Heidegger on Modern Science

Heidegger on Modern Science Tim Wilson, November 2024 In Being and Time (1927) Heidegger speaks about the nature of science in relation to what he calls a ‘regional ontology’. He speaks positively about science as a way of understanding beings. Genuine progress occurs if these sciences are able to come to a crisis in their basic concepts. In his later work, Heidegger takes a more explicitly negative view of science. For instance, science is also implicitly at issue in the essay, “On the Essence of Truth” (1930). There Heidegger critiques the notion of truth as a simple correspondence of statements to matters of fact, which is conceivably the basis of the scientific truth claim. In such essays as “The Age of the World-Picture” (AWP) and “Modern Science, Metaphysics and Mathematics” (MSMM) (1936), Heidegger speaks about how, in contrast to the common view that technology and industry are applications of science, science is inherently technological. We can see in the Beiträge (1936-38), important indications of how this later view develops. Introduction: The Hermeneutic Situation Heidegger’s reflections on science arise in the context of what we could generally call “the crisis of modernity”. In his Beiträge, Heidegger outlines the basic phenomenological features of this modern crisis under a number of headings: • The flight of the gods (“absconding” of the gods (die Flucht, Section 54; 56.1, 56.13) o We could think of this as the loss of any possibility of the experience of the “holy” (Qadosh = HBW: separate, or “other”) or sacred (Latin: consecrated, dedicated) o Rather than the possibility of the overpowering awe and mystery generated by the holy, the sacred, the divine, we have a system of uniform beings that are completely knowable because they arise within the mathematical projection that makes them all products of human making (Machination) – beings are measurable, calculable, quantities 1 • The abandonment of beings by Being o We can think of this as the withdrawal of Being, or the nihilation of Being; what Nietzsche characterizes as Nihilism, is this withdrawal of Being (Beiträge Section 72) o Being arises within the site of Being (Dasein) as a meaningful whole or world o The abandonment by Being arises as the loss of a sense of wholeness, a loss of a sense of meaning o Without the meaningful whole to which beings belong, beings arise as quantities (not different in kind) (the Gigantic) (Beiträge Section 71) However, how can we speak of a “crisis of modernity” when the modern age has been tremendously successful in securing the means of human flourishing? Even if there are some negative aspects of the modern world, surely there are positive aspects to modernity, and these positive aspects are largely a product of science: • • • • • Science has become increasingly accurate in its knowing of nature and more exact in its measuring and predicting of the behaviors of natural beings For this reason, nature arises as calculable and as a product of human making and willing, it can be bent to human purposes (Bacon) We see the success of this modern scientific endeavour in the dramatic improvements over the last two centuries in life expectancy, in food production (and resultant reduction in starvation), curing of deadly diseases etc. We live longer and eat better, all because of the success of modern science in its increasingly accurate and exact measurement and control of nature. How can the modern age be a crisis if it is marked by this type of modern science? Heidegger’s point of departure seems to be to assert: • • • Science is not a more accurate form of knowing the beings as they arise; it is merely based on a different fundamental conception, or way of disclosing beings in the open region This fundamental conception (what he will call the mathematical projection) is tied to the modern metaphysics of the subject, which itself culminates in and is tied to the phenomena of the flight of the gods and the abandonment of Being described above Science, and the improvements in our material conditions it affords, is not the positive side of the coin of modernity, whose inverse is marked by the loss of 2 • meaning and divinity described above. Rather, science is an essential element of that withdrawal of Being itself “Now, however, because in the modern era … truth is fixed in the form of certainty … and also because this certainty of thinking unfolds in the instituting and pursuit of modern ‘science’, the abandonment by being … is essentially codetermined by modern science, yet indeed only inasmuch as the latter claims to be a – or even the – normative knowledge. That is why a meditation on modern science and its machinationally rooted essence is unavoidable within an attempt at indicating the abandonment by being as the resonating of beyng” (Beiträge §73) Heidegger’s view of science seems to shift from the early works up to and including Being and Time to the “post-turn” works. Could this shift with respect to science be connected to the prevailing