First Word

My colleague has begun to address some of the issues of the philosophy of science (see e.g. review of Gordon Clark on science), but it is also necessary to explore some of the broader issues involved in science.

Below are a few Wittgenstein quotes on science. Like C. S. Lewis and Tolkien, Wittgenstein was abhorred by what the west was becoming, due, in a large part, to the cultural domination of science and technology. While many may shrug off Wittgenstein’s views as Luddite, I find myself having a great deal of sympathy for them. These comments come from his personal notebooks collected by Georg Henrik von Wright and translated by Peter Finch.

Science and Truth

People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them – that does not occur to them.

Science: enrichment and impoverishment. One particular method elbows all the others aside. They all seem paltry by comparison, preliminary stages at best. You must go right down to the original sources so as to see them all side by side, both the neglected and the preferred.

What a curious attitude scientists have –: “We still don’t know that; but it is knowable and it is only a matter of time before we get to know it!” As if that went without saying.–

“We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.” (Tractatus 6.52)

Science and Progress

The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn’t absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are.

Science and industry, and their progress, might turn out to be the most enduring thing in the modern world. Perhaps any speculation about a coming collapse of science and industry is, for the present and for a long time to come, nothing but a dream; perhaps science and industry, having caused infinite misery in the process, will unite the world – I mean condense it into a single unit, though one in which peace is the last thing that will find a home. Because science and industry do decide wars, or so it seems.

The “Bomb”

The hysterical fear over the atom bomb now being experienced, or at any rate expressed, by the public almost suggests that at last something really salutary has been invented. The fright at least gives the impression of a really effective bitter medicine. I can’t help thinking: if this didn’t have something good about it the philistines wouldn’t be making an outcry. But perhaps this too is a childish idea. Because really all I can mean is that the bomb offers a prospect of the end, the destruction, of an evil,– our disgusting soapy water science. And certainly that’s not an unpleasant thought; but who can say what would come after this destruction? The people now making speeches against producing the bomb are undoubtedly the scum of the intellectuals, but even that does not prove beyond question that what they abominate is to be welcome.

[Wittgenstein was doubtless thinking of Bertrand Russell and his kind when he writes, “scum of the intellectuals.” His contempt for the “peace movement” is brought out by a humorous story recounted by Paul Engelmann.

“When, in the ‘twenties, Russell wanted to establish, or join, a ‘World Organization for Peace and Freedom’ or something similar, Wittgenstein rebuked him so severely, that Russell said to him: ‘Well, I suppose you would rather establish a World Organization for War and Slavery’, to which Wittgenstein passionately assented: ‘Yes, rather that, rather that!’”]