meta: {"file": "/data/tomer/Sefaria-Export/txt_done/Modern Works/Works of Eliezer Berkovits/The Scientific and the Religious World View/English/The Scientific and the Religious World View.txt"}
text: The Scientific and the Religious World View
  השקפת העולם המדעית והדתית
  The Scientific and the Religious World View
  
  
  The Scientific and the Religious World View
  
  
  
  
  
  <i>Introduction</i>
  For Judaism, the scientific and religious outlook have one thing in common, i.e., the recognition of orderliness in nature. This is expressed in the very story of creation. The first act of creation, according to the Bible, was followed by an act of division: “And God divided the light from the darkness”. The principle of division was the first principle of order. The <i>memshelet hayom</i> and the <i>memshelet halayla</i> (the order of day and night) was the establishment of a basic law of nature. The creation of all living things “after its kind” presupposes the idea of well-defined categories in the botanic and zoological realms. The unchangeability of <i>Hukkot Shamayim va’Arets</i> (Laws of Heaven and Earth) is a well-known biblical concept. The rabbis in the Talmud affirmed the principle that <i>Olam k’minhago noheg</i>, the world continues in accordance with its established order, and God should not be expected to interrupt that order. The <i>Sidrei Bereshit</i> (Order of Creation) is a well recognized principle, which is identical with the concept of an established natural order. The entire structure of the <i>Hal’aka</i> presupposes the existence of a universe in which the kind of orderliness obtains which is the subject matter of scientific inquiry and interpretation. The Jewish calendar, the entire Talmudical order of <i>Z’raim</i>, (Agricultural Laws) the very times for the daily prayers, every aspect of the <i>Halakik</i> order, involve reference and application to a form of reality which is objectively controlled by the uniform orderliness of the laws of nature. According to Maimonides’ interpretation, the teachers of the <i>Midrash</i> already felt uncomfortable at the thought of a miracle, which should interrupt the natural course of events, and attempted to see the miracle itself as something originally envisaged in the act of creation and incorporated in nature from the beginning.
  However, the acknowledgment of orderliness in nature, or the scientific search for its laws, does not in itself yield a world view. A world view is an interpretation of reality. Of necessity, such an interpretation cannot be derived from experience. As a view of the world, it must be comprehensive; but no human experience may comprehend the All. Every world view is a creative act of the imagination, based on a very limited experience of the world. In relationship to the whole of reality, all exact human knowledge is fragmentary; yet man, in order to live significantly, must have a vision of the essential quality of the whole. However limited his actual knowledge of the world may be, in its light man must venture out into the unknown and seek to behold the structure of the All. The great metaphysical systems have been such adventures of the human spirit. They cannot be “proved”. The question concerning them may only be whether they can be significantly maintained in the light of what is provable.
  A scientific world view is not science, but the leap of faith undertaken by the scientist who ventures to interpret the whole of reality on the basis of the exact knowledge gained from the scientific investigation of a relatively small segment of the whole. Neither is a religious world view religion. It, too, is a leap of faith, which attempts to grasp the essential nature of the whole in the light of a necessarily limited experience and a specific insight.
  The relationship to the world which is to be viewed has at least two aspects. There is the world, which confronts the human being; there is the human being, which confronts the world. Reality has an objective and a subjective aspect. There is, however, a third aspect to reality which requires consideration. It received its metaphysical dignity in the critical philosophy of Kant. When Kant distinguished between phenomena and nomina, between the world as it is revealed — or constituted — in human experience, and “the thing in itself”, as it may exist beyond all possible experience, he was inquiring into the third aspect of reality. At every instance, when man experiences the external reality, he is really involved in Kant’s problem of the “thing in itself”. The world is never given to us in immediacy of experience. Man is never in direct contact with the external world. The world as object is always given to us through the mediation of our senses. It is the source that emits the stimuli which are responsible for the sense impressions. The world for us is its representation in sense perceptions. What we call external reality is the imprint made by it on our senses. The point has been ingeniously illustrated by Edwin A. Abbott’s familiar <i>Flatland</i>. In one of his essays, Professor Eddington compared the world around man to a broadcasting station. The messages are rather different from the station itself. We may be the recipient of the broadcasts, but we cannot identify the programs that we receive with the size and structure of the station itself or with the nature of its functioning. Attempting to pierce beyond the world of phenomena, we are confronted with the problem of the ultimate ground of reality.
  Needless to say once we become aware of the problem of the ultimate ground of reality with reference to the object world, it is easily realized that the problem is an all-embracing one, comprehending both the world as object and the realm of the subject. A world view must therefore take cognizance of the three-fold aspects of reality: of the world, experienced by man as the object; of man, who experiences, the subject; of the ultimate ground of reality in both its manifestations, the subjective and the objective.
  