scientific breakthroughs occurring at each juncture. Heidegger Phase Scientific Context Heidegger I • 1924-25: Plato’s Sophist • 1927: Being and Time Heidegger II • 1936: MSMM • 1936-38: Beiträge • • • • • • 1912: Lecture by Brouwer – Intuitionism (Brouwer) vs Formalism (Hilbert) 1915: General Relativity (Einstein) 1929: Uncertainty Principle (Heisenberg) 1931: Refutation of Formalism (Godel) In the early works, science is to be understood in relation to basic questions of philosophy and our understanding of Being. In the later works, the history of science is understood in relation to a historical analysis of the history of Being and its withdrawal (see Summary and Annex A) 3 Science in Being and Time: Ontic Sciences and Regional Ontologies In Being and Time, Heidegger describes two types of inquiry: 1) 2) Ontological – concerned with the meaning of Being (how beings are intelligible as beings) Ontical – concerned with facts about entities, or beings The history of philosophy has proceeded by an “onticization” of Being. However, ontic knowledge cannot proceed by itself to objects – without the ontological it can have no possible “whereto” (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics). Heidegger also makes the distinction: • • Regional Ontology – ontology of domains (Biology / Banking) Fundamental Ontology – a priori structures that allow regional ontologies Ontic Science (example Biology) (Facts about Biological world) Regional Ontology (What is it to be a Biological entity) Fundamental Ontology (What allows regional ontology to approach beings as beings) 4 Ontology is science of being – it investigates what it means for beings to arise as beings, for the “to be”. What is the meaning of Being? • • • • Traditional ontology has reduced Being to a being (onticization) Fundamental ontology must begin with this question of the meaning of Being To do this, must turn to Dasein – which always has an understanding of Being This understanding is “pre-ontological”, hidden from view – so, ontology must take the form of a hermeneutic phenomenology because phenomenology lets what is hidden show itself and come to light and hermeneutics allows for the understanding of meaning In a parallel way, perhaps, regional ontologies are ways of understanding Being that guide our interactions with particular types or regions of beings. • • • • • For the most part, these regional ontologies are pre-ontological – they are “fundamental concepts” that always in advance structure our approach to scientifically inquiring into the beings in question For Heidegger, genuine development in a scientific field is marked by its ability to undergo a revision or crisis of its basic concepts (Being and Time § 3, pages 9-10) NOTE: in MSMM and Beiträge, Heidegger historicizes this notion of science having crises of its basic concepts. We could say that the founding of the various epochs within the history of Being and Truth have each been connected to a crisis within its basic concepts of science (see Summary) QUESTION: As part of this crisis of basic concepts, this re-thinking of their “regional ontology”, do the sciences undertake a form of hermeneutic phenomenology with respect to their field, as must be done for fundamental ontology? QUESTION: Can we see this crisis in basic concepts as akin to a “Kuhnian” paradigm shift? For Heidegger, science is a modification of circumspective concern in which entities are discovered simply by looking at them (BT §69b, 357) 5 Science and “The Essence of Truth” • • • • • • • • • Science can be seen as a tool – lets us know about certain questions that are beneficial for getting by: “what temperature does water boil at”? Establishes facts – note: Popper’s falsifiability. Ethics or Metaphysics are propositions about value or that which is not a “fact”. They cannot be falsifiable. However, science is only the arbiter of truth if we take truth to be “correspondence” of statement and matters of fact – matters that can then be secured in an experimental design So, for Heidegger, modern science, then, is no more “correct” than Greek science – both turn to facts as they arise within their own comportment to beings In other words, facts are not theory neutral. They assume a certain stance to the world – a certain “comportment” and “attunement”, to borrow the language of “The Essence of Truth”. Science, to be science, does not hold open its facts and the attunement upon which they rest to questioning. Fundamental ontology holds open the question of being as the ground of all beings Sciences are ways of knowing certain regions of beings (ontic or positive sciences) – the being of these beings not at issue (the way of unfolding of these beings is taken for granted within a regional ontology) As we see later in “MSMM” and “AWP”, the scientific procedure secures in advance what will be allowed to arise within its field of vision – through a “mathematical projection” and the projection of a “groundplan” of nature 6 “Modern Science, Metaphysics and Mathematics” A) The Characteristics