Method, Bold Spirits, and "Some Third Way"

Abstract

On the first two pages of Method in Theology, Lonergan briefly distinguishes those who conceive method more of an art than a science; those “bolder spirits” who select the most successful science, study its procedures, formulate its precepts, and propose analogies; and a third group of those who are conceive method in a third way.  This essay is a commentary upon the startling claim and the “price that must be paid” if academic disciplines are to rise above mediocrity and begin to implement the solution to the longer cycle of historical decline.