INTRODUCTION

We have come to the end of a long journey of exploration, filled with rich disciplinary vistas. The journey has been complicated by the recurring challenges of absorption and synthesis forced upon us by the multidisciplinary framework of the inquiry. In this concluding chapter, having arrived back home, so to speak, I attempt to fulfill the obligations of an integrative interpreter of many disciplinary perspectives on RSEs by weaving together the main strands of the inquiry into the theoretical equivalent of a tapestry that recalls where we have traveled. The tapestry records the many ways the interpretation has been knotted tightly to relevant data, and illustrates the affiliations among valid insights that might otherwise seem unrelated or even opposed. In fact, most of the tapestry was finished on the journey, but it is important to pause at the end, step back, and see what we have wrought.

I proceed first by crystallizing five controversies that the unfolding argument has held in suspension and indicating their bearing on my conclusions. Subsequently, I shall summarize the argument by restating the five affirmations that express in the most substantive way the interpretative conclusion of the book about the nature, functions, and value of RSEs.

FIVE KEY CONTROVERSIES

Five controversial themes run through the argument of this book. These are: Definitive proof versus hypothesis correction; Ideological extremity versus multidisciplinary balance; Supernaturalism versus naturalism; Instinctive innocence versus self-critical responsibility; and Natural law versus social engineering.