of Modern Science We normally distinguish modern science from older medieval or Greek science by saying that the former is: • • • • Factual o it adheres to the facts of nature as opposed to being guided by conceptual frameworks of what is o however, every relation to beings is always guided by a conceptual preunderstanding o In the early modern scientific revolution, the great natural philosophers, as philosophers, understood this o In the burgeoning advances in quantum science, there are thinkers who also recognize this (Bohr and Heisenberg) Experimental o However, the basic procedure of testing experience of the world is a feature of ancient and medieval science as well (see Beiträge 76.14; 77) o This kind of “experience” also lies at the basis of all contact with things in the crafts and in the use of tools o The difference seems to be in the way the test is set up and in the intent with which it is undertaken and in which it is grounded o Manner of experimentation is tied to the way in which facts will be understood in their preconception Calculating and Measuring o But ancient science also measured o Again it is the manner in which the objects are approached for the purpose of measurement Therefore, to see what is distinctive about modern science, we must get to its fundamental feature [or fundamental concepts] o That fundamental feature is that modern science is MATHEMATICAL B) What is the Mathematical? • Not simply to do with what we would think of as mathematics 7 • • • • • Ta mathemata = what can be learned and at the same time taught (250) We associate mathematics with numbers – not because mathematics is numerical, but because numbers are mathematical Learning (mathesis) is a kind of grasping and appropriating such that we take cognizance of things aw what we already know them to be in advance: the body as the bodily, the plant-like of the plant So teach is a giving such that what is offered is for the student to take for himself what he already has True learning only occurs as self-giving So number is mathematical in that it is something about things we bring to them, or already know: we see chairs and say that there are “three” chairs. The threeness is not offered by the things (252) • • • What is number? What is “three”? It is not the third but the first number – we only come to number when we have a collection (of at least three) gathered as a whole; then go back to count the parts (253) QUESTION: is this an insight parallel to Gestalt psychology? C) The Mathematical Character of Modern Science: Newton’s Laws of Motion Example of Newton’s Law of Motion – every body continues in its state of rest or in motion in a straight line if not acted upon by another force • • Seems self-evident to us now, but it was not self-evident before Newton It involved a revolution in relation to the way beings in their motion were understood before. D) The Difference Between the Greek and Modern Experience of Nature Fundamental concepts of ancient science set out in Aristotle’s lectures on the heavens (De Caelo) 8 • • Later medieval scholastics driven by thinking on concepts alone; however Aristotle was tied to phenomena (facts) “Aristotle fought in his time precisely to make thought, inquiry, and assertion always a legein homologoumena tois phainomenois, ‘saying what corresponds to that which shows itself in beings’ (De caelo, III.7.306a6)” (258). The Greeks characterized things as physica and poioumena – that which occurs from out of itself or that which is produced. To these two different ways of understanding a thing are associated two ways of knowledge (episteme), with two different endpoints or teloi – where it stops or what it genuinely holds to: • • • • Knowledge of what occurs from out of itself (phusis); and Knowledge of what is produced (techne) “That at which productive knowledge comes to a halt, where from the beginning it takes hold, is the work to be produced. That, however, in which the knowledge of ‘nature’ takes hold is to phainomenon, what shows itself in that which occurs out of itself” (De caelo III.7.306a16-17) Here, Aristotle’s point of departure is the same as Newton’s (259). “But despite this similar basic attitude toward procedure, the basic position of Aristotle is essentially different from that of Newton. For what is actually apprehended as appearing and how it is interpreted are not alike” (259). • QUESTION: can we see in the what of apprehending is the object of Phenomenology and the how of interpreting is the object of Hermeneutics? For Aristotle, motion in general is metabole – the alteration of something into something else. For example, turning pale or blushing. But it is also an alteration when a body is transported from one place to another – this being conveyed is phora. • • • Kinesis kata topon means in Greek what constitutes the proper motion of Newtonian bodies. In this motion lies a definite relation to place. This motion of bodies is kath’ auta, according to them, themselves. The basis of movement is the body itself. This basis is arche, which