do, and even brings back his wife for good measure off-screen for another cameo.  Sorry, I'm gonna censor that. I understand that there's parents out there that let their little ones surf YouTube willy-nilly. You're doing a great job, parent. Keep it up. The Incredibles director Brad Bird continues to be my favorite, as superhero designer extraordinaire Edna Mode. Jack Jack went from a funny side gig in the first film to stealing the new one completely. It's funny to see his myriad of powers unfold, and it leads to one of my favorite scenes in the entire film, Jack Jack vs the Raccoon. I'm a simple man.  Yeah, you got me sold. The sequel adds a bunch of new characters to the roster, most of which are pretty lackluster. They add a bit to the battle variety department, but little else. The biggest issue with the Incredibles 2 is its villain, the screen slaver. Screen slaver can take control of anyone watching a device using some advanced hypnotics. While this does lead to some great moments, the character's identity is extremely obvious. This normally wouldn't be a big problem, but we have the first movie, and Syndrome. Syndrome voiced by Jason Lee is one of the best animated villains, full stop. And let's chat more about him in round two, coming up now. Buddy Pine is what Disney would have you believe every last Jedi hater is. A hardcore fan so betrayed by his hero, he became the ultimate antagonist. As we all know, it's the few crazy ones that hit the hardest, and Buddy hit real hard. He stayed in the shadows for many years, learning everything he could about his fallen idols. He amassed wealth, technology, and a persona of his own. Gone was the doe-eyed boy who worshipped the ground Mr. Incredible walked on. In his place, Syndrome, the most serious and deadly adversary the world has ever seen. Much like another favorite animated villain of mine, Scar, Syndrome's been succeeding for quite some time, killing off many of Earth's finest heroes while perfecting his super terminator. That storyline is compelling enough to stretch for two hours, but that's not even the main focus.  Using powers is illegal after waves of lawsuits and budget crippling events took place. That doesn't stop Mr. Incredible from going out late at night with his pal, listening to the police scanner, see what they can cook up. Eventually he starts working for a shadow organization unbeknownst to his family. I'll ask the girl and the kids, of course, find out when he's held captive, and it's up to the family to work together to stop Syndrome. Brad Bird easily could have cashed in on the success, rushed out and made another Incredibles movie right away, but no, he waited 14 years, patiently, to remake the first one again. I'm joking, but there is a lot of similarities. Although Incredibles 2 is a fun, entertaining picture with plenty of action and laughs to be had, the story is very familiar to the first. Since it takes place exactly where the last one ended, nothing's changed. We still need to let supers back into the spotlight. This means once more we have a large company with a secret agenda, showing up to offer our family financial stability and the opportunity to right some wrongs. And this time, Elastigirl gets the spotlight. She was great in the first film, but here she puts the other family members to shame, outside of Jack Jack, of course. She stops a runaway train, saves a politician during a helicopter attack, and goes toe to toe with the not-so-mysterious screen-slaver. I'm also happy to report she's just as thick in this one, with a new suit and a power bike. The film jumps between her adventure and the home life, which goes from 0 to 100 pretty quickly. Jack Jack's random powers and constant cookie-fits make for some very entertaining watching. This is home-alone 2 die-hard 2-level storytelling.  The pacing can get a bit bogged down, too, with some heavy exposition and conversations that have little to no purpose outside of providing a bit of social or political commentary. As I said in the opening, though, there's plenty of magic in the Incredible series, and I'd love to see a third one. Hopefully one that's just a bit more creative in the writing department. This'll be quick. These are Pixar films. They look amazing. The visuals really stand out, giving off a Hannah Barbera-esque style to them. The 50s inspired clothing, locations, and great soundtracks from Michael Giacano bring it all home. There's definitely some good nods to the James Bond property as well, with the gadgetry and the villain's layer.   Since there is a large amount of time between flicks, Incredibles 2 has the luxury of more powerful tech and all the extras that come with it. I'm talking high-thread counts in their super suits. They look gorgeous. I have no hang-ups in the production department for either movie. The effects are wild, the comedic timing is wonderfully animated, and the action is framed up perfectly. Elastigirl gets two of the best moments in the franchise for me, the first being her playing Jettison with the kids, and the second being the intense helicopter rescue I previously mentioned. I can't imagine anybody's gonna complain about the work done by the talented artists or composers on these films, so let's wrap up. While I do enjoy Incredibles 2, it had almost an impossible task laid out. The Incredibles is my favorite Pixar movie, and that hasn't changed. Incredibles 2 was just more of the same, which is fine. Just not enough to catapult it above the original. Let me know your thoughts. Leave a comment, vote for your winner, and remember, this is more than just reviews. This is Movie Feuds. I will say, one surprise in the sequel. Did anybody really think the goddamn Underminer was gonna get away? I mean, hopefully in 14 years we can wrap that thing up. That'd be nice.


Our second speaker is Michael Craig, whose title for the three-minute thesis competition is Keeping the Lights On, Power Systems, Water and Climate Change. Welcome Michael. I'd like to begin my presentation by pointing out something that I think a lot of people overlook every day, and that's electricity. I mean, it's absolutely incredible that when you walk into a room every second of every day and you flip that switch, that electricity is there to meet that demand. And when you wake up in the morning, you turn your coffee pot on, it's ready to make that coffee, and you can imagine what the world would feel like without coffee. It would be like absolutely anarchy in the streets. And so what we call that in the power system world is power system reliability, that when you need that electricity, it's there to provide it. And that's the focus of my research. Specifically, I work on power system reliability under climate change and under water impacts of climate change. So to get to that point, I'm going to walk you through two lines of background research, the first of which begins with this picture behind me. So this is Brigham Island, a nuclear power plant in Central Pennsylvania. And you'll notice that it's located on the mighty Suswell-Hannah River. And that's because that power plant needs water for cooling. If that river ran dry tomorrow, that power plant will not be able to generate power. And in fact, that's true for all thermal power plants, which includes coal, gas, and nuclear plants. And those plants together produce over 90% of electricity in the United States. And so without those plants, we don't have power system reliability. And that means that without that water, we don't have power system reliability. And in fact, we've already seen water constraints on the power system causing blackouts and brownouts. And the southeast, which is where I work, a few summers ago, there were two little water levels and that caused turbulent blackouts and brownouts in the area. And yet this problem is going to get even worse in the climate change because not only does climate change make things warmer, but across much of the United States, including in the southeast, it decreases precipitation and it increases the severity and frequency of droughts. So you're probably thinking climate change, tons of people work on that. The power system is also a pretty big field of research. So how do people not answer this problem already? Why is this not for researchers? Well, there has been work done in this area, but the work that's been done so far has been on the plant level. So people have taken, you know, drawn a brain around a plant and used an engineering model and they either selected one plant or ten plants or even a hundred plants and they've asked how does climate change affect generation from those plants. But the power system is a system and what we really care about is how that system operates as a whole. And what determines power system liability is how the system operates. And that's where my research comes in. I'll be the first to apply a power system model called the NICMEM model to the question of power system liability under climate change. That model tells me over a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand plants in a fleet, how many power plants generate when on an hourly basis, and we're working with a team of climatologists and hydrologists at the University of Washington. And so they'll be revitalized with water and temperature data and combined with my operational data and with their climate and water data, I'll be able to determine whether there are certain areas or certain time periods in which you might have water sources that reduce power system liability. And this is more than just an academic matter because planners really care about this issue. We're talking about big infrastructure decisions that take 10, 20, 30, 40 years to build and so planners need to start planning now for the future 40 years or now under climate change. And so our research will be able to help guide them to citing plants as well as to choosing certain pheotypes in regions. Thank you very much.


