Humanity first--Science second

[coberst]

Humanity first—Science second

The scientific method has made MAN INTO A CIPHER. We had created a science that has become a Science; we have created a monster that can be spelled with a capital “S”. Women and men served best when they were hidden, unobserved behind the tubes and belts. Newton’s method demanded an observer who was inconspicuous and replaceable by a machine whenever possible. The laws governing the movement of the spheres where number one; humanity was the machine’s servant.

The Age of Enlightenment, the eighteenth century, began with a belief; the belief “that nature was kind and good”. After the Lisbon earthquake and resulting fire there precipitated a reexamination. While others succumbed to despair Rousseau optimistically proposed an ideal; Liberty had to be the goal of all institutions. It was to be a well-defined ideal, “a model of man”. Morality must be a human design forming “a secular map for human moral action”.

Rousseau was offering “the Science of Society something great, unprecedented—just what it needed: an ideal type of man…it was holistic, spiritual, nonreductive, descriptive, phenomenal…to describe man taken as a total thinking, feeling, free agent.” Rousseau showed that morality could be designed by woman and man in accordance to an ideal created by them. Rousseau determined that the “science of man” could have meaning only as “an active ideal-type science”.

Newtonian science left little room of such an idealistic model. It propounded a science of Science; the scientific method made man into a cipher, which served best when served lest. Rousseau pushed back; make humanity first and science second. When humanity is placed first “Existence is the thing—Man—the mass of men—Humanity; human music not the music of the spheres, that’s what interests man, the man of flesh and blood.”

The scientific method has made man into a cipher. Women and men served best when they were hidden, unobserved behind the tubes and belts. Newton’s method demanded an observer who was inconspicuous and replaceable by a machine whenever possible. The laws governing the movement of the spheres where number one; humanity was the machine’s servant.

The seventeenth century Enlightenment determined that knowledge should be controlled based upon the needs of humanity. The spirit of the age demanded a science of man that could run parallel with Newtonian science of objects. The judgment of this age was that mechanistic Science was morally unedifying. The Age of Enlightenment rediscovered the concept of alienation as it applied to women and men. Humanity became alienated from their nature by the Science of science. Subjects were deprived of their subjectivity in servitude to machines.

The Enlightenment gave us a science worthy of men and women, a subjective science, a science of human value and not a neutral science of machines. What are the greatest gifts for mankind, if not those that point the way to the maximization of liberation of human creative energies?

 

[Booko]

Could you link to your source on this? Thanks.

 

[coberst]

Booko

The source for the quotes and ideas is "Beyond Alienation" by Ernest Becker. I recommend Becker highly. I think he is great.

 

[Valjean]

I don't see what you're getting at. You seem to have some problem with knowledge, and see some discrepency between it and humanistic philosophy.

Please clarify your point.

 

[Booko]

Booko

The source for the quotes and ideas is "Beyond Alienation" by Ernest Becker. I recommend Becker highly. I think he is great.

Thanks, coberst!

 

[standing_on_one_foot]

What on earth is this supposed to mean? The scientific process and philosophical ideas about morality are two seperate things that address seperate issues. Of course the scientific process is "morally unedifying." It was never intended to be. If your criticism is that people should take account of both when living their lives, I would say it's valid but I'm not sure who it's aimed at, since every scientist I've ever met would agree.

 

[coberst]

In an attempt to clarify and extend my OP I have added several paragraphs. The original OP is in bold. Also I failed to note that my ideas and quotes come from “Beyong Alienation” by Ernest Becker.

The seventeenth century, the Age of Enlightenment, was a turn away from a ‘God dominated culture’ to a ‘human dominated culture’. The Church had, for one thousand years, been the force that turned all eyes upon God and the hereafter. The Age of Enlightenment turned all eyes upon wo/man and existence as the center of concern.

Europe was becoming acquainted with cultures throughout the world and in so doing discovered that there are many cultures, there are many different ways that society can be organized. Anthropologists refer to this state of mind as “cultural relativity”. This attitude led to the question, which is correct, were the ancients mere savages or where they Noble Savages? When one compares one culture with another in an attempt to discover which is better one needs a metric. What is a standard of good and bad for culture?

A debate lasted throughout the century as to what is the fundamental nature of humans. Were we at rock bottom a Noble Savage or were we merely savages and any kind of civilization is an improvement. Had wo/man risen from a low state by civilization or was wo/man by nature a noble creature? This was the argument of The Enlightenment, which separated that period from the Renaissance. “It was a quest for an answer to the problem of how exactly society causes human unhappiness.”

Rousseau says: “For it is by no means a light undertaking to distinguish properly between what is original and what is artificial in the actual nature of man, or to form a true idea of a state which no longer exists, perhaps never did exist, and probably never will exist; and of which it is, nevertheless, necessary to have true ideas, in order to form a proper judgment of our present state.”

Rousseau is telling us that we must comprehend human nature if we are to gain a critical perspective upon which we can “formulate an ideal”. Social science would call this an ideal-typical one. “It is an imaginary projection against reality, a projection that guides man’s striving, even if the ideal is never reached nor can be reached. Either man lives with ideals that guide his efforts, or he wallows uncritically in his everyday world.”

