The things I do for you: I just counted, and there are said to be over 700 branches of science (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_branches_of_science). And science itself
(from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Modern science is typically divided into three major branches that consist of the natural sciences, which study nature in the broadest sense; the social sciences, which study people and societies; and the formal sciences, which study abstract concepts…. Disciplines that use science, such as engineering and medicine, are described as applied sciences.
Okay, but which are the truly Big Ones, the ones without which science could not be? There are plenty of trivial pursuits, from bees to mud to queers, but which are the principles that render science — or any knowledge — possible?
In yesterday’s post we alluded to a number of important -ologies such as alethiology (the study of truth), agnoiology (the study of ignorance), and pseudology (the study of lying), which pretty much covers the waterfront: truth, ignorance, and lies. What else is there?
Well, let’s run down the list; there’s phenomenology, which is the study of appearances (i.e., how phenomena appear to consciousness). Appearances may deceive, but believing them doesn’t make one a liar. If an uneducated person tells you the sun circles the earth, it isn't true but he’s not lying.
Come to think of it, if someone tells you the earth circles the sun, he’s also wrong but not lying, since both bodies revolve around the center of gravity of the solar system.
Nor is that the last circle, since our galaxy is spiraling inside a cluster inside a supercluster of galaxies, and thinking about this is making my head spin.
So, truth, ignorance, lies, and appearances. What else? Let’s not forget etiology, the study of causes, since to understand a principal truth is to know the ultimate cause, or that from which other things flow. This dovetails with archelogy (the study of first principles). (When Schuon refers to the "principial" realm, he's talking about the first principles and ultimate causes of things herebelow.)
Have we left anything out? Why, yes, we only left out everything, i.e., ontology, the study of being qua being. Other candidates for ultimacy include gnosiology (the study of knowledge), the very much underrated mereology (part-whole relations), noology (intellect), sophiology (ideas) and eschatology & teleology (ends and final causes).
Now, suppose we want to organize a cosmic flowchart to understand how these ologies relate to one another. Reviewing the list, what must come first? Again, we have Truth, Ignorance, Lying, Appearances, Causation, First Principles, Being, Part-Whole Relations, Intellect, Ideas, and Finality.
Well, it’s gotta be Being, since Being is the one property that truly unifies everything: supposing something exists, then it partakes of Being. A thing either IS or IS NOT.
Okay, but how do we know this? Since we do know it, there must be a complementary relationship between Being and Knowing. If there isn’t, then how is science even possible, since each of those 700+ scientific disciplines studies this or that tiny aspect of intelligible being, from acanthochronology (cactus) to zythology (beer)?
Is there a principle that could be higher or more fundamental than this? Yes, I think so. At the same time, it seems to me that there are other important aspects of Being besides its intelligibility, or rather, there’s more to intelligibility than truth, for example, beauty.
When I ran down that list, I noticed there is no entry for logology. Nevertheless, I see it has an entry of its own; in fact, there are two distinct logologies, one referring to “the study of all things related to science,” the other to “the study of words in search for divine truth.”
This latter is of more interest, because it would go to the Unity of unities — not only the unification of science, but to the very ground and possibility of Unity itsoph. But the Wiki entry isn’t helpful, because it defines the term differently from the way I mean it.
For I’m talking about that Logos which 1) is in the beginning, 2) is with God, 3) is God, 4) is that principle through which things are made (and without which nothing is made), 5) is Life, 6) is Light, and 7) descended into human nature.
Whew, this post took it out of me. To be continued...
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