The search for truth: in conversation with Cornel du Toit

Abstract

Cornel du Toit is an exploratory thinker. He is a wide thinker, who refuses to be confined by the limitations of a specific discipline or dogma. In the years that I have worked with Du Toit, I have found his work to be innovative and fresh, ground-breaking and constantly testing the limits of convention. It is such a mind that is helpful in the tensions between science and religion, between religion and politics, and between existentialism and metaphysics. Underlying his work is the nugget which drives every researcher: a quest for the truth. In this article I wish to celebrate the work of Cornel du Toit by commenting on the different ways he has grappled with the question of truth, while holding the reins of the bucking horses called religion and science. I will do so by describing Du Toit’s perspectives of the locus of truth in religion and science, and his exploration of the tension between these two entities. I conclude with ideas about the direction in which our understanding of truth in science and religion may be heading.