Our sermon title this morning is Jealous and Zealous Love. This is part three. We're continuing to work through this text in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 verses one through six. There's so much in these words, so many subjects that so many sermons could be preached, right? So many hours we could spend talking about these things. And they're worth our time, amen. The word of God is worth our effort, worth our time. We should value it more than gold, yea, much more than fine gold. And so we come again now to 2 Corinthians chapter 11 verses one through six, continuing to work through this text. And as we come to this chapter, as we come to this passage, Paul is about to embark now on what he would ordinarily consider to be a fool's errand. He knows that what he's about to embark on is a little foolish. It is a little folly, as he would say in verse one, the one who said that we boast in the hope of the glory of God, the one who said we boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who said, let the one who boasts, boasts in the Lord, that one is the one who now feels compelled to boast in himself, so to speak, and boast in his ministry that is commended through his boasting by God. And many have called this Paul's fool's speech. It's his fool's speech, they say, which, after some explanation, begins in earnest in verse 22. For the apostle Paul, it's foolish to him that he has to do it. He feels foolish, stooping to this rather mundane level, and he introduces the whole endeavor as foolish in chapter 11 verse one. Oh, Corinthians, that you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Indeed, bear with me. Now this section of text is riddled with highly appropriate sarcasm. When Paul doesn't have his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, Paul seems to be biting it. And you can tell that Paul here feels stuck between a rock and a hard place.   And Paul is trying to navigate a tricky ground between those two truths. And as we know, the initial or the most obvious reason for this course of action on the part of the apostle Paul is the coordinated attack of false teachers who have infiltrated the church at Corinth. They commend or they boast about themselves as true apostles they say of the Lord Jesus Christ. But Paul says they're preaching a different Jesus. They claim these false apostles claim that their ministry is fueled by the spirit of God. But Paul says they have brought a different spirit. They preach what they profess to be the gospel. But Paul says they're preaching a different gospel. And if you judge according to appearance, these men don't look like false teachers, whatever that is supposed to look like. It's there's a certain hair, certain style of suit. They've got the little and the wire. No, we can't tell, right?  They don't look like snakes. They don't sound like demons. They don't come looking and smelling like wolves. But Paul says in verse 13 that they are deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. In verse 15, they are ministers of Satan who transform themselves into ministers of righteousness.  And these wicked men now, these wicked men, have gained an influence among many in Corinth through their boasting. They boast in their credentials. They boast in their commendation. They boast in their reputation. They boast in how much money they make. They boast in their speaking ability. They boast in who they know. Paul describes them in chapter 10 verse 12 as those who commend themselves, comparing themselves and measuring themselves among one another, make themselves look good. And they have many in the church at Corinth convinced that those worldly things, that boasting according to the flesh, that carnal boasting gives them right then to speak for the Lord in the Lord's church based upon those worldly standards, those worldly parameters. You've got many in the church at Corinth that think, yeah, they earned a right to speak for the Lord in the Lord's church. So Paul then, Paul is compelled to play this little game with them. He's compelled to throw his hat in the ring, so to speak. And so Paul boasts himself. He says in chapter 11 verse 12, what I do, what I do, I will also continue to do so that I may cut off opportunity from those who desire an opportunity to be regarded as we are in the things of which they boast. In other words, what Paul is saying is I'm going to boast now to show you how foolish their boasting really is. It's not what I want to do. Paul is reluctant to do it, but it appears that on the ground in Corinth it's necessary. And it's necessary in large part because the boasting of these wicked men is having an impact among God's people in the church there. They're so eloquent in the eyes of the Corinthians. They speak so well. They're wise in their eyes, persuasive. They sound so smart. And Paul, who's Paul, Paul's a tent maker. Paul has got his hands dirty. Paul himself is probably dirty. They're so polished, right? They're so professional, so professional. And Paul is beat up. Doesn't preach well by their standards. His speech, they say, is contemptible. And all of a sudden, all of a sudden, through the wicked lies, the wicked slander of these false teachers in the church at Corinth, Paul's relationship with the church is that of an embarrassing dad trying to hold hands with his teenage daughter as they walk through the mall with their friends. She wants nothing to do with you. In fact, you've got to drop her off at the mall three blocks away so that her friends don't see you with her. They act like they're ashamed of them. And there's a sense of truth to that. There is a sense of shame with this humble, not worldly, not worldly wise in a way that they would think, not speaking in a way that they would think is good. They act like they're ashamed of them. What's Paul's response on all of this? How does Paul respond to this rejection? Right? How does Paul respond to this shameful, disrespectful treatment on the part of people in Corinth, brothers and sisters, that he has ministered among, that he has shed tears over, that he's prayed with, that he's preached the gospel to? What's Paul's response when they treat him like this? It's love. Right? Paul responds with humble love. Paul responds with humiliating himself by entering into this foolish boasting for their sake. Paul says what I do, I do for you. In chapter 12 verse 15, he says, I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls. Whatever it takes, Paul says, even though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved. Sad, isn't it? It's shameful. He tells them in verse two, I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I have betrothed you to one husband so that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. In love, like the father of a petulant, immature teenager, the teenager thinks he knows everything. Right? I was never one of those. Paul assumes a fatherly responsibility for the immature Corinthians. He portrays himself like the father of the bride, like the father of a petulant, immature teenage girl. And following the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave his very life to redeem his bride, the church, Paul's purpose here is to see these people prosper, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to the Lord Jesus Christ. He wants to see the people that he has betrothed to Christ through the gospel. He wants to see them persevere to the end and be with her bridegroom when he comes for her. The virgin bride, maintaining her purity and devotion to the bridegroom until the day of her wedding. But now as much as Paul intends to see her prosper in this way, in verse two, Paul very well understands that his fatherly responsibility is the labor for her protection in verse three. And listen, that's necessary and Paul's been doing that all along the way. It's often that you try to help the teenager who thinks they know everything by instructing them, by correcting them, by rebuking them or reproving them, by trying to help them, by walking them step by step through wisdom, right? You try to help them. It's sometimes the case, isn't it, that they won't listen to anything you have to say because they believe they know it already. Paul has been instructing them, correcting them, rebuking them, reproving them, working with them, pleading with them, preaching to them the whole time. And here he is again in verse three. He says, I fear that somehow as the serpent is eaten by his craftiness, so your minds also may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. We have an enemy that is at work among us. There is an enemy of the Christian. There is an enemy of your soul. Listen, if you're here today, you've never turned from your sin. You've never put faith and trust in Christ. You have an enemy who is actively working against you. The world, your own flesh, that heart that is within you is deceitful above all things. And the devil himself, who's orchestrated this world system to work against your repentance, to work against your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. We have an enemy that enemy is cunning, that enemy is deceitful, and that enemy is deadly. And since the very beginning, even in the garden with Eve, he has been seeking to devour and to destroy. And Paul fears now that the church in Corinth is easy prey. This deception, Paul says, like it did with Eve, begins in the mind. It then poisons the heart and destroys your life. We can see that, don't we?  