molnar tradition and science

7/28/2019 Molnar Tradition and Science

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Tradition,Science, and theCenturiesThomasMolnar

SCIENCENDCONSERVATIVEHOUGHTsasub-ject that brings to mind old and stabiliz-ing debates, with well-defined and re-spected concepts, since such debatesused to unravel in a climate of deeply andeven institutionally rooted positions. Thedouble rootsof conceptual stability usedto be science, mostly in the sense ofinvestigatingphysis from Thales to Nicho-lasof Cusa, and tradition, interpreted asadherence to natural law, to historicalcontinuity,toa valid structure of being.It isremarkable that, in spiteof the shift-ing paradigms and their superstructures,the debates were always meaningful, therespective argumentso which offered arounded world-picture. No matter howunpalatable were the views of Plato,pseudo-Denys, Democritus, and Galileo,they offered to an opponent an admit-tedly oscillating yet recitablestoryand arepresentable image, allowing him tomobilize to good purpose his imagina-tion, udgment, intuition. The good pur-posewasthe harmonious description ofparts or of the totalityof the cosmos. Thewords in italics above point to the overallcharacter of the debate: the basic as-sumption that the universe is imagin-

able, describable, graspable as a story. fit isnot ultimately arepresentable real-ity, then theself can only weave endlessabstractions likeaKandinsky canvas; itcan mechanically mobilize fancies, butnever rise to human comprehension.*Gradually this cosmos-based harmonyof thought and sensibility di~integrated,~although the harmony-seeking debatescontinued being meaningful and the vari-ousparticipants used the same anguage.Meanwhile, Hellenic and Near Easternassumptions yielded to a kind of pan-psychism, and then, under the influenceof Paduan materialists, the world-spiritwas liquidated, the space being filled byastral debris nstead of by gods and spir-its. Christianity contributed decisivelyto the breaking-up of the universe and ofits neutralization-and thus to the suc-cessof modern science. Jupiter andVe-nus became chunks of rock, floating inspace; the task was now not to tell hu-manly significant tales but to find and toexplore new principlesof cohesion.The great rupture inWestern cosmol-ogyand consciousness does not have tobe chronicled here. t is sufficient to diag-nose oneof its culminatingmoments froma recent writing of George Steiner. Our

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LeeWhorf hold; it isanchored in sense.Steiner has valuable things to say aboutit in Real Presences (0000)-where heindicts Nietzsche, Mallarme, Rimbaud,Derrida for detaching significance fromwords, with the terrifying result thatwords drift apart, lead a loose existence,and destroy speech. Words mean whatI want them to mean isthe road-map tomodernity, as communication disinte-grates. Either science becomes as mpos-sible as much of modern art, or else anarrowly algebraic setof signsisworkedout in an emotionally and morally aridvocabulary. Meaning no onger has mean-ing because it isno longer backed up bya presence. Steiner accuses the univer-sity culture and its research-maniacs,puffed-up courses, and empty ambitionsfor this stateof affairs. Heidegger con-curs: it isno longer the philosopher, hewrites, but the research assistants whodictate the topic and the style of aca-demic work.What we call scienceand conserva-tive thought are then old notions andcategories, still vaguely audible in post-medieval debate where they were mean-ingful; yet they can no longer be recon-structed since they can no longer carry afull load of comprehension. Let us con-sider a few instances which help us tocross the bridge from the Graeco-Chris-tian world viewto the modern one.In its original shape and contents, sci-ence drew its postulates from the es-sence of things, the Greekphysis. Whatis?Thisisaquestion to askof Parmenides,Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, with eachgiving a different and differently preg-nant answer. Democritus, to pick herethe most controversial philosopher, seesthe world as an empty space with collid-ing balls in it, while what we call theirqualities are super-added by us to helpour debile needs. They are, Democritussays, atomic motions observed by roughsenses.This hypothesisisthe epitomeofanticonservatism.as t was bruited for

