... a wilful emphasis on every negative.
Comment? — Banno
This thread is a fishing expedition. I'm seeking out those who disagree with this proposition: Science is a good thing, to see what their arguments are. — Banno
We'd literally be living in clay huts with a life expectancy of 40 years max and infant mortality rates up to 50% without science — TheArchitectOfTheGods
For my part I prefer a world less secure in which I am not guaranteed longevity and comfort, but in which I am free to pursue the good and beautiful with danger and discomfort and awareness of my mortality. — Todd Martin
This wasteland of the soul is what I fear we have received in exchange for a prosperous bodily existence. I know all the counter-arguments... — Todd Martin
In other words, “the music is nothing if the audience is deaf”. — Todd Martin
You can argue that science is good based on the prosperity of the masses, but if the higher accomplishments of the soul are compromised by its success ... — Todd Martin
dIn other words, “the music is nothing if the audience is deaf”. — Todd Martin
Some interesting thoughts. You may want to check the comments section on youtube for Mozart's piano concertos. But that same comment section reveals also what technology has taken away from us, namely the ability to eloquently express our thoughts and feelings in writing, and this deterioration in linguistic abilities and modes of expression results of course in a change of the soul, I completely agree with you here. As for genius, surely there are now more people alive as brilliant as Mozart or Einstein, than there were in their own age. Let history decide who will be considered the geniuses of our age with hindsight, which breakthroughs of science and technology, and which works of art will be considered milestones in human achievements, and which not.The soul itself has been transformed by philosophy to recognize only the base concerns of the body, and to delight only in its barbaric emanations. Beethoven and Mozart are accessible to all; whose soul is moved by them? — Todd Martin
So, to keep an open mind, we have to allow that science is not always a good thing, especially when it crushes the spirit each of us has in us by denying its very existence. — Hanover
we have to allow that science is not always a good thing, — Hanover
I'm not following your actual argument.
Is it that Mozart survived childhood, against the odds, and somehow this makes his work of greater value? — Banno
One pictures oneself as one of the survivors, not one of the many who died in childhood. Those who died are not free to pursue the good and beautiful. — Banno
The "wasteland of the soul" you describe is a consequence of the fact religion chose an antithetical relationship to science — counterpunch
As the two [religion and science] diverge, the one claiming to be the source of all things spiritual, moral, aesthetic - appears falsified by contrast to the demonstrable truths of science. — counterpunch
But if your deal was with the devil, he was wearing vestments and a mitre - not a lab coat! — counterpunch
You have not established a causal relation or shown that science and art are incompatible. — Fooloso4
As for genius, surely there are now more people alive as brilliant as Mozart or Einstein, than there were in their own age. — TheArchitectOfTheGods
After all, unless you haven’t noticed, we no longer produce Beethovens or Mozarts, Keatses or Dantes, Raphaels or Rembrandts. — Todd Martin
once upon a time, depictors of the human body cared little of anatomical accuracy, but cared much about conveying in their works the spirit or soul encapsulated within the body they portrayed. After the Enlightenment, artists began studying anatomy in order to better represent the human body, its exact musculature, dissecting corpses...this change in itself is an indication of the alteration that philosophy (science) exacted upon aesthetics: more emphasis on physical exactitude, at the cost of psychic representation. Only compare Rembrandt with David. — Todd Martin
I think science and religion are natural enemies. The recognition that there is a natural order discoverable by reason, and the authority of text revealed to man by god must necessarily collide, which was always the source of the persecutions of philosophers by the civil/religious authorities. — Todd Martin
The fault lies with science, not religion; and I mean by “science” what used to be meant by “philosophy”, ie, the pursuit of the truth about nature according to reason—including the nature of man, of his soul. That bold innovation of Machiavelli and his numerous disciples, the Enlightenment—was really just a power-grab: an attempt to wrest authority away from the pontiffs and prelates and rulers who bowed to them and place it in the hands of philosophers, that they no longer suffer persecution, and this was successfully accomplished by focusing man’s attention on his material as opposed to spiritual prosperity. It was this goal of philosophy that conduced to the division in philosophy b/w it and science in the modern sense, ie, “hard” science, the sort that is demonstrable and easily adaptable to material prosperity. — Todd Martin
