Traditional Quotes and Symbols
Whether we like it or not we live surrounded by mysteries, which logically and existentially lead us towards transcendence.
Believing only what one "sees": this prejudice, as crude as it is common, leads us to insert a parenthesis. Wanting to believe only what they see, scientists condemn themselves to seeing only what they believe; logic for them is their desire not to see what they do not want to believe. Scientism in fact is less interested in the real in itself (which necessarily goes beyond our limitations) than in what is non-contradictory, in what is logical therefore, or more precisely, in what is empirically logical; thus in what is logical de facto according to a given experience, and not in what is logical de jure in accordance with the nature of things.
In reality the "planimetric" recording of perceptions and the elimination of the apparently contradictory only too often gives the measure of a given ignorance, even of a given stupidity; the pedants of "exact science" are moreover incapable of evaluating what is implied by the existential paradoxes in which we live, beginning with the phenomenon, contradictory in practice, of subjectivity.
Subjectivity is intrinsically unique while being extrinsically multiple; now if the spectacle of a host of subjectivities other than our own causes us no great perplexity, how shall it be explained "scientifically" (that is, avoiding or eliminating all contradiction) the fact that "I alone" am "I"? So-called "exact" science can find no reason whatever for this apparent absurdity, any more than it can for that other logical and empirical contradiction which is the limitlessness of space, time and the other existential categories.
Whether we like it or not we live surrounded by mysteries, which logically and existentially lead us towards transcendence.
Even if the "scientists" could observe the non-contradiction of all possible objective phenomena, there still would remain the contradictory enigma of the scission between the objective universe and the observing subject, not to speak of the "scientifically" insoluble problem of that flagrant contradiction which is the empirical uniqueness of a particular subject, to which problem we have just alluded; and even if we limit ourselves to the objective world, whose limitlessness precisely constitutes a contradiction since it is inconceivable according to empirical logic, how can we believe for an instant that the day will finally come when we can put it into a homogeneous and exhaustive system?
And how can we fail to see the fundamental and inevitable contradiction between scientistic logic-which is moreover
intrinsically deficient since it lacks sufficient data- and the infinity and complexity of the real, which scientism sets itself out to explore, to exhaust and to catalog?
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.
If therefore the scientific method, or the conceptual system (die Weltanschauung) resulting from it, claims to have the privilege of excluding contradictions, it goes without saying that it accuses methods or systems which in its opinion are extrascientific of the defect of accepting what is contradictory; as if there could exist a human and traditional thoutht which accepts the contradictory de Jure and not only de facto, and as if what is contradictory in religion (supposing that it is not merely in the minds of the scientists) did not imply the consciousness of an underlying non-contradiction, known by God alone!
What is the significance of the theological opinion that the human mind has limits, and what is the meaning of the mysteries inasmuch as they are supposed to transcend reason, if not that man is incapable of perceiving the total and homogeneous reality behind the contradictions where his short-sightedness stops? Recourse to the Divine authority of Revelation means nothing else but that, and this is so evident that one would like to excuse oneself for pointing
it out.
The man who wishes to know the visible (to know it both in entirety and in depth) is obliged for that very reason to know the Invisible, on pain of absurdity and ineffectualness; to know it according to the principles which the very nature of the Invisible imposes on the human mind; hence to know it by being aware that the solution to the contradictions of the objective world is found only in the transpersonal essence of the subject, namely in the pure Intellect.
Besides - and this is another question altogether - how can the adepts of a scientism which sets out to reduce total Reality to a clockwork fail to see that the absurd (not, this time, insofar as it is simply an appearance of the unknown, but insofar as it is a manifestation of the indefinite and thereby of the unintelligible in itself), how can they fail to see that this cosmic absurdity is an integral part of the mirrorings of Maya and hence of the economy of the Universe?
One of the most difficult things there is morally is to concede the metaphysical right of existence to what is existentially absurd; not in theory alone, but on concrete contact with absurdity, which is almost the victory over the dragon. Now before wishing to abolish the absurd that is merely apparent, it is necessary to acknowledge the ineluctable presence of the absurd as such, which could not possibly be reabsorbed into the intelligible save in its function of being a necessary element in the equilibrium of things.
For Reality does not limit itself to revealing its aspects of geometry. It also likes to conceal itself and to play hide-and-seek; it would be astonishing if it consented to unveil itself totally to mathematical minds; if it could consent to this it would not be Maya.
Man is contingent and he is condemned to contingency, and contingency implies by definition the insoluble and the absurd.
Everything here is a question of causality: there are phenomena which seem absurd to us as long as we are ignorant of their causes, or because we are ignorant of them; and there are other phenomena which are absurd in themselves and which have no other cause than the cosmic necessity for that which has no necessity.
Likewise there are possibilities which have no function other than to manifest the impossible, to the extent precisely that that is still possible; and it is possible at least in a symbolic way, which is sufficiently clear to manifest the intention of impossibility or absurdity.
