Science and mythology

a new "metaxu"?

Jacques Vauthier

pp. 173-182

in: Peter Koslowski (ed), Sociobiology and bioeconomics, Berlin, Springer, 1999

Abstract

Human intelligence is concerned with what the Scholastics called "adequatio cum re". Concepts are elaborated by reality seizing. What is the counterpart of this Human activity when one has to cope with the three ultimate realities of human life: "Where do we come from?", "What is the ultimate goal of one's life?" and "Why is there is something instead of nothing?" Is it not in order to answer such essential and perennial questions and to avoid proceeding along the steep slopes of metaphysics towards the discovery of the ultimate Reality, the First Being, that mythologies or achetypes are built up? These fundamental questions pervade one's reflexion and cannot but reappear within Science. After the dramatic divorce between Philosophy and Science during the period of the "Naturphilosophie", although some philosophers have been concerned with the interrogations of the scientific world, the contrary is certainly not true. Even Wittgenstein maintains that, "Philosophy is a synopsis of trivialities' and Heisenberg, one of the founders of Quantum Mechanics affirms that, "Nothing can be done in Philosophy nowadays without reference to modern Physics."

Cited authors

Wittgenstein Ludwig