centuries since it described an in-itselfstable substratum and told a storywhere things fitted. Indeed, taking a longleap of about 1800years, we find thatDescartess admiring friend, FatherMersenne, located in Democritus a left-handed philosophical ally of the Church,insofar as the Greek allows at least acentrally directed mechanism to run theuniverse, with hazard (tyche)stepping inthe shoes of God. Accordingly God be-comes the Great Watchmaker, not unac-ceptable perhaps for a boldly investigat-ing materialist from Abdera. Still thisconstruct is better than what Spinozahad to offer with his pan-psychism.Obviouslythe What s?question hadmovedtoa new location, whether tradi-tionalists noted it or not. They (PopeUrban, Bellarmin, the Jesuits) were now(mid-seventeenth century) busy withGalileo, and seemed at peace with someancient materialists who, as Peter Greenremarks of the Hellenistic Age, beganlong before cultivating their souls,de-tached from their pagan background.Science in the seventeeth century, andNewton even later, had still not lost thatsoul,and the scientists themselves werestill called, very significantly, naturalphilosophers. Newton himself had hopesof finding a better explanation for thequestionable gravitation, an explanationcloser to God.What happened between Democritusand Mersenne and their respective worldviews? Science deals with facts, but theunderstanding of what fact is changes.For this to happen, parameters must bevalidated or revalued; for example, whenthe pagan view apprehends the cosmosas one filled with degrees of vitality, thenthe subsequent monotheistic visioncleanses heavens until only astral debrisremain in empty space. Oneasks:What isleft for apersonal and majestic God torule over?He did indeed change into amaster-mechanic, astatus from which hemay have meanwhile also abdicated.

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There have been many other bridgescrossed, blocked, or by-passed. At anyrate, what we used to call science hasnow arrived in an unrecognizable shape,in a break with the old meaning, the oldstory, theoid image. Sciencehas beenmetamorphosed into technology, recast-ing notsomuch its raw data as the wholesetof the cognitive assumption. The hi-erarchy that used to connect the humanenterprise to Gods sustaining act hasbeen blasted byaseries of epistemologi-cal explosions.

Science has changed into technology,as it has also changed the whole cultureand the meaning of conservativethought. We have argued that sciencewas never merely science, that it waspart of a web of significances, of thesearch for cosmic harmony, of aseries oflanguages mostlygrown out o each other,continuous yet accommodating revolu-tions, changes of patterns, and para-digms. Hence, there was never aneed fora political or an aesthetic vision to go towar against science, other than in timesof cordial debate between interpretationsand ways of illustration, the ultimatemodeofarbitration. But modernity isnotanew scientific enterprise to be observed,utilized, rectified, and, above all, illus-trated. It isanti-science, it models itselfon therepudiationof meaningasactuallyan ideal (like modern art and politics), inreality a form of hybris. Henceforward,there will be no limit to the artistic, lin-guistic, pedagogical, and institutionaldeformations imposed upon mankind;allwe shall need will be a suitable labo-ratory to present its finding.What can conservatism say to thissituation, how can it influence the out-come, and what kind of outcome does itexpect to prepare? Provided that conser-vatism, for lack of a rich content, isnot amere periodic cry to halt progress!, asocial defense mechanism or a pitiabledisregardof~hange,~t ought to repair tothe previous harmony and not adopt, for

example, theopponentswar cryof Letshave more growth! This special issue ofModern Age asks a number of alwayspertinent questions, but my reaction isthat these questions would have beenperhaps more suitable some centuriesago. Now they sound rhetorical. Somequestions suggest a surrender to themodern temptation for the conservativeintellectual class to join surreptitiouslytheir opponents,and together to becomean intellectual clerisy, handling a cooled-offcharisma. It isperhaps done with theintention to work from inside, but thiscritical intention regularly succumbs toanew ceremonial role-modelling.

Conservatives are summoned at inter-vals to re-examine the tenetsof modern-ism and their own connection with it; toreverse the trend and toveer off the roadthat leads implacably and with techno-logical precision to a brave new world.But do they understand the weight of thesummons? Do they contemplate fromthe supposed endo history what his-tory has come to signifynow, when thescientific world view is the only realitysurrounding us, and is clearly bent onabolishing whatever human substratumstill whispers its humble presence? Inother words, the issueis no longer thecomfortable one: science versus tradi-tion, an articulated ensemble of concepts,but a frenzied circus act versus the hu-manly fitted natureo things.Thus I try to answer the questionsformulated here-again, they would havebeen more validly put some centuriesago, and in fact they were, with a kindofnostalgic mood. No, technology cannotbe controlled by any kind of humanis-tic re-coding; yes, biogenetic manipula-tion has opened wide and irreversiblythe gatesof the brave new world; neitherLeft nor Right is likely to deal with whatisscience today.Yes,conservatives them-selves often promote the destructiveculture wars which devastate the planet.5They are not on the side of the angels,

