SCIENCE AND TRUTH

Here is yet another variation on the provocative subject of the truth and the lie of fact and fiction, this time in connection with Nietzsche’s comments in the Third Essay of his Genealogie, concerning the non-factual origins of science.

Ever since my childhood I was fascinated by the fact revealed to me by my illustrious mentors, that science was not based on a scientific fact, but on a belief (Glaube, in German, where, surprisingly, one word serves to denote both belief and faith: I say surprisingly, because the German language, ever since Hegel, who, by his own ingenuity, had adapted the whole language for most sophisticated philosophical use, has shown an incredible sensitivity for highly nuanced abstract notions, but, in this case, perhaps intentionally, had made a conspicuous exception), just like any religion, and in this sense, being one (that is, a religion!), to a point. Indeed, the fact that two parallel lines never cross, which is one of the basics of Euclidian geometry, is not even a fact at all, in modern geometry, but a “particular” assumption, made for certain practical purposes, a “belief” of sorts, a matter of convenience, based on one’s personal preference. So is the modern Big Bang theory in physics, and so on, and so forth.

Although by no means an apologist of religions, Nietzsche ridicules those scientists who aren’t humbled by such shaky origins of their beloved sciences, and put themselves above “religious prejudice” (a classic case of the holier than thou syndrome) as objective nonbelievers in one of his most brilliant passages which is in Genealogie, 3^rd Essay, #24. Observe how he turns the tables on the critics of religions, among whose ranks he was just recently a standard bearer! Here it is, given in excerpts:

And now look at those rarer cases of which I spoke, the last idealists left among philosophers and scholars-- are they, perhaps, the desired opponents of the ascetic ideal, the counter-idealists? Indeed, they believe that they are, these “unbelievers” (for that is what they are, one and all); they are so serious on this point, and so passionate about it in word and gesture, that the faith which they are opponents of this ideal seems to be the last remnant of any faith they have left, but does this mean that their faith is true?

We, “men of knowledge,” have gradually come to mistrust believers of all kinds; our mistrust has gradually brought us to make inferences the reverse of those of former days: Wherever the strength of a faith is very prominently displayed, we infer a certain weakness of demonstrability, even the improbability of what is believed…

(But) strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a 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.

It is still a metaphysical faith which 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, if nothing turns out to be divine any longer, if God himself turns out to be our longest lie?

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 it 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. (Genealogie 3^rd Essay #24.)

There are actually two important points for discussion here, as the reader may have noticed already. One is that with which I opened this entry, namely, that science is not an established fact, but a kind of established fiction (strictly speaking, all belief is fiction, as opposed to fact). The other is the question of ‘truth’ in fact and in fiction, and how truth is inextricably tied up with religion: “because truth was posited as Being, as God,” as Nietzsche puts it.

This is a great philosophical puzzle, to which, I believe, I may have found an answer that Nietzsche himself had despaired to find. My geometry example, my insistence on the liberation of God from religion, in order to be One and not to require proof of His existence, my introduction of the concept of God-by-definition, all these justify the value of truth, but not that fragile and vulnerable truth that loses the universality of God is One, when chained to a specific religion,-- all these problems are to be solved when we validate the truth of science not as some disputable fact, but as fully indisputable fiction, and when the existence of truth is also being made indisputable by the categorical power of definition. My two big finds here are saving God from religion, and separation of fact, the lie, from fiction, the truth!

But still another significant comment of mine is the connection between science and philosophy, which in its best form so far I have seen in the first part of my Lecture on International Justice (see it there). While Nietzsche provides in that case too, a useful addition to my thinking on the subject, he is not its centerpiece, and, consequently, that is not a topic for this Nietzsche section.