The modern scientist casts an ambiguous shadow: does he really only want to understand rerum naturam as the disinterested theoretician, or is he the benefactor of mankind, the technician discovering things that can be used to increase our material prosperity? Everything lies in the motive, for it is not obvious that everything he discovers has practical application—especially in the realm of the soul. Aristotle’s lover of “beautiful and useless things” is not to the modern taste. — Todd Martin
I make no causal connection b/w his survival and the quality of his music. My point is that, despite the fact that many more ppl died young in olden times, nevertheless, those who did survive enjoyed a richer culture, and I question the validity of the argument that science is undeniably good simply because it increases physical prosperity and longevity. — Todd Martin
the advent of science has had an extraordinarily, overwhelmingly positive impact on how we live. — Banno
It was this goal of philosophy that conduced to the division in philosophy b/w it and science in the modern sense, ie, “hard” science, the sort that is demonstrable and easily adaptable to material prosperity. — Todd Martin
The underlying historical cause of this phenomenon seems to lie in an unbalanced development of the human mind in the West, beginning around the time of the European Renaissance. This development gave increasing importance to the rational, manipulative and dominative capacities of the mind at the expense of its intuitive, comprehensive, sympathetic and integrative capacities. The rise to dominance of the rational, manipulative facets of human consciousness led to a fixation upon those aspects of the world that are amenable to control by this type of consciousness — the world that could be conquered, comprehended and exploited in terms of fixed quantitative units. This fixation did not stop merely with the pragmatic efficiency of such a point of view, but became converted into a theoretical standpoint, a standpoint claiming validity. In effect, this means that the material world, as defined by modern science, became the founding stratum of reality, while mechanistic physics, its methodological counterpart, became a paradigm for understanding all other types of natural phenomena, biological, psychological and social.
The early founders of the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century — such as Galileo, Boyle, Descartes and Newton — were deeply religious men, for whom the belief in the wise and benign Creator was the premise behind their investigations into lawfulness of nature. However, while they remained loyal to the theistic premises of Christian faith, the drift of their thought severely attenuated the organic connection between the divine and the natural order, a connection so central to the premodern world view. They retained God only as the remote Creator and law-giver of Nature and sanctioned moral values as the expression of the Divine Will, the laws decreed for man by his Maker. In their thought a sharp dualism emerged between the transcendent sphere and the empirical world. The realm of "hard facts" ultimately consisted of units of senseless matter governed by mechanical laws, while ethics, values and ideals were removed from the realm of facts and assigned to the sphere of an interior subjectivity.
It was only a matter of time until, in the trail of the so-called Enlightenment, a wave of thinkers appeared who overturned the dualistic thesis central to this world view in favor of the straightforward materialism. This development was a following through of the reductionistic methodology to its final logical consequences. Once sense perception was hailed as the key to knowledge and quantification came to be regarded as the criterion of actuality, the logical next step was to suspend entirely the belief in a supernatural order and all it implied. Hence finally an uncompromising version of mechanistic materialism prevailed, whose axioms became the pillars of the new world view. Matter is now the only ultimate reality, and divine principle of any sort dismissed as sheer imagination. — Bhikkhu Bodhi
I'm not a theologian, but it seems to me the philosophical groundwork was there in the cannon of Catholic doctrine - that could have bridged the apparent divide. — counterpunch
I'm not a theologian, but it seems to me the philosophical groundwork was there in the cannon of Catholic doctrine - that could have bridged the apparent divide. — counterpunch
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
You know it cuts both ways. The vocal atheists of popular culture all weaponise evolutionary theory to ‘prove’ or ‘show’ that God doesn’t exist. So how are the religious supposed to react to that? ‘Oh, I guess you’re right. I guess what I’ve seen up until now as the whole foundation of my life is really just a delusion, a by-product of my evolved simian brain.’ — Wayfarer
Does the expression ‘biblical literalism’ mean anything to you? Do you know why it is criticised? What the alternatives are to it? — Wayfarer
I think it one of those situations where if you have to explain the point, it’s not worth making. I’m sure someone will come along soon with another point, let’s wait for that. — Wayfarer
You’re kind of fundamentalist in your own way, you know. It’s a very black v white, good guys v bad guys script you’re running. Stay with it, I will trouble you no more. — Wayfarer
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