Epistemological Revolution

[Georges Metanomski <zgmet(at)wanadoo.fr>]

RD chapter "Epistemological Revolution" has been updated
and stored in the temporary location for comments and
discussion:

http://members.fortunecity.com/georges/rdtests/AA_epistemological_revolution.htm

For convenience I copy it in Attachment

Georges.
Epistemological Revolution
--------------------------
Human being distinguishes himself from other living creatures 
mainly by his reason. During his prehistory he applied it 
unconsciously, just happening to be more ingenious than other 
animals, without worrying about the why's and the how's of it. 
Prehistory switches to history when reason becomes conscious, 
aware of itself. For our culture this milestone corresponds 
with the beginning of the Greek Philosophy.

Now, history appeared for a long time to be accidental. It 
seemed to be governed by "Cleopatra's nose", by some king 
happening to be more cunning than another, by sudden rain 
making some road too muddy for artillery. In this state 
history could be merely described, but not rigorously, 
scientifically investigated. 

First trial to approach it as a science is due to Marx, who 
proposed the "means of production" or, as we would say today 
"technology", as an objective criterion allowing to distinguish 
among various historical epochs and to explain their 
transitions. 

However, this criterion, restricted to economy, indeed to its 
part concerned with production, seems to narrow. Human being 
is more than a mule turning in a treadmill, than a honey 
gathering bee. Or, to use by anticipation RD terminology, 
"technology" is "objective" and leaves the "subjective" term 
of the Dichotomy "Human Situation" undetermined.
 
Therefore we propose to supplement it with a "subjective" 
criterion, which we shall call "SPECIFIC DOMAIN" of human 
Reason. In order to define it let's have a look at the 
history starting with the origins of the Greek Philosophy.

At its very beginning, the intellectual interrogation was 
restricted to one single domain: Philosophy. One started soon 
to distinguish within it various sub_domains: ontology, 
epistemology (theory of cognition), ethic, aesthetic, logic. 
Nevertheless, they stayed parts of Philosophy and continued 
to be approached with a unique, purely speculative 
methodology. At the next step some domains got emancipated 
and established themselves as independent disciplines with 
proper methodology, usually more rigorous and experimental, 
more scientific, than pure speculation. First of them were 
MATHEMATICS, ASTRONOMY and POLITICS in Greece. Shortly 
afterwards ETHIC established itself as LAW in Rome. Middle 
Age saw the emancipation of THEOLOGY, with its proper 
scholastic methodology (exceptionally not more scientific). 
Renaissance started the emancipation of Objective Science 
and the 19_th century that of Psychology and Logic, where by 
"Logic" we understand traditional logic, that of Cantorian 
Paradise, prior to the Crisis discussed in "Lost Paradise".

Current established view considers Logic as the last 
emancipated domain and leaves to Philosophy its two remaining 
domains: ONTOLOGY and EPISTEMOLOGY.

We define SPECIFIC DOMAIN as the last emancipated domain and 
propose it as supplementary criterion of classification of 
historical epochs. Consequently, each stable epoch will be 
associated with a SPECIFIC DOMAIN and each transition with a 
new domain raising claims to independence. Transitions may be 
revolutionary, when the old SPECIFIC DOMAIN will not give up 
and the new has to struggle for emancipation.

Thus, we may refer to Middle Age as to the epoch of THEOLOGY, 
and to Renaissance as to OBJECTIVE SCIENCE revolution. Indeed, 
the theological Middle Age used all available social and 
political means to oppose the new scientific ideology. No 
prior period saw as many stakes, no one had more appearances 
of Middle Age than Renaissance. As a rule, the obsolete 
SPECIFIC DOMAIN comes to its apogee when it is still socially, 
but no more intellectually ruling. All established institutions 
are still founded upon obsolete principles, the new domain 
pervades via a few individuals such as Copernicus, Galileo, 
Keppler and Leonardo da Vinci, who are persecuted and sometimes 
murdered like Giordano Bruno; fanaticism and intolerance 
propagate themselves through the masses. The old domain seems 
to triumph just before abdicating.