So as we pick up the text in verse four, Paul has good reason here to fear, good reason to be concerned. Just like Satan, in the Garden of Eden, there is an intruder in Corinth who wants to lure the bride away from her single-minded devotion to the bridegroom. So he says then in verse four, for if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you may well put up with it. Now as we begin to unpack verse four, make the connection with me between verse three and verse four. Paul's concern is that their minds may be corrupted from the simplicity, the single-minded devotion that they should have for the Lord Jesus Christ. That their minds would be corrupted from that simplicity that is in Christ. The deception begins in the thinking of Eve, the corruption begins in Eve's mind, and Satan intends to get to her heart, Satan intends to get to your heart through your mind, through your thinking. And this is a serious concern because verse four, what's the status of those believers, those people in Corinth? What's the status of the church in Corinth? If someone comes along preaching another Jesus, a different spirit, or a different gospel, Paul said to them verse four, you may very well put up with it. In other words, what Paul is saying is you don't have any discernment. You have no discernment. You don't recognize the danger of that false teaching. You don't recognize the false teaching.  Do you see? Paul's concern in verse three is well-founded in verse four. The enemy that we have doesn't come announcing that he's a wolf. They're those that you see that are wolves, right? This guy coming along says, I'm a worshipper or a Satan. I want you to worship Satan with me. I'm not going to be deceived. It's going to be tough to pull that one over on us, right? Not long ago, I had Jova's witnesses come to our door. So I'm outside talking to Jova's witnesses. Listen, there's so much unbiblical about what they think and believe. It's going to be difficult to persuade a reasonably thinking person, a thinking person, going to be difficult to persuade them away from the truth of God in his word if they're thinking about the truth of God in his word. But the enemy doesn't come all the time looking like or sounding like a wolf. He comes dressed in sheep's clothing. He doesn't come announcing that he's speaking for the prince of the power of the air. He prays upon the weak. He prays upon the undisturbing. So what do the cults do? The cults pray upon the weak. The cults pray upon the undisturbing. The cults pray upon those who lack knowledge. The cults pray upon those who sit in churches week in week out who never teach doctrine. The enemy prays upon the weak. The enemy prays upon the simple-minded. He prays upon the undisturbing with subtle deceptions until they are turned away to destruction. Those that do not know and love the truth are simply then unwilling or unable to defend themselves against the smooth sounding words of the enemy. They're unable or unwilling to defend themselves against their persuasive arguments. In fact, in verse 4, they have absolutely no trouble with their teaching. They literally, as it says at the end of verse 4, bear it well or bear it beautifully. They are marvelously tolerant, blissfully unaware. Well, to know this is true, to know that what Paul is saying is critical for us to understand. You just have to look around. Look around us today, right? The enemy flag is raised over virtually every so-called church around this place. They are synagogues of Satan because they're not teaching the truth as it is in Christ. They're teaching something else, a different Jesus, a different spirit, a different gospel, which is really not another Paul would say. The strategy of the enemy since the very beginning with even the garden is to assault the truth and assault your thinking about it. He comes slithering into your mind with the subtle lie on his forked tongue to pollute your understanding of the nature of God, to pollute your understanding of the attributes of God, to pollute your understanding of the doctrine of justification, the doctrine of sanctification, to pollute your understanding of the poison, your conception of the grace of God and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. He knows, the enemy knows that love of the truth is that which fuels and fires and motivates true, genuine devotion to Christ. He knows that. We're to worship the Lord, our God in spirit and in truth. The one who says, listen, I don't need theology. Don't give me theology. I just want to have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. You're not going to worship in spirit and in truth. You're going to worship in spirit and something else, emotion, feeling, opinion, but it won't be truth if you don't know and love the truth. Truth doesn't come naturally to us. It has to be given to us and it's given us by God in his word. He knows that truth is necessary. The enemy knows that truth is necessary to genuine love. And he knows that those who do not know and love the truth, those are easy pray. He prays on the weak. He prays on the ignorant. He prays on the undiscerning. We are called of God to love the Lord, our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Peter instructs us to gird up the loins of our mind, right? Where to add to our faith virtue, to our virtue, knowledge. In 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 9, the coming of the lawless one at the end of the age is according to the working of Satan with all power, signs and lying wonders and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish. In other words, it's not among those who get a bad grade on a test. It's not among those who miss a couple of points until get an 88 instead of a 92. Sometimes we're accustomed to this. This is not a light matter. All power, signs and lying wonders and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish and they perish because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. So how do you battle the unrighteous deception of Satan? How do you battle it? You know and you love the truth. You know and you love the truth.  Sometimes we think we act that way, don't we? We wouldn't say it out of our mouths, but that's the way that we act. I act like I don't need this when I don't read it. I act like I know it all. I got this. I act like I got this when I don't speak him in his word. I act like I know exactly what I need when I don't search for truth in his word but I search for truth in other places. We're acting like a stubborn, rebellious teenager when we do that. So many will say, so many will say, I don't want to study theology. I don't want to study theology. Listen, I just want to be a better mom. If you don't apply yourself to studying good theology, you are a prime candidate for deception and you will likely lead your children into damning error. That's what you'll get for that, mom. You need to learn to know, to love good theology, truth from God's word. Some will say, I'm not going to apply myself to learning sound doctrine. We're doing this study in church. It's just too hard, too hard to work. We're doing this book. I don't really like it. I'm not going to apply myself to learning sound doctrine. I just want to love Jesus. I just want to worship Jesus. I just want to have a relationship with Jesus. The less that you know of sound Christology, the more likely that you are an idolater. You have fabricated or imagined a false Christ in your heart and mind, a different Jesus, which is not another. Some might say, I don't learn very well. Well, you'd better apply yourself to learning. Apply yourself to learning. The Lord has been gracious, gracious. Satan prays on the undiscerning. How long will you persist in not making progress from milk to meat? Satan prays upon the ignorant. Satan prays upon the undiscerning. How many do we need to see? Leave the Lord's church because they didn't understand the Christian Sabbath, because they didn't understand that the Christian life is a life of commitment and delight in the work of the Lord. How many the enemy prays on the undiscerning? When I was thinking about this, I couldn't help but think of a time when I was in college. I try to forget all of that time. By the Lord's grace, He's helped me to do that. There was this point in college, joining this group. There was an initiation involved.  