Can science make sense?

Science makes sense. But science cannot make 'the' sense. Science functions in the 'middle'. It never includes and understands but 'between'. Between Alpha and Omega only. The 'extreme' questions are beyond its control..

The scientific totalizing is thus never an absolute totality. Such a claim was asserted in the old days by the naive metaphysical presuppositions of scientism. The fundamental error of such a view was to ignore the ecosystem in which science is functioning. Every scientific place is always 'included' by a broader including space. Science occupies an immense space, undoubtedly. But this space itself is placed in a bigger one. True science knows that its coherence functions like an insular coherence in the middle of other possible coherences.

Scientific objectivity wants to be total and totalitarian, i.e. it aims at the absolute Totality of all the possible objects. Of course any human project carries a tendency to be exclusive, and the technical-scientist project is particularly affected by this natural rational imperialism. But the scientific reason cannot be identified with the total reason. It is only one specific manner of the reason to constitute itself. It represents only one of the modes of the logos. The conscious or unconscious tendency of its project presupposes that all can become object of science and, therefore, to become understandable while concerned with only scientific intelligibility. But the big question remains: can the total field of the human experience be buckled into the scientific adding up? Doesn't the total human experience remain radically and implacably open on another dimension than the strict and cold scientific articulation? The total sense of existence.

What science does not lodge and what, on the contrary, lodges science. First, science itself. The conditions of possibility of science are beyond the science. Why is something as a science possible? The most incomprehensible, notes Einstein, is that science is possible.

Secondly, the reason. Science is never but the reason made up at a given time. What founds this made up reason is the constituent reason, i.e. the absolute requirement itself of non-contradiction, of totality and of coherence.

Thirdly, the act of being i.e. the irreducible factitiousness of being… Science necessarily begins from a `there is' that it does not create. But how can you explain and understand that ‘there is’ something rather than nothing as Leibniz wonders.

Fourthly, the rationality of the reality. Every thing is not possible. All things are not possible together, anywhere, at any time, nor anyhow. The universe is governed by laws without these laws science would be impossible. This `pressure' determines an order of being and successions. Beings and phenomena are determined. Even `chance' is determined, if you consider that there is not only the space of the (random) play, there are not only the rules of the game but basically the rules which govern the possibility of the game itself! Without the belief in the internal harmony of our world, according to the word of Einstein, science could not be possible.

So many mysteries surround us and so many questions, already in the field of the simple material nature. Is the universe really system, mega-system, or is it an irreducible scattered plurality? Are our epistemological possibilities regarding the universe total or simply regional? Is the universe, may it be total or regional, understandable in a homogeneous or in a heterogeneous way? What is really 'matter'? What is energy? What is space-time? Is time absolutely irreversible? Is the cosmos unique or is there a plurality of worlds? Is this possible plurality basically complementary or is it antagonistic? Do there exist anti-universes? Are the interactions we know (and we unify) the only interactions?

Like a `bubble' floating on infinity, such is the scientific reason. Its spherical coherence occupies the vast space of the middle. The extremes are excluded from it. However, it is impossible to reduce them to silence. Which meaning, however, can have the medium without its extremes? Which is the reason of the reason? Such a question gives criticism very short notice. It marks an impotent stop because such a question overflows the possibility of the reason itself and opens a gaping infinity. Here is the reason seized of giddiness. However such a question does not have anything irrational.

We know only from the bottom of mystery. Like a raft on the immense ocean of the questions… How far is our epistemological possibility going? Is the universe a system or a scattered plurality? Is the possibility of our knowledge of the universe total or simply regional? Is the universe understandable in a homogeneous or in a heterogeneous way? What is really matter? What is energy? What is space and time? Is time absolutely irreversible? What is necessity? What is chance? Is there only one cosmos or a plurality of worlds? If there is plurality, is it basically complementary or antagonistic? Do anti-universes exist? Are the interactions which we know and which we manage to unify the only interactions? Are the principles of today’s scientific intelligibility absolute or transitory? Is our intellectual space homogeneous? Which is the probability of new epistemological revolutions? Is there only one order of intelligibility or a plurality of orders? Etc, etc.

Science is a human construction. A logically and rationally coherent construction which holds its truth and its certainty of this coherence itself. This certainty is however only internal. It affects only its insular content. This one remains 'floating' in an including space which enables it to exist but on which it does not have itself any hold like the reason, the necessity, the existence. These fundamental conditions of science slip out of the possibility of science. This including possibility that science presupposes without being able to fund it constitutes the originating postulate of science. Science is not only hypothetical-deductive in its process, it is hypothetical-deductive in its constitution. The scientist is, as Einstein says, animated belief in the internal harmony of our world. He makes something like an act of faith in the order of the universe without being able to justify it.

You cannot identify the scientific reason with the total reason. In fact, it represents only one of the modes of the logos. Also, the total field of the human experience refuses to be buckled in scientific totalizing. It remains open on some 'other' thing. As the act to be. The mystery of our being. The sacral experience. Existential emergence. Creation. Infinity. Freedom. Encounter. The mystics solidarity of the world. Value. Love. Beauty. Good. Evil. Time. Eternity. The sense. The sense of sense. God…

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