  
  
  <i>The Two World Views</i>
  Science, 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.
  For 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.
  It 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.
  As 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.
  The 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.
  In 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 <i>ad infinitum</i>. 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.
  He 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, <i>M’Komo shel ha-Olam</i>. 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.
  
  
  
  <i>Meaning and Purpose</i>
  That God created the world is, of course, not a scientific statement. But no statement concerning the ground of reality or the ultimate Encompassing can be scientific. Scientific statements are only possible within the object realm. The sentence, God created the world, posits this realm and its orderliness; it establishes it and in such a manner that it is made accessible to scientific investigation. It does not describe the object as it is, but explains why it is. It is because God willed it. A new principle is introduced into the interpretation of reality, the principle of intention. The world is willed, it is planned, it has a purpose. But if willed and intended, reality has value. “And God saw all He has made and behold it was good”. Being has value, for the world ground is the divine intention.
  The scientific interpretation is quantitative. The object may be adequately described only insofar as it is measurable. The essence of the object is ideally expressed in the mathematical formula. But only objects may be so represented, not intentions or purposes. The scientific interpretation of reality recognizes only facts, not meanings. It can deal only with what is, not with what ought to be or should be. Objects in themselves just are; as the facts of science they are brutally indifferent toward all considerations of meaning or purpose. This in itself is not a bit disturbing as long as the scientific interpretation remains limited to the domain of the object. Conglomerations of atoms and molecules do not ask for meaning or purpose. They just are what they are. The trouble arises when the scientific method becomes the foundation of a world view that is bound to objectify the whole realm of existence. The scientific world view, not being able to break through to the ground of reality, has no access to the source of meaning and purpose. Meaning and purpose are regarded merely as human inventions, they are the drives and desires of a human being who is himself objectified and should be seen as a mere sample of the world of objects. Thus, man is obliged to see his existence as the accidental result of the interplay of impersonal natural forces, which are utterly indifferent toward the mirage of his imagined personal destiny. In truth, however, man cannot be objectified. He is a person. And the characteristic mark of personality is the quest for meaning in existence. As the person possesses ontological authenticity, so too the quest for meaning and purpose, which is inseparable from personal being, has ontological status. It is inherent in Being itself. Within the objectifying world view of science, man’s longing for meaningfulness cannot be satisfied. Here is one of the roots of despair in certain forms of existentialist philosophy of the day.
  Within the religious world view, man, in his search for purpose, turns naturally to the ground of being in order to discover the meaning of his own existence. In search for meaning, he comes face to face with the ultimate ground of being, the intention and will of the Creator. But now the world of the object too appears in a new light. The will of the Creator embraces the whole of creation, subject and object. The energy-charged space-time structure of “brute facts”, so efficiently described by science, is now itself referred to that other dimension of the Ultimate Encompassing, the dimension of meaning and value, the ontological homeland of both, subject and object. The object realm itself becomes thus injected with purposefulness. Man has now to meet it with a sense of awe and find fulfillment in it for his personal destiny in a spirit of responsibility toward the all-embracing reality, which has issued from the hands of the One Creator.
  
  
  
