People think of a scientist as a person who, in everyday language, checks everything and does not take anything on faith, i. e. ‘doubts everything’. I think that this is not true or not always so. On the one hand, doubting everything is not fruitful, because we simply do not have time to double-check and prove everything. On the other hand, a scientist takes many things on faith, and I hope to show that there are even more of these things in his mental habitat than we realise. Finally, the point is not to persist in saying, ‘I don’t believe it!’ but to find sufficiently trustworthy signs of reliable judgements to reduce the number of possible errors, but not to eliminate them altogether. This latter path is the path of philosophy.

In everyday language, however, the word ‘philosophy’ connotes something much greater, higher, almost divine… In a philosopher we want to see a sage, a teacher, often a religious teacher. In reality, philosophy does not, or rarely, bear this magical glow (although philosophers from antiquity to the present day have done much to support it). In fact, I repeat, philosophy, sad as it is, does not reveal truths to us. At best, it can give us the skills of good, correct thinking; thinking that helps us avoid error, but the conclusions of philosophically armed thought are not universally binding. More than one correct, that is, internally consistent, philosophical view is possible. In the marketplace of philosophy, as we all know, there are many sellers, each offering the buyer his own seasoned and coherent system, and none of these systems claims to be unable to explain everything. On the contrary, they all modestly claim to interpret the universe…

We can say that philosophy relates to thought as conscience relates to the will; in other words, philosophy is the conscience of thought. This is precisely why it cannot be a source of truths — only a key for verification. The teaching role of the earlier philosophers, with the variegated and inconsistent nature of their teachings, led to a natural revolt of thought against philosophy, in the name of ‘common sense.’ As might be expected, common sense did not survive this revolt and went in the same grave as philosophy. Thought was ultimately left without guidance, i. e. without conscience. Such is the present state of affairs.

But let us return to the scientist. Unable to doubt everything, left without philosophical guidance, what can he do with the multitude of facts and judgements that must either be accepted or rejected? As far as we can tell, he chooses the middle path. He rejects a whole series of ideas exclusively and irrevocably, not because he has examined them and found them untrustworthy, but because the school of scientific thinking to which he belongs does not know what to do with these things, finds no use for them in scientific usage, and therefore rejects them. Needless to say, all these things belong to the realm of the human, that is, the spiritual or, in other words, the religious. Another series of ideas he accepts in the full sense of the word on faith, just as religiously, from a generation of teachers.

No one, however, expects a young person to critically examine the prevailing opinions in science. It is not in the interest of any school to educate critics, thinkers who, instead of triumphant application of a learned method, will spend effort and time criticising it with a view to its possible justification or rejection. The face of science in this case would be quite, quite different than we know it, but it would not be the production science necessary to the modern state. It would be mostly pure thought, the application of which is difficult and rarely possible; in short, something unnecessary to the all-powerful patron of science of our day, the state authorities.

Where is there room for scientific scepticism? There is not much room for it. Rejection of everything beyond the materialistic (read: mechanistic) worldview cannot be called ‘scepticism’, because scepticism presupposes a conscious attitude to the subject. Rejecting this or that on purely dogmatic grounds does not make us sceptics — we just remain good dogmatists. A scientist can be a conscious sceptic only in relation to his own speciality, in which he feels relatively firmly established; but even here scepticism is difficult to separate from the mental habit by virtue of which new thoughts are rejected without consideration. As for judgements about areas alien to the scientist, any miracles can be accepted, as long as they are scientifically expressed as far as possible. Conscious scepticism has no place here either…

Science — I say this quite dispassionately — is no less and no more dogmatic an institution than others. No special scepticism is peculiar to it, except that which is fostered by philosophy in the above sense. Philosophy does not reveal truths to us. The less can science, especially that which has not passed through the philosophical school, reveal them to us. Such a science is highly inclined to construct its own dogmatic system, the first sign of which is unprovable and unverifiable assertions about the causes and purposes of things. The scientist who, in addition to the study of everyday, repeated and confirmed by repetition of facts, asserts something else, for example, claims to create a new ethics or aesthetics, should frankly say that he is engaged in metaphysics, that it is an ancient and honourable work, but that before embarking on it, it is necessary to agree with himself about the meaning of facts, about the validity of assumptions, about the criteria of truth — in a word, to return to the philosophical school abandoned by science. Until this return takes place, science may be said to be at enmity not only with religion but also with philosophy, that is, with reasonably grounded scepticism.

Timofey Sherudilo.
From the book Knowledge and Creativity: Essays on Culture.

Back to Knowledge and Creativity

Visits: 38