has a double meaning: that from which something emerges, and that which governs over what emerges in this way 9 • • The body is arche kineseos; what an arche kineseos in this manner is, is physis, the original mode of emergence “When a body moves toward its place this motion accords with nature, kata physin. A rock falls down to the earth. However, if a rock is thrown upward by a sling, this motion is essentially against the nature of the rock, para physin. All motions against nature are biai, violent.” (260) Note: On the relation of Gods and Mortals – Heidegger is careful to discuss ancient notions of motion outside of the categories of eternal and temporal. Rather, he describes it in relation to perfect and imperfect movement. He does so to separate what is, in his mind, essential to the Greek notion of motion from the elements in it tied to the “metaphysics of presence”. However, the ancients understood the sub-lunary and its motions to be temporal and finite – beginning here and ending there. The super-lunary is eternal. The moon and the other heavenly bodies move in circles whose movements do not have an end. This is an important distinction for understanding the essence of the human as mortal, as having an end to his motion in death. This is not a product of the metaphysics of presence; we see this in the epics of Homer: • • Humans are essentially mortals (thnetoi: the dying ones) and are understood in relation to The Gods as immortals (athanatoi: the undying ones) Note: In modern scientific conception, the origin of movement has been taken out of the things themselves. The origin of motion of beings in modern science is in another, in an external force. For Aristotle, it is only products of techne that have their arche kineseos in another (Physics B1). In the modern mathematical projection, all beings arise as produced beings (vs beings of nature that have their arche, origin and order) within themselves. In that all beings are produced (poioumena), we see the onset of Machination. The ancient Greek conception corresponds with our common conception and experience of motion on earth (as mixed: straight and curved) and of the motion of the stars) In Newton’s notion of motion: • He refers to ALL bodies – no distinction between different types of bodies 10 • • • • • • • Default motion is STRAIGHT, no longer the priority of circular motion as being perfect, more in Being An abstract notion of PLACE – motion is the same everywhere o Note: with an abstract-measurable notion of space, we also have an abstract-measurable notion of time (BT §80-81) Motions are not determined by different natures, capacities etc With a change of concept of place, motion becomes measurable change in distance The difference between natural and violent motion is eliminated Therefore, the concept of nature in general changes – nature is no longer the inner principle out of which the motion of the body follows; rather, nature is the mode of the variety of the changing relative positions of bodies, the manner in which they are present in space and time, which themselves are domains of possible positional orders and determinations of order and have no special traits anywhere Thereby the manner of questioning nature also changes (and becomes opposite) o With Aristotle, there is an allowing of what shows itself out of itself o With the Moderns, there is a projecting out of oneself conditions of the arising of beings E) The Essence of the Mathematical Project Editors Note (265): The modern project is well described by Kant, when referring to the breakthroughs of the scientific revolution: “They learned that reason only gains insight into what it produces itself according to its own projects; that I must go before with principles of judgment according to constant laws, and constrain nature to reply to its questions, not content merely to follow her leading-strings” (Critique of Pure Reason, Preface to Second Ed. B XIII) So, we can only know what we have made. In modern knowing, all can arise as a product of human making and thus arise as knowable. This culminates in the essence of MACHINATION in the Contributions. • Ancient notion of the mathematical (learning as a taking of what one already has is a knowing tied to appropriation; it does not rest on a sense of the beings having been made by or resting on the foundation of the human subject. Rather, it rests on a 11 • sense of knowing what arises as already possessed as its own (proper / appropriation) within the world of Dasein) Modern notion of the mathematical (learning as a taking of what one already has) turns this pre-having into a secured making, projection, machination. “The mathematical is based on such a claim, i.e., the application of a determination of the thing which is not experientially derived from the thing and yet lies at the base of every determination of the things, making them possible and making room for them.” (265) In modern science we begin with the body left to itself (First Law). But where do we find it? Nowhere. But modern science