Science, religion, and philosophy,--- incompatible or symbiotic? An overwhelming majority of the Russian Orthodox believers will automatically and emphatically reply Symbiotic!, even if for a wrong reason. On the other hand, an overwhelming majority of the church-going American Evangelicals, as soon as they hear the words “science” and “philosophy” in the same sentence with “religion,” are immediately apprehensive, as if having received a most unpleasant electric shock. They are likely to suffer these two words with the greatest measure of hostility, as if some terrible offense had just been perpetrated against them. For, in their minds, science and philosophy are indeed incompatible with religion.
…What can I say? For me, a Russian, these three are not only symbiotic, but closely connected. Put science, religion, and philosophy in one incomplete sentence, and I shall finish it with the name of Pythagoras. Here was a great scientist, a philosopher par excellence, and a founder of religion all in one person, and there was nothing “incompatible” about him. (Perhaps, I ought to add most of the pre-Socratic philosophers to this list as well, all of them prodigious scientists and philosophers, although, perhaps, religiously not as original and prominent as Pythagoras.) If that were still not enough, I shall name Pascal, and if the reader has not been duly impressed by now already, there is no sense in keeping going on.
In my life, I used to know several great scientists, who were intensely religious, and amateur philosophers, to boot. The names of Nikolai Nikolayevich Semenov and Anatoly Ivanovich Zimin, who are particularly familiar to the readers of my book Stalin, and Other Family, are prominent among them.
Science, religion, and philosophy… There is not only a deep connectedness, but a close kinship between the three. Philosophy, being fiction, has a lot in common with science this way, for all science (not only science fiction!) is fiction, too. Needless to say, religion easily joins their ranks, as even the best and the “truest” of all great religions (which one of them, is always in the mind’s eye of the beholder) is the product of God’s creative fantasy, Divine Fiction, I might call it.
An interesting connection between these three points of the triangle is found in Nietzsche’s Menschliches-6, which is discussed more at length in the Nietzsche section, but cannot escape finding a rightful place in this Philosophy section, where it goes to the heart of my argument on the truth and lie of fiction, science included.----
“The scientific spirit is powerful in the part but not in the whole. The distinct, smallest fields of science are treated purely objectively. On the other hand, the general, great sciences as a whole, pose the question, a very unobjective question: what for, to what benefit? Because of this concern about benefit, men treat the sciences less impersonally as a whole, than in their parts.”
Right from the start, Nietzsche introduces the compelling suggestion (first subtly, and later explicitly) that the principal difference between philosophy and concrete sciences is in the level of their generalization. In philosophy that level is the greatest, thus in the next paragraph of this passage, he will place philosophy at “the top of the whole scientific pyramid.” Ironically, but by no means contrarily, I am putting philosophy at the bottom of the whole scientific structure, as its solid foundation!
Nietzsche’s observation is important to my treatment of great sciences as fiction, with a pure hypothesis at their foundation, like the hypothesis of parallel lines in Euclidian and Lobachevsky geometries, for instance. As in general literature, where the worth of fiction is determined by its readability, that is, by its publishing success (we are talking in practical terms here, leaving ethics and spiritual value aside), in all sciences the value of any hypothesis must be determined exactly by Nietzsche’s pragmatic question: “What for, to what benefit?” Paradoxically, at first sight, this question need not, and ought not to, be asked of philosophy (that is, if one expects an answer from it), which, as I said on many occasions before, owes its intrinsic value to the asking of questions, but not to the answering of them.
“Now, in philosophy, the top of the whole scientific pyramid,” (philosophy, to Nietzsche, is a science, bravo!) “the question of the benefit of knowledge is posed automatically, for, every philosophy has an unconscious intention of ascribing to knowledge the greatest benefit.”
In my opinion, the question of the benefit in philosophy may be more forcefully pursued only because it is much less obvious, whereas in science it is self-evident. Thus, in Euclidian geometry, where the flat-earth hypothesis, known by all to be untrue in the general sense, is universally accepted for practical reasons, like land measurements, where the general truth is literally larger than life, the question of benefit is not posed automatically only because it is answered automatically before the need to pose it ever arises. Curiously, I am not disagreeing with Nietzsche about anything here, because my whole approach to science, in fact, all my interest in science nowadays is exclusively through philosophy, and science without the philosophy of science, to me, turns into a silly clueless hammer, of no interest to the philosopher, until somebody picks it up and starts using it for a certain purpose, which alone justifies his interest. (See this subject discussed in my Lecture Summary on International Justice.)
“Therefore, all philosophies have so much high-flying metaphysics, and so much wariness of the seemingly insignificant explanations of physics.”