Finally OBJECTIVE SCIENCE won and established itself as the 
SPECIFIC_ DOMAIN of the epoch of Rationalism. Further 
transitions followed. The limited scope of this chapter forces 
us to skip them and to pass directly to the contemporary 
situation.

As we have said above, Logic is the last officially established
domain. Unfortunately, the emancipated allegedly "scientific" 
Logic become fundamentally anti-scientific. Boosted by unequaled
conceit onto the Olympus of transcendental "reality" it usurped
the god-like power to determine this "reality" with own logical 
concepts and to impose it as the foundation of reason, of social 
ideologies and of science.

In "reason" it culminated with Hegel's -So much the worse for 
the facts-, when facts contradicted his ideas, as well as in his
"Dialectic" asserting that anything can be a "synthesis" of
"thesis" and "antithesis", of Absolute Being and Nothingness.

In social praxis this "reason" founded the ideologies of Lenin's, 
Mao's, Hitler's and other Gulags.

In Science it took form of the transcendental mechanistic
determinism which, counting uniquely the Aether Theory, caused
the largest waste of time, resources, efforts and ingenuity in
the history of Science. ("Aether and Dogmatic Thinking").

We live officially in a "logical" world, ruled by this absolute,
transcendental, noumenalistic "Logic". "Logic" based Set Theory 
is the official foundation of Mathematics, which, in turn claim 
to be the most fundamental science. Human beings are classified, 
discriminated and exterminated on the base of absolute "logical" 
concepts, such as race, nation or religion.
 
Contrarily to this established opinion it is our thesis that:
 
WE LIVE CURRENTLY AMID THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL REVOLUTION.  

According to our definition this means that EPISTEMOLOGY became 
unofficially the SPECIFIC DOMAIN of our time, that the social, 
scientific and technological development have revealed new 
aspects of existence which cannot  be even formulated, let alone
solved with help of absolute "Logic", but require some other more 
conform context. This context, the Applied EPISTEMOLOGY, or,
as Einstein called it the New Manner of Thinking (NMT), has 
already been conceived by him while defining Relativity Theories 
and is locally applied by small intellectual elite in chosen, 
deepest, scientific domains, mainly in Physics. However, it's 
applied there implicitly, without ever having been formulated as 
an autonomous Inferencing System. Creative physicists don't need 
it, it became their second nature. After Einstein, dealing with
Physical Models is nothing else than the NMT on the go. And,
perhaps surprisingly, Physics is the simplest of sciences. The
aura of complexity surrounding it in the eyes of laymen is due
to the relative complexity of its mathematical tools. However,
once having mastered them, one discovers that they are there
to express simply physical concepts and thus to render Physics 
extremely simple.

Unlike Physics, the critical problems of human and social praxis 
such as demography, ecology or globalization cannot be simplified 
by mathematical formalisms and require explicit Inferencing 
structures to be formulated, not to mention to be processed and, 
hopefully, solved. In other terms, human and social praxis 
require extension of the NMT, inherent in current Physics, over 
the whole human Universe of Discourse, as well as its definition 
as an autonomous Inferencing System.

That's what Einstein meant saying:

A NEW MANNER OF THINKING IS ESSENTIAL IF HUMANKIND IS TO SURVIVE

Relativistic Dialectic (RD) presented in this study endeavors to
explicate Einstein's NMT as the emancipated Applied Epistemology,
as an autonomous Inferencing System extended over the whole human 
Universe of Discourse and applicable for formulating and 
processing of critical human and social issues. 

It's "Relativistic", because the NMT postulates relativity of
human knowledge.

It's "Dialectic" because Relativity implies necessarily a basic
dialectic or polar structure of apparently opposed, but in fact
complementary terms or poles. 

RD has, of course, nothing to do with its unfortunate homonym,
the Hegel's "Dialectic" playing in its ivory tower of extreme 
conceit with Absolute Beings and Nothignesses.

Finally, the term REVOLUTION applies to our context literally: 
contemporary fanatical discrimination and extermination of 
hundreds of millions making Renaissance and Inquisition look 
like children play is one of social manifestations of "Logic" 
based dogmatic ideologies defending their obsolete establishment.