Critique of Pure Criticism, or Doubt²

More than reasons to believe, there are reasons to doubt doubt. --Dávila

So, a prime directive is to cultivate doubt². For there are two kinds of cynicism, the facile and superficial kind -- one thinks of a Bill Maher, or the New Atheists, or the MSM -- and the kind that properly regards the wisdom of the world like this fella:

The believer knows how to doubt; the unbeliever does not know how to believe. 

 And

The most subversive book in our time would be a collection of old proverbs.

Which makes Dávila just about the most subversive guy around. For he would be the first to say that nothing he says is original, God forbid.

Whoever believes himself to be original is merely ignorant.

Besides,

Originality is not something to be sought, but something to be found.  

As all posts do, this one took off in an unanticipated direction -- or rather, what Churchill called anticipatory plagiarism. In other words, Dávila, merely because of his temporal priority, expressed all my ideas before extending the courtesy to allow me to think of them first.

Magee writes that "science did not begin"

with a study of those matters closest to hand, namely human affairs, and then work outward toward the most distant things, namely the stars. On the contrary, science began with observation of the stars, and worked from there inward. The last matters to come under scientific observation were human affairs.

While trivially true, there's a deeper point, that without an investigation (and critique) of the human subject -- not just its role in science, rather, its very existence -- science exists in a "pre-critical" state. And it seems to me that this naïveté largely accounts for its transformation to bonehead scientism, from a skeptical method to a credulous ontology.

At the same time, those matters closest to hand -- human affairs -- that man had been thinking about for thousands of years, were gradually forgotten. Which is why there is more wisdom in Marcus Aurelius or the Tao Te Ching than in contemporary psychology. Come to think of it, this must partly account for Jordan Peterson's popularity, in that he repackages this wisdom for an age of stupidity.

This whole subject of scientism is a bit played, isn't it? Fish barrel bang. Is there anything new to add? Better yet, anything old? 

The modern man is the man who forgets what man knows about man.

For example, that men aren't women, or that two men cannot marry, or that it's okay to be white. 

The fool is not impressed except by what is recent. For the intelligent man, nothing depends on its date.

But

The modern man only admits the evidence that the vulgar perceive.

No wonder our culture is so vulgar, for 

In order to abolish all mystery it is enough to view the world through the eyes of a pig.

Or a journalist. 

Scientism is nothing if not vulgar. I'll bet we can dispatch it in five wise cracks from the Master, which I will take the liberty of arranging in ascending order: 

Without philosophy, the sciences do not know what they know.

The philosopher who adopts scientific notions has predetermined his conclusions.

Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question. 

To believe that science is enough is the most naive of superstitions.

Science, when it finishes explaining everything, but unable to explain the consciousness that explains it, will have explained nothing.

What about the wisdom of old, which is as young as the day it was hatched by those venerable eggheads?

Man is not educated through knowledge of things but through knowledge of man.

To think like our contemporaries is a recipe for prosperity and stupidity. 

When one century's writers can write nothing but boring things, we readers change centuries.

Only ancient writings have a cure for the modern itch.

All reading is contemporary for the reader who knows how to read.

He who does not place his life alongside the great texts places it alongside the clichés of his time. 

To be conservative is to understand that man is a problem without a human solution.

After conversing with some "thoroughly modern" people, we see that humanity escaped the "centuries of faith" only to get stuck in those of credulity.

Civilizations are what old men have saved from the onslaught of youthful idealists.

Yes, I resemble that remark.

Back to scientism for a moment,

Nothing proves more the limits of science than the scientist's opinions about any topic that is not strictly related to his profession.

Three words: Neil deGrasse Tyson. Or two: Bill Nye. Or one: Fauci.

What is more irritating than stupidity itself is a scientific vocabulary in its mouth.

Like I said, this subject might be too easy for our cynical audience, but we'll have to think about it and come back tomorrow, hopefully with some new stale bobservations.