In This House We Believe in the Science Before Science

Sometimes I'll search the blog for a phrase or subject, and up will pop some long forgotten -- or never remembered -- offering from years ago. 

This one -- actually four, edited down and woven together -- revolves around a book called The Science Before Science: A Guide to Thinking in the 21st Century, wherein the author makes the outrageous claim that  "the world exists independent of us and of our understanding."

Conversely, Mr. Bad Example, Descartes, in looking for a good location to set up a philosophy business, started inside his own head instead of with the outside world. It's amazing he had any customers at all, since the doors are permanently closed.

Thus begins a tragic bifurcation in the human spirit. It leads straight to Kant, who concludes that we not only begin in the head but can never leave there -- or in other words, all we ever "know" are the forms of our own sensibilities. Epistemology is divorced from ontology, and here we are, imprisoned in the subjectivist hell of Progressive World, with no appeal to the higher court of reality.

Subjectivism means that we cannot consult the world -- objective reality -- to settle our differences.

Rather, perception is reality, and crouching behind perception is a beefy looking man slipping on brass knuckles. "I think, therefore I am" soon enough redounds to "I insist, therefore you aren't."

Seriously, have we ever had a president [Obama] so hermetically sealed in his own ideology? That he is "narcissistic" is somewhat beside the point, because that pertains only to the interpersonal plane, when he's closed on every level. He can't be reached by reality because his soul is unlisted.

The essence of narcissism is closure of the human subject. It is only a pretend closure, of course, because the narcissist still needs others, only not for their own sake. Rather, the narcissist needs others to serve as mirrors of his own grandiose narcissistic image. In the absence of this mirroring he will begin to experience an emotional depletion, since there is no energy "coming in." Thus, he is covertly an open system, but in an intrinsically pathological way.

Now, I believe that ultimate reality is Trinity, and that this Trinity is the ground of intersubjectivity. Thus, even -- or especially -- God is an "open system." In his case he is open horizontally with himself (so to speak) -- i.e., Father-Son-Holy Spirit -- but also vertically, with his creation.

For this reason, every part of the world will reflect this fact. Everywhere we look we see an open exchange of matter, energy, or information. It is what makes the world intelligible, for what is knowledge but the precipitate of an open encounter between mind and world? The world is always instructing us in its mysterious allforabit, and how weird is that?

Look above your head at the One Cosmos mysthead, and what does it say? Life is Our School, The Cosmos Our Teacher, Truth the First Principal. In a way, that says it all, for life is our school and the cosmos is our teacher. And Principal Truth pops into class every now and then to make sure order is maintained and everyone is learning.

This is not the way it is in leftworld, where ideology is the school, feelings the teacher, and wokeness the obnoxious principal.

When we say the human being is an open system, we mean both horizontally and vertically. But verticality is prior, while horizontality must be a prolongation of this. A human, in order to be one, must be open to love, truth, beauty, and goodness. These verticalities are known as "transcendentals," so to be open to them is to be vertically open.

I remember reading in a book by the philosopher of science Stanley Jaki that we begin with the plain fact that objects object. Here again, this seems like a trivial truth, but recall the adage that a tiny mistake at the beginning will lead to monumental errors down the road.

Descartes, for example, would have saved us a lot of trouble had he begun with the irrefutable fact that "Objects object, therefore they exist." This is literally the eureka moment that makes all other eurekas possible.

Conversely, if your eureka moment is "I think, therefore I am," you have consigned yourself to a closed system from which you will never legitimately escape.

2

Have you noticed how the subjectivists begin with normal science, and then twist it around in order to support their subjectivism?

This is often done with quantum physics, especially by quackdom farcisists such as Deepak Chopra. We only know about quantum physics because we begin with really existing things like rocks and tables and chairs. We don't begin at the other end of extreme mathematical abstraction, and then try to get from there to the ponderable reality of intelligible objects.

But in a fiendish twist, the Deepaks of the world start with the paradoxes of quantum physics in order to prove that the macro world is pervaded by the same sorts of paradoxes, such as "perception is reality." Thus, they want to have their scientific crock and eat it too: misusing science to support a crazy a priori ideology.

