OF IMAGINARY OMNISCIENCE AND FICTIVE CONFIDENCE
p Almost every student of antiquity notes with surprise that in the so-called “pre-scientific” era man did not feel that he was surrounded by an unknown, problematic world. On the contrary, the further we retrace our steps in history the more 89 demonstrative is our view of imaginary omniscience. Such diverse both in methods and points of departure scholars of primitive society as Heinrich Schurtz, Edward Burnett Tylor and Lucien Levy-Bruhl have stood in accord in their recognition of the amazing "epistemological conceit" of the ancient peoples.
p The aborigine "knows all": there is no question which could throw him into a state of doubt or lead him to an impasse. The surrounding world may seem hostile, insidious and replete with evil intent to him, but it does not exist for him in the category of an unknown. The primitive often fears that which in reality should be no cause for alarm (and in this sense his reaction to the world is irrational) but he is a stranger to fear before the unknown. Faith in the fact that the world as well as one’s personal fate are already known and that one need only find-a means of acquiring this knowledge—this faith forms an essential aspect of superstition (the occult world view). In systematic form a faith in the existence of a pre-established universal knowledge forms a necessary component of any developed religious perception of the world.
p Science by no means emerges in the atmosphere of a deeply felt dearth of knowledge. Quite the opposite, it everywhere intrudes into the domain of previously evolved certainties, comforting semblances and artificially smoothed-out contradictions.
p Science brings not knowledge as such but logically and empirically established knowledge which at any given point encompasses a rather narrow cluster of phenomena. The volume of the explanations which it provides falls far short of the volume of pseudo-explanations which it refutes. This situation describes both the emergence of science proper, and of each major discovery. A solid scientific achievement may be compared with a small but durable building surrounded by the ruins of the "speculative city”, by fragments of "make-shift thoughts" of various types (naive confidence and false hopes) within the framework of which one could feel oneself quite comfortable.
p The correlation of scientific knowledge and imaginary omniscience is well expressed by the conception which regards any fundamental theoretical proposition as a type of interdiction imposed upon certain practical expectations (such as the establishment of a new area of unresolved tasks). The basic laws of science, both natural and social, may almost always be translated into the negative norms, demonstrating what it is impossible to do and what activities merit no hope of success.
90p Classical mechanics imposed a veto on a broad area of practical dreams (for example, on the hope of creating a perpetual motion machine). Chemistry forced man to withdraw his optimistic hopes from experiments in alchemy. The scientific theory of society placed an interdiction on Utopian blueprints for the overnight reconstruction of the existing social organization.
p The development of science is in this respect a sobering-up process for the human mind, involving the discovery of an ever mounting number of facts pointing to the objective resistance of the surrounding world, of more and more regions of the inaccessible at the present state of knowledge and practice.
p To be sure scientific research is providing man with instruments for practical dominance over certain spheres of reality. But this mastery is obtained at the price of disillusionment with former instruments of direct and instant influence over the wider reality in any meaningful sphere, instruments which were consecrated by the occult world view, religion and social utopianism.
p The interrelation between that which science gives and that which it takes away may be clearly imagined with the aid of the following parable.
p A certain merchant, let us say, has one thousand coins which he assumes to be made of gold. One day a wanderer, the "legendary guest”, experienced and generous, arrives at the home of the merchant. The wanderer is able, first, to distinguish authentic gold coins from counterfeit, and secondly, to produce artificial gold.
p Having looked over the merchant’s wealth the wanderer informs him that of the thousand coins only five are in fact true gold, the remainder one counterfeit. Being not only experienced but also of generous cast of mind the wanderer produces and presents as a gift to the merchant yet another five authentic gold coins (he is not capable of more).
