From: lambdac-AT-globalserve.net
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 12:46:20 -0500
Subject: 1. Science, which science? 


1. Science, which science? 

"We possess scientific knowledge today to precisely the extent that we
have decided to *accept* the evidence of the senses - to the extent that
we have learned to sharpen and arm them and to think them through to
their conclusions.  The rest is abortion and not-yet-science: which is
to say metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistemology.  *Or* science of
formulae, sign-systems: such as logic and that applied logic,
mathematics.  In these, reality does not appear at all (...)" TI,
'Reason" in Philosophy, #3


The truth seekers

	How neat it is to present science as the daughter of religion, only to
give it the emancipation status of a sister as its destiny.  We would go
from the sorcerer to the priest to the scholar and the scientist - a
line of progress and evolution.  A continuum of the search for truth,
where we must reason our faith and have faith in our reason with truth
as reward: truth for its own sake and knowledge for knowledge's sake. 
So, what have we then? - the truths we deserve and the knowledge we
imagine.  The suffering from the past that casts its sad gaze upon the
future.  The weariness of the higher men of science.


The origin of established science

	If we look back to our history, we see how our philosophy and our
science everywhere emerged from theology, how black-robes whitened their
cloaks to become philosophers and scientists.  The academia formed as a
scholastic circle.  The attributes of spirit were stolen from the
transcendence of a God, then lent to Man and to Matter.  The inquisitive
spirit modelled as an inquisitorial mind - unable to question the
dogmas, a follower of fashion, the lay form of virtuousness.  Hence was
born a science which gave less and less pleasure and, most
symptomatically, never could quite abandon error, illusion, fantasy and 
anthropomorphism.  A science destined to ruin itself as it steepened
further into common sense and the poverty of wit.
	BUT, this was not where science was born - only how science is
aborted.  It was only the birth of a science that asks why - why me? why
us? why now? why here? why life? why death?  why disease?  why war?  why
poverty?, etc.  A science which has become the religion of the great
public.  A democratic science which has displaced the despotic religion:
the moralizing science of nihilism, always in search of a justification
for the worst, always capable of finding one, systematically
rationalizing what it cannot comprehend, ready to enact laws and
regulations, ready to enforce behaviour: do not smoke!  Because it is
harmful to your health; do not laugh!  Because it causes wrinkles; do
not cry!  Because you are impotent to do anything about it; do not
practice unsafe sex!  Because you will die of AIDS.  Do not expose
yourself to the sun!  Because you will contract carcinoma.  


How come why?

	Why the question why?  *Because* from the outset it places us squarely
upon metaphysical considerations - what is the meaning of existence? 
The very question begs the question of who makes it.  It is a question
for nihilists: a nihilist *why* looking for a metaphysical *because*. 
BUT, *it* is not the question of science - *it* is not science as
questioning, or as the ability to pose adequate questions.  
	The question of science is how: how does it work?  How does life
function?  How is life will to power?  What do we do with the powers
that make us and escape us?  How does the cosmos work?  *How it works*
subtends a passion for an immanence - not knowledge for its own sake,
but knowledge in the service of Life and action.  Metaphysical reason is
not the domain of science - only its religious image, and History its
error.  Science does not have a reason why but a reason how - it is
knowledge of the 'intelligible character' of the 'world seen from
within'.

Lambda C


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