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The World's Fair - Thar be monsters: Science, Religion, Art, ...

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Saved by 3 people (2 private), first by anonymouse user on 2007-08-10


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In this post, I'd like to address fear of the unknown.

Highlighted by forestfortrees

e unknown. The title of the post comes from the tired cliché d

Highlighted by fairybel

We tend to be afraid of what we don't know, but are soon emboldened through contact, information, and a kind of narrative sense

Highlighted by forestfortrees

the very laudable goal of science is to translate the unknown into the known. To bring more of the world into the province of human understanding. One potential conclusion to draw from this is that, given enough time, all of the world will be brought under the auspices of human knowledge.

Highlighted by forestfortrees

post, it seems to others as well) that the very laudable goal of science is to translate the unknown into the known. To bring more of the world into the province of human understanding. One potential conclusion to draw from this is that, given enough time, all of the world will be brought under the auspices of human knowledge. So it was with Diderot and d'Alembert.

Highlighted by fairybel

laudable goal of science is to translate the unknown into the known.

Highlighted by oldjove

This enlightenment ideal gets repeated, I would argue, in contemporary responses to religion.

Highlighted by forestfortrees

when everything is, or at least soon will be, explainable through scientific reasoning and investigation?

Highlighted by oldjove

Faith that science can and will offer certainty about the world and our place in it, be it biochemical or whatever.

Highlighted by oldjove

Does this persistence of the unknown go some way toward explaining (though not necessarily justifying) the persistence of religious belief that can operate as a bulwark against change and uncertainty?

Highlighted by forestfortrees

For Roquentin, the categories of understanding, of classifying things as separate and meaningful, can fall away and leave nothing in its place.

Highlighted by forestfortrees

It seems relatively human to hold onto some kind of certainty - be it faith in religious dogma, or a specific scientific schema, or a general scientific methodology which will sure reach its apex. It's not for nothing that Plato defined knowledge very precisely, as being immutable and eternal .

Highlighted by forestfortrees

there will always be some element of unknown in the world

Highlighted by forestfortrees

to overcome the reactionary glom onto religion in the face of scientific uncertainty, we can seek to reconcile science to an embrace of irreducible unknown-ness.

Highlighted by forestfortrees

it doesn't involve, necessarily, a turn to the irrational. It may, instead, open up the world, if only slightly.

Highlighted by forestfortrees

that is the province of art - to "express the inexpressibility of the inexpressible."

Highlighted by forestfortrees

What would that look like? I don't know. But it may be important to maintain some sense of presence for the remainder, to acknowledge that there are parts of the world that eternally resist conceptualization and they should not be feared. For Adorno (see, I didn't forget), that is the province of art - to "express the inexpressibility of the inexpressible."

Highlighted by oldjove

what we need is space for richer experiences and to not simply fear the unknown (we will always do that, I think, to some degree), but to also see in it possibility and humility.

Highlighted by forestfortrees