objectivity

An Attack on Science

 

Science is based on an unscientific judgment of value. Science and its followers claim that knowledge and truth about the world are only possible through the scrutiny of the scientific method. Therefore, all other sources of knowledge are doubtful, if not, downright mistaken. It eradicated subjectivity from its grand representation of the universe and claims to speak as matter-of-fact and objective as possible.  However, the scientific enterprise has still to prove why we should deal with the cosmos as a problem to be solved; it has yet to answer why knowing is much more important than any other human activity. The great technological benefits we enjoy today are not at all essential; we clearly see the animal world enduring without vehicles or television, or notions such as gravity and entropy, such ‘animals’ even have very complex societies or innate flying abilities. Therefore science cannot claim to be the ultimate route to a better and wiser life, it is a historical phenomenon existing only for the past few centuries and not necessary to life on this planet. In this sense science is morally unscientific; it cannot provide evidence for why a scientific attitude is more preferable than, for example, an aesthetic or nihilistic one. This is simply because science has not been able to predict human emotions or chart our future decisions, it has nothing to say about what we should do; it merely states what is not what should be. 

Scientific-minded people believe themselves to be the most rational minds today. They have associated rationality with one method of inquiry (i.e. scientific method) and have abolished all other sources of data and knowledge. This seems to me more like a limitation than an advantage, precisely because science cannot deal with the whole spectrum of our experience. It works simply on the observable external phenomena and has yet to contribute to an understanding of human consciousness. It pretended for many centuries to get rid of this uncomfortable fact but the shadow of consciousness has crept into modern physics and it is now clear that even basic physical concepts such as mass, distance, velocity, time, are dependent on an observer. In a broader sense, rationality should encompass more than just science and its mother logic, considering that science is narrowly limited by its inability to connect with our whole experience of life. In other words, we are aware of things that the analytic mind cannot formulate. The rational discourse of science is incomplete; it cannot be the entire picture since it lacks insight into our inner life which is as real and undeniable as the external world. For this reason we can learn about life equally as much from a scientific treatise as from a novel, a poem, a kiss or a beautiful landscape. 

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(This is not an attempt to invalidate science but simply a reminder that the powerful mystery of life cannot be grasped from one perspective. Those that are dedicated to the exploration of existence must remember: there are no official paradigms; we alone bestow authority to whatever we choose to believe. We cannot limit the cosmos to certain aspects of itself, it is beyond our attempts to reduce it to one knowable thing.)

A Modern Hero

A modern hero
Hero-1

We can watch him quietly chewing his dinner. His gaze is imperturbable and his thoughts invariably these:

The nothingness that exists in all forms, and the nothingness that is yet to be born.

The modern hero awaits (and this waiting period is interminable) for a fatal threat. This threat is anticipated throughout the cycles of the clock. It is always approaching, never disappearing.

What can he do?

Nothing. Resisting the menace of existence is a futile and wearisome illusion. He will initially find himself in hypertension, guarded against an invisible enemy. Since there is no defence against his opponent, rebellion would represent a defeating madness. Acceptance must be learned and practiced. However, salvation is not achieved solely by the acceptance of one’s own precarious situation. He has no escape, he must sacrifice a distracted and unexamined life in order to become bearer of a strange suffering.  He will be the hated antagonist of any unfounded human optimism.

For what?

To cure himself of a malady that is not only his own but also a dormant illness that all conscious beings carry within.

What relieves him?

From the perspective of the world he has secluded himself in an abstract and spurious discourse; from the perspective of his own condition he has renounced his faith in a world of form and substance, he has lost trust in the socially approved states of consciousness. He lives in a mythological world, albeit, his myth has not yet been written nor can it be.  He is dispersed in a flux of perception that not necessarily implies an objective external world. His experience cannot be communicated, it does not have the logical structure of a normal human situation.

Is there a light at the end of his tunnel?

From the standpoint of the all-too-human, suicide may appear as the last desperate, but effective, act of liberation, but this won’t be his course. He has selected an ambitious journey: The transmutation of consciousness. An intuition convinces him that the reality we live in is only one of many possible creations; and in the sober creation of less restricted states of consciousness he will achieve his ultimate objective: inner peace.

We… post-postmodernists?

Our Age is too near to get sight of its boundaries, it is too early to understand its misconceptions. We are too dogmatic in our denial of dogma, absolutely certain in the impossibility of absolute truth. We refuse categorization, even the relativistic classification nauseates us with its blatant inaccuracy. We have exhausted the map of the expected, we have sailed off the edge of objectivity. Is there enough courage at last to tear open the last unexamined convictions?

 

Science has detonated such a bright flash in the sky of our conceptions, it left us bleakly trembling under the paleness of the explainable.  Our lust craves for some personal knowledge beyond the downpour of communication.  Yet, we are still too philosophical in the claim that philosophy is futile and irrelevant, too logical while we humiliate the world into meaninglessness.

 

Every man has always been in error. We scrutinize the lack of breadth in antiquity, humans living under the conditions of necessity. But has the wealth of leisure begotten any real savory experience of the magnitude of the universe? Do we not still live under the dining lamp, stuff our heads with hamburgers and neglect the vastness of space and time only to idle hours of curiosity?

 

Do we prefer to stand still in opposition to progress or move frantically to and fro in opposition to linearity? Is there much to gain in opposing the current of history? Does the weight of our question collapse under our temptation to doubt?

 

Why do we seek definition?  How can we induce our subjective universe to submit to our words before we have been able to glance it all? Existence is too chaotic to wear the stale garment of adjectives and deductions. Whatever we seek – if we seek anything at all – lies beyond the fortress of definition.

 

Let the living eyes of the future bury us with their dead words,

                                                for we will be by then … dead things.