I couldn't even tell you where it was. They had been out in this area cooking up a huge batch of this like an abominable stew. An absolute abhorrent concoction of whatever animal parts and weak old milk. All the stuff that was in this thing. Part of the initiation was that they were going to make us drink it. We're out there. It's dark, so I can't see. My allergies are acting up, so I can't smell. They handed it to you. You're going to have to drink this. I was going to drink it. Well, thank the Lord. I had a buddy with me at the time that stopped me from drinking any of that stuff. It was absolutely disgusting, but I couldn't see and I couldn't smell. That compares, doesn't it? How likely are you and I when we can't see, we can't discern, we don't understand, we don't know the truth of God as it is in Christ. The way that we should, far more likely that you will suck that down and tolerate it, be okay with it, not know any different. The water looks clear and you don't see that there's arsenic in it. You can't see the enemy praise on the undisturbing. In second Corinthians chapter 11, verse four, Paul says, listen, I have good reason to be concerned, you Corinthians. It's my loving duty, Paul says, as a spiritual father to you to protect your purity, to protect your single-minded devotion. Well, listen, you are in great danger. You're in danger like Eve was in danger with a serpent in the garden. What's worse is that you don't see or perceive the danger that you're in. You're undisturbing. Someone comes along preaching damning heresy and you may very well put up with it. Literally verse four, you bear it well, you bear it beautifully. You have no problem welcoming someone who comes along preaching a different message than the one that we've preached to you, different than the one that you've originally believed. Now you believe something different, something else. Now oftentimes apostasy is revealed or exposed by the truth that we deny later. In other words, you come to Christ, you think you come to Christ, you turn from your sin, you put your faith and trust in him, you say you believe what the Bible teaches about what the Bible teaches, and then a year later, two years later, you fall prey to some heretical teaching and now you deny the trinity. Listen, you're not a Christian. You can't be a Christian and deny salvific doctrine. The fact that you now expose that unbelief in your heart is proof you were never safe to begin with. Often apostasy is exposed by what you fail to affirm or what you affirm later. And remember that it's subtle. In fact, the scenario now that Paul is referencing in verse four, not hypothetical. It's not hypothetical. That little preposition if at the beginning of verse four might better be translated since false teachers have already come into the church at Corinth. False teachers were already there and the Corinthians were already tolerating them well. Paul is drawing attention to a present reality going on in this church. This is a church that was getting apostolic instruction directly from the apostle Paul himself.  In fact, the snakes are living there now. They're eating out of the refrigerator and the Corinthians are giving them the pulpit. And notice how Paul describes it as they come, right? They come. They're not sent by Paul. They're not sent by another godly biblical church. They're not commended by the elders of that church. And yet they come. Do you see? They come. Present active participle. They are coming and you are marvelously tolerant. The women's ministry is so good. You got to read this book from Sally so and so. She touches my heart. I don't want a theology book. Just give me a book that speaks to me as a woman. Ladies, you have a book that speaks to you as a woman. I'm not objecting. We're not objecting to books outside the Bible that get us into the Bible to help us understand the Bible. But you need God's word or the truth of God. Listen, the truth of God comes mediated through his word. The truth of God is mediated through his word. Therefore, for us to know the truth, and the truth will set us free, we need to be readers. It comes mediated through his word. But I don't want to read. I don't want to read. I just, I'll watch a video. Give it to me on video. I want to hear Johnny Cash read the Bible. You can actually get a recording of Johnny Cash reading the Bible. I'll listen to a podcast, right? I want to listen to a podcast. As long as it's not about theology, give me something practical. There's the dichotomy, right? Give me something practical. I'm telling you, there is nothing more intensely practical than God's word.  If Paul sounds sarcastic to you in verse four, it's because Paul is. Paul is being sarcastic here. Paul is beside himself. I can hear my dad like echoing in my ears. Act like you got some sense, boy, right?  You tell that to me all the time. Paul is saying to us, listen, act like you have some sense. You are undisturbing and the undisturbing are easy pray for the enemy. Paul summarizes the error of the false teachers in Corinth under three headings. He says in verse four that they preach another Jesus, a different spirit, and a different gospel. The error or the heresy of these false teachers come under three headings. They preach another Jesus. They preach a different spirit. They preach a different gospel. Now remember, it's subtle. The error is subtle. They're not coming preaching Buddhism. They're not coming. They're not Mormons, Jova's witnesses showing up on your doorstep with crazy false doctrine invented by a single man with his head in a hat. It's not what we're talking about, okay? Satan has to be able to get it past the simple minded and undisturbing. So it's going to come wrapped in velvet. It's going to come smelling like cotton candy, but Paul makes no mistake here. He says we're talking about damnable heresy.  So what was the error that Paul then describes in this way? What were they teaching in Corinth? Well, the text doesn't explicitly say, but we can reconstruct a likely candidate, and we've done that in previous sermons. We looked at evidence from the text that it would appear to identify them, these false teachers, as Judaizers or Hebrews from Jerusalem. They profess to be Christians, but according to Acts chapter 15 verse one, they are Judaizers. Turn there with me to Acts chapter 15. Acts chapter 15, and let's take a look in the example of what they were teaching, and then let's apply some of that to our understanding today. According to Acts 15 one, they taught that unless you are circumcised, according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. Faith in Christ was necessary for salvation, but faith in Christ alone was not sufficient for salvation, right? We're saved by grace through faith. They would affirm that, they would say that, but not saved by grace alone through faith alone. You had to add your own works to make it sufficient. I like this example given by a commentator. The illustration is this, that oxygen, oxygen is a necessary condition for fire. You have to have oxygen if you're going to have a fire, but oxygen isn't a sufficient condition for fire. You've got to have other stuff too. Oxygen alone isn't going to do it. If oxygen alone were sufficient for fire, then the whole world would be on fire right now, right? But it's not sufficient. It's not a sufficient condition. In other words, you need something else. So faith was necessary for salvation. Faith was necessary to make one righteous, but faith was not sufficient to make one righteous in their thinking. Do you see the comparison? It shows up. This error shows up in all kinds of ways, all kinds of ways. And if you think to yourself, listen, if you think to yourself, well, this is not going to impact me, I'm clear, right? Salvation stopped by works. I got it. Listen, this shows up in all kinds of ways. And as we work through our law in gospel study, in small groups, in Sunday school, on Sunday night, as our brother preaches through the book of Galatians, you're going to see that this error shows up in all kinds of ways to deceive even you and I if we don't know and love the truth, okay? Paul calls it another Jesus, a different spirit, a different gospel. Here's what it looked like in Paul's day, Acts 15 verse 1. Certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren that unless you are circumcised, according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. Now the attack here is on justification, right standing with God, justification by faith alone in Christ alone. That is what the enemy is attacking, that doctrine. That's something that you and I must understand, get a hold on what is justification by faith alone in Christ alone. It would be like someone coming in verse 1, like someone coming in and saying, listen, unless you are baptized according to the custom of the Roman Catholic Church, you cannot be saved. Unless you are baptized like the churches of Christ say that you must be, you cannot be saved. It'd be like someone coming and saying something similar to that, okay? Verse 2. Therefore, when Paul and Barnabas had no small detention and dispute with them, the guys who were claiming this nonsense, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about this question. Now Paul and Barnabas knew the answer to this question, but they're arguing with these guys who want to say that you have to add works to faith. And so let's go to those who are reputed to be pillars in Jerusalem. Let's settle the matter clearly for everyone involved. Paul is not unsure about the answer. Paul wants to handle this decisively, okay? So verse 3 then, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through Phoenicia, Samaria, describing the conversion of the Gentiles, and they caused great joy to all the brethren. Gentiles are pouring into the church. It's awesome. Verse 4. When they had come to Jerusalem, they were received by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all things that God had done with them. But some of the sects of the Pharisees who believed, they would have said they believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. You see? They believed. They professed. They