is supposed to be based on experience of facts in the world? • • • Note: in modern political science, we have an equivalent “First Law”: humans left to themselves (in a “state of nature”) experience basic freedom This freedom serves as the basis for understanding Natural Right – right to selfpreservation and the liberty to seek to preserve it (life, liberty, property) Here, freedom is understood as freedom from constraint, not the freedom to attain one’s proper end (telos) On Galileo’s experiment. Other observers saw the same fact but interpreted it differently The mode of access, the mode of questioning and the cognitive determination of nature are now no longer ruled by traditional opinions and concepts. “Bodies have no concealed qualities, powers, and capacities. Natural bodies are now only what they show themselves as, within this projected realm” (268) • “Therefore the project also determines the mode of taking in and studying of what shows itself, experience, the experiri …. Modern science is experimental because of the mathematical project” (269) Uniformity of all bodies and all places requires a uniform measure. “The new form of modern science did not arise because mathematics became an essential determinant. Rather, that mathematics, and a particular kind of mathematics, could come into play and 12 had to come into play is a consequence of the mathematical project” (269). F) The Metaphysical Meaning of the Mathematical The mathematical project is tied to the fundamental metaphysical features of modernity, which is: • • • • • The Metaphysics of the Subject (Descartes) A Mode of Historical Dasein A Way of Being Open (Open Region) An Essencing of Truth An New Form of Freedom The history of Being is the history of the essence of Truth, which is the historical unfolding of Dasein – the history of Being is the Tradition and its greatest thoughts and articulations of meaning. See Annex A: Metaphysics and the History of Being. “But this mathematical must, in turn, be grasped from causes that lie even deeper. We have said that it is a fundamental trait of modern thought. Every sort of thought, however, is always only the execution and consequence of a mode of historical Dasein, of the fundamental position taken toward Being and toward the way in which beings are manifest as such, i.e., toward truth” (271). Two subordinate questions to this, we’ll focus on the second: 1. What new fundamental position of Dasein shows itself in this rise of the dominance of the mathematical? 2. How does the mathematical, according to its own inner direction, drive toward and ascent to a metaphysical determination of Dasein? 13 • • Note: according to the question, the mathematical (unlike beings allowed to arise within the mathematical projection, has its own inner direction). Mathematical projection is a historical mode of Dasein HUMAN BEING Sending itself in accordance with its own unfolding as “mathematical” DASEIN Mathematical Projection Attuned – Logos – Understanding Responds in articulating the meaning of Being in a mathematical way: mathematical projection Until the emergence of modern mathematical projection, the authoritative basis of truth was the Church and faith. • • • • “In the essence of the mathematical, as the project we delineated, lies a specific will to a new formation and self-grounding of the form of knowledge as such. The detachment from revelation as the first source for truth and the rejection of tradition as the authoritative means of knowledge” (272) Note: Bacon’s New Instauration; Descartes Regula III (see MSMM p 276; Beiträge 78) This new project is a liberation and a new formation of freedom – as a binding with obligations which are self-imposed Note: the metaphysics of modern liberalism is this self-grounding of freedom as binding with obligations which are self-imposed. See the end of “ET” (quote from Kant on philosophy as keeper of its own laws; for Kant, the essence of freedom is living in accordance with a law one has given oneself, self-legislation) On Descartes’ “I” as Special Subject Descartes comes a generation after Galileo but is the founder of modern thought. The usual sense of the upshot of Descartes’ thinking is that he proceeded via doubting all foundations of knowledge, but he could not doubt that he exists. His foundation for knowledge is the subject, and in modern philosophy epistemology precedes ontology. • • This usual image is a bad novel Descartes’ Meditations is a work of “First Philosophy” (Metaphysics) and reaches to the basis of the thinking of the being of things (274-75) 14 • “But this means that the mathematical wills to ground itself in the sense of its own inner requirements. It expressly intends to explicate itself as the standard of all thought and to establish the rules which thereby arise” (275) On Descartes’ Rules for the Direction of the Mind • • • Regula III – contra resting on authority; must be self-grounded Regula IV – “Method is necessary for discovering the truth of nature” – method (how we are to pursue things) decides in