The Age of Enlightenment, the eighteenth century, began with a belief; the belief “that nature was kind and good”. After the Lisbon earthquake and resulting fire there precipitated a reexamination. While others succumbed to despair Rousseau optimistically proposed an ideal; Liberty had to be the goal of all institutions. It was to be a well-defined ideal, “a model of man”. Morality must be a human design forming “a secular map for human moral action”.

Rousseau was offering “the Science of Society something great, unprecedented—just what it needed: an ideal type of man…it was holistic, spiritual, nonreductive, descriptive, phenomenal…to describe man taken as a total thinking, feeling, free agent.” Rousseau showed that morality could be designed by woman and man in accordance to an ideal created by them. Rousseau determined that the “science of man” could have meaning only as “an active ideal-type science”.

Newtonian science left little room of such an idealistic model. It propounded a science of Science; the scientific method made man into a cipher, which served best when served lest. Rousseau pushed back; make humanity first and science second. When humanity is placed first “Existence is the thing—Man—the mass of men—Humanity; human music not the music of the spheres, that’s what interests man, the man of flesh and blood.”

The scientific method has made man into a cipher. Women and men served best when they were hidden, unobserved behind the tubes and belts. Newton’s method demanded an observer who was inconspicuous and replaceable by a machine whenever possible. The laws governing the movement of the spheres where number one; humanity was the machine’s servant.

Science accomplished its assigned task when women and men remained value neutral. An experiment was ruined if a human emotion or idea outside the scientific facts required was intentionally or unintentional inserted.

Newtonian science was a mathematical, quantified pattern capable of reducing reality to an atomic level. It’s ideal, if there was one, was man as a machine or more likely a cog in a machine. In such a science we lose the individual man and woman. Rousseau was offering something entirely different. It was holistic and non-reducible. It was a gestalt that included man as neutral manipulator of scientific experiments but also as a subject with values who was a totally thinking, feeling, free agent.

“Rousseau showed that morality had to be instrumented, by man according to an ideal formulated by him; the science of man could only have meaning as an active ideal-type of science.” Newtonian science left no room for such and ideal. It had no room for a holistic woman or man. The solution proposed by Rousseau was to make humanity first and science second; science was to be the servant of wo/man rather than wo/man as the servant of science.

The seventeenth century Enlightenment determined that knowledge should be controlled based upon the needs of humanity. The spirit of the age demanded a science of man that could run parallel with Newtonian science of objects. The judgment of this age was that mechanistic Science was morally unedifying. The Age of Enlightenment rediscovered the concept of alienation as it applied to women and men. Humanity became alienated from their nature by the Science of science. Subjects were deprived of their subjectivity in servitude to machines.

The Enlightenment gave us a science worthy of men and women, a subjective science, a science of human value and not a neutral science of machines. What are the greatest gifts for mankind, if not those that point the way to the maximization of liberation of human creative energies?

 

[standing_on_one_foot]

I still don't see the point. It's like you're trying to convince Spock or someone like him, but very few scientists are Spock, and even he was willing to admit that being a machine was not preferable.

Plus, what's proposed here is something entirely different from science. "Subjective science" doesn't make any sense. It's like you associate science with all pursuit of understanding, and then you don't like it when that turns out not to be true, and so it must be a problem with science. It seems a very strange criticism to me, all told.

Anyhow, science's ideal, if there is one, is to construct theories based on the most accurate information available. It doesn't require humans to be complete machines. It just requires them to be objective when doing science. Science is not and never was intended to be a basis for morality.

 

[Valjean]

Rousseau was a social philosopher. Newton a mathematician.

Are you trying to compare apples and syncro-mesh transmissions?

 

[coberst]

Seyorni

I am comparing science with morality. We have become enchanted with Science and I want us to become realistic about science and about our need to learn a morality that will allow us to "just get-along".

 

[Valjean]

Well, science is great, and morality is great. Scientists can make moral decisions and hippies can think scientifically, but these are two seperate spheres aren't they?

 

[standing_on_one_foot]

Seyorni

I am comparing science with morality. We have become enchanted with Science and I want us to become realistic about science and about our need to learn a morality that will allow us to "just get-along".

But they're two different things! If this should be a criticism of anyone, it's of non-scientists who don't understand that. How on earth do you really compare a process of verifying information and patterns with a set of values determining behavior?

 

[nonobjective]

I am comparing science with morality. We have become enchanted with Science and I want us to become realistic about science and about our need to learn a morality that will allow us to "just get-along".

I think I would have to hear a working definition of both science and morality to engage in this conversation. Seyorni points out, it's kind of like comparing apples to syncro-mesh transmissions (whatever the hell those are.)

Perhaps you're saying that the work of scientists is in direct opposition to accepted moral standards? Science can inform morality, and morality can influence the pursuit of science, but I don't see that they in any particular opposition to each other.

 

[lilithu]

Humanity first—Science second

I think that coberst is trying to say that the rise of science, specifically reductionism/materialism, has made objectivity the ideal. Whereas humans are innately subjective. Therefore, human nature is being subordinated to this external ideal.

Would that be correct coberst?