believed. Some of the sect of the Pharisees who believed rose up saying it is necessary, necessary for justification. It is necessary for right standing with God. It is necessary to be acceptable to God, acceptable by God, acceptable for salvation. It is necessary to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses. Now the apostles and elders in verse 6 came together to consider this matter. When there had been much dispute, Peter rose up and said to them, men and brethren, you know that a good while ago God chose among us that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. So God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them, those who put their faith alone in Christ alone, apart from the law of Moses, apart from circumcision. God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us. Now listen, that's the reason that miraculous sign gifts were observably evident in the first century upon conversion. It's because those sign gifts attested to the truth of a Gentile conversion, a Gentile receiving of the Spirit of God. Now that's been attested to in the word of God and those sign gifts don't continue today. There are many, there are many who will say that they are saved because of some experience. They're adding some, it's because I spoke in tongues that I know I am saved. No, if you're saved, you know you're saved because the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross, paying the penalty for your sin, and has justified you by his work alone on Calvary, and has forgiven you by virtue of that perfect work.  But that's a deception. The enemy comes preaching another Jesus, a different gospel, and a different spirit, not the Spirit of the Bible. He, verse 9, made no distinction between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. And what is meant there is by faith alone. Now therefore, verse 10, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved in the same manner as they. Amen. Right, Paul would later say to Peter in Galatians 2, verse 21, if righteousness comes through the law, or any work of our own, if righteousness comes in any way, shape or form through our own work, Christ died in vain. What is it for? If righteousness comes through my own effort, my own experience, if righteousness comes through my own work, if righteousness comes through my keeping of the law. And there, this is what it looked like in Paul's day, Acts 15, verse 1 and following, but this exists all over the place today in our day. Let me give you just a few examples, the example of Catholicism. Baptism, considered to be the instrumental cause or the means of justification, it is the means. So the way that the Catholic would conceive of this is that the grace of God comes through the sacrament of baptism. At baptism, righteousness is not imputed, not given, it's infused or given to you in order that you may do works that make you righteous. Do you see the difference? It's not the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ and His righteousness alone that is credited to me, that righteousness, the basis on which I am justified before God, no, no, no, the grace of God makes it possible for me to do works of righteousness so that I can be righteous in and of myself. Do you see the difference?  If Jesus Christ, if that's true, Jesus Christ died in vain. Well, as you can imagine, if you're made righteous through the sacrament of baptism, made righteous through your own good works, then what happens when you sin? Well, if you sin, now you've been made unrighteous again. What do you have to do? You have to confess. You have to do priestly absolution. You have to do works of penance, which are works designed to make you righteous again, right, to secure your justification all over again. It's the same heresy, the same heresy that's explained in Acts chapter 15, verse one and following. You see, packaged up, republished 2000 years later. We have the example of easy believism today. Easy believism. I am going to, and wow, right, it just boils down to this. I am going to get up my courage. And when that altar call comes, when the music starts playing, listen, the lights go down, the music starts playing. I know what's about to happen. I'm getting myself geared up for it. All right, I want to placate my guilty conscience. Who doesn't want to go to heaven? I'm going to work out my courage. I'm going to make it down that aisle. So what happens? The invitation is given. This manipulative, this coercive plea, listen, just as I am, the 17th time you better come because on time 18, we're going to stop at him. And so you white knuckle it, you make it down the aisle. And what do you do? You pray a prayer believing that if I'm sincere, when I pray that prayer, the Lord Jesus Christ has promised to come into my heart, misinterpreting a text of scripture, twisting scripture. I believe that Jesus Christ now coming into my heart is going to save me by virtue of what? By virtue of your sincerity. If it's on the basis of your sincerity, then Christ died in vain, by virtue of you getting up the courage to walk the aisle and say that prayer when the invitation started. Listen, if it's by virtue of a decision that you make and not on the finished work of Christ alone, then Christ died in vain. It's not on the basis of your decision. It's not on the basis of your act, not on the basis of your experience, not on the basis of your sincerity, the same error repackaged. Listen, Paul would call it a different gospel. There's the example of the marrow controversy we're talking about in our studies along gospel. The basis of the marrow controversy is that you must forsake sin in order to come to Christ. Well, doesn't the Bible say that we're to repent and believe? Repentance and faith are gifts of God. I'm not a Christian because I don't do this and I don't do that, which the reverse of that is, if I do this and if I do that, then I am a Christian. You say, no, I'm not going to fall prey to that insidious lie. No, no, no, no, we fall prey to that. It's a short step it's a short step. It's a short step to replace the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ in whom is to be our faith, to replace him with the evidences of a work of grace in the heart of a true believer. We can easily make that switch and we begin to think, if I do this, then I'm acceptable with God. And if I don't do this, then I'm not acceptable with God. When I do this, I'll know that I'm saved. It's the same error repackaged, republished 2000 years later. Turn with me to Galatians chapter one. Can you see how damning and dangerous that is?  You get any notion, right? Listen, young person, young girl, young man, listen to me. You are not a Christian by doing this, that or the other thing. I'm going to be a Christian. If I'm going to be a Christian, I need to read my Bible to become a Christian. I need to pray in order to become a Christian. I need to repent in order to become a Christian. I need to mourn over my sin in these ways.  Or if you think to yourself, if you think to yourself that I'm only acceptable with God, if I do these things in this way, that is a damning error. If righteousness comes through our works, our efforts, then Christ died in vain. It is by faith alone in the finished work of Christ alone. You see? Galatians chapter one, verse six, Paul says, I marvel. He told the Corinthians, didn't he? You are marvelously tolerant. He's telling the Galatians the same thing. They're faced with the same heresy, the same error. I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another. But there are some who trouble you who want to pervert the gospel of Christ. They want to corrupt your mind from the simplicity that is in Christ. You see the connection.  It's not going to come looking like that. We're not going to be fooled by that. It's going to come very subtle. It's going to come in deceptive ways. And the way that you battle that deception is by knowing and loving the truth.  