Chapter 3.    Part F

   Empiricism, it appears at present anyway, can’t provide a rationale for itself in theoretical terms and can’t demonstrate the reliability of its methods in material ways. Could it be another set of interlocking, partially effective illusions, only larger and subtler than medieval Christianity, Communism, or Nazism once were? Personally, I don’t think so. The number of the achievements of Science and their profound effects on our society’s way of life argue powerfully that Science is a way of thinking and living that works in the real world, even though its theories and models are constantly being replaced and even though the way of thinking on which it is based can’t logically justify itself.

  However, it is true that sometimes models of reality given to us in some of our once most widely believed and trusted scientific theories – for example, Newton’s Laws of Motion – have turned out to be largely inadequate for explaining more detailed data drawn from more advanced observations of our universe. The views of the universe that better technologies and bigger telescopes gave us by the mid-nineteenth century led astronomers past Newton’s Laws and eventually onward to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Newton’s picture turned out to be a simplistic picture of the universe. 

  Thus, when we consider how revered Newton’s model of the cosmos once was, realizing that it gives only a partial and inadequate picture of the universe can cause philosophers and even ordinary folk to doubt the way of thought that is basic to Science. One can’t help but begin to question whether Empiricism is trustworthy enough to be used as a base for a thing so desperately important as a new moral code for the human race. Our survival is at stake here. Science can’t even provide a rationale under which we can explain Science itself?      

   

  As we attempt to build a moral system that we are all going to try to live by, we need to look for a way of thinking about thinking and knowing that is deeper, is based on stronger logic: a way of thinking about thinking that we can believe in profoundly. We need a new model of human thinking, one built up from a base philosophy that is different, not just in degree but in kind, from Empiricism.    

  Empiricism’s disciples have achieved some impressive results in the practical sphere, but then again, for a while, in their times, so did the followers of medieval Christianity, Communism, Nazism, and several other giant world views/theories. They even had their own “sciences”. They dictated in detail what their scientists should study and what they should conclude from their studies. 

    Perhaps the most disturbing examples are the Nazis. They claimed Empiricism and Science for their own. In their propaganda films, and in all academic and public discourse, they preached a warped form of Darwinian evolution that enjoined and exhorted all nations, Germans or non-German, to go to war, seize territory, and exterminate or enslave all competitors.

Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler

 "In eternal warfare, mankind has become great; in eternal peace, mankind would be ruined."                                                                                                      (Adolf Hitler, “Mein Kampf”)

Such a view of human existence, they claimed, was not cruel or cynical. It was simply built on a mature and realistic acceptance of one of the truths of Science. Adults, if they calmly and clearly look at the evidence of history, see that war always comes. Mature, realistic adults learn and practice the arts of war, assiduously in times of peace, and ruthlessly in times of war. This was, according to the Nazis, just a logical consequence of one’s accepting the “survival of the fittest” rule that governs our existence. 

    Hitler’s ideas of “race”, and thus his ideas about how the model of Darwinian evolution could be applied to humans, were, from the viewpoint of the real science of Genetics, largely unsupported. But in the Third Reich, this was never acknowledged.

Werner Heisenberg

    The disturbing thing about physicists like Heisenberg, chemists like Hahn, and biologists like Lehmann becoming willing tools of Nazism is not so much that they became the tools that they did, but that their whole life philosophy as scientists did not equip them to slip past or break free of the Nazi distortion of that life philosophy. Their religions failed them, but clearly, in moral terms, Science failed them too.

    Otto Hahn 

     Thus, there is certainly evidence in history to support the view that the consequences of science and thus of empiricism, misunderstood and misapplied, can be horrifying. Nazism became humanity’s nightmare. Some of its worst atrocities were committed in the name of advancing Science. (13) For practical, historical-evidence-based reasons, then, as well as for theoretical reasons, millions of people around the world today have become deeply skeptical about all “systems”, and in moral matters, about scientific ones in particular.

     At deep, primal levels we are driven to wonder: should we trust something as critical as the survival of our culture, our knowledge, our children and grand-children, and even our Science itself to a way of thinking that, in the first place, can’t theoretically explain itself, and in the second place, has had some large and dismal practical failures in the past?    

     In the meantime, we must get on with trying to build a base for a universal moral code. Reality requires that we do so. It will not let us procrastinate. It forces us to think, choose, and act every day. Empiricism as base for the moral code project just does not inspire confidence.

     Is there something else to which we might turn? 

Notes 

13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Human_Experimentation