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and they seem to worry more about anefficient free-market than about a bal-anced cosmology. Finally, democraticgovernance may not be an ideal worthpursuing. Our finally sterilized histori-calvision has slipped from divine hands.(it stopped for a moment in ours, thenslipped therefrom too). The industrial-technological end-station looms likeanever-swelling tumor. We have reachedthe point where we must assume, in acomplete reversal of the assumptionscrowding behind us, that enlightenedmodern man is no better and no wiserthan historys so-called irrational andbarbaric forces. They at least instinc-tively operated with meaning (as mani-fested in art, religion, myths, monu-ments): we rationally abandon it.Men always used tools which wereextensions of their hands, themselvestoo weak or too short. But modern tech-nology does not reach or refine: it iscomposedof sets of machines, not exten-sions of the body but aself-multiplyingand self-reproducing copy of the copy,increasingly far from necessities and fromthe Aristotelianmmesis.It has even de-served a somewhat comical label: gad-get,whether itserves kitchen and bath-room, or displaces rocks on other plan-ets. Thus the machine has become mansonly palpable and also visible contactwith the universe, which subsumes hisown milieu. An enlarged or diminishedmilieu can be seen in myriad samples indaily life: human robots with antennae,mobile phones, vicarious contacts, non-experienced relationships, and virtualrealities6While man isthus taken out ofhimself, mini- and maxi-robots swarmaround him with grotesque automatism.The modernist dream has taken shapewith the manufacturing of an intelligentthinking machine and the genetic pro-ductionof the mechanically perfect man.Evolution has ended in a fusion of ma-chine-man and human machine. One atleast issuperfluous. We have chosen to

eliminatethe factor-man.Nowonder thatthe centurys mainline literature, the lit-eratureof anguish and scream-Kafka,Nietzsche, Huxley, Orwell-is one con-tinuous escape from machine-man, andthat its mainline architecture isthe face-less,inarticulate skyscraper. It does noteven have arms to raise to heaven formercy.Haveconservatives changed this land-scape,or thistelos, n the slightest? Havethey decided to reverse, even to criticizethe process other than in short burstsoflament? On the contrary, they have beenon the sideof growth where the Watch-maker-God is also located, of materialenlargement, of the abolition of the re-maining balance between nature andmans handiwork. Conservatives havefaithfully escorted the scientific-indus-trial enterprises, making no effort to de-tach from it societys other aspirations.As said above, the seduction to rise tothe status of a technological clerisy wastoo strong, opting hence for more gigan-tic industrial mergers and more globalmarkets.Myriad cases could be listed, eachappearingsmall and unthreatening iniso-lation, yet each typifying the collectiverush which then swells to mass propor-tions. True, it can be argued that fromthe beginning there has beenatechno-logical continuity, chasing after needsand entertainment and mere displaysofingenuity: from the ancient sun-dialthrough the waterworks of Versailles,Kempelens chess-playing machine to thelaser and the spaceship. But each of thesenormalconstructions has been accom-panied by monstrous negatives: count-less automobiles, obligatory computersin classrooms, an internet in every pot,the splicing of genes-until, of course,we reach tomorrow and mans trans-mutation. It would be a vain effort to tellwhere exactly conservatives have under-taken initiatives in the face of these wel-come changes. Here and there we hear an

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individual objection, even at times a cor-rect diagnosis, but without concretere-sults. Tocqueville indicted democracyas a monotonous tumult; Max Weberwarned against the drying-upof creativeGan; Ortega y Gasset spoke againstmassproduction in the arts; C.S. Lewis con-demned the abolitionof man. The tragicfact isthat these one-shot reactions no-where cohere as a philosophy, not evenasareasonable public assessment of thefuture. Facing Nietzsches devastation ofGod and metaphysics, Bishop Prohaszka(Hungary,1903) lamented: It spossibleto restore the Christian world view intodays cultural context?.. I want to speakto modern man, but do understand hisinternal life,his language.Let us attempt to work out an incon-clusive conclusion rather than a sum-mary. Until modernitys successive wavescame knocking, science, statecraft, manu-facture, art, and a more or lesscommonethical understanding of issues, publicorprivate, were on reasoning terms: Man,in other words, faces a universe half hisown making and imagining, half his never-passive surrender. The material worldhelps and opposes, the spiritual mani-fests itself, often anarchistically but alsointriguingly, all this because it is notmonistic, but instead sacredand profane.This unity-and-change allowed us tointegrate knowledge into a story whichwe told in vastly different terms and ac-cents, but never imagined that it wasneither a tale of idiots nor even an arbi-trary frametobe switched at will. Thenthere came upon us not science, whichwas easy to confront since it searches forunderstanding, but the machine, alocked-up pseudo-self, self-sufficient, command-ing. One of its unintended ancestors hadbeen Leibnitzs monad turned into mecha-nism. In quick succession, the machine,now without a rival, absorbed the sci-ences, human relationships, and artisticand literary aspirations. It even wentthrough a heroic/epic period whenZola

hammered his metallic worker-legends,America found her vocation in techno-logical gigantism, and Soviet propagan-dists invented the Stakhanovite virtues.Nobody understood at the time that thePromethean machine isa soui-crushingbanality that takes the story out of life.

