Only the science of the Absolute gives a meaning and a discipline to the science of the relative.

The fundamental contradiction of scientism is to want to explain the real without the help of that first science which is metaphysics, hence not to know that only the science of the Absolute gives a meaning and a discipline to the science of the relative; and not to know at the same stroke that the science of the relative, when it is deprived of this help, can only lead to suicide, beginning with that of the intelligence, then with that of the human, and in the end, with that of humanity.

 

The absurdity of scientism is the contradiction between the finite and the Infinite, that is to say, the impossibility of reducing the latter to the former, and the incapacity to integrate the former into the latter; and also the inability to understand that an erudition which cuts itself off from initial Unity can lead only to the innumerable, hence to the indefinite, to shattering and to nothingness.

 

 

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Frithjof Schuon

 

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Quoted in: The Essential Frithjof Schuon (edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr)

 

Done