FROM KNOWLEDGE TO UNDERSTANDING:
By
(Manfred A. Max-Neef)
Life is an unending sequence of bifurcations. The decision I take, implies all the decisions I did not take. The route I choose, is part of all the routes I did notchoose.
Our life is inevitably a permanent choice of one among an infinity of ontological possibilities. The fact that I was at a given place, at a very precise moment in time, when a given situation occurred or a given person appeared, may have had a decisive effect on the rest ofmy life. A few minutes earlier or later, or a few metres away in any direction, might well have determined a different bifurcation and, hence, a completely different life. As the great Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset pointedout: “I am myself and my circumstance”. What holds for individual lives, holds for communities and whole societies as well. Our so called Western Civilization is the result of its own bifurcations. We are what we are, but we could also have been something we are not. Let us then revise some of our decisive bifurcations.
Sometime during the XIIth Century, in Italy, a youn gman, named Giovanni
Bernardone, while still very young and very rich, decided to radically change his life. As a result of his transformation, we remember him today under a different name: Francis of Assisi. Francis, when he referred to the world, spoke of brother Sun and sister Moon, of brother wolf, and of water, fire and trees, and people as brothers and sisters as well. The world he described and felt was a world where love was not only possible but made sense and had a universal meaning.
Sometime later, also in Italy, we hear the resounding voice of brilliant and astute Machiavelli, warning us that: “It is much safer to be feared than to be loved”. He also describes a world, but in addition he creates a world.
The world we have today is not that of Francis. It is the worldof Machiavelli. Francis was the route not navigated. The navigation we chose was that of Machiavelli, and inspired by it we have constructed our social, political and economic conceptions In 1487, another very young man, just 23 years of age, Francesco Pico dellaMirandola, prepares himself for the public defense of his 900 theses about the concord between the different religions and philosophies. He refuses to enclose himself within the narrowness of just one doctrine.Convinced that Truths are multiple, and never just one, he longs for a spiritual renovation that can reconcile humanity.
Some years later, fervent believer in absolute truth and in the possibilities of certainty, Francis Bacon invites us to torture Nature so that through the delivery of her secrets, we can extract the Truth . Again two worlds. One representing the route we navigated, and the other the route we navigated not. We did not follow the way suggested by Pico della Mirandola. We opted for accepting Bacon’s invitation, and, thus, we continue applying his recipe with efficiency and enthusiasm. We continue torturing Nature in order to extract from her what we believe to be the truth. In the year 1600, Giordano Bruno burns at the stake, victimof his pantheism, since he believed that the Earth is life and has a soul. Everything, for him, are manifestations of life. Everything is life.
Three decades later, Descartes whispers in his Metaphysical Reflexions: “Through my window, what I see, are hats and coats covering automatic machines”. We did not navigate the route of Giordano Bruno. We chose that of Descartes, and, in that manner, we have witnessed the triumph of mechanism and reductionism.
For Galileo and Newton, the language of Nature is mathematics. Nothing is important in science that cannot bemeasured. We and Nature, the observer and the observed, are separate entities. Science is the supreme manifestation of reason, and reason is the supreme attribute of the human being. Goethe, whose scientific contributions have been (unjustly) overshadowed because of his colossal achievements in literature and the arts, felt upset with what he believed to be the limitations of Newtonian physics. For Goethe, “science is as much an inner path of spiritual development as it is a discipline aimed at accumulating knowledge of the physical world. It involves not only a rigorous training of our faculties of observation and thinking, but also of other human faculties which can attune us to the spiritual dimension that underlies and interpenetrates the physical: faculties such as feeling, imagination and intuition. Science, as Goethe conceived and practiced it, has as its highest goal the arousal of the feeling of wonder through contemplative looking (Anschauung), in which the scientist would come to see Godin nature and nature in God”1.
Two worlds oncemore. Another bifurcation. We are still under the spell of the overpowering luster of Galileo and Newton, and have chosen not to navigate theroute of a Goethen science. Feeling, intuition, consciousness and spirituality are still banished from the realmof science, some new enlightenment arising from the field of quantum physics notwithstanding.
The teaching of conventional economics, which, as incredible as it may sound, claims to be “value free”, is a conspicuous case in point. A discipline where mathematics has become an end in itself instead of a tool, and where only that which can bemeasured is important, has generated models and interpretations that are theoretically attractive, but totally divorced from reality. Johannes Brahms composed two concerts for piano and orchestra. Regardless of which of the two may be more to one’s liking, the fascination is with the first. In fact, it is a splendid exposition of the route Brahms finally decided not to navigate. We have been left forever with the curiosity of knowing how the other Brahms might have been. That’s the way it is. A route not navigated remembered only by “library worms”, and a navigated route to which we attribute spectacular successes and achievements. The University in particular has chosen the routes of Machiavelli,Bacon, Descartes, Galileo and Newton. As far as Francis, Pico, Giordano Bruno and Goethe (the scientist) are concerned, they have remained as historical footnotes.
As a result of the navigated route, we have managed to construct a world in which as suggested by the Catalonian philosopher Jordi Pigem,2 the Christian virtues such as: faith, hope and charity, manifest themselves todaymetamorphosed as schizophrenia, depression and narcissism. The navigation, no doubt, has been fascinating and spectacular. There is much in it to be admired. However, if schizophrenia, depression and narcissism are now the mirror of our existential reality, it is because all of a sudden we find ourselves in a world of confusion. In a world of disenchantment, where progress becomes paradoxical and absurd, and reality becomes so incomprehensible, that we desperately seek refuge in a
technology that offers us an escape into virtual realities.