Again, this seemingly irresolvable problem is no longer a problem, as it is completely resolved by infusing philosophy into scientific research. I suspect that Nietzsche’s point here recognizes the actual existence of such a deficiency, whereas I am bluntly taking for granted the ideal case based on a general recognition of the necessity of its ultimate overcoming.
“For, the importance of knowledge for life must appear as great as possible. Here we have the antagonism between individual scientific fields and philosophy.” (See my comment on the divergence of scientific and religious thought reaching the point of incompatibility, in the already mentioned Lecture Summary on International Justice.) “The latter, like art, wishes to render the greatest possible depth and meaning to life and activity.” (See my several entries on the art and science of chess, and on what this distinction means in actual applications.)
The philosopher, however, is not limited in his endeavor to the artistry alone, at least he is not supposed to be “limited” in anything, being a free soul. By the same token as I have already discovered a contradiction in my earlier pursuit of the so-called antihistoricity, which I have now resolved to correct on these grounds of free spirit’s inalienable right to do anything it wishes to do within the “fictional” (that is, hypothetical), foundation of his endeavor.
“In the sciences, one seeks knowledge and nothing more, whatever the consequences may be.” (It is clear by now that Nietzsche engages in the criticism of his day, and not in a condemnation on principle of all human science, which should then include, the science of the future.) “So far, there has not been a philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not become an apology for knowledge. In this way, every one is an optimist, by thinking that knowledge must be accorded the highest usefulness.” (Once again, what is knowledge? Yes---definitions, definitions, definitions!) “All philosophers are tyrannized by logic: and logic, by its nature, is optimism.” (How can we liberate ourselves from the tyranny of logic, then? This is why I am especially glad to have uncovered the limitations of logic, which, so-to-speak, puts her in her place and therefore ends her rule effectively. Not by logic alone! Let it remain for all time our tool, to be applied to the little ventures of ours only to develop and elaborate on the one and only immutable truth of a creator’s universe [of our own created universe, that is]: the hypothesis!)
---My next important Nietzschean passage closely corresponds to my thoughts on science and religion, with philosophy being the connecting bridge between them. (This passage is taken from Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals; 3rd Essay; 24.)---
“Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as science “without any presuppositions.” A philosophy, a faith, must always be there so that science can acquire from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist.” (See how the very first paragraph of this remarkable passage unites science, philosophy, and faith in one short sentence! And perhaps the most remarkable thing here is the equating of philosophy and faith which, come to think of it, makes its own sense. Inasmuch as science requires a direction, it is in need of a morality, the ethical component, and ethics is the common ground of philosophy and religion.)
“It is still a metaphysical faith that underlies our faith in science. We, godless men of knowledge of today, still derive our flame from the fire ignited by faith, the Christian faith, which was also Plato’s, that God is truth, and that truth is divine. But what if this belief is unbelievable, what if nothing turns out to be divine any longer, if God himself turns out to be our longest lie?”
This is all incredibly interesting, but the question of faith in science ought to be stripped of its theological attire altogether, and clothed in the more modest, but unobjectionable, wording of acceptance of our basic hypothesis, which justifies the particular science. Just as the philosophical acceptance of faith makes faith more palatable than when shoved down our throat, the acceptance of any hypothesis does not imply force, or any suppression of reason, and thus becomes itself acceptable to the latter!
“At this point science itself requires justification (which is not to say there is any such justification). Both the earliest and the most recent philosophers are all oblivious of how much the will to truth itself requires justification, here there is a lacuna in every philosophy. How did this come about? -- Because the ascetic ideal has hitherto dominated philosophy, because Truth was posited as Being, as God. From the moment when faith in the God of the Ascetic Ideal is denied, a new problem arises: that of the value of truth.”
As for the old question of truth, I have already pointed out the two different notions of truth, which make our comprehension and acceptance of this term, well, palatable. There is always One Truth, of course, God’s Truth, which is Absolute and Universal, but, being theologically incomprehensible, it is also impracticable. On the other hand, my new concept of the truth of fiction, which identifies comprehensible truth with the domain of its creator, and postulates that truth, rather than open its legitimacy up for discussion, ought to suppress the most objectionable arguments to its acceptance, and, by the same token, by removing any such objections to “smaller” truths, preclude the ricochet objectionability of the Absolute Truth, and, with it, our most objectionable and most unreasonable objection, to God!
…Here is a great philosophical puzzle where I believe to have an answer, which Nietzsche had despaired to find. My geometry find, my insistence on the liberation of God from religion, in order to be one, universally acceptable measure of the Absolute; my introduction of the concept God-by-definition, to discourage those feeble and fatally flawed efforts to prove His existence,--- all these well justify the value of truth, but not that fragile and vulnerable “truth” which loses the universality of One God when chained to a particular religion. All these problems should be solved, as soon as we validate the “truth of science,”--- not as some disputable fact, but as a completely indisputable fiction, and when the existence of Truth is also made indisputable by the categorical power of definition. Thus, my two principal philosophical-theological efforts in this area are: (1) “saving” God from particular religion; and (2) separating fact, the lie, from fiction, the truth.)