  <i>Unity and Continuity</i>
  Some of the age-old problems of epistemology have remained unresolved to this day, because their solution was attempted exclusively within the frame of reference of the object world, without due consideration for the subject and by ignoring the ultimate ground of reality, which is common to subject and object.
  At the dawn of modern philosophy Descartes raised the question as to the reality of the external world. Since the world is given to us in sense perceptions and since these are often misleading or illusory, how can one be sure of the external world? Perhaps what we call the world, exists only in human imagination? While Descartes’ solution of the problem is rejected, most thinkers attempt to shrug the problem off. To imagine that the universe existed only in the consciousness of a single individual, as required by consistent solipsism, is absurd. It is unacceptable. Yet, the mere disinclination to entertain a doubt because it is disagreeable to us is no solution. Indeed, there is no solution to the problem as long as we attempt to “objectify” all reality. Only if we are willing to acknowledge the subject in its full ontological authenticity may Descartes’ problem be solved. Man, the person, fulfills his essential nature in search for meaning. Within the religious world view, by relating himself to the divine world ground, he becomes aware of purpose and responsibility as modes of personal existence. There is something to be realized, something that ought to be. But the concept of the “Ought” cannot arise in a solipsistic universe, in which the whole of reality exists only in the imagination of a single individual. The “Ought”, which is as inseparable from the subject realm as the “Is” is from that of the object, points to another or to some other form of reality outside the subject. In the utter loneliness of solipsism, responsibility, purpose, meaning are inconceivable. In responsibility and conscience the world itself is given to man as real. It may be called the ontological irony of human existence that as long as man refuses to acknowledge the subject aspect of reality, he cannot prove that the whole of the universe may not be mere imagination in the consciousness of a subject that, according to the premise, is a mere object in disguise.
  Among the basic presuppositions of the scientific method are the concepts of unity and continuity in nature. Without them no laws may be formulated and no predictions made. Yet, both concepts are epistemologically most questionable.
  Modern science formulates its laws on the strength of the validity of the principle of induction. When a certain function has been established in a sufficient number of cases it is assumed to conform to a “law”. The general rule is induced from the specific occasions. This, however, may only be done on the assumption that what happens on numerous occasions will happen always. But why? Surely, this is a conclusion not based on experience or observation. “Always” may neither be experienced or experimented with. The conclusion derives from the presupposition of unity in nature. It is assumed that nature functions according to a uniform pattern. The assumption, however, can never be proved by the method of induction. It is the presupposition about which induction proves nothing. How serious the problem is one may appreciate better, if one contemplates the ramification of the problem of continuity in nature. It was David Hume who raised the issue most disturbingly. No past experience by itself justifies the assumption that the order discovered in nature in the past will continue in the future. There is no experience of the future. Not even Kant, who confessed that Hume’s questioning woke him from his “dogmatic slumbers”, ever really answered Hume’s criticism. The concept of statistical laws offers no solution either. It too must assume the metaphysical principle of unity and continuity. Though the orderliness is conceived as being of a statistical nature only, it requires the presupposition that what has been established in a small corner of possible experience is valid in general. It also affirms that the same orderliness that has been observed in the past will remain in effect in the future too, an assumption which cannot be supported by any statistical data since there are no statistics of the future. Whitehead correctly maintains that the principle of induction, the very core of the scientific method, is “the despair of the philosophers”. It is based completely on a metaphysical assumption that cannot be validated either logically or experimentally.
  It is, however, rather remarkable that notwithstanding “the despair of the philosophers” the assumptions are justified by their results. The method of induction does work. Predictions of the future based on general laws normally do come true. The philosopher’s despair may be resolved by realizing that the solution to the problem was sought in a realm where it could not be found, in that of the object. Mere objects just are and their pure object essence is utterly indifferent either toward order or chaos. Order and law belong essentially in the subject realm. The object, as such, can well do without them. The original mode of the existence of the object world is <i>Tohu va’Bohu</i> (chaos). Only the subject is not conceivable in a state of <i>Tohu va’Bohu</i>. Only in the realm of the subject, of the Personal, are law, order, and unity no mere presuppositions but actual modes of Being. The object can just be; the subject is law, order, and unity or else it cannot be.
  The same applies to the principle of continuity. It is not a principle of the object realm. Continuity, as experienced is inseparable from consciousness. Continuity too is a mode of personal existence. The object has no sense of time. It does not endure, except in relationship to a subject. By itself, the object has neither a past, nor a future. It is what it is at every instant of its existence, in its completeness and “perfection” confined on all sides by the instant. It has no memory of the past nor expectations of the future. Only plan and purpose, meaning and goal will thread instants of experience into an enduring sequence. Only the subject continues. The object is “timeless”; it exists below the threshold of time.
  However, the subject can neither exist nor function in a state of <i>Tohu va’Bohu;</i> yet it exists and has to function in the midst of the object world. To plan, to hope, to seek the realization of meaning are modes of personal existence, but they take place in the midst of an object world. That the subject may be, there must be room for planning and purposeful action within the domain of the object. This requires a measure of orderliness, of an expectation of tomorrow within the object realm itself. This is not mere logic. The ontological essence of the subject includes within itself the ontological reference to an external realm, which, though object, yet is “aware” of the subject. The existential reality of the subject includes the “subject-awareness” of the object world. It is ontologically given with the givenness of the subject. To that extent the realm of the object itself becomes “subjectified”. The object is appointed to the subject as the subject is appointed to the object. However, since both subject and object are not further reducible in their ontological authenticity, since neither the subject emerged from the object nor the object from the subject, their being appointed to each other has to be sought in the common world ground of the divine will of purposeful creation. Only if we connect the subject and the object to their common divine world ground may unity and continuity in the realm of the object be expected as the requirement of meaning and purpose that seek their realization by means of the subject.
  __________<i>Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits is chairman of the Jewish Philosophy Department in the Hebrew Theological College of the Jewish University of America, Skokie, Illinois.</i>
  <i>This article is based on a lecture given by Dr. Berkovits at the</i> 1963 <i>A.O.J.S. National Convention.</i>