This research identifies, through a comparative analysis, areas of conflict between emergent complexity (science) and process thought (philosophical theology). Emergent complexity encompasses the architects and concepts of the expanded Darwinian synthesis. Process thought is represented by Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism. Historical and intellectual points of contact between the two systems, as well as concepts important to each, are comparatively analyzed. Three areas of conflict between process thought as a pre-complexity metaphysic and current scientific theories of the emergence of complexity are identified and expressed as three questions. The three questions are: (1) Is process or substance the basic unit of existence? (2) Is the capacity for experience present in all entities or emergent only in higher level entities? And (3) Is there only retrospectively observed directionality in the universe, or is there transcendent purpose? These areas of conflict are then considered for their possible resolutions. Analysis of the possible solutions to the areas of conflict reveals that the Whiteheadian propositions of processes as the basic unit of existence, capacity for experience at the lowest levels of existence, and a place for transcendent purpose in the universe, are viable ontological propositions that merit further research, similar to the excellent, if limited, comparative research between process thought and the scientific concepts related to emergent complexity that has already been accomplished. In addition, when the areas of conflict are considered within the arena of common reflection, where epistemological parity may be supposed, Whiteheadian process thought continues to have much to offer the dialogue between science and theology. It remains relevant to the search for a coherent worldview that considers both the scientific and the spiritual propensities of humankind, just as it has for many scientists and process scholars throughout the last century.

In the philosophical and theological debates concerning religious pluralism, scant attention has been paid to the methodologies that underlie comparisons of the world's religious traditions. The author argues that any comparative religious inquiry must proceed in accordance with a hermeneutic methodology. To this end, he rationally reconstructs the hermeneutic tradition from Chladenius to Gadamer as a philosophical attempt to think together two ideas that are in tension with each other: the diversity of perspectivalism (represented by Chladenius' doctrine of Sehe-Punkt), and the ontological unity that underlies interpretive discourse. A significant moment in this narrative is the further insight, drawn from Ricoeur, that the individual is not trapped within her own linguistic horizon, but is able to partially transcend these limitations. This implies that the experience of every individual is co-constituted by her cultural situation and the non-linguistic world.This ability to partially transcend one's own historical horizon establishes the hermeneutical agency of authors and readers, and raises the question of whether any two perspectives are so alienated that understanding between them is impossible. This worry about incommensurability is dissolved by the practice of phronesis, or practical wisdom. But because genuine understanding entails genuine disagreement, a higher court of appeal is needed: a theory of truth. Considering several accounts of truth that are possible given the assertion of the co-constitution thesis above, the author argues that truth is best defined as correspondence, and that determining this correspondence is unlikely. The truth claims raised by religions have a definite relation to a determinate ontological world, though we may never verify the accuracy of those claims in any absolute sense due to our own hermeneutical finitude. Finally, he defends the position of "fallibilist hermeneutics" against the criticisms of Lyotard and Derrida, arguing that fallibilist hermeneutics is an example of the constructively postmodern trajectory in philosophy, which accepts the "break" of deconstruction, but also reconstructs systems, stipulating that such systems must have a tentative, open, and hypothetical status. Returning to the religious pluralism debates, the author endorses something akin to John B. Cobb, Jr.'s "complementarity" or "deep" pluralism as the most adequate account of religious diversity.

The task of this study is to reconstruct the legacy of Korean minjung theology by reformulating its essential ideas in a dialogue with process thought. This study has two primary concerns: how to reinterpret the theology to be able to show its significance that is meaningful in contemporary theological studies as well as in past theological localization of Christian beliefs in the Korean context; and how to reformulate basic ideas of the theology with philosophical consistency so as to establish a theological basis for the future study of minjung theology. For this task, this study re interprets the idea of minjung messiah, the most important doctrine in the history of minjung theology through which the fundamental insights of the theology are conveyed, not as a quasi-christology but as a non-dualistic/organic understanding of the relationship between God and minjung. To facilitate a discussion on the non-dualistic nature of the idea of minjung messiah, this study experiments with the philosophical adoption of process panentheism. The philosophical context, which is established in the dialogue with process panentheism, supports the idea to avoid the constant theological charge of "messianic confusion," a theological confusion that ignores the role of the Christ and instead regards minjung as the messiah. Also, in the dialogue with process panentheism, minjung theology could refine some important concepts in a coherent philosophical framework in which the idea of minjung messiah can explicate its fundamental theological tenet, a non-contradiction between minjung's self-redemption and the creative role of God in it. All of the reformulated ideas are put together in a minjung hermeneutics that promotes the essential teaching of minjung theology--minjung-centrism which suggests a theological envisioning through the eyes of minjung and on the side of minjung--with philosophical clarity. With minjung hermeneutics, minjung theology continuously enlivens its practical concern--a whole-hearted praxis toward sustainable communities of life --and proposes it as an alternative way of thinking and living in our postmodern context.