…What can I say? For me, a Russian, these three are not only symbiotic, but closely connected. Put science, religion, and philosophy in one incomplete sentence, and I shall finish it with the name of Pythagoras. Here was a great scientist, a philosopher par excellence, and a founder of religion all in one person, and there was nothing “incompatible” about him. (Perhaps, I ought to add most of the pre-Socratic philosophers to this list as well, all of them prodigious scientists and philosophers, although, perhaps, religiously not as original and prominent as Pythagoras.) If that were still not enough, I shall name Pascal, and if the reader has not been duly impressed by now already, there is no sense in keeping going on.
In my life, I used to know several great scientists, who were intensely religious, and amateur philosophers, to boot. The names of Nikolai Nikolayevich Semenov and Anatoly Ivanovich Zimin, who are particularly familiar to the readers of my book Stalin, and Other Family, are prominent among them.
Science, religion, and philosophy… There is not only a deep connectedness, but a close kinship between the three. Philosophy, being fiction, has a lot in common with science this way, for all science (not only science fiction!) is fiction, too. Needless to say, religion easily joins their ranks, as even the best and the “truest” of all great religions (which one of them, is always in the mind’s eye of the beholder) is the product of God’s creative fantasy, Divine Fiction, I might call it.
An interesting connection between these three points of the triangle is found in Nietzsche’s Menschliches-6, which is discussed more at length in the Nietzsche section, but cannot escape finding a rightful place in this Philosophy section, where it goes to the heart of my argument on the truth and lie of fiction, science included.----
“The scientific spirit is powerful in the part but not in the whole. The distinct, smallest fields of science are treated purely objectively. On the other hand, the general, great sciences as a whole, pose the question, a very unobjective question: what for, to what benefit? Because of this concern about benefit, men treat the sciences less impersonally as a whole, than in their parts.”
Right from the start, Nietzsche introduces the compelling suggestion (first subtly, and later explicitly) that the principal difference between philosophy and concrete sciences is in the level of their generalization. In philosophy that level is the greatest, thus in the next paragraph of this passage, he will place philosophy at “the top of the whole scientific pyramid.” Ironically, but by no means contrarily, I am putting philosophy at the bottom of the whole scientific structure, as its solid foundation!
Nietzsche’s observation is important to my treatment of great sciences as fiction, with a pure hypothesis at their foundation, like the hypothesis of parallel lines in Euclidian and Lobachevsky geometries, for instance. As in general literature, where the worth of fiction is determined by its readability, that is, by its publishing success (we are talking in practical terms here, leaving ethics and spiritual value aside), in all sciences the value of any hypothesis must be determined exactly by Nietzsche’s pragmatic question: “What for, to what benefit?” Paradoxically, at first sight, this question need not, and ought not to, be asked of philosophy (that is, if one expects an answer from it), which, as I said on many occasions before, owes its intrinsic value to the asking of questions, but not to the answering of them.
“Now, in philosophy, the top of the whole scientific pyramid,” (philosophy, to Nietzsche, is a science, bravo!) “the question of the benefit of knowledge is posed automatically, for, every philosophy has an unconscious intention of ascribing to knowledge the greatest benefit.”
In my opinion, the question of the benefit in philosophy may be more forcefully pursued only because it is much less obvious, whereas in science it is self-evident. Thus, in Euclidian geometry, where the flat-earth hypothesis, known by all to be untrue in the general sense, is universally accepted for practical reasons, like land measurements, where the general truth is literally larger than life, the question of benefit is not posed automatically only because it is answered automatically before the need to pose it ever arises. Curiously, I am not disagreeing with Nietzsche about anything here, because my whole approach to science, in fact, all my interest in science nowadays is exclusively through philosophy, and science without the philosophy of science, to me, turns into a silly clueless hammer, of no interest to the philosopher, until somebody picks it up and starts using it for a certain purpose, which alone justifies his interest. (See this subject discussed in my Lecture Summary on International Justice.)
“Therefore, all philosophies have so much high-flying metaphysics, and so much wariness of the seemingly insignificant explanations of physics.”
Again, this seemingly irresolvable problem is no longer a problem, as it is completely resolved by infusing philosophy into scientific research. I suspect that Nietzsche’s point here recognizes the actual existence of such a deficiency, whereas I am bluntly taking for granted the ideal case based on a general recognition of the necessity of its ultimate overcoming.
