השקפת העולם המדעית והדתית ב׳The Scientific and the Religious World View 2
א׳
1The Two World Views
ב׳
2Science, as such, treats one aspect of reality, the objective one. Anyone who wishes to understand that phase of the world must employ the scientific method of investigation. However, a scientific world view goes beyond that and undertakes to interpret all three phases of reality in the light of scientific principles. The scientific world view is conceived by the application of the scientific method to the entire realm of existence. As a result, it objectifies all reality; it regards the subject as well as the ultimate ground of reality as objects, occupying the quantitative dimensions of the space-time continuum. The human being that confronts the object world, the Ego, is explained as a specimen, exemplifying a group, a species. It is what it is because of the general rules that prevail within the group. Its individuality as a subject disappears; its uniqueness is looked upon as the mere fancy of the uncritical intellect. The subject is turned into an object; the I becomes an It. This is the only way the human being may be understood scientifically. There is no science of the individual, the unique. Science cannot cope with the individual; it melts the subject down into the category of the general. As to the ultimate ground of reality, it too is objectified. Since that aspect of reality which confronts man as object is scientifically verifiable, the scientific world view boldly affirms that only what is so verifiable is real or exists. It is acknowledged that the object world is given to us only in our sense perceptions; but it is maintained that it is the only world that exists and there is nothing else beyond it. (This is the gist of all forms of scientific realism. There is no need for us to analyze them further in this context.) As the subject is dissolved into the object, so is the ultimate world ground limited to the object aspect of reality. It exists only to the extent to which it is scientifically verifiable.
ג׳
3For Judaism the essential concern of religion is with the realm of the subject. It acknowledges the authentic reality of the subject, its individuality, its uniqueness. Without such acknowledgment Judaism is inconceivable. We need not take cover under the supernatural or unseen world in order to analyze this approach to reality. The starting point of this approach is altogether of this world. The subject is given to us directly. In fact, it is the only aspect of reality to which we have direct access. Whereas the object world is known to us only by the mediation of our senses and, as it were, only as a reflection mirrored in our sense perceptions, we know the subject “from within”, from the immediacy of our individual existence. The religious interpretation of reality begins with the acknowledgment that the subject is real, that the individual does exist as an individual, that the I is not an It, that the subject is inexplicable in terms of the subject. In fact, it would seem to be intellectually easier to “personify” the object than to “objectify” the subject. Developing further the implications of the Kantian position, Schopenhauer maintained that the space-time continuum of the objective order cannot be regarded as existing absolutely. Its relation to the subject may never be overlooked. His dictum, “No object without a subject”, seems to us to be incontestable. However far we may proceed in the objectification of the subject, the subject remains inviolate, for only a subject can objectify.
ד׳
4It is important that my body should function normally. However, I am not identical with my body. I am not identical with its anatomy, its chemistry, its physiological functioning. I am somehow attached to all this; it has been appointed to me. But I am not my body. My body is an object, I am not. I can even look at my consciousness and make it an object of study, but I am not identical with my consciousness either. My body, my consciousness, my sensations, my feelings and thoughts — they are mine, but they are not me. I am I. I am a person; I cannot be objectified. The subject represents a category by itself. The Personal is a basic category of being, it possesses ontological authenticity and is, therefore, not further reducible.