"Architect of Excess: Robert Duncan and the American Pragmatist Sublime" examines three historical phases of the poet Robert Duncan's writing within the aesthetic and philosophical context of an American pragmatist sublime. With its constitutive view of the poem as a "multiphasic" experience of language, Duncan's poetics of process---which like process philosophy is predicated on conditions of change and plenitude---can be traced to the pragmatist tradition of William James, John Dewey, and Alfred North Whitehead. Implicit in their conception of a multifarious, non-totalizable world is a pragmatist sublime that, against the continuing legacy of the Kantian sublime, reorients the concept as a pluralistic, ontological, and relational phenomenon of experience. Working from this theoretical framework, and drawing upon such archival materials as the poet's notebooks, unpublished manuscripts, and correspondence, each chapter examines a different stage in Duncan's understanding of excess in relation to poetry. These include: (1) his early years writing and editing in New York during the late 1930s and early 1940s, when Duncan's ideas about desire and the social function of the poet as a shaman exploring larger forms of consciousness first developed under the shadow of Surrealism; (2) the poetics of organism in The Opening of the Field (1960), Roots and Branches (1964), and Bending the Bow (1968) that emerges out of Whiteheadian notions of extension and multiplicity as a response to the sublime conditions of "What Is"; and (3) the architectural complexities of Ground Work (1984, 1988), including Duncan's related notions of the pragmatist poet as an architect building with language, and of the poem as an architectural space of dwelling with otherness. Underlying each of these periods is a sublime poetics (and poetic politics) of process corresponding to Duncan's pluralism.

Quantum theory as it stands today is perhaps the single most comprehensive, experimentally verified and successful theory in the entire history of science. Using a philosophical context, this synthesis challenges the impression shared by many physicists and laymen alike that in some way this theory is incomplete, philosophically flawed, or self-contradictory. In simple terms and with little scientific or philosophical jargon, this is an examination of some of the philosophical implications of quantum theory. In particular, the Copenhagen interpretation of Bohr and Heisenberg is systematically explored revealing its neo-Kantian and anti-realist features. The unsung 'hero' of this tale, as recognized by Heisenberg is the German poet and naturalist Goethe whose heterodox “Theory of Colors”, dismissed by so many as an anti-science diatribe, actually presciently outlines a position similar to the indeterminacy principle. Goethe maintained that theories are not objective descriptions as such, but rather the points of view of the scientist framed within a particular context of knowledge. As Bohr said: 'Natural Science is not nature itself but part of a relation between man and nature, and therefore is dependent on man.' Finally the physical theories of de Broglie and Bohm are contextualized within the philosophical ideas of Bergson, Deleuze, Kant and Whitehead. In particular Whitehead's idea of the 'Melodic Metaphor' an embrace of the matter wave model is seen as a new 'Music of the Spheres.' Finally, the notion of aesthetic beauty in scientific theory is examined in some depth, revealing it to be an important criterion for judging the validity of theoretical constructs.

