Leaving Us to Wonder: An Essay on the Questions Science Can't Ask

Chapter Four: Provoking Thought

1 Chapter Four Provoking Thought I see brains and lips closed, tympans and temples unstruck, Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose, Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies slumbering forever ready in all words. —Walt Whitman, “Vocalism” It is not enough simply to have the facts presented to know what those facts mean. All facts demand an interpretation to be meaningful. Furthermore, using Darwin’s and Nietzsche’s accounts of moral evolution, as we saw in the last chapter, fundamental presuppositions or hopes for the future determine what counts as a relevant fact, how a series of facts are organized, and how the consequences of this organization are articulated. In this chapter we explore how an objective scientific and a more experiential philosophy can be brought to bear fruitfully on the same phenomena. 77 78 Leaving Us to Wonder Heidegger and the Distinction between Ways of Thinking Martin Heidegger, arguably the most influential twentiethcentury philosopher, also spent much effort thinking about the phenomenal world and its relation to the world of science which he saw as having such a defining effect on the modern age. Though often labeled as anti-science and antitechnology , he was, in fact, immensely knowledgeable about science, especially physics, serving as a reader for scientific as well as philosophical dissertations. Heidegger was an original, sympathetic, and thoughtful commentator on modern science and its influence in the modern world as well as a close friend of Werner Heisenberg, one of the originators of quantum mechanics. The recent English publication of the Zollikon Seminars, so named for the Swiss city in which they were conducted, presents us with a keen record of Heidegger’s interactions with scientists. Brought together starting in 1959 by Medard Boss, M.D., medical students and scientists attended seminars conducted by Heidegger during which they engaged many of the issues we shall discuss below. Boss recounts his first encounter with Heidegger’s classic Being and Time recalling that: “The book opened up question after question which I had never encountered before in my entire scientifically oriented education.”1 According to Boss, he was not alone in this initial reaction to Heidegger’s thought. As he says of the seminar participants: “these scientifically trained doctors had never encountered Heidegger’s questions as questions.”2 Quoting further from Boss will get at the heart of some of our concerns : “Many participants seemed to be shocked, even outraged , that such questions would be permitted in the first place.”3 Yet in the end, Boss claims his own subsequent book and the work of those colleagues and students who participated in the seminar was significantly richer for having struggled to learn from Heidegger’s thought. The first and perhaps most important aspect of Heidegger’s thought that we wish to use is discussed in a 79 Provoking Thought number of ways and in a number of places throughout his texts.4 For our purposes here, we shall focus on the language and way of thinking he develops in his “Memorial Address.” In this piece, the primary distinction between what Heidegger calls “calculative and meditative thought” structures the essay. Heidegger argues that calculative thought is associated especially with the sciences and their particular methodologies. It is a manner of thought and a set of attendant methods that aims at correct answers or at attaining particular, well-defined practical goals. The characteristic feature of calculative thought is that the criteria for judging if an answer is correct or even thinkable are present before the investigation begins. This way of asking questions and seeking their answers stipulates in advance a set of parameters that limit the possible outcomes. In terms of scientific investigations, Heidegger saw this kind of thought as “challenging-forth” the phenomenon in question. Challenging-forth is a dense and difficult phrase. As a broad sketch, science is said to challenge-forth the world, in part, because it sets its methods over and against the world. It shows us a world that is not necessarily one that can be rightly described in terms of objects and formulae, but simply one that is so described. It is both correct and important, in Heidegger’s view, that we develop the methodologies and habits of thought to do this. When we challenge -forth things in this calculative manner...