Our life is inevitably a permanent choice of one among an infinity of ontological possibilities. The fact that I was at a given place, at a very precise moment in time, when a given situation occurred or a given person appeared, may have had a decisive effect on the rest ofmy life. A few minutes earlier or later, or a few metres away in any direction, might well have determined a different bifurcation and, hence, a completely different life. As the great Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset pointedout: “I am myself and my circumstance”. What holds for individual lives, holds for communities and whole societies as well. Our so called Western Civilization is the result of its own bifurcations. We are what we are, but we could also have been something we are not. Let us then revise some of our decisive bifurcations.
Sometime during the XIIth Century, in Italy, a youn gman, named Giovanni
Bernardone, while still very young and very rich, decided to radically change his life. As a result of his transformation, we remember him today under a different name: Francis of Assisi. Francis, when he referred to the world, spoke of brother Sun and sister Moon, of brother wolf, and of water, fire and trees, and people as brothers and sisters as well. The world he described and felt was a world where love was not only possible but made sense and had a universal meaning.
Sometime later, also in Italy, we hear the resounding voice of brilliant and astute Machiavelli, warning us that: “It is much safer to be feared than to be loved”. He also describes a world, but in addition he creates a world.
The world we have today is not that of Francis. It is the worldof Machiavelli. Francis was the route not navigated. The navigation we chose was that of Machiavelli, and inspired by it we have constructed our social, political and economic conceptions In 1487, another very young man, just 23 years of age, Francesco Pico dellaMirandola, prepares himself for the public defense of his 900 theses about the concord between the different religions and philosophies. He refuses to enclose himself within the narrowness of just one doctrine.Convinced that Truths are multiple, and never just one, he longs for a spiritual renovation that can reconcile humanity.
Some years later, fervent believer in absolute truth and in the possibilities of certainty, Francis Bacon invites us to torture Nature so that through the delivery of her secrets, we can extract the Truth . Again two worlds. One representing the route we navigated, and the other the route we navigated not. We did not follow the way suggested by Pico della Mirandola. We opted for accepting Bacon’s invitation, and, thus, we continue applying his recipe with efficiency and enthusiasm. We continue torturing Nature in order to extract from her what we believe to be the truth. In the year 1600, Giordano Bruno burns at the stake, victimof his pantheism, since he believed that the Earth is life and has a soul. Everything, for him, are manifestations of life. Everything is life.
Three decades later, Descartes whispers in his Metaphysical Reflexions: “Through my window, what I see, are hats and coats covering automatic machines”. We did not navigate the route of Giordano Bruno. We chose that of Descartes, and, in that manner, we have witnessed the triumph of mechanism and reductionism.
For Galileo and Newton, the language of Nature is mathematics. Nothing is important in science that cannot bemeasured. We and Nature, the observer and the observed, are separate entities. Science is the supreme manifestation of reason, and reason is the supreme attribute of the human being. Goethe, whose scientific contributions have been (unjustly) overshadowed because of his colossal achievements in literature and the arts, felt upset with what he believed to be the limitations of Newtonian physics. For Goethe, “science is as much an inner path of spiritual development as it is a discipline aimed at accumulating knowledge of the physical world. It involves not only a rigorous training of our faculties of observation and thinking, but also of other human faculties which can attune us to the spiritual dimension that underlies and interpenetrates the physical: faculties such as feeling, imagination and intuition. Science, as Goethe conceived and practiced it, has as its highest goal the arousal of the feeling of wonder through contemplative looking (Anschauung), in which the scientist would come to see Godin nature and nature in God”1.
Two worlds oncemore. Another bifurcation. We are still under the spell of the overpowering luster of Galileo and Newton, and have chosen not to navigate theroute of a Goethen science. Feeling, intuition, consciousness and spirituality are still banished from the realmof science, some new enlightenment arising from the field of quantum physics notwithstanding.
The teaching of conventional economics, which, as incredible as it may sound, claims to be “value free”, is a conspicuous case in point. A discipline where mathematics has become an end in itself instead of a tool, and where only that which can bemeasured is important, has generated models and interpretations that are theoretically attractive, but totally divorced from reality. Johannes Brahms composed two concerts for piano and orchestra. Regardless of which of the two may be more to one’s liking, the fascination is with the first. In fact, it is a splendid exposition of the route Brahms finally decided not to navigate. We have been left forever with the curiosity of knowing how the other Brahms might have been. That’s the way it is. A route not navigated remembered only by “library worms”, and a navigated route to which we attribute spectacular successes and achievements. The University in particular has chosen the routes of Machiavelli,Bacon, Descartes, Galileo and Newton. As far as Francis, Pico, Giordano Bruno and Goethe (the scientist) are concerned, they have remained as historical footnotes.
As a result of the navigated route, we have managed to construct a world in which as suggested by the Catalonian philosopher Jordi Pigem,2 the Christian virtues such as: faith, hope and charity, manifest themselves todaymetamorphosed as schizophrenia, depression and narcissism. The navigation, no doubt, has been fascinating and spectacular. There is much in it to be admired. However, if schizophrenia, depression and narcissism are now the mirror of our existential reality, it is because all of a sudden we find ourselves in a world of confusion. In a world of disenchantment, where progress becomes paradoxical and absurd, and reality becomes so incomprehensible, that we desperately seek refuge in a
technology that offers us an escape into virtual realities.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire