Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Wissenschaft; Newton (Principia, esoterische Schriften)

Kurzinhalt: it is a problem to recognize in Renaissance Hermerticism and its offshoots the background for modern natural science

Textausschnitt: 82a In short, it is a problem to recognize in Renaissance Hermerticism and its offshoots the background for modern natural science. Yet it is there and not only in Bruno and Kepler and Paracelsus; it even persists long after the Hermetic texts have been correctly dated and lost some of their pristine lustre. As central a figure as Isaac Newton is still engaged in alchemical investigations, as well as numerological speculations relating to the Book of Revelation, well into the seventeenth century.1 It is a puzzle to behold the father of modern science, the discoverer of the comprehensive laws of motion, simultaneously pursuing the esoteric connections and meanings that will lead to a higher illumination of all reality. What the connection between the two sides of Newton's work is remains to be investigated. It is only in recent times that scholars have felt comfortable enough with even acknowledging the alchemical and speculative dimensions. The intellectual confusion in regard to Newton is reflective of the broader uncertainty about the origination of modern science in what can only be described as a widespread decline of rational differentiation. Certainly, the empirical investigation of nature continued apace, but it was pressed into service in the great Hermetic project of ascending and descending through the hierarchy of being. Compared to this aspiration, any medieval conceptions of hierarchy appear overwhelmingly static and tame. Enthusiasm for the occult influences of nature accounts for the motivation of the empirical turn, but it simultaneously seems to deflect it away from any open disclosure of the factual relationships involved. Everything is immediately absorbed within a preconceived frame of reference-exactly the opposite of our model of empirical science in its norm. (Fs)

83a How was it possible for the explosion of Hermetic enthusiasm to give rise to the scientific revolution? The answer is probably best given by the example of Newton himself. He kept the spiritual and empirical-mathematical dimensions separate, assigning them to different books. The Principia (1687) would hardly stand as the great model of the scientific mind at work, mathematizing the phenomena of motion throughout the universe, if it had been embedded in schemes of alchemical and apocalyptic transfiguration. But it was Newton's capacity for keeping these two modes of thought separate in his mind that was the real cause of his scientific success. Gradually, the mystico-speculative side had been stripped away and Newton could stand as the culminating figure in a line of early physicists meticulously mapping the various types of motion. His genius was to reduce them all to one system that was capable of explaining motion, from the smallest terrestrial to the broadest celestial levels. It was a staggering achievement and stands even today as a model of the scientific method. What accounts for its extraordinary success as a mode of investigating reality is the rigorous elimination of all elements of an anthropo-centric nature. All of the interest in man's access to the occult harmonies of the universe must be utterly set aside. Scientific reason consists in the abnegation of human interests before the disclosure of reality as it is. (Fs)

83b The difficulty of sustaining this commitment is considerable. Popularly, science is conceived of as being a methodology of verification whereby knowledge advances incrementally. Discovery and development of hypotheses for falsification are commonly acknowledged to be its most creative moments. But what of the even greater creativity required in transforming the broadest theoretical frameworks within which hypotheses are elaborated? These are the great paradigm shifts that are neither easy nor frequent. Scientists are human too. They are incapable of pursuing a line of investigation that runs directly contrary to their own enframing worldview. For them too, reality as a whole must make sense; it cannot be too egregiously riven by cognitive dissonance. We continue to live with some sense of reality as a whole, and that context defines the limits of what can be hypothesized and questioned. This is why the "scientific revolutions" so famously identified by Thomas Kuhn are the great seismic events of the scientific world.2 Few minds have the temerity to contemplate them, and a steady accumulation of pressure is required to detonate them, but when that does occur it constitutes the shift to a whole other way of thinking of reality. Scientists are as susceptible as the rest of us to the containing and constraining influence of worldviews. For, much of the time, we would rather retain a flawed reality model than undergo the kind of massive upheaval in which everything we have known undergoes reexamination. (Fs)

84a Newton's achievement was to have created the modern scientific paradigm-the conception of reality as matter in motion-that endured up to the quantum and relativity shifts of the twentieth century. But even he could not eliminate the need for an extrascientific worldview that would extend and elaborate the picture only partially conceived within science as such. He could separate out these distinct phases by assigning them to different books, publishing the scientific treatises while withholding the esoteric. He could demonstrate the imperative of maintaining a clear line of separation between physics and theology. Yet he could finally not eliminate the pull toward spiritual elaboration.3 The speculative side of his work is eloquent testament to the ineliminability of the framing philosophical questions from science. At some level, they remain the irreducible residue that persists as the great source of motivation and distortion in science. Success in the scientific enterprise turns on our capacity to remain within the more modest expectations of phenomenal relationships. Straying into the speculative construction of a worldview invites the loss of scientific reason. The preservation of science consists of remaining on the right side of this tension, which can neither be abolished nor resolved. (Fs)

85a The bounded rationality of science is a raft floating in a sea of uncertainty. As Newton exemplifies, everything depends on recognizing the line of the boundary so that the speculative extrapolations are never confused with the more modest empirical justifications. The model of the scientist disinterestedly working away on laboratory experiments, unaffected by broader spiritual ramifications, is only slowly beginning to fade. Historiography of science still has a good deal of work to do in exploring the connection between spiritual worldviews and the range of what can be empirically acknowledged in science. Kuhn's work has been particularly innovative in this regard, suggesting a whole avenue of approaching the history of science. It has made us more aware of the dependence of the empirical methodology on what the worldview renders permissible. Even calling attention to this bounded rationality of science has generated its own controversy and discomfort. It was immediately seized upon as an assault on the objectivity of science. Were we reducing the scientific enterprise, the last bastion of modern rationality, to an inconclusive flow of variable paradigms that amount to no higher claim than the relativity of all knowledge? Despite the initial plausibility of the suggestion, the anxiety was misplaced. The very existence of paradigm shifts presupposes an advance in rationality and therefore confirms the degree to which a shared sense of objectivity underpins the process. Why shift at all if there is nothing to be gained? But the overcoming of this most obvious objection does not affect the deeper implication of Kuhn's work: the recognition of the bounded rationality of science. The tension between science and the extra-scientific worldview sanctioning it is ineliminable, and the rationality of science consists of resisting the pull to overstep its limits. (Fs) (notabene)

85b The reason why this problem remains so central to early modern and later science is that it exists within a world without authoritative revelation. Absent a transcendent perspective, the partial perspectives must struggle to elaborate the order of the whole. As the most successful mode of knowledge in the modern world, science is inevitably surrounded by an aura of expectation of a higher illumination. Much of what sustained the momentum of the vast scientific enterprise on which we collaborate is the fascination with piercing the mystery of it all. That was the impulse of esoteric penetration at the start of modern science, and it continues as the great imbalancing pressure against which it must resist. What science knows, it knows at the cost of foregoing the greater illumination. But the outcome is not always so successful. The more modest piecemeal process of investigation is increasingly overburdened as the subject rises in the scale of significance. It is not simply that the methodology of the hard sciences yields more certain results, but that they are capable of remaining more faithful to their methodology than the biological and human sciences. Living and human reality is not just more complex, it is also more intimately bound up with the illusory expectations of the investigators themselves. After all, one's humanity is a more integral dimension of oneself than the mere physical or chemical substratum shared with all other entities. As a consequence, the need to extrapolate toward the meaning of the whole becomes all the more intense. The need to occupy the space vacated by the revelation of transcendent reality is virtually irresistible, even though the inclination defines the loss of rational science.1 (Fs)