Hello Cleese,
I wonder whether you can tell us where Schweitzer refers to "a theory of the universe" ? I have read quite a bit of his writings but cannot recall that he uses this terminology. It is a very interesting question you pose and I would like to consider it seriously.

Hello Cleese,
We may not have the same editions of the book you refer to, but I think I have found the places you have listed and read in them with your question in mind.
It is an intriguing question you ask, and having read these sections again, I wonder what has prompted you to ask it.
It seems to me, that Schweitzer makes the point, that we cannot expect to find the basis for a true civilization as he envisages it, from searching for, or deducing it from a "theory of the universe". He is therefore not that interested in "theories of the universe",  as he thinks that our knowledge of it will always be only partial and never complete, and that what knowledge we do have of it, provides no basis for an ethical yet positive (affirmative) world-view. He also seems to believe that such an expectation was one of the major misconceptions of recent western thinking, leading us all 'up the garden path' and into the disastrous situation we find ourselves in.
To quote from the last page of Chapter V, CIVILIZATION AND WORLD-VIEW:
"Perhaps we shall have to look elsewhere than we have done hitherto for the real basis of that world-view which carries with it affirmation of the world and of life. Previous thought imagined, that it could deduce the meaning of life from its interpretation of the universe. It may be that we shall be obliged to resign ourselves to abandon the problem of the interpretation of the universe and to find the meaning of our life in the will-to-live as this exists in ourselves."

and to quote from the Preface of "CIVILIZATION AND ETHICS":
"My solution .....is...to renounce completely the optimistic-ethical interpretation of the world. If we take the world as it is, it is impossible to attribute to it a meaning in which the aims and objectives of mankind and of individual men have a meaning also.
......In the world we can discover nothing of any purposive evaluation in which our activities can acquire a meaning. Nor is the ethical to be discovered in any form in the world-process.
..... I believe, I am the first among Western thinkers who has ventured to recognize this crushing result of knowledge, and the first to be absolutely sceptical about our knowledge of the world without at the same time renouncing belief in world- and life-affirmation and ethics."

If you, Cleese, find that I have interpreted this correctly as far a Schweitzer is concern, and this is what represents a problem for you, then let us discuss it. It is in my view a pretty fundamental issue and I'm not at all sure that I see it quite as 'black and white' as Schweitzer does.

What does anyone else think?
Percy