biological developments along particular lines. Auxier's theory of the quantum of explanation, developed with Gary L. Herstein, holds that all explanation (especially scientific explanation) depends upon a structure, called “the quantum” (following Whitehead's usage) drawn from concrete reality and hypothesized as an irreducible unit for the purposes of some determinate inquiry. While Auxier and Herstein are realists in science, they are realists about this quantum, which they hold to be basic to the structure of both cognition and understanding. The quantum is, in Auxier's view, an overdetermined image modeled precisely and carefully to serve as the exact unit which is irreducibly present in the whole which is to be explained. Explanation thus moves from the analysis of a presupposed coordinate whole by means of a genetic specification of the order immanent in the quantum. Thus, all scientific knowledge proceeds by a kind of mereotopology, by the creation of s suitable space of explanation and a re-enactment of its primary characters according to the complex features immanent in the quantum. The ability to identify and describe a quantum for these purposes is a kind of talent that some people possess as a refinement of their aesthetic reflective intuition. Thus, scientific genius is no less aesthetic in character than artistic genius, in Auxier's view. Theology and philosophy of religion Auxier holds that theology must be done in accordance with the methods and norms of philosophy and that even when theology is the source of new methods and forms of analysis (for example, Duns Scotus's theory of transcendentals or Friedrich Scheiermacher's hermeneutics), these methods and forms must be judged according to philosophical rather than theological norms. Thus, while religious practice in no ways depends upon theology, theology is completely dependent at the level of norms and methods (not content) on philosophy. Good theology must therefore be first and foremost philosophically sound. Theology takes on at the level of faith the assumption of the existence of divinity, of revelation, and of the reality of the good. Upon these three suppositions, theology may proceed along paths that philosophy does not travel. With Royce Auxier holds that doing philosophy does depend upon an act of philosophical faith in the intelligibility to us of the universe, but this requires no idea of divinity, revelation, or the good; it requires only an idea of the whole, of insight into that whole, and of the better and worse, not