Tuesday, November 24, 2020

"the 'sciences' structured by the spill-over"

 "Whereas the withdrawl from cosmic meanings is a move which is properly motivated by the nature of the reality which natural science studies, the spill-over occurs where the prestige of the stance begins to dictate what we can take as reality.  We can note too that the 'sciences' structured by the spill-over are understood by their practitioners to be motivated by fully epistemic considerations, whereas in fact (if I am right) a big part of the motivation resides in the prestige and admiration surrounding the stance itself, with the sense of freedom, power, control, invulnerability, dignity, which it radiates.  In other words, what operate here are ethical considerations (those to do with the ends of life, or what is a higher form of life).  This is masked by a certain ideological consciousness."

     Charles Taylor, A secular age (Cambridge, MA:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 286.  And, channeling Aquinas:  "A powerful homogenizing a priori is at work here (perhaps a little too reminiscent of Kant), perverse in its effect.  I say 'perverse', because we ought to hold that method and stance be adapted to the nature of the reality concerned, whereas here, albeit unwittingly, reality is being arraigned before the bar of Method; what doesn't shape up is condemned to a shadow-zone of the unreal."

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