>Under which religous caregory do you place science?
I responded (in part):
> I assume that Don Milulecky's question is intended to be ironic
>(in suggesting that science may be a category of religion), but I also
>think it may have a deeper import and importance.
Don, I was trying to widen the frame of reference, and I am not sure that I
succeeded. My sense is that you took the opportunity to expand upon the
point you had in mind but read no further. That's O.K., but in the process
you raise even more, and more importantly misunderstood, problems.
>Bruce, I was not joking.
I did not think you were joking. When I said I thought you might have been
ironic in your comments I meant to imply a kind of judgemental view, which
appears to be the case. And a judgemental view tends to block perception.
>Whatever criterea you have for defining
>"religion" I think science will meet them.
If science met all and any criteria used to define religion would they not
be identical? It is more useful, I think, to consider them as related but
in ways depending upon various definitions and functions. For instance, I
would agree that, for some people, faith in scientific methods and
knowledge provides deep criteria for truth and other values. For others,
science means only technological know-how, which provides little more than
techniques for securing money and power, etc. While this may be a religion,
by most of the criteria of traditional religions it involves the worship of
false values/Gods.
>The Cartesian Reductionist paradigm in effect won over the Church
>in the battle for controlling minds.
Well, the battle for minds still goes on. Certainly the rise of science has
been triumphant in many ways. But scientific knowledge provides only
partial answers to many vital questions. Over the past century or so many
thinkers (e.g. existentialists but also others) have emphasized that
(Cartesian) analytic rationality is inherently limited in its capacity to
comprehend and deal with all the problems of human life. While analytic
methods have had much success, faith in the idea that all phenomena are
reducible to physics has not been proven in the event, and there are many
reasons to doubt that it will ever be. Any any rate, for now, other
approaches are also necessary.
The main point is that to consider the problem as an "either-or" i.e.
science or irrationality, is to misunderstand the human condition.
>We work within a belief structure so effective that most of
>us believe that we don't. Pirsig (sp?) in "Zen and the art of
>motorcycle maintainence" aptly refered to the "Church of reason".
Most of us most of the time work with a belief structure that we were
brought up with, but not always because it is so effective. It is simply
what we are used to, and it seems to be the case that a great many people
have great faith in belief structures that in fact create all kinds of
problems for themselves and others. Most of us continue to stick with the
faiths of our fathers until we are close to catastophe, and forced to
examine the assumptions we have been making. It is a difficult process, not
at all one of pure rationality. The belief in the primacy of rationality is
itself a faith that is today causing many problems (See Voltaire's
Bastards, by John Ralston Saul).
>No, its not a joke. And with fundamentalism on the rise everywhere,
>I won't venture a prediction of the outcome.
Fundamentalism is among other things a symptom of unmet human needs, and
will not be overcome unless the innate human needs being expressed are met
in otherwise adequate ways. Most science, including psychiatry and
psychoanalysis, fails in this.
>I agree with Bruce, that anyone who refuses to take this
>seriously is probably going to suffer for it.
Well, this is not what I said or meant. I think that if we all together do
not take questions related to higher values seriously we will all together
suffer, but we may suffer in any case, even in the process of coming to
terms with such values.
To bring it back to PCP, scientific systems and cybernetics, the key values
lie not so much in the avoidance of pain and suffering but in being able to
learn, and to find more desirable and attainable goals and alternatives. I
think this is what the higher values of creativity and freedom are all
about. These are also more illuminated by a cybernetic frame of reference
than by a model of conflict between reason and desire, or between science
and religious fundamentalism.
Cheers!
Bruce Buchanan
buchanan@hookup.net