advance what truth we shall seek out in the things Regula V – “Method consists entirely in the order and arrangement of that upon which the sharp vision of the mind must be directed in order to discover some truth” – this must be based on an axiomatic foundation Descartes makes the human subject the locus for truth: • • “Until Descartes every thing at hand for itself was a ‘subject’; but now the ‘I’ becomes the special subject, that with regard to which all the remaining things first determine themselves as such” (280) Other beings arise as that which “stand” as something else in relation to the “subject”, which lie over against it as objectum – the things themselves become objects (Gegen-stand) Objectum had meant in the Middle Ages that which I cast from my mind as a mere fantasy. On Being and Logos • • • Note: original sense of logos as legein: gathering together into a meaningful unity and whole, such that beings can arise In Aristotle, logos was the guideline for the determination of the categories, i.e., of the Being of beings; however, the locus of this guideline (human reason, reason in general) was not characterized as the subjectivity of the subject (281). Note: since the logos (the articulated order of things) is no longer found in the things themselves; they are offered up to the technological manipulation of das Gestell. 15 • QUESTION: In today’s age of artificial intelligence, the logos is not even experienced as human subjectivity; rather, the logos becomes the domain of a made (machinational) intelligence which can process and manipulate every actual and possible human utterance. In this context, what will be the fate of the gathering together that is logos and what will be the fate of beings? The “I think” is reason; it is the fundamental act of reason. “Reason so comprehended is purely itself, pure reason…. In the title ‘pure reason’ lies the logos of Aristotle, and in the ‘pure’ a certain special formation of the mathematical” (282). Science in the Beiträge (Sections 75 - 80) Section 75: Two ways of meditating on science: • • • “The first does not grasp science as the current objectively present institution but, rather, as one determinate possibility of unfolding and constructing a knowledge whose essence is itself rooted in a more original exposition of the ground of the truth of beyng” (this seems to be the pursuit of “MSMM”) The other way (which is pursued in the directives of the next section), “grasps science in its current actual constitution”. Note: in Being and Time, Heidegger distinguishes between: o An existential conception of science, which attempts to understand the ontological basis for the movement from circumspective concern to a theoretical relation to beings; and o A logical conception of science “which understand science with regard to its results and defines it as ‘something established on an interconnection of true proposition – that is, propositions counted as valid’” (BT §69b, 357) Section 76 76.2 – Science is not a knowing in the sense of a grounding and preserving of an essential truth; science is a derivative, instituting of knowing 16 76.3 – “What is ‘scientifically’ knowable is in every case pre-given ‘to science’ in a ‘truth’ about some known region of beings [nb: BT and “ET” here], a ‘truth’ that can never be grasped by science itself” 76.4 – thus, there is no science in general; there is only specialized knowing in science [specialized knowing of the positum, of the beings in a region] 76.5 – Specialization is not a sign of deterioration of science; it is a necessary intrinsic character of the sciences. “Where lies the genuine reason of the compartmentalizing? In beingness as representedness” (see AWP 123) • • Ground of the specialization of the sciences is in the modern metaphysics of the subject and its representedness of beings as objects before a subject QUESTION: is this a departure from the Rectorate Address, where he seems to assert that modern sciences have disintegrated into specialized disciplines and that the role of philosophy is to bring forth a unity and wholeness out of these fragments? 76.8 – Organizing of knowledge through explanatory nexus whose possibility requires the thorough binding of the investigation to the respective subject area 76.9 – The rigor of science is carried out in the method – the way of approach (the adopting of a point of view on the subject area [nb: the modern sense of freedom as the obligation that is self-given “MSMM”] 76.13 – “But a science must be exact (in order to remain rigorous, i.e., to remain science) if its subject area is determined in advance as a domain (the modern concept of ‘nature’) accessible solely to quantitative measurement and calculation and only thus guaranteeing results” 76.14 – All science rests on experience in the broadest sense – even mathematics 17 76.19 – “With the ever-firmer entrenchment of the machinational-technological essence of all the sciences, the differences between the natural and the human sciences as regards objects and procedures will subside