Let him be damned. As we have said before, so now I say again, verse nine, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you, then what you have received, let him be accursed. Listen, it can't be stated more clearly than how it is stated frequently in the New Testament. Doctrine is critically important. Theology is critically important. And listen, the way that that works, you understand, right? So in our church, we'll study various topics, various subjects, and we want to edify you, the people of God through these studies. We believe that they're very edifying to you. And time being what it is, we can't just give you a chip implant so that you know it all at once, right? This is a marathon, not a sprint. The Lord tarries. We're going to be studying the Bible together for a long time. Many opportunities to study. Many subjects praise God, but we're going to take them, you know, how to eat an elephant one bite at a time. We're going to take it one study at a time. But while you're studying law and gospel in our church over the next four or six months, you're going to be gaining for yourself rich, blessed, theological understanding that will impact you in every area of your life on the job, in the classroom, as parents of your kids across the dinner table in church, serving the brothers and sisters. If you're working in the nursery, you can hear me over there, law and gospel will make you a better nursery worker, right? Listen, and let me bring it home even a little closer. If we decided to spend a year studying eschatology, what do you think that eschatology is going to do? A study of what God has in store for us, what he's promised us, what's going to come. The promises of God can have the same impact, right? Doctrine is important. What this teaches us clearly is that there will be people who call themselves Christians, who say they believe what God says in His Word, and they're not Christians. This tells us that deception is real. This tells us that we can be easily deceived, easily let astray into error, tells us how desperately we need to know and love the truth of God. There are people who will say that they believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for sinners. There will be people that say He died on the cross for sin, that He was raised from the dead on the third day. The only way to be saved is to turn from your sin and put your trust in Him. Never mind all those false gospels, right? They'll come saying, you've got to turn from your sin and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. And then they'll believe or teach something that is fundamentally unbiblical or undermines those glorious truths, proving they're not actually Christians at all. They're preaching a different Jesus, a different spirit, a different gospel, which is no gospel, no Jesus, and no spirit at all. This is a passage that teaches us that simply the presumption, the ignorance of saying that I'm a Christian, I claim Jesus as my Lord and Savior, and that profession alone is the reason I'm a Christian. If there's anything that teaches more clearly that that is a falsehood, it's this text, you could teach a parrot to say that, right? Given enough time and you don't aggravate the parrot. We've got to know and love the truth. What Jesus are we talking about? What gospel is the Bible referring to? How is the gospel described in Scripture? How does the Lord Jesus Christ save? In whom am I placing my trust if I describe my wife? And I said that Karen is six foot two. She's got a Yankee accent, plays basketball for the audience. We laugh because that's clearly not my wife. People can come professing and saying all sorts of things. It doesn't make it true. It doesn't make it saving. It may mean that you were in horrendous and perilous danger. Paul understands his responsibility in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 verses one through six. He understands his responsibility as their spiritual father to prosper her. I intend, Paul says, to present you a chaste virgin to Christ. Paul understands that in that responsibility to prosper her is woven blended together with the responsibility to protect her because there are other suitors. There are seducers who would seduce her away from single minded devotion to Christ. And so Paul feels compelled. He understands his responsibility to protect her. There are those that would preach a different Jesus, a different spirit in a different gospel. But lastly, Paul understands verse five as a spiritual father. He is to provide for her. He prospers her, protects her and provides for her. Verse five, Paul says, for I consider that I am not at all inferior to the most eminent apostles. Even though I am untrained in speech, yet I am not in knowledge. We have been thoroughly manifested among you in all these things. I believe that in verse five, when Paul makes a reference to eminent apostles, he's making a reference to the false teachers there and not to those who are considered to be or reputed to be pillars in Jerusalem. The other apostles were apostles before Paul's conversion experience on the road to Damascus, right? Before the Lord Jesus Christ called him. I think he's talking about here the false apostles, the reason that we would draw that conclusion in verse five because he references his untrained speech in verse six. That was an accusation that the false apostles had against him. Okay, even though I am untrained in speech, I'm not behind those guys who claim to be eminent apostles, those guys who profess to be sent one to the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm not behind them inferior to them, even though they say I'm untrained in speech, I'm untrained in speech, right? And they profess to speak so eloquently. Paul says, I'm not behind them in knowledge. Even though I am untrained in speech by their standards, I'm not untrained in knowledge. We have been thoroughly manifested among you in all things. The way in which Paul is manifested among them will be spelled out clearly in the fool's speech that follows this introduction. We'll see that more clearly as we work through the text. Paul in providing for this church, providing for the bride provides them that which they need. He provides them with knowledge. With the truth of God in his word, Paul preaches Christ and him crucified. That's how it's summed up, right? They come preaching a different Jesus, a different spirit, a different Christ, a different gospel. What does Paul come preaching? Paul comes preaching Christ and him crucified, right? The Lord Jesus Christ, remission of sins through his name. There is no other name given among men by which we must be saved, right? Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ that your sins may be blotted out. Paul comes preaching them, providing for them the truth of God and that truth manifested in Paul's life. You see in verse six, there's this connection, this connection between knowledge and the truth of God and the life and example of Paul. That truth, Paul is not behind them in knowledge and Paul's knowledge of the one true and living God. Paul's knowledge of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the truth of God that as it is in Christ and now Paul living out that truth, that truth is manifested among them in all things through the life, actions, work, labor and love of the apostle Paul. And that's the way it will be, brother and sister, for every one of us. That truth, what you know will be manifested in your life, manifested in your labor, manifested in the way that you love the Lord, manifested in the way that you love one another and serve in the Lord's church, manifested in the way that you preach the gospel to the lost, manifested in the way that you delight in the commandments of God, right? Manifested among you in all things. When you believe savingly upon the Lord Jesus Christ, it has a transformative effect on your life. No question about it. But as you come to grow in wisdom and in knowledge and in maturity, in the truth as it is in Christ, you become more and more like Him and that is manifested in the way that you live, right?  We become sanctified. Paul is saying in verse six, we have been thoroughly manifested among you in all things. That's what Paul is bringing to the table, right? As an apostle, a sent one of Jesus Christ, Paul brings the preaching of God's Word and that's what they need, right? He's providing for them what they need. What do those false apostles bring? Lies, deceit, error. What do lies and deceitfulness and error produce? Not the fruit of a godly life. No, we see it all over the pages of 1st and 2nd Corinthians, what those lies, what that deceit produces. It produces strife. It produces contention. It produces apostasy. It produces starving so-called Christians, right? Produces error. Produces danger. It produces peril. It produces peril. Brothers and sisters, let's heed Paul's gracious entreaty here, right? Let's heed the warnings that God gives us in His Word and let's cling to the Word of God. If you cling to the Word of God, if you value it as gold, where will you be when the Word of God is preached? It's not a rhetorical question, right? We talk about that, that there are times when you are providentially hindered, not speaking about that. But be careful when you claim providential hindrance because you're saying God kept me from it. If it's important, if you value it, if you say, God, I need your truth. I need to know you more. I need to understand these things. Then what are you going to be doing? Where are you going to be? What's going to occupy your time? What's going to occupy your thoughts? What are you going to be doing? You're going to be seeking the Lord in His Word. Listen, God blesses through His Word. He grows and matures His people. I can't say it any clearer than that. I can't say it any more compellingly. If you value the truth of God, if you acknowledge and you understand how desperately needed it is, how desperately you personally need it, that will be evident. It will be manifested among you in all that you do. Brothers and sisters, let us not neglect the gathering of ourselves together as is the manner of some, but let us come together, clean to the Lord, clean to the Lord's Word, clean to the teaching, love one another, stir one another to love and good works, and may the Lord bless the preaching of His Word to our hearts and minds for His glory and our good. Amen. All praise, honor, and glory to the one who has done all of this for His bride.


Look at that. You can't tell me that that's not pulled pork. Once it's got barbecue sauce on it and it's steaming and it's got crispy edges, like that just straight up looks like a pulled pork sandwich to me.


