 124. Philosophy � Greek |
The False Religion of Scientific Knowledge
Scientists tend to imagine themselves to be "humanists," or individuals who possess a superior regard for the well-being of mankind. Indeed, organized groups of scientists commonly promote themselves as a kind of independently superior and humanistic conscience, whereas in fact their general effect on the world is often quite the opposite. (At the very least, their effect is no more superior or ultimately beneficial than that of any other organized and socially powerful point of view, past or present.)
The scientific establishment has been organized in league with the highest levels of concentrated political, economic, and propagandistic power in the world today. Science is simply the primary method of knowing in modern societies, and its rule is established in no less an irrational and authoritarian manner than was the case with any religious or philosophical principle that ruled societies in the past.
The method of science has now become a style of existence, a mood or strategy of relating to the world and to other human beings. That method now describes the conventional posture taken by "Everyman" in every form of his relationship to the conditions of existence. Science has become a world-view, a presumption about the World-Process itself. It has become a religion, although a false one. And modern societies are Cults of this new religion, although a false one. And modern societies are Cults of this new religion. Can this new religion establish us as individuals and communities in right relationship to each other and to the World-Process? Absolutely not! Science is only a method of inquiry, or knowing about. It is not itself the right, true, or inherent form of our relationship to the conditions of existence. No matter what we may know about the conditions of existence, we cannot account for existence itself. And we are, regardless of our personal and present state of knowledge about the natural mechanics of the world, always responsible for our right relationship to the various conditions of experience, to the beings with whom we exist in this world, and to the World-Process as a whole. Relationship is inherently and perpetually a matter of individual responsibility, founded in intuition, prior to the analytical mind.
The method that is science is inherently incapable of establishing us in a right relationship to the conditions of existence. Love and self-transcendence are realized outside or prior to the play of conventional knowledge. The scientific method is not a moral or a spiritual and intuitive disposition. It is a strategy for acquiring objective knowledge. If it were a moral disposition, then scientists would all be great moral beings. But in fact, the daily application of the scientific method is not itself a moral practice, or a kind of meditation that transforms the practitioner. Rather, the application of the strategy of scientific inquiry is only a special intellectual discipline, and it forever stands outside the higher intuitive and radical psycho-physical processes whereby the individual may be transformed in either evolutionary or moral or spiritual terms.
Those who embrace the attitude of verbal thinking, observing, analyzing, comparing, categorizing, and so forth must understand that to do so is not the same thing as to exist and live in the most fundamental and responsible terms. Rather, it is merely a way of observing and verbally considering the patterns of phenomena, in order to know about them. And if one abandons the fundamental process of self-transcending Communion and unity with the World-Process, and opts instead and exclusively for the position of the separated analytical observer, then one begins to operate in defiant opposition to the primary conditions of human existence.
Science must again become simply a method of inquiry, and it must be renounced as the universal style of our very relationship to the conditions of existence. It must cease to characterize the totality of Man himself. Rather, it must again become an "employee" of Man - a specialized instrument for certain kinds of work. Otherwise, Man will cease to be capable of either the moral or the spiritual and evolutionary exercise of personal responsibility.
The verbal mind, or the left hemisphere of the human brain, is not suited to be the Ruler of Man. It is only an attribute or potentiality of Man. Therefore the "urge" to science, which is the ultimate method of the analytical or verbal mind, must be disciplined and held in right perspective by a higher or more complete understanding. Every exercise of a part of Man must be understood relative to Man as a whole, and submitted to the process and ultimate Condition that includes and involves Man prior to all his knowledge.