p Did the real wealth of the merchant increase? Undoubtedly. To be exact, it doubled. Previously the merchant was in possession of only five authentic gold coins, now he has ten. But it is also certain that previously the merchant felt himself to be 100 times richer. The wanderer who has twice rendered a good deed to the merchant (once when he informed him that his wealth was unreal, and the other time, when he increased the real holdings of the merchant by five gold coins) has also impoverished him, for the fictive wealth of the merchant had 91 in his mind been completely real. It gave him a consciousness of his own strength and power, and allowed him to embark upon risky undertakings, to be persistent in his claims, etc. Thus, despite its fictive nature, the wealth could have been the source of quite real accomplishments in life.
p The merchant has every justification for bringing suit against the wanderer: "I believed that I had one thousand gold coins—you took this faith from me; take back your gift and return the confidence which helped me live!" To this the wanderer will be forced to answer: "I don’t know how to do it. I still don’t know how to produce gold fast enough to replace in full your counterfeit coins with real ones, and I am not able to transform your lost illusions to their prior state.”
p The scale of the dispelled illusions always greatly exceeds that of the certainties and real possibilities offered by science at a given moment. Moreover the "wrecking operations" carried on by science against existing pre-scientific knowledge vary directly with the significance of the creative and constructive contribution made by science to human conceptions of the world. To understand this dependence more precisely we must take into account the fact that there is no pre-established correspondence between those problems, concerns, and hopes standing at the forefront of the quotidian (that is, of priority for the quotidian consciousness) and those problems which are first to be resolved by science (i.e. which come to the forefront through the immanent logic determining the development of scientific knowledge). For many a century the highest human priority has been to obtain nourishment with no great exertion. From this has stemmed the eternal hope for cheap (free) bread which found its parallel in religious vows, expressed in the legend of the "manna from heaven" and the "feeding of the five thousand”. However human society even today is far from possessing the scientific means to enact the radical restructuring of the food chain which would be required to bring about an abrupt cheapening of the costs of foodstuffs. The history of science begins not with the question of bread but with that of mechanisms and engines—with the foundation of technological civilization.
p It is conceivable that people would relinquish all of the numerous accomplishments of this civilization in exchange for "three miracles": a preparation to cure or ward off all diseases; an enterprise synthesizing food products out of non-organic substances, and a teaching method guaranteeing the full development of the natural abilities and inclinations of the 92 child. But it is precisely these hopes, nearest to the human heart, which are for science the most remote and difficult to fulfil.
p Scientific research inexorably comes up with answers to vital practical questions. However, it has not come up with answers to those questions connected with the basic needs of individual existence and to the fictive satisfaction of which pre-scientific techniques of "influencing reality" (incantations, prayers, etc.) were directed.
p But there exists a sphere in which the “discord” between science and the ordinary consciousness is even more marked (strictly speaking, absolute). This is the field of individual vital decisions and choices. From generation to generation millions of humans are confronted, each time in the unique individual context of daily experience, with questions of the following type: "Will I die of this disease or will I survive?”, "Is it worth marrying this woman?”, "Should I bring this case to court?”, etc. To these questions (and at given points in one’s life they consume all or the individual’s energies and are elevated by him to philosophically significant alternatives) scientific research will never be in a position to provide the answers. The reason for this does not lie in the unique content underlying each of these questions. For science the universal form of these questions is unacceptable, a form derived from an occult and religious world view; to be precise: "What is my fate?" and "Is it worth me taking the risk...?”
p In the first instance it is automatically assumed that the path followed by an individual in life may in some fashion be determined independently of his freely-made decisions. The second gives expression to the hope that the consequences of a decision yet to be made (or, perhaps, to be rejected) may be conjured up "before one’s eyes" as a deed completed. Science has no right to answer a question in which this assumption and hope are perhaps indirectly incorporated. Science not only cannot, but categorically refuses to satisfy the need for prophecy, a need which over the centuries has been met by fortunetellers, soothsayers, astrologers and interpreters of dreams. Science leaves empty the spot for this fictive knowledge which helped man escape from his own freedom.
p Thus, science, no matter how paradoxical it may seem, renders life difficult precisely for the judicious and prudent individual, for it confronts him with the indeterminateness of concrete situations and voices the demand that he make his decisions freely and autonomously without waiting for the help of earthly—or ethereal—promptings.