Frithjof Schuon
Whether we like it or not we live surrounded by mysteries, which logically and existentially lead us towards transcendence.
Believing only what one "sees": this prejudice, as crude as it is common, leads us to insert a parenthesis. Wanting to believe only what they see, scientists condemn themselves to seeing only what they believe; logic for them is their desire not to see what they do not want to believe. Scientism in fact is less interested in the real in itself (which necessarily goes beyond our limitations) than in what is non-contradictory, in what is logical therefore, or more precisely, in what is empirically logical; thus in what is logical de facto according to a given experience, and not in what is logical de jure in accordance with the nature of things.
In reality the "planimetric" recording of perceptions and the elimination of the apparently contradictory only too often gives the measure of a given ignorance, even of a given stupidity; the pedants of "exact science" are moreover incapable of evaluating what is implied by the existential paradoxes in which we live, beginning with the phenomenon, contradictory in practice, of subjectivity.
Subjectivity is intrinsically unique while being extrinsically multiple; now if the spectacle of a host of subjectivities other than our own causes us no great perplexity, how shall it be explained "scientifically" (that is, avoiding or eliminating all contradiction) the fact that "I alone" am "I"? So-called "exact" science can find no reason whatever for this apparent absurdity, any more than it can for that other logical and empirical contradiction which is the limitlessness of space, time and the other existential categories.
Whether we like it or not we live surrounded by mysteries, which logically and existentially lead us towards transcendence.
Even if the "scientists" could observe the non-contradiction of all possible objective phenomena, there still would remain the contradictory enigma of the scission between the objective universe and the observing subject, not to speak of the "scientifically" insoluble problem of that flagrant contradiction which is the empirical uniqueness of a particular subject, to which problem we have just alluded; and even if we limit ourselves to the objective world, whose limitlessness precisely constitutes a contradiction since it is inconceivable according to empirical logic, how can we believe for an instant that the day will finally come when we can put it into a homogeneous and exhaustive system?
And how can we fail to see the fundamental and inevitable contradiction between scientistic logic-which is moreover
intrinsically deficient since it lacks sufficient data- and the infinity and complexity of the real, which scientism sets itself out to explore, to exhaust and to catalog?
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.
If therefore the scientific method, or the conceptual system (die Weltanschauung) resulting from it, claims to have the privilege of excluding contradictions, it goes without saying that it accuses methods or systems which in its opinion are extrascientific of the defect of accepting what is contradictory; as if there could exist a human and traditional thoutht which accepts the contradictory de Jure and not only de facto, and as if what is contradictory in religion (supposing that it is not merely in the minds of the scientists) did not imply the consciousness of an underlying non-contradiction, known by God alone!
What is the significance of the theological opinion that the human mind has limits, and what is the meaning of the mysteries inasmuch as they are supposed to transcend reason, if not that man is incapable of perceiving the total and homogeneous reality behind the contradictions where his short-sightedness stops? Recourse to the Divine authority of Revelation means nothing else but that, and this is so evident that one would like to excuse oneself for pointing
it out.
The man who wishes to know the visible (to know it both in entirety and in depth) is obliged for that very reason to know the Invisible, on pain of absurdity and ineffectualness; to know it according to the principles which the very nature of the Invisible imposes on the human mind; hence to know it by being aware that the solution to the contradictions of the objective world is found only in the transpersonal essence of the subject, namely in the pure Intellect.
Besides - and this is another question altogether - how can the adepts of a scientism which sets out to reduce total Reality to a clockwork fail to see that the absurd (not, this time, insofar as it is simply an appearance of the unknown, but insofar as it is a manifestation of the indefinite and thereby of the unintelligible in itself), how can they fail to see that this cosmic absurdity is an integral part of the mirrorings of Maya and hence of the economy of the Universe?
One of the most difficult things there is morally is to concede the metaphysical right of existence to what is existentially absurd; not in theory alone, but on concrete contact with absurdity, which is almost the victory over the dragon. Now before wishing to abolish the absurd that is merely apparent, it is necessary to acknowledge the ineluctable presence of the absurd as such, which could not possibly be reabsorbed into the intelligible save in its function of being a necessary element in the equilibrium of things.
For Reality does not limit itself to revealing its aspects of geometry. It also likes to conceal itself and to play hide-and-seek; it would be astonishing if it consented to unveil itself totally to mathematical minds; if it could consent to this it would not be Maya.
Man is contingent and he is condemned to contingency, and contingency implies by definition the insoluble and the absurd.
Everything here is a question of causality: there are phenomena which seem absurd to us as long as we are ignorant of their causes, or because we are ignorant of them; and there are other phenomena which are absurd in themselves and which have no other cause than the cosmic necessity for that which has no necessity.
Likewise there are possibilities which have no function other than to manifest the impossible, to the extent precisely that that is still possible; and it is possible at least in a symbolic way, which is sufficiently clear to manifest the intention of impossibility or absurdity.
Frithjof Schuon