This dissertation presents a process praxis theodicy, which is an attempt to combine Alfred North Whitehead's process theodicy and the understanding of suffering in the liberation movement. Jincheol O argues that Whitehead has a concern for praxis for the suffering world as well as philosophical concerns for theodicy. The thesis of this work is that logical and existential process theodicies go further than the work of David Ray Griffin, Burton Z. Cooper, and Tyron Inbody by seeking the balance of theory and praxis in order to confront massive injustice and inequality in the world. Griffin's fundamental interest in theodicy is to propose a coherent logical process theodicy. On the other hand, Cooper and Inbody have a strong personal, existential tendency because their fundamental concern is to create a valuable meaning in the middle of affliction. However, these three process thinkers focus little or not at all on the importance of liberating people from conditions producing massive suffering. Because of their focus on logical or individual suffering, they are weak in praxis for world suffering. According to Whitehead, thought cannot be separated from the experience of feeling. Therefore, the theory of thought should be rooted in concrete experiences. In the relationship between praxis and theory, Whitehead's idea of feeling bestows the priority of praxis of liberation before philosophical theory. In order to establish a Whiteheadian process praxis theodicy, Jincheol claims that one should acknowledge the priority of praxis over the theoretical foundation in spite of indispensable relationship between praxis and theory. What Jincheol calls "the praxis process theodicy" aims at the communal praxis for wholeness. It proposes a nondualistic, holistic, relational vision of the liberation of the world without defying the priority of praxis to theory, although there is an indispensable relationship between the two. Because one of the fundamental issues of liberation theology and process theology is to bring about social justice, both theologies can be complementary to each other. This means that liberation theology can support the process theologians who desire to more actively participate in social justice issues, and process theology can assist the liberation theologians by giving strength to the theoretical foundations of the liberation movement.

The meta-narrative of Christian soteriology answers three functional questions: from what are saved, to what, and how? The "how" of salvation remains a problematic area in the Western church, where a number of transactional theories have been offered, all of which fall generally under the heading of "atonement," and all of which have met with criticism. In a constructive attempt to reformulate a Christian soteriology, this dissertation presents two atonement trajectories in the West--one constructive, although consisting of multiple theories; the other critical--with the goal of discerning problems that would need to be addressed by a revised doctrine of salvation. It also examines the Eastern model of theosis, which has resurfaced in the West in response to the polemic against atonement. The major critiques of both these traditions concern the nature of God, the appeal to supernaturalism, and the nature of human transformation--ontological or moral? Behind these criticisms lies an overarching question that emerges in the absence of an adequate metaphysic, namely, how does God act in the world? This dissertation proposes a new meta-narrative of salvation based on process theology. It argues that we are saved from a state of excarnation, which occurs when the divine aim is repeatedly ignored or rejected. It results in progressively fewer possibilities in an individual's life and more generally in suffering, determinism, and evil. We are saved to abundant life, an existential state characterized by enjoyment and inclusive well-being. How we are saved is by means of theoanthroposis--the natural process by which God is incarnationally present in every actual entity. With a process metaphysic, there is no problematized nature of God to be overcome by some transaction, and there is no appeal to supernaturalism. God is not an ontological exception, operating outside the natural world, but an actual entity dynamically related to other actual entities. Human transformation is not reduced to perspectivalism or moral improvement but is actual and aimed at inclusive well-being.

The purpose of this dissertation is to make a modest contribution to the contemporary discussion of pluralism by developing a "constructively postmodern" approach to religious diversity. This approach is based on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead as that philosophy has been developed by John B. Cobb. Jr. and David Ray Griffin. With help from Whitehead, the dissertation surveys approaches toward pluralism in the West and then develops a distinctively Chinese version of constructive postmodern pluralism. Constructive postmodern pluralism implies an attitude of respecting others and of being willing to learn from others without reducing the other to one's own identity: that is, to sameness. A constructively postmodern approach avoids a dichotomy between universalism and particularism. John Hick and S. Mark Heim represent these two perspectives. Hick emphasizes the universal and, in so doing, neglects the uniqueness of the particular. Heim rightly emphasizes the particularity of religious traditions, but neglects the fact that particular religions are traditions in process and that they can learn from other traditions. A constructive postmodern approach can welcome both commonality and difference, showing how constructive relationships can be built in the very process of dialogue. It shows how different religions can highlight different but complementary ultimates and point to different but complementary forms of salvation. Chinese traditions can enrich such pluralism by offering a model of creative relationships among religions modeled after relations among Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. This distinctively Chinese version of constructive postmodernism can be called "harmonism." The key features of  harmonism include an emphasis on equality of all religions, an emphasis on complementarity of religions, treating the three Religions as an organic whole, peaceful co-existence, mutual transformation. As developed with help from Whiteheadian or process thought, Chinese harmonism provides a middle way between particularism and universalism and shows how diversity can exist within unity. As philosophers continue to develop philosophies of religious diversity, Chinese harmonism can make a key contribution to the ongoing conversation.