more and more” • This is a very prescient statement given the developments in “Digital Humanities”, Neuro-Humanities, Health Humanities, Eco-humanitites etc.; also, with AI becoming the author and artist, leaving potentially no room for human creativity, no possibility of saying anything that has not been absorbed within the large language models (LLMs) Section 77 • • • Need to explore the levels and modes of experience in order to understand experimentation within modern science Also, the long history of the word Experiencing as o striking up against something o approaching something o approaching something in the mode of test how it looks o one that tests and observes Section 78 “The specific and unique presupposition for experimentation is, as remarkable as it may sound, that science become rational-mathematical, i.e., in the highest sense, not experimental. Initial positing of nature as such” [?] NOTE: in the Beiträge, experience, as what arises before one without contrivance, becomes in the modern world an experiment: testing and observing only what one has set up in advance. In this way, Heidegger’s critique of Lived Experience (as a setting up and representing before oneself the world to be experienced) is tied to the critique of the representational metaphysics that also underpins modern science. 18 Summary "MSMM" Being and Time Ontic Science Modern concept of motion / nature (Newton / Galileo) What is a physical entity? Regional Ontology (Fundamental Concepts) Metaphysics ("goes deeper") -- of Subject Dasein as the articulation of the meaning of Being Fundamental Ontology First Beginning Modern Science (Physics / Mathematics) Ontic Facts of Physics Mathematical Projection: Historical projection of Dasein Greek Medieval Modern Post-modern Ontic Science Physics (Aristotle) (Adhering to facts (experience)) (saying what shows itself in phenomena Physics of Natural Law (God’s products) (Aquinas) Physics of Universal Laws (Newton) Quantum Physics (Heisenberg) (empeiria) (expiriri) (experiment) – as controlling of what is to be observed Things of nature have arche kineseos within themselves (kath auta) Things of nature have arche kineseos within themselves (or God?) Things as having their arche kineseos outside themselves (in forces) Science that can no longer be confirmed by experience Dissolution of things into a function of forces And have a telos And have a telos No telos No telos Veritas (secured vantage vs falsum) Certitude (securing of the human subject) Value-positing (Perspectives) Mathematical: know what we project as a plan (Projection) Mathematical: Know what we make (Machination) Free relation to Being (God) – secured in salvation Freedom as selfimposed obligation Technological unfreedom? Metaphysical liberalism (freedom grounded in the “I”) End of liberalism in tribal identities and metaphysics of Gestell Augustine/Aquinas Descartes Nietzsche Regional Ontology Emergence (phuein) (Each epoch as a new crisis in fundamental concepts) Fundamental Ontology / Essence of Truth Alētheia Truth of statement (alethes logos) Mathematical Mathematical: Know what we have (Appropriation) Mathematical: Know what we have (Appropriation) Essence of Freedom Free relation to Being Free relation to Being (ousia) Letting beings be (“ET”) Thinker Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides Plato / Aristotle 19 Other Beginning Thing Sheltering revealing Free relation to Beyng Heidegger Annex A: Metaphysics and the History of Being BEING (Sein)1 Beings2 Truth3 Thinker4 Way of Knowing5 First Beginning Greek Metaphysics Medieval Metaphysics Modern Metaphysics Post-modern Metaphysics Other Beginning Phusis Idea / Ousia Highest Being Subjectum Will to Power / GESTELL / BEYNG (Seyn) / EREIGNIS Advent of NIHILISM (w/drawal of Being) Arising of Beyng as NO-THING FUNCTIONS of forces (Standing-reserve) THING EMERGENCE Alētheia Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides Modes of alētheuin Art Work6 Locus of community Basic Disposition7 Wonder Mereology8 Beings as Wholes Political Regime9 (Polis) Janus-face of Technology (Fate as one’s share / part – meros / moria in the whole (cosmos)) Polis (site of Being) Representational COPIES of essence / Idea ENS CREATUM – caused by a highest instance of their essence Present-at-hand OBJECTS Truth of statement (alethes logos) Veritas (secured vantage vs falsum) Certitude (securing of the human subject) Value-positing (Perspectives) Sheltering revealing adaequatio rei et intellectus divinus Accordance of statement and object Augustine Descartes “A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms” Nietzsche Heidegger Epistēmē / technē / phronesis / sophia Faith surpasses understanding Cogito / Newtonian science Willing / QUANTUM science Safeguarding of Dasein / Inceptual Thinking Copy of a copy (mimesis) Copy of thing and divine intellect Aesthetic object Aesthetic value in system of cultural production Shock Site of Truth Site of strife of Earth and World Restraint Idea (enduring presence) Ens creatum Mathematical Projection