Science and Faith as ways of knowing: embracing the irrational

Positivism and the Paradigm of Exploitation

It seems strange to me that when a physics professor like Hawking is given to flights of fancy he is considered a genius. As the genius constructs and deconstructs possible universes with speculative mathematical equations he is applauded for his insight. One who does the same to justify faith in God, however, is a dogmatist. A thinker who views the illogical paradoxes of Einstein; Gödel, Escher, and Bach and ends with quantum time travel is a genius; one who concludes that there is room for irrationality and ends in faith and prayer is a fanatic. A scientist who uses his intelligence to promote the model of comfort, consumerism, and exploitation, however is a genius according to our modern world. 



Never mind that Steve Jobs, arguably the greatest genius of the last quarter century, had a deep interest in Vedic spirituality and Eastern thought or that Einstein was a mystic. How did we go from valuing eternal insight in philosophy to esteeming raw materialism? How did exploitation become the paradigm driving modern science?

Where does this idea of consumerism and comfort come from? And How is it possible that comfort has surpassed wisdom as the focus of civilization?

Comte: the Philosopher of Comfort

The philosopher of bourgeois comfort was the Frenchman, Auguste Comte. HIs famous formula of meaning was “science d’où prévoyance; prévoyance, d’où action.” “The reason for knowing is to be able to predict, and the reason for prediction is to make action possible.” As Ortega y Gasset puts it, “The result is that action--advantageous action, of course--becomes the thing that defines the truth of knowledge.”

Epistemology of exploitation

The epistemology of exploitation is clearly explained here, critiqued by a prominent 20th Century philosopher. As the great physicist Boltzmann blandly stated it, “There are no correct reasonings except those which have practical results.” No wisdom exists which does not enable us to exploit, or further the cause of exploitation. Truth, then is at the service of utility. The philosophy that was baked out of these ingredients was called pragmatism in the 20th century. The idea is that there is no other truth than success in dealing with things, making things, consuming things, enjoying and exploiting things. The technical knowledge which advances our exploitation is science and this is the only knowledge. Anything else which goes by the name of knowledge is really outside the realm of useful investigation, therefore useless by definition. Since modern physics has vitiated philosophy with these ideas, there is nothing left for philosophers but dialectical word-games.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, master of dialectical word-games

The Virus of Exploitation

Comte's positivist view of comfort and exploitation is an audacious epistemology, but one which, like a virus has spread throughout all the organic systems of wisdom and philosophy, weakening them. How can anyone contaminated with such a materialistic view seriously speak of wisdom, of life, or of the “meaning of life?” And yet the imperial triumph of physics owes itself to this epistemology. While science pretends to be value-neutral, the focus on “practical usefulness” has led to some terrible results.

The Mushroom Cloud of Usefulness

Since Ortega y Gasset wrote his critique at the beginning of the last century, the “practical usefulness” of science has mushroomed. A practical solution for the Japanese was found in the atomic-bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the fire-bombing of Dresden. For Hitler, Farben’s Zyklon B gas was a practical and useful solution for the Jews. The pesticide plant in Bhopal, the nuclear meltdown of Chernobyl, global warming, climate change, air pollution, the destruction of habitats, extinction of plants, birds, and animals, all these are by-products of our penchant for practical usefulness. By excluding ethical considerations from science, we have managed to discover how to weaponize anthrax and smallpox virus, how to reduce the ice at the polar ice-caps, and how to machine-gun hundreds of thousands of young men in an afternoon on the bomb-torn fields at Ypres and Verdun.

Disasters of Science

We know how to melt Vietnamese children with Napalm and how to register, fingerprint, and database every Muslim on the planet. The Nazi scientists who worked at Auschwitz learned how many hours it takes before a human being freezes to death, and exactly how many calories are needed to keep a human alive for a month at hard labor until he starves to death. The man-made disasters of science are legion; spend a half-hour watching the news and chances are you will witness one. All these great achievements were made possible by the epistemological paradigm of positivistic materialism.

Is Philosophy Dead?