"What better way to feed subjectivist belief," asks Rizzi, "than to propound that their belief is given by science?" Again: if one begins in the mind, one ends up out of it.

Why not begin in the senses, as does every developing human? Ever see a baby begin with a feminist theory about the degrading role of mothers?

Subjectivism necessarily equates to nihilism, and furthermore, renders real community impossible, since each mind is an isolated monad. No longer is it THE truth, only my truth, which is of course no truth at all.

But the very existence of science itself "is a continual refutation of nihilism, because it continually trusts that the world is understandable; even more, that it is understandable by us" (Rizzi).

Thus, the exercise of science rests upon a trusting -- one might even say childlike -- metaphysic. For just as we trust that our parents won't screw us, we innocently trust that mother nature will not steer us wrong and let us down. 

Even so, "it appears that science has hatched, or helped hatch, a culture with elements that are potentially destructive of science," almost to the point of suicide. Progressives are not necessarily anti- this or that science,  rather, anti-the science-before-science.

Now, this science-before-science implies both a ground and a telos, or origin and end. Or in other words, the ontological assumptions that make science possible carry with them certain entailments that make God necessary.

3

Continuing with the previous post, it is axiomatic that if humans didn't have free will, then they couldn't possibly know it, for there would be nothing separate from necessity, i.e., no space from which to view it.

In the land of necessity, so too must every thought be necessary; and if necessary, then unable to be anything other than it is. Therefore, statements are not true or false, only necessary.

Thus, in a very real way, to say necessity is to say freedom; I believe someone once made the crack that freedom is awareness of necessity. This is the least one can say of freedom: that it is something other than necessity.

But what is it actually? In other words, that minimum definition is like saying light is awareness of darkness. It lets you know light exists, but doesn't tell you anything about it. Moreover, it is misleading, for it implies that darkness is the substantial reality, light a kind of nebulous absence or privation.

Now, in a certain way, truth is parasitic on error for the same reason that freedom is awareness of necessity. Certainly science proceeds on this basis: it is a continuous exercise in trying to disprove one's current beliefs. Thus, it is very much as if science cannot know truth, only chip away at presumed error. 

Being only falsifiable, a scientific thesis is never certain but is merely current.

Nevertheless, truth exists and man has a right to it. And because he is so entitled, it means that he is entitled to the cosmic conditions that render truth possible.

Thus, first and foremost, man is entitled to freedom, since, as alluded to above, no freedom, no truth: the two are inseparable; it is not possible to think the one without the other. 

To put it in terms alluded to above, we are entitled to the science before science, whereas we have to work for the science after science, i.e., the ordinary, everyday worker bee type science.

4

Rizzi writes of how "The temptation to sacrifice reality for clarity has trapped many an otherwise strong and competent thinker," and "a clarity that appears too soon or is too broad and facile is likely to be a counterfeit achieved by ignoring the full depth and breadth of the reality under consideration."

Human beings are born with an epistemophilic instinct: a vertically oriented love of truth, or an innate desire to understand What the Hell is Going On. Which reminds me of a comment by Chesterton, that 

The primary things in the universe, before all letters and all language, are a note of exclamation and a note of interrogation.

Which is what we call (?!), AKA the sacred WTF. For me, these two work together like anabolism and catabolism, or analysis and synthesis, i.e., breaking down and putting back together; or, perhaps the joyous (!) of the right cerebral hemisphere complemented by the more detached (?) of the left.

One could also say that the science before science is a kind of pure (!), i.e., the overwhelming facticity and utterly surprising intelligibility of being.

This is of course where science begins, and must begin: with our experience of the objects of sensation. But then comes the (?) with which we investigate those objects of experience.

When we affirm the truth of Truth, we are by no means talking about anything the human mind could ever contain; one might say that if we could know it, it wouldn't be Truth. Rather, it always contains us.

For it is a kind of higher dimensional Truth, or, better, the eternal sponsor of any and all truth. I would go so far as to say that the intellect is woven of truth, or that truth is its substance. Therefore, our love of truth is really like soul calling out to soul and actually getting a response -- which always provokes that (!).

"In essence, the image serves as a powerful visual metaphor for the text's central critique: the dangers of a mind closed off to an independently existing, knowable reality, and the profound separation that results."