ה׳
5As the religious interpretation does not allow the realm of the subject to be absorbed by the object, neither does it permit the objectification of the ultimate ground of reality. Once again, as in the case of the subject, the refusal is not due to any supernatural element which is introduced into the religious world view, but rather to a problem with which one is confronted as one attempts to interpret reality purely in terms of object. While it is necessary to describe the object realm of reality in terms of its own orderliness, there is one aspect of that realm which cannot be so rendered intelligible, i.e., its very givenness. The laws of nature may help us understand the processes of nature but they do not explain their own existence. Newton’s law of gravitation describes the relationship between bodies of differing masses, but it does not render the so-called gravitational pull itself intelligible. That is accepted as given. Gravitation being given, the scientist can only discover the way of its functioning. Einstein’s curvature of space may represent a condition prevailing in the universe, but it does not explain it. Given the fact the bodies do cause a “sagging” in space, movement along the curve will be determined by the nature of the curve. All laws of nature are originally given and their being given cannot be explained in their own terms. They are like the principle of a series, which reveals the prevailing order of the series but is not responsible either for the existence of the series or for its principle. Plato already saw clearly that all attempts at interpreting reality, sooner or later, must come up against an inexplicable surd, that resists all interpretation. It is the ultimate givenness of something with which we have to start and whose givenness is not explicable in terms of the structure of what is given.
ו׳
6The inexplicable surd, or the puzzlement over the givenness of being itself, is inseparable from the question as to the ultimate ground of reality. A deeper insight into the cause of man’s puzzlement over the inexplicable surd provides the signpost for the direction in which one must seek the answer to the question of the ultimate ground. While the wonder over the givenness of existence may never be resolved. Plato’s inexplicable surd is the logical consequence of a limitation inherent in the method of interpretation. The methodology, that is so fruitful when applied to the object world, must fail when called upon to make meaningful the givenness of that world. The ultimate ground of the givvenness of the object world, as well as of its orderliness, can only be provided by a principle that is not itself of that world. If it were of it, it would itself be the inexplicably given. The principle of interpretation must come from a dimension “outside” the realm of the object, from one that “encompasses” the space-time continuum within which alone the method of scientific objectification may properly function.
ז׳
7In modern existentialist philosophy the significance of Plato’s irreducible surd and Kant’s “thing by itself” has been formulated anew by Karl Jaspers in his concept of the Encompassing. With this concept Jaspers drew our attention to the truth that every object, of which we have experience and knowledge, is always within another. However comprehensive it may be, it is never the All; it is always contained by a “horizon”. But each horizon points beyond itself, to that which surrounds the given horizon. As man presses on from horizon to horizon, never being able to come to rest by securing a point of view from which the whole of Being may be surveyed, he is confronted with the question of the Encompassing. The Encompassing is not just another horizon, but the ultimately comprehensive medium, the “surroundings” of every determinate form of existence, that which encompasses all possible horizons but itself cannot be grasped as yet another horizon. As a mere horizon it would again point beyond itself. The Encompassing is the ultimate “environment”; it contains all horizons but it is not iself contained. The thought has a twofold significance for us. The Encompassing cannot be “objectified”: for whatever is object of knowledge and experience is found within a horizon. Secondly, the Encompassing cannot be itself of the nature of the object world. If it were, it could only be a horizon, that would require a further environment and so on ad infinitum. The Encompassing is the ultimate “environment” to all horizons because it is apart from the space-time dimensions of the object world. But the question concerning the Encompassing is essentially the same as the question about the ultimate ground of reality. Quite clearly then the ultimate ground of reality is not to be “objectified”, nor will it be contained by the laws and dimensions of the object realm of Being.
ח׳
8He who recognizes the authenticity of both, of the realm of the subject and that of the object, raises — of course — the question about the ultimate ground with reference to both. The answer, however, must encompass all “horizons”. It must be found in a dimension that transcends the object and the subject and yet sustains them. The ultimate ground ought to be sought in what is supra-personal and supra-“objective” and from which both could have issued, the object and the subject, the thing and the person. nature and the individual. It is at this point that the central affirmation of Judaism becomes the foundation of the religious world view. God, the ultimate world ground, is the creator of nature as well as of the person. He is the Ultimate Encompassing or, in talmudical terminology, M’Komo shel ha-Olam. He is the One who transcends all horizons and yet holds them and contains them. The religious affirmation provides the idea, which enables the believer to conceive a view of the whole that takes adequate cognizance of all three aspects of reality, the subject, the object, the ultimate ground.