We have seen, in the first part of this journey through the history and philosophy of science, that science developed into a social institution. The Enlightenment had, in spite of differences among the thinkers, paved the way for the modern period, based on the ideas of democracy, individual freedom, including free speech and the rule of law. But also the modern era would mean the industrial era. New social challenges. New questions to answer. A new dispute about what science is. From 1800 on, we are into the modern period, and during that period there is more advances in science, but there is also a questioning of the whole Enlightenment project. There is an ideological, there is an ideological struggle within science. And this tragically ends with the Second World War. The main questions that have followed science throughout its history are still at the centre of discussion. What constitutes true knowledge? Is there one science or many? Is there one uniform way of doing science or many? Is science social or politically biased? And can scientists study anything? The centre of this discussion would, for the next more than 100 years, be the German-speaking world. The Prussian king Frederick III wanted to make Berlin into a major capital in Europe. He therefore wanted to place a new university in the centre of the city. Wilhelm von Humboldt was an Enlightenment scholar and had been arguing for education reforms. In 1809 he was called by the king of Prussia to oppose this education minister. He founded the University of Berlin in 1811. The university would become one of the most important universities in Europe. It was named Humboldt University of Berlin in 1949. This room is special because it has certain figures of the history of the university and also of important figures of the time when the university was founded. And one of them is Wilhelm von Humboldt who had the idea for that university. And I think it's especially nice to have a picture by him here because one of Humboldt's main idea was to combine teaching with research. That's I think one of the ideas for which he is famous. That's a university should be a place where research is done on the one hand but the same people who do the research do the teaching. Wilhelm's younger brother Alexander would exemplify a universally educated man. He was an explorer and in around 1800 he made long travels to Latin America observing nature and culture and pioneered the idea of seeing nature and culture as a whole integrated ecological system. I think the fact that they chose philosophers to lead this university shows what kind of time that was and how much somehow this idea of this university is built on ideas. The Humboldtian model of higher education was a comprehensive perspective on education where studies and research are integrated and students learn a wide range of subjects both science, cultural knowledge and art in order to support their individual education and development. However, Humboldt's ideas would be challenged from two sides those who did not think it took human self-development far enough, the idealists and those that argued that science should be about explaining the natural world not only reflecting on it, the rationalists. The main thinker within the idealist camp was Georg Friedrich Heigl. He became professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin and was the president of the university from 1829. Heigl argued beyond the thinking of Kant, further developing idealism and speculative philosophy. Heigl argued that our thinking is based on our existence and that means that our thinking is not only mental, it's also bodily and we do not only have knowledge, we also have knowing. He thereby criticized the rationalism of the Enlightenment. There is more to knowledge than pure thinking. Heigl also argued that we as human mankind is part of history and have a sort of a destiny related to the historical development. So our thinking is also embedded in the historical context that we exist within. Heigl's philosophy went back to the ideas of Plato and Aristotle. It implied going beyond our immediate impressions and looking for deeper relations that govern the world we live in which is basically a dialectical and filled with contradictions. Then we also have Heigl's desk. It was later found and then put in this room and I think just a little funny anecdote about this table is that it has a little plate on it saying that's the desk of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and also it says at the very bottom, bitte nichts abstellen, which means don't put anything on it and the funny thing is obviously that's written on a plate which is put on the table so it's a kind of pragmatic antonomy which is funny because I think it demonstrates Heigl's thinking which is somehow known for these kinds of practical antonomies to be at the centre of all thinking. Heigl's thinking would inspire the next generations of German thinkers with a focus on how we can understand ourselves and the world as an integrated historical and cultural reality. Contrary to the idealism that developed in Germany more rationalistic thinking developed in France. One of the persons that came to take the rationalistic tradition of the Enlightenment period forward was Auguste Comte. He grew up after the French Revolution and he stayed in this apartment here in the last part of his life. In contrast to the humanistic ideas of Humboldt and the idealistic ideas of Hegel the French sociologist Auguste Comte developed a much more rationalistic idea of science what he called positivism. Positivism according to Comte was a stage of knowledge development where all metaphysics was removed. It meant that knowledge is based solely on pure facts or pure abstract logic. He thought that mathematics was a science that had made the greatest advancements in terms of abstract knowledge and argued that all the other branches of science astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology and sociology should strive at the same level of abstraction thus becoming positivistic. Furthermore Comte's vision was a science that should be useful for society and he even argued that science would take over the role that religion previously had as the main reference point for society. Comte's positivism combined British inductive empiricism with Descartes' rationalism. The positivist method would imply doing empirical observation and from them develop general abstract theories. It therefore went much further in theorizing than induction. The big ambition for science would be to describe things in mathematical form. Comte believed that the more mathematically precisely a phenomenon could be described and the simpler the theory was the closer it was to truth. Astronomy had according to Comte almost reached the positive stage. Social science on the other hand lagged behind. In economics, positivism inspired the development from classical economics based on empirical observation to neoclassical economics that was described in pure mathematical terms. Comte's countryman Emile Durkheim would use this method in his sociological studies revealing the nature of social structures. Durkheim developed social functional theories on how family structure, religion, industrialization and urbanization impact our lives. In the board of Auguste Comte and also inspired by David Hume the British biologist Charles Darwin in 1859 published his book The Origin of Species and in this book he offered a completely new explanation of how species had developed. Denouncing creationism and arguing for evolution through natural selection. Even though there were similarities between scientific discoveries in different countries there were also differences in how science was perceived. Why was British science so occupied by looking at natural things and developing new theories about natural things? We can observe a contrast between the continental way of thinking basically the German way and the British way although science itself was international the philosophers of science was concerned about different problems and what the British taught us was the simplicity of science. Science is built on observation so we have to go out in the world, observe it, collect data and then we can build our theory as simple as possible on those data. And the theory of evolution is a good example of this because it's basically a very simple theory. Now several discussions in the German speaking world started. Was there one science for all disciplines or does each discipline have its own science? Are they governed by the same principles? Is all research science and is there more than one way of doing science? The dualism between natural science and human science was highlighted in this new dispute called metodenstreit or the dispute on method. It was a dispute where Austrian philosophers and scientists reacted against German idealism and historical orientation. The dispute was mainly related to the study of the economy and society. Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Empire had become one of the main intellectual centres in Europe. Here philosophers and social scientists started to adopt a positivistic way of thinking while their German counterparts were following thinking from Kant and Hegel. More or less it was a direct or indirect reaction to German idealism. They called it school philosophy, school philosophy in the tradition of Kant and Kant played a major role as a subject for criticism regarding is there any prior knowledge for instance, is there a categorical imperative? Kant had exemplified how we can know things a priori that is, before they are observed. The categorical imperative as an ethical norm that you shall act so your action towards others can form the model of how others should act against you is a principle we can know is reasonable without observing it. Austrians agreed with positivists that the foundation of our thinking should be observation. However in Germany and in particular at the University of Berlin scholars still argued that at least humanities and social sciences were different from other branches of science. In what becomes so-called metodenstreit between German and also and mainly Austrian scientists is this discussion is there one way of doing science or is science really many things and also the discussion of whether science in Germany is the same as science in France or in England or in other places. So does the historical context count in the way we are thinking about things? Because there was also reactions in the 19th century to German this grand way of thinking over Hegel who tried to encompass everything also history in one unified system. Perhaps one could say that in this metodenstreit natural science could be left out because that was not that controversial whether nature looked like that or not but in all other fields then the Germans would this so-called historical school in Germany would claim that there is a particular way of thinking at a particular point of time and that influenced the way we look at things. German scholars were arguing for a special foundation for the human and social sciences. Among these was Willem Delty. From 1882 he was professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin. Delty became convinced that the study of nature and the study of man and society never could be the same kind of science. While we can explain nature we can only understand the human world. He thereby established the interpretivist position in social science. His way of dividing science into natural science and human science was a way of dealing with this complexity that the metodenstreit had created. On the one hand natural science could agree rather easily on the method of how to do natural science. In human science we need similarly to agree on some way of doing science. Causality is the key thing in nature natural science but understanding and meaning and interpretation is the key thing in human science. To Delty still natural science was a kind of simple kind of science unproblematic which didn't need any philosophical effort to understand. Thereby a new methodological dispute in science occurred. That between the positivist and the interpretivist tradition. However the idea that science