I would be inclined to agree with Brian's or Rorty's qualification, "scientific," about the reality science addresses. This is inevitably a matter of one's metaphysical bias. However one characterizes science, it would seem to be inherently inimical to ontological distinctions, any hierarchical differentiation of "levels of being" such as characterized pre-Enlightenment philosophy. Historically, science acquired its cultural prestige by demonstrating power over nature. It accomplished this by treating nature abstractly, as a manipulable system of substances. The discovery of power was represented as (or confused with) a discovery of reality. It blew away traditional (hierarchical) conceptions of reality. The metaphysical bias of science is that nothing is real outside the manipulable system of substances it deals with. Ontological distinctions are ruled out.
An ontological axiom is: "you cannot derive the greater from the lesser." You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, nor (for example) human consciousness out of a soup of randomly colliding manipulable substances. Deriving the greater from the lesser, like a rabbit out of a hat, like consciousness out of matter, is the great trick of science-driven philosophy & quasi-philosophical apologetics. The bigger the whopper, the more enthusiastically it is swallowed, when it comes to this.
Brian writes: "I think our moral and religious evolution, which moves with aching slowness and by sudden starts, has long since been outstripped by our technical development; and the effect of this huge and ever-increasing gap is not only dangerous (which I don't mind much), but ugly and ignoble (which I do)."
Right, but don't you think the "technical development" you refer to is itself a "sudden start" in historical perspective, the last 3 or 4 hundred years? And it puts a certain kind of evolutionary pressure on the moral/spiritual essence that would not otherwise be there. When you think of it, it's pretty amazing we haven't blown ourselves up yet, having possessed nuclear power for 50+ years. So, maybe there's hope for us. I in any case like the idea that it's an evolutionary process & that the one-sidedly technical development of modern science has a specific function within this process, like a risky bet. Not ignoble in that regard.
|