The malaise, becoming deeper withevery step we take toward the machine,iscosmological, although its effects on usare spiritual, religious, social, and scien-tific. Its essence suggests an alienationfrom the universe does remain in thedominant position-it is always outthere,and itiswe, nsuccessive genera-tions, who must grasp and adjust to it.Wecancallthis graspacorrectedanthro-pology or a wise degree of humility infacing the real. We canalsocall it meaningwhich is best conveyed to us by a vastpicture or astory, or even by a humanact-not numbers, measurements, sys-tems of coordinates, statistics. The uni-verse forus(and thereisno other) isnotrocks in space senselessly hurling by, buttales with beginnings and endings, de-scribable events, personified powers. Itis,at its most significant point, myths topreserve, an architecture of the cosmoswith huge doses of beauty, soto speak.Thisisno naive (or neo-naive) recom-mendation for an exclusive return to theABC of creation, but only a reminder ofMax Webers formula that the clock iswinding down and that nature and his-tory are disengaging from the seductionof magic and religion, and yielding to arationality which grows and expands. Weshould add that rationality means herethe machine and itsmanlike equivalent,bureaucratization. To disengage frommagic and religion contains the wholeambiguityof an age that Weber contem-plated from its meta-historical and tragicside. Its clarification should help conser-vatives rest, to confront not sciencepersebut technology, that is,themselves ina distorted mirror. Lack of awarenesstakes away something everyday from their

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ruison d2h-e. Their philosophical statusquo has long been shed, replacedbythatof the technocrat, or at least his accom-plice-a manipulator, or a social engi-neer, or abusinessman. ndeed, the tech-nocrat has produced, in turn, a good

conscience since the moral space inwhich he is active does not raise ques-tions of adifferent kind. Who or what willliberateus from this cave, whichis deeperthan the Platonic cave?

1. Such essences were original sin, belief in asustaining supreme power, adherence to meaning,the mediation of symbols, the rejection of purehazard {fychC) as an organizing principle. 2. Thephilosophical-scientific harmony in debate wasmanifest, for example, when in the Middle Agesjurists, poets, and architects were able to discuss,as cognitive equals, matters likethe superiority orthe dependence of painting over law. (It madesense that the Florentine urbanist, Alberti, had alaw school background.) Such debates had theircivilizing roots in those between Socrates andProtagoras; n the consubstantionalist controversyat Nicaea; n the iconoclastic conflict; in the politi-cal battle between the Popes and the Emperorsjurists. Concepts were sharpened, attitudes solidi-fied, and, above all, the unity of vision and thedialectical method required a common systemofreference. 3. The process and the end-result odisintegration are classically described, amongothers, since the literature now isenormous, byAlexandre KoyrC, From the Closed World to theInfinite Universe and Paul Hazard, La crise de laconscience europkenne.Note that next to the mod-ern cult of the description of utopia, the currentfashion isthat o writing books locating the originand spreado decadence. If pursued civilly, thistoo could become a classical debate. 4. Conser-vatism has come to mean the expansiono freedom(of economic enterprise) when the issue is,precisely, thato limitsin general. Capitalismisnotvirtuous, nor does it feed self-identity in fashion-able globalistic confusion. When the Renault carstake over Nissan,40,000 apanese workers becomedependent on alien processes, just as in the six-

teenthxentury arrangement of cujus regio ejusreligio. It seems that conservative valuesculrni-nate inaplanetaryeconomism,which isinclined tototalitarian solutions as any in this century, andprobably the next. 5. In forty years o witnessingconservative cultural activities hardly found anycaseof international philosophical awareness thatwould not rapidly fade awayor ossify. The reasonsgiven were (1) lack of money, (2) unsustainedinterest,(3) lackof solidarity. Hardly an historicalelan!6. Note how Western man, supposedly asynthesizer, has given up his vital contact withnature, the milieu in which he makes primarysense and finds asource of his identity.Hisdreamsand dreads used to be bathed in animal stories(complemented with giants and fairies); tales sur-rounded him, explaining him to himself, elucidat-ing while also mythifying the outer world and theinner world. Animals are now in research laborateries and in reserves, and the human animal isrecast on the Freudian therapy couch. Man todayisboth dimensionless and directionless. 7. West-ern physics, struggling since the ancients, hassuffered from the problemof action at a distance.As long as such an action was conceived as con-tiguously spreading, the transmission of cause/effect formed a story natural to man. Dozensotheories followed, each one a chapter o moder-nity, among them gravitation and a significantlycentrifugal universe. Newton was still hoping for aGod-centered one. The problem persists. Cener-ally, up to the time of Calileo, theologians, moral-ists, and astrologers remainedasa dominant pres-ence in thecosrnological/scientific field.

molnar tradition and science

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