is many things also provoked new attempts to define the unity of science. Now something new happened that would impact the idea of scientific knowledge and again this new insight came from physics. Similar to how Newton's discoveries had inspired philosophy of science in the 18th century the new physics influenced philosophy of science in the 20th century. And again it started in Cambridge. Newton's laws ruled physics for 250 years but at the beginning of the 20th century something happened. People started investigating the atoms and the atoms came to be the most important subject of study at all in natural science because atoms explained physics they explained chemistry they explained biology cosmology and so on. And within the atoms the laws of Newton didn't apply and now here in Cambridge we could concentrate on Paul Dirac who did his very special contribution and this is the way he worked. He started by mathematical reasoning he started by thinking how should nature look like? And he made and he developed a beautiful equation describing mathematics as he thought it should be. Something very strange popped out of this equation namely that for each particle there existed an unknown particle called its antiparticle. For instance for electrons there was an anti-electron. Nobody had ever observed an anti-electron. So this was a purely mathematical or a purely result of his mathematical reasoning. The new insight into atoms and electrons mobilized scholars around Europe and by the 1920s the University of Berlin became the centre of the new thinking in physics. And the first half of the 20th century was the time of the big revolutions in physics the big groundbreaking theories like the special theory of relativity the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. And those theories are associated with names like Albert Einstein Max Planck Erwin Schrodinger and Heisenberg. Why did all these important physicists come here to Berlin? All of them came to this university and had a position here together in the 1920s. So this tells us a lot about the prestigious university this was. If we look at these breaks through this revolution in physics is it relevant also in the history of science to look at what was happening? Did it impact the development of science in general the way that physics started to look at the world in a new way? You can say that the German universities based on the ideas of Humboldt and Enlightenment was a place where people were not only discussing physics but also philosophy. And it's obvious that philosophical thinking were important for the physicists to really do the revolutionary changes. Modern physics challenged some of our basic conceptions of time, space and causation as was illustrated by Werner Heisenberg. He formulated the uncertainty principle which says that the more precisely the position of some particle is determined the less precisely its momentum can be known and vice versa. And Erwin Schrodinger used an example of a cat that is both alive and dead at the same time to illustrate some of the features of waves in quantum physics. The new breakthroughs in physics were neither based in experience nor in observation. Rather the process of developing this knowledge was beyond the discussion of induction versus deduction. In the same way as Berlin became the center of new thinking in physics Vienna became the center for new thinking about science based in the insights from physics. In Vienna around 1900 there was tremendous experimentation with new ways of seeing things. Art, music, literature, architecture were all searching for new forms and rules. Both in science and art one was starting questioning the rules of the game. Both science and art perform and create knowledge within conventions. It was therefore argued that one should rethink these conventions. The people who started to do that were called modernists. These modernists were looking for new formal procedures and rules to govern the way we think and look at things. The person who brought some of these ideas into philosophy was Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein designed this house for his sister Margrette and it's a good illustration of his philosophy and thinking that he formulated in this small book Traktatus which had a tremendous influence on philosophy and on science. The parallel is that in Traktatus he says we need to start philosophy on a new ground removing all old metaphysics all unimportant things and come back to the basic principles that philosophy should be based on and it's the same idea that you find in architecture at the time. Wittgenstein presented what has been called a picture theory of language. Using the picture as a metaphor one can think that a picture can be true in the sense of not manipulated and still not the whole truth. The picture shows one angle of things and leaves others unnoticed. This is also the case with our picturing of the world. We see certain things but not necessarily everything. But how can we be sure that what we see is true if not the whole truth? Here Wittgenstein argues that in order for a sentence to be true it has to be built up by elements that are each true. Wittgenstein realized that philosophy is not only just about to get the right understanding of the phenomena. Philosophy is also about the very language that you just understand the phenomena. And he realized that a lot of the problems of philosophy were not in the way they think about the phenomena as such but in the way they use language to express this thinking. Wittgenstein's ideas inspired scientists. Could a new foundation for science be developed based on both the new insights from physics and Wittgenstein's new insight into language? This was a question asked by a group of scholars at the University of Vienna that became known as the Wienerkreist or the Vienna Circle. The Vienna Circle called themselves neo-positivists. They thereby gave some reference to Auguste Comte but at the same time they agreed with Comte that science should be anti-metaphysical and be based on observable facts but should also take into account logic and language. It was still anti-metaphysical philosophy. It was the commitment to the exact sciences and methods but it was also the inclusion of modern language analysis. There was this claim to combine or to have a coverage between the old tradition of rationalism and empiricism and in the term logical empiricism you have the same tendencies. Both tendencies are coming together but not in a systematic way so that these two poles were really significant for the different intentions within logical empiricism. But the Vienna Circle and the logical post-visit that has been called very much later is very often seen as proclaiming the unity of science. Yes, one point was is there more or less a unity of all sciences and regarding methodology and epistemological claims that there was an agreement that there shouldn't be this absolute divide between humanities and the natural sciences. In the Europe of the 1930s strong political polarization had an impact on the scientific debate and by the mid-1930s most of the members of the Vienna Circle had emigrated from Austria. We know that most members identified themselves with leftist or liberal positions in the wider public they were driven out because of their philosophy and because of their personal political attitudes. And there is a familiar resemblance between scientific philosophy and the emergence of the young republics in Europe and democracies and republics. So, how can we summarize how the Vienna Circle and neo-positivism took the new insights from physics and language theory into account? First of all, they did not make a doctrine or normative theory of how to do science. Secondly, they demanded that all thinking is based on observable facts. And thirdly, they were concerned with how we construct sentences. Their objective was to avoid integrating metaphysical assumptions in our use of language. Parallel to the Vienna Circle another philosophical position developed. This position also argued for the unity of science and it got its inspiration from Vienna even though it mainly developed in Germany. This new philosophical position was called phenomenology and it was quite different from neo-positivism. Phenomenology was developed by Edmund Husser and he got some of his most important ideas from his teacher, Franz Prentano here in Vienna, where Husser was a student. Then Husser brought those ideas to Germany and developed them first in Göttingen and then in Freiburg and the main idea was to unify the philosophy of the subject and the philosophy of objectivity. And how did he do that? He did that by a core concept called intentionality to stress that the subject or consciousness is always directed towards something which is the object and this directedness he calls intentionality as Prentano had done. Did Husser's phenomenology influence his view on science? Yes, many scientists between the wars in the 1920s and 30s took up phenomenology as a basis for their own thinking. Husser's students started to develop phenomenology. The idea of putting the individual life world in the centre of all thinking inspired both political and ethical theory. The most influential student of Husser was Martin Heidegger. Heidegger was an assistant of Husser's in Freiburg and he developed phenomenology in his own way. He moved a bit away from this strict objectivity of Husser taking into account the manifold ways that a human being has in their relation to the world and to itself and developed what we could call a basis for more existential philosophy. Heidegger published his main work Being and Time in 1927. The work was inspired by both Husser and Hegel. Here he argued for the need to address the ontological question what is the nature of things and the most fundamental ontological question is what is being? Heidegger argues that being is something preconceptual hence pre-scientific. It implies a limitation to the ambitions of science and to the idea that instrumental reason can give us answer to all kinds of questions. While many of the neo-positivists had tried to develop science in a logical and abstract way phenomenology had tried to found science in more existential thinking. But phenomenology scholars had been increasingly worried about how science had become instrumental. Edmund Husser died in 1938 but managed to publish in 1936 a book where he strongly attacked the way science had developed. In the 1930s Husser started worrying about how science developed into more and more abstract science more and more mathematics more and more concepts which were far removed from the life world of ordinary people because Husser was more and more thinking about the life world as a subject for thinking and he thought that science was moving into a crisis because it lost contact with the life of ordinary people. Husser's warning against science turned about to be rather prophetic in terms of what was to happen during the Second World War. Science was used in the ideological battle with terrible consequences both through its experiments on human beings and the development of new weapons. Robert Oppenheimer was professor of physics here at the University of California in Berkeley and he's called the father of the atomic bomb. During the Second World War he became leader of the Manhattan Project a project with the intention to develop nuclear weapons. The first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945 in the Trinity Test in New Mexico. The same kind of bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and the 9th in 1945. Oppenheimer later remarked that he was aware that what they had invented would change the world and also that what they had invented could destroy the world. Today scientists are engaged in trying to prevent that this happens again. In the two first parts of this journey through the history and philosophy of science we've seen that science started in ancient times by trying to understand the world. Gradually it had been able to explain at least part of the world and show how man can utilize the resources and forces of the world. By the mid-20th century science had also demonstrated that its knowledge could be used to destroy the world.