Response to an inquirer:
In a word, what's wrong with modern science is its totalizing
character. Blinded by its own success in establishing power
over movement and change of all kinds, and convinced of its
scientific method as the sole path to truth, it becomes
dangerous. The very essence of truth itself becomes
effectiveness, which is another way of saying that it
totalizes efficient causality in linear time. Hence unresolved
problems in science must be pronounced to be 'merely' a
matter of our 'not yet' being able to deal with the high
complexity of efficient causal interactions. This scientific
attitude reveals also its megalomania -- ultimately, we'll nail it -- control Alzheimer's, beat cancer, for instance.
I agree that experience of the world is the basis of physics,
of science -- and also of philosophy. But there is never any
innocent, naive access to 'naked' experience, not even 'naked' sense data, because all
experience wears the garb of how it shows itself AS
such-and-such. For instance, something shows itself AS
something. Where does this category of something come from? Or
you assume without further ado that it is a subject who
experiences the world within its consciousness. Where does
this preconception come from?
Solipsism is another word for the encapsulated subject of
consciousness. Hence the problem for all subjectivist
metaphysics from Descartes to Kant to modern science is How to
get out there in the world?´or, what is the same thing, How
does the world out there get inside consciousness? For
Descartes there is representatio, for Kant there is
Vorstellung, for Einstein's relativity (who skips the problem constituting the object AS object and hence indulges in a naive empiricism), there are the
electromagnetic signals sensuously received by the
observer-subject (including by means of its experimental
equipment set up to capture physical data that are then sensualized in some way for human use -- thus numbers, graphs, oscilloscopes, brain scan images, etc. etc.).
All these versions of subjectivist metaphysics
overlook that we are always already out there in the world
and, if we were not -- we would never get out there. Hence
Descartes resorts to the guarantee of a God to dispense with
the problem of an evil genius (or man-in-the-middle) deceiving
the subject in its sensuous communication with the objects out there, or Leibniz resorts to a God-given pre-established
harmony to guarantee that the monad, who has no windows, is
nonetheless fed with true representations in consciousness. And modern science doesn't bother itself with the problem, but takes the objects out there for granted, pointing to sense-data in the present as specious 'proof' of the world existing outside encapsulated consciousness. It does not ask about the objects' objectivity nor about the meaning of 'to exist'.
So the question arises as to whether there is a more adequate
way to receive the phenomena AS they show themselves of
themselves. Modern science is great for being effective in the
world, but its totalizing nature is megalomanic. If we stepped outside the will to power, how could the world disclose itself AS a world?.
In any case, if modern science relinquishes its totalizing
claim to be THE true mode of access to the world (through its scientific method, which itself is ungrounded), then
something is gained, With the "step back" (Heidegger), the presupposition
of modern science, which is metaphysically subjectivist
through and through, can be seen, namely, the 3D temporal
clearing, that must be given first of all and thus eventuate groundlessly.
Hence Heidegger speaks of the Ereignis which simply
eventuates abyssally, i.e, grants, gives: Es gibt. This eventuation enpropriates the presencing/absencing of presents/absents and human being (Da-presence) to each other.
This alternative way of thinking doesn't aim at getting rid of science, but of putting it
in its place.
Responses to an inquirer:
1) Already with two entities there is the question as to interaction
or interplay, the former between things, the latter
between human players who are the origins of their own free
movements. Therefore I distinguish between interaction and
interplay to allow for the spontaneous nothingness of Dasein.
2) Very interesting that you distance yourself from
predictability and calculability, a hallmark of all modern science, for this would be a major
point of agreement between us. All modern physics is at core a
mathematical calculus for the linear causality of
movement/change (including many-body interactions). Hence
Newtonian, Lagrangian, Hamiltonian classical mechanics,
Schrödinger quantum mechanics and also quantum electrodynamics.
Physicists absolutely strive for equations of time
evolution for the dynamic system. All operate with linear, real
time t, basically with partial differential equations. Otherwise
they would not be modern physiciists and hence fall out
of this historical epoch, i.e. lose their identity in this world,
this time..
3) In Aristotle's ontology of movement, the actualitas
(_entelecheia_) of a potential (_dynamis_) is movement
(_energia_) itself, since the _dynamis_ is then 'at work' (_en
ergoi_). The pro-ductive (forward-leading) movement, however,
only comes to its end in the perfected presence of the finished
product -- hence _en-tel-ech_eia_ = literally
'having-(itself)-in-its-end-ness'. Insofar I agree that there's
a certain one-sidedness in Aristotle's ontology of movement,
which accounts only for pro-ductive movement from an origin
(_archae_). This ontology captures quite a few phenomena,
however, e.g. chemical reactions. What is worked upon in a
productive movement is the material, which suffers itself (and
has the passive power to suffer) to be transformed by
the active power/potential/potency at work on it.
4) Of course, even with Aristotelean ontology of movement, you can
have chains of productive movements in which the outcome of one
movement is the starting-point for the next. Insofar, the
finished presence of the product is AS starting-point
the absence of a further product. Is this what you
mean? In the case of a conversation, however, even between two
interlocutors, there is an interplay between them, since each is
a starting-point for a movement, namely, to say something. If I
am out to persuade you of something, and I manage to achieve
this, then this is, in Aristotelean terms, a rhetorical movement
that 'produces' your change of viewpoint. In fact, this is how
Aristotle attempted to conceive rhetoric itself, namely, productively
which, in my view, doesn't hold water. Rather, a dialogue is
open-ended, never achieving a final, perfected presence, even
when points of agreement along the way may be reached. All
dialogue is subject to re-vision, i.e. the matter at hand can be
re-seen in another way, from another angle.
So, in that sense, there is always something lacking in
movements of all kinds, which Aristotle captures with the term
_steraesis_ -- a full presence is lacking because something or
other is lacking, wanting. As Aristotle saw, anything physical
at rest is also a kind of movement because
anything physical is, by definition, capable of movement/change, and
hence is potentially something else which is still absent. Hence
everything physical, including ourselves, is marked by both
presence and absence, and the absence itself is present as a lack! Absence comprises both what was and
what could be. Hence it is impossible to conceive the
phenomenon of movement/change properly without a well-worked-out
conception of three-dimensional time. This is still missing in
Aristotle who, fatefully, takes time to be a counting number
(_arithmos_) lifted off movement. Thus the 3-D temporal clearing remains hidden in metaphysics, and time is confused with clock-time, which is merely derivative.
Further reading: Commutative and distributive justice.