But as long as we have cheap wifi, internet porn, sex, drugs and rock and roll, and new iPhones, why should anyone care? Philosophy is dead, says Hawking, since it doesn’t advance the cause of science any further. What questions it contemplates do not bear on the physical science and therefore have no use. As Ortega y Gasset puts it, writing a hundred years ago in reference to the imperalism of physics:
 “...the intellectual life of Europe has for almost a hundred years suffered from what one might call the ‘terrorism of the laboratories.’ Overwhelmed by this superiority, the philosopher was ashamed of being overwhelmed, which meant that he became ashamed of not being a physicist. As the problems which are genuinely philosophic do not permit of solution according to the method of the physical sciences, the philosopher gave up any attempt to attack them; he renounced his philosophy, contracting it to a minimum, putting it humbly at the service of the physics. He decided that the only philosophic theme worth pursuing was meditation on the fact of physics, that philosophy was merely a theory of knowledge, and nothing more.”
 “Kant was the first to adopt such an attitude in a radical form; he did not interest himself directly in the great cosmic problems, but with the imperative hand of a town policeman he stopped all philosophic traffic--twenty-six centuries of metaphysical thought--by saying, “Let all philosophizing remain suspended until this question is answered: How are synthetic judgments possible a priori?” Well, now, “synthetic judgments a priori” meant to him physics, the factum of the physio-mathematical science. But these statements of the problem as he saw it were not even a theory of knowledge. Their point of departure was the knowledge of physics as it existed, and they did not ask “What is knowledge?”

Insofar as it fails to confront the big questions, philosophy is, in a very real sense, dead. If Ortega y Gasset complained about the death of philosophy a hundred years ago, Stephen Hawking’s snide epitaph drives another nail into the coffin. What role does philosophy play in a world where the imperialism of physics is absolute?

Stephen Hawking and Philosophy’s Epitaph

Speaking to Google's Zeitgeist Conference in Hertfordshire, the author of 'A Brief History of Time' said that fundamental questions about the nature of the universe could not be resolved by philosophy. "Most of us don't worry about these questions most of the time,” he said. “But almost all of us must sometimes wonder: Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics."

Imperialism of Physics

This is as good an example as exists of Ortega y Gasset’s principle of the “imperialism of physics.” Hawking's mind-numbing hubris is apparent here, as is his lame attempt at philosophy. He refutes himself here with his own sophomoric philosophical musings. “Philosophy is dead” is a philosophical discussion on the nature of epistemology as we have seen in the above comments of Ortega y Gasset. But of course Hawking sees nothing wrong with appropriating a discipline which he has declared dead. Of course, Hawking is more interested in “imaginary time” and other mind-boggling speculations to muster the proper rigor to make a philosophical proposition.  

Hawking: out of his depth

What Hawking means to say is that metaphysics has not kept up with physics, but he is beyond his depth. Metaphysics, before Kant decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater, was the branch of philosophy that dealt with the “hard” question of consciousness. The metaphysics of Aristotle and Aquinas is a useful framework on which to understand modern science, especially quantum mechanics. Even Heisenberg knew this. Ken Wilber has documented the fascination of modern physicists like Bohr, Einstein, Schrodinger, and Heisenberg with mysticism. In quantum mechanics, cosmology, and evolutionary biology, scientists are just catching up to over two thousand years of philosophical and theological insight from the great philosophers of the Upanishads.

Practical and Useful?

Scientists like Hawking are concerned with the practical and the useful. They rarely understand the philosophical framework of their technical labor. They are mere technicians crunch numbers and tinker with instruments, with little insight into the philosophical basis for their calculations.

Atheist technicians and quasi-scientists

Atheist technicians like Hawking are poor imitations of the great scientists of the scientific enlightenment and the great pioneers in modern physics -- vanishingly few of whom were atheists. Real scientists do more than play with equations and tinker with instruments; they should have a meaningful understanding of natural philosophy as it relates to their work.

Popular Science

It’s hard to believe the present day advocates of atheism and popular science like Dawkins and Hawking would pass a freshman philosophy class. They may be charismatic representatives of popular science, but they are hardly trained in philosophy, or even introspective enough to think through the basic problems.
The imperialists of physics, our scientific priesthood, lack the philosophical basis to ask meaningful questions. Their questions are strictly limited by the paradigm that dominates their fields, that of “practical and useful truths.” And so a great mind like Hawking believes that the cosmos has no purpose. In his case, philosophy is dead; lacking a deep philosophy for himself, he wants it to be dead for everyone else. And sadly, few philosophers challenge the imperialism of science and physics. Those who dare are silenced.