REVISING PROCESS METAPHYSICS IN RESPONSE TO IAN-BARBOURS CRITIQUE

In Religion in an Age of Science, Ian Barbour concludes that the conte mporary evolutionary worldview with its emphasis on the interplay of l aw and chance, relationality and autonomy, can be properly accounted f or only by something like the process-relational metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead. At the same time, he expresses serious reservations about certain features of Whitehead's scheme, notably, his perceived i nability to account for the ongoing identity of the human self and for the fact of multilevel organization within organisms and in the world of inanimate compounds. In this article, I suggest that both of these difficulties can be resolved if one adopts a revisionist understandin g of the Whiteheadian category of society according to which democrati cally organized societies possess an ontological unity and exercise a corporate agency proper to their own level of existence and activity. Furthermore, if one applies this revisionist understanding of societie s to the Whiteheadian doctrine of God, a Trinitarian understanding of God becomes possible within the overall parameters of process-relation al metaphysics. In this way, traditional belief in the doctrine of the Trinity can be reconciled with a scientifically credible worldview.