The Contemporary Challenge to the Traditional Ideal of Science

THE CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGE TO THE TRADITIONAL IDEAL OF SCIENCE T HE ideal of scientific knowledge which was traditional in Western Europe until modem times reflects the mentality of the Greeks of the classical period of philosophy by whom it was first formulated. The Greek of classical times was whole-minded; he saw things primarily as a whole, and his outlook was organic. Human life and culture for him was not something partial and one-s~ded, but a complete and unified whole engaging the whole man in all his activities. The universe itself was regarded, fundamentally, as a whole, as profoundly one and simple beneath all the variety and multiplicity of life and nature, in so far as the inner essence of reality is simple and common to all. This implied a basic unity of action in the universe, made evident in the reign of law; chance events led beyond themselves to a thorough-going teleology which reveals that the universe is logical, in so far as its structure and activity are based on design. On the surface there is unending change and variety; below all this flux there are permanent elements, and the flux itself is guided by eternal and unchanging laws, so that it is a rational process. The world was regarded as a system of rational law, with unity of structure, as is most evident in man himself, who is a part of nature; but it may also be seen from the structure of crystals, flowers, musical sounds and the movements of the celestial spheres. The universe is not just a conglomeration of disparate entities, but a cosmos, a harmonious and symmetrical whole, hierarchical in disposition. If the universe is logical and rational, and man gifted with reason, then he can understand the universe. It is possible and necessary that he should enquire into the reasons of things and events to seek the inner reality, the essence, and to discover the laws of nature. Convinced of this, the Greek was given to 583 584 AMBROSE J. MC NICHOLL leaping from the individual event to the general law or hidden essence. He did not neglect the individual or contingent aspects of reality, but he saw beyond this to the universal which they revealed, and of which they were instances. The principles and procedures guiding the mind in its search into the realm of essences and causes could be stated and codified as a strictly scientific process leading to the knowledge of the essence of things and of the causes of events.1 Three main assumptions thus came to determine the ideal of scientific knowledge which was taken over by the great Scholastics : 1) scientific knowledge is a body of doctrine, of systematically connected truths about a determinate subject, founded on experience, and reduced to principles from which they could be deduced, and which refer to the proper causes of that subject ; 2) the universe is a cosmos, an ordered hierarchy of essences, between which there are intelligible relations, as also between essence and properties; 3) the human intellect is able to know such essences and to perceive such relations. These assumptions were fully accepted by the great Scholastics who also worked out the implications of the Aristotelian ideal of science. They stressed the fact that the notion of science is analogical, being differently realised on the various levels of abstraction, and capable of being predicated even of God. The distinction of levels of abstraction, together with the distinction of subject-matters and of kinds of causality, and therefore of explanation, made it possible to elaborate a systematic doctrine of scientific knowledge and method remarkable for its clarity and comprehensiveness. In the natural order, all the sciences were seen as dependent on the supreme science of metaphysics, which was also the vital link which made possible the grandiose synthesis of Christian thought placing reason at the service of faith in the divine science of theology. 1 Cf. H. D. Kitto, The Greeks (London: Pelican Books, 195!!), chap. 10; E. A. Burtt, The M®physical Founrlations of Modern Science (Garden City: Doubleday , 1954), pp. 15-85. To avoid exaggeration of this aspect, see E. I. R. Dodds, The Greeks and...