“For, the importance of knowledge for life must appear as great as possible. Here we have the antagonism between individual scientific fields and philosophy.” (See my comment on the divergence of scientific and religious thought reaching the point of incompatibility, in the already mentioned Lecture Summary on International Justice.) “The latter, like art, wishes to render the greatest possible depth and meaning to life and activity.” (See my several entries on the art and science of chess, and on what this distinction means in actual applications.)
The philosopher, however, is not limited in his endeavor to the artistry alone, at least he is not supposed to be “limited” in anything, being a free soul. By the same token as I have already discovered a contradiction in my earlier pursuit of the so-called antihistoricity, which I have now resolved to correct on these grounds of free spirit’s inalienable right to do anything it wishes to do within the “fictional” (that is, hypothetical), foundation of his endeavor.
“In the sciences, one seeks knowledge and nothing more, whatever the consequences may be.” (It is clear by now that Nietzsche engages in the criticism of his day, and not in a condemnation on principle of all human science, which should then include, the science of the future.) “So far, there has not been a philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not become an apology for knowledge. In this way, every one is an optimist, by thinking that knowledge must be accorded the highest usefulness.” (Once again, what is knowledge? Yes---definitions, definitions, definitions!) “All philosophers are tyrannized by logic: and logic, by its nature, is optimism.” (How can we liberate ourselves from the tyranny of logic, then? This is why I am especially glad to have uncovered the limitations of logic, which, so-to-speak, puts her in her place and therefore ends her rule effectively. Not by logic alone! Let it remain for all time our tool, to be applied to the little ventures of ours only to develop and elaborate on the one and only immutable truth of a creator’s universe [of our own created universe, that is]: the hypothesis!)
---My next important Nietzschean passage closely corresponds to my thoughts on science and religion, with philosophy being the connecting bridge between them. (This passage is taken from Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals; 3rd Essay; 24.)---
“Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as science “without any presuppositions.” A philosophy, a faith, must always be there so that science can acquire from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist.” (See how the very first paragraph of this remarkable passage unites science, philosophy, and faith in one short sentence! And perhaps the most remarkable thing here is the equating of philosophy and faith which, come to think of it, makes its own sense. Inasmuch as science requires a direction, it is in need of a morality, the ethical component, and ethics is the common ground of philosophy and religion.)
“It is still a metaphysical faith that underlies our faith in science. We, godless men of knowledge of today, still derive our flame from the fire ignited by faith, the Christian faith, which was also Plato’s, that God is truth, and that truth is divine. But what if this belief is unbelievable, what if nothing turns out to be divine any longer, if God himself turns out to be our longest lie?”
This is all incredibly interesting, but the question of faith in science ought to be stripped of its theological attire altogether, and clothed in the more modest, but unobjectionable, wording of acceptance of our basic hypothesis, which justifies the particular science. Just as the philosophical acceptance of faith makes faith more palatable than when shoved down our throat, the acceptance of any hypothesis does not imply force, or any suppression of reason, and thus becomes itself acceptable to the latter!
“At this point science itself requires justification (which is not to say there is any such justification). Both the earliest and the most recent philosophers are all oblivious of how much the will to truth itself requires justification, here there is a lacuna in every philosophy. How did this come about? -- Because the ascetic ideal has hitherto dominated philosophy, because Truth was posited as Being, as God. From the moment when faith in the God of the Ascetic Ideal is denied, a new problem arises: that of the value of truth.”
As for the old question of truth, I have already pointed out the two different notions of truth, which make our comprehension and acceptance of this term, well, palatable. There is always One Truth, of course, God’s Truth, which is Absolute and Universal, but, being theologically incomprehensible, it is also impracticable. On the other hand, my new concept of the truth of fiction, which identifies comprehensible truth with the domain of its creator, and postulates that truth, rather than open its legitimacy up for discussion, ought to suppress the most objectionable arguments to its acceptance, and, by the same token, by removing any such objections to “smaller” truths, preclude the ricochet objectionability of the Absolute Truth, and, with it, our most objectionable and most unreasonable objection, to God!
…Here is a great philosophical puzzle where I believe to have an answer, which Nietzsche had despaired to find. My geometry find, my insistence on the liberation of God from religion, in order to be one, universally acceptable measure of the Absolute; my introduction of the concept God-by-definition, to discourage those feeble and fatally flawed efforts to prove His existence,--- all these well justify the value of truth, but not that fragile and vulnerable “truth” which loses the universality of One God when chained to a particular religion. All these problems should be solved, as soon as we validate the “truth of science,”--- not as some disputable fact, but as a completely indisputable fiction, and when the existence of Truth is also made indisputable by the categorical power of definition. Thus, my two principal philosophical-theological efforts in this area are: (1) “saving” God from particular religion; and (2) separating fact, the lie, from fiction, the truth.)
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