John Lukacs, in his own estimation, is much more than a ordinary historian. In what he considers his most important book, Historical Consciousness, he elaborates “not a philosophy of history but its opposite: a multifaceted statement and exposition of a historical philosophy …. It wishes to demonstrate the profound yet considerably unsystematic, historicity of our knowledge”. When we learn from Conor Cruise O’Brien that Lukacs possesses “one of the most powerful, as well as one of the most learned minds of our time”, we eagerly await an account of Lukacs’ philosophical discoveries.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) believed that the future course of world history depends upon people’s decisions as to the relation between science and religion. In fact, the force of religious intuitions and the force of scientific endeavors are the two most powerful forces in history. Whitehead’s soulutions to conflicts between science and religion was to suggest modifications in both science and religion, as each has been traditionally understood, so that an inclusive alternative world-view might be constructed. He turned to speculative philosophy for this constructive task. Whitehead proposed that philosophy attains its chief importance by fusing religion and science into one rational scheme of thought.