GIGANTIC Beings as Wholes Beings participate in highest Idea or essence Beings caused by their highest essence Beings move in abstract space / time Arising in Form (Gestalt) Classical Republic Monarchy Liberalism / communism Reign of the QUANTITATIVE – equivalence of parts with no whole Interest-based Politics (Political hierarchy reflects Divine) (metaphysics of subject – individual or collective) (Cosmopolis; metaphysics of WTP; perspectives in power struggle) accordance (homoiosis) of a statement (logos) with a matter (pragma) Plato / Aristotle (participation of all parts in whole of Regime (polis)) Local community See “WM”, Nietzsche lectures, Beiträge, “Overcoming Metaphysics”, “QCT”. See Nietzsche lectures, Beiträge §84, “QCT”, “AWP”, Radloff Disclosure and Gestalt 344. 3 See BT §44, “ET”, Nietzsche lectures, Parmenides. 4 See Nietzsche lectures, Beiträge, “Overcoming Metaphysics”, “QCT”, Early Greek Thinking. 5 See Plato’s Sophist, Beiträge, “QCT”, “MSMM”, Radloff Disclosure and Gestalt 344. 6 See Nietzsche lectures, “OWA”, Radloff Disclosure and Gestalt. 7 See Beiträge § 5. 8 See Homer’s Iliad, Aristotle Categories and Metaphysics, Husserl Logical Investigations III, Beiträge §70-71, 84, “QCT”, “MSMM”, Radloff; note: Strauss on Socrates’ turn to the human things and the “heterogeneity” of the whole (not calculable, quantitative parts) (Natural Right and History 122-23). 9 See Aristotle Metaphysics and Politics, Radloff on Heidegger’s Black Notebooks. 1 2 20 Annex B: Heidegger and Strauss on Specialization in Science Both thinkers have insightful comments on the ever-growing need for specialization in the sciences For Strauss, in “Social Sciences and Humanism”, the sciences tend toward specialization out of the finitude of humanity, to some extent. Our deepest desire is for knowledge of the whole. However, that is not available to us. So, we turn to partial knowledge of parts of the whole. • • • The scientific spirit is one of analysis into parts; the humanistic spirit sees unity and forms a meaningful whole [Heidegger’s “world” or open region] Humanism sees the matter from the perspective of common sense, or the “natural perspective”, or the perspective of the citizen; this is the pre-theoretical realm of significances; it is also the realm of the “cave” Science goes to analyze the parts, but must return to the perspective of the human (it must be guided by the perspective of the statesman) – in order to see how that part relates to a pre-conceived notion of the whole. For Heidegger, in Section 76 of Contributions and in “Age of the World Picture”, specialization is part of the driving force of the institution of science – part of modern science’s unfolding as a way of securing, mastering and calculating beings. • • • Specialization is tied to the fact that science is a derivative knowing – a knowing of beings already posited within a region of beings. It is not a founding-knowing of a world, a “whole” (76.4) In addition, in its institutionalization, specialization serves the goals of a calculative thinking because the specialized fields yield to ever-greater precision of quantitative measurement, control and application In this way, the quest to specialize in science is tied to “the Gigantic” – the dominion of the quantitative, i.e., quanta as parts that are not different in kind – as well as being tied to the unfolding of “Machination” (calculative thinking with the goal of control, manipulation for the betterment of humans) For Heidegger, in MSMM and AWP the rise of the quantitative is tied to the modern metaphysical determination of beings within which modern science is situated • The mathematical is that which is already known in classical Greek. – The mathematical within the context of modern science involves a projection of an abstract equivalence (of space, time, motion etc). In this way, these phenomena can arise as “mathematical”, or as amenable to abstract calculation 21 • For the ancient Greeks, numbers (arithmoi) were tied to the counting of things. Numbers only arise within this intentional or referential context. Three is not an abstract quantity or concept (“Threeness”), it is “three of a particular type of apple”. Note too: can only count things as they are gathered (within logoi) as belonging together as one kind. If different in kind, they cannot be counted. We can count apples, but can only count apples and oranges inasmuch as they are gathered as fruit. See Jacob Klein and John Sallis, Chorology. 22 Works Cited Works of Heidegger BT (1927) – Being and Time. Trans by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962 “ET” (1930) – “On the Essence of Truth”, in Basic Writings. Ed. David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. 117-41. “MSMM” (1936) – “Modern Science, Metaphysics and Mathematics”, Basic Writings. Ed. David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. 247-82. Beiträge (1936-38) – Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event). Trans. by Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2012. 23