Having recognised that in any quest for meaning we have to resort to inference to the best explanation (IBE) in the light of the standards prevailing in the general human search for intelligibility, we need now to consider the various areas to be explored. These are as diverse as the humanity engaged in the quest. Here we are primarily concerned with those new perspectives on nature and humanity that are derived from the sciences – as being the most likely to be capable of yielding public knowledge. For they are the agreed basis of actions and policies in much of our communal activity and are the common possession of many thinking people in contemporary culture. The world of science therefore constitutes a common starting point from which all might set out on any exploration towards the divine. However, although widely held basic presuppositions are deeply influenced by scientific perspectives, they are not exhaustively conditioned by them and there are more general philosophical considerations that should carry weight and must also be deployed and referred to in what follows.
We begin by looking at the world as it now appears to the sciences – a kind of ‘still shot’ of its moving panorama.