93p Thus science brings man not only new knowledge and opportunities but also his first awareness of the limited boundaries of his knowledge, a recognition of the fact that there exist objectively impossible events, tasks allowing of no resolution in practice, and indeterminate life situations.
p This by no means indicates, however, that the recognition of ignorance immediately becomes the property of the many.
p The ordinary consciousness spreads its roots in the soil of pre-scientific experience; its general structure evolved in an era when man regarded himself as a being under the protection of a celestial force, for which there existed no insurmountable tasks and no unforeseen events. From the consciousness of this state of wardship, corresponding to definite socio-historical conditions, emerged the habit of phrasing questions in a form which calls for an instruction, prediction, or warning (in a word ready-made knowledge, provided as if through revelation).
p This habit outlives faith as such in the supernatural and persists in people’s minds long after they have ceased seriously treating religious mythology, miracle workers, soothsayers and diviners. The demand for miracles and prophecy is now foisted on science itself. Similar expectations (in type of knowledge) which once were placed upon mystics, astrologers and practitioners of black magic are now pinned on science. We refer to hopes for "making the unbelievable seem possible”, for comforting predictions, recommendations which would remove the danger of personal choice and so on. The extrapolation to scientific research of the epistemological expectations which evolved within the occult and religious world view, forms the basis for the ideology of scientism (faith in science as man’s shepherd).
p Spontaneously evolving scientistic mass consciousness finds support in maximalist conceptions advanced by the philosophy of science and sometimes by scientists themselves—in theoretical scientism.
p Born in the womb of Enlightenment ideology and elaborated in the positivism of Comte, T. H. Huxley, Lester Frank Ward and other contemporary Western philosophers, theoretical scientism conceives of science as the propelling force of progress, as a new demiurge, whose tools social organization and its members are gradually becoming. It is supposed that considerations of prudence will sooner or later lead every individual to an understanding of the fact that questions unsupported by theoretical instruction do not merit investigation, that any problem not submitting to the competence of 94 science must be considered a pseudo-problem. Only once humans have escaped the confines of the inevitable subjectivity of their personal concerns, fears, and expectations will that state of epistemological saintliness and blessedness have been attained, in which every question may find a ready scientific answer and in which every enterprise is planned on the basis of estimations of its success.
p It is not difficult to observe that the programme of theoretical scientism and the expectations of spontaneous scientism stand in sharp contradiction, on the one hand, and are surprisingly harmonious on the other. The spontaneous scientistic demand of the individual consists in an expectation that science take him under its aegis as religion once did. His position is that of he who lacks self-confidence and wallows in deep subjective fears and concerns. The theoretical scientism, on the contrary, asks of the individual that he adopt it as the monk does religion. It will answer only those questions posed by a novice. But spontaneous and theoretical scientisms agree on the central point. They each recognize that science must be the shepherd, and people—the flock; both assume that an individual problem becomes a problem only when there is hope of solving it with the help of available knowledge; both would like human choice and decision-making to lean unwaveringly upon reliable cognitive guarantees.
p The false unity of science and the ordinary consciousness within the framework of scientistic ideology can be ruptured only if science rejects messianism and if the ordinary consciousness accept the cognitive situation, which scientific research really encounters. The latter presupposes the readiness of the individual to act upon his fears, to take risks, to move decisively even when the circumstances are unclear, when in the external world there lack signposts to determine the essential value orientations.
p How can a person develop such a readiness?
Man has the ability to "avoid stumbling into behaviorial indeterminateness in the face of cognitive indeterminateness”, because as an individual he has an internal gyroscope, so to speak, the axes of which retain a constant direction regardless of alterations in the external conceptual context of life. These axes are the moral consciousness, lasting internal convictions tempered in the severest trials through history. Science free of scientistic superstitions presupposes the presence in the individual of this consciousness and, what is more, makes an appeal to it.
Notes