The Irrational Basis of Scientific Thinking
The visitor may find it helpful to read the essay Mind and Matter on this site, prior to reading this one.
Through the Quantum Physics we have discovered that the reality at the microscopic, sub-atomic level is strange and incomprehensible by our common sense.  Another incomprehensible state of reality as well, we discover also within the Theory of Relativity.  The Quantum Physics has revealed the wave-like features of the sub-atomic particles and their statistical existence in the space.  The Theory of Relativity has revealed the deviation from the laws of Euclidian Geomery with the discovery of the elastic nature of time and space.  The (different) laws which rule the reality at very small or very large masses and at very high velocities, shatter down our commonly accepted understanding concerning our surrounding world and particularly the scientific pre-assumptions about the human perception upon which the science has been traditionally developed.  Thus in addition to the overwhelming surprise these Modern Physics discoveries had provided, these deep penetrating discoveries also imply us that beyond exploiting them to further our insights into the physical world, we should also focus our attention towards the patterns of our thinking.  Those patterns of our thinking which were found out to be in the course of the scientific progress insufficient or even wrong, might be laid at the basis of the other areas of our life.  And since the scientific development took place mainly in the West, it will not be inappropriate to say that the different expressions of those wrong patterns of thoughts will be found mainly in the West.  Nevertheless, the purpose here is not to point out those expressions but to realize something more fundamental related to our way of thinking. 

That fundamental thing which I wish to discuss is the conscious or the sub-conscious pre-assumption of ours, saying that all what we absorb through our senses and analyse in our mind is the authentic and universal expression of the reality as it is and not just some subjective reflection of it.  A good example for this concept were the ancient Greeks who asserted that the "perfect" and "beautiful" geometry laws as discovered by them, are the laws of God.  Thus they stamped on those laws the stamp of universality.   Newton had considered the rate of lapse of time as a priori uniform everywhere in the space just because the humans did not sense the time is dependent on anything they knew then.  The same way goes the entire traditional belief underlying the scientific investigation which says that we are able to discover objectively all the secrets of the nature and to define them authentically in the human language (verbal or mathematical).  In all these cases, it was assumed as obvious that our perception is indeed objetive and in addition to that it is fully capable to perceive the reality for its Whole extent.  It's true that it is very difficult to imagine something which may lie there, existing beyond our perception ability.  Also the scientific progress should not be ceased for that.   On the other hand, the absolute and decisive attribution of objectivity and universality to the laws of nature as discovered and cognized by us during the scientific progress, prove that there was no sufficient thought dedicated within the scientific enquiry to the limits of our cognition abilities.  Our human ego has put us in a circle of thinking where there was no critical examination of the fundamental pre-assumption on which the whole scientific enqiry was based - the assumption concerning our mind's abilties.  In this circle, the self-examination of the most important tool in the scientific enquiry - the cognition, was totally missing.

Thus, most paradoxically, the science, which is considered the greatest achievement of human rationality, was based on an irrational foundation.  The whole scientific method was based on a very non-scientific pre-assumption.  It was based on a subjective, untested sense of the humanity which was unknowingly and wrongly pre-assumed as objective and universal by the mainstream scientists.  This pre-assumption and the subjective sense deserved from the very beginning a constant critical examination and a doubtful apporach according to the scientific principals themselves.  The essential requirement of preserving the scientific coherency cannot be compromised with overlooking the need for ceaseless examination of the most fundamental pre-assumption on which the whole scientific progress is carried out.  But the scientists never paid much attention to this crucial point.  However,  finally, the scientific method itself pointed out that the elements which it was built upon - senses, cognition, experience - are very much limited and the conscious or the sub-conscious pre-assumption about their objectivity, is fundamentally wrong.  This is the power of the scientific method which eventually revealed the defect concealed within its own foundation.  But by revealing this, the scientific method has brought a partial destruction of itself.

A final comment: The Classical Physics gave us a world picture which is compatible to the human intuition and to the common sense.  The Classical Physics gave this kind of picture because that physics was devoleped on the basis of the human common sense.  Our common sense and intuition built ONLY what they were capable to build and which could finally be perceived by them.  On the other hand, scientists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg, Louis deBroglie, Wolfgang Pauli detached themselves from the usual human intuition, from the common sense and from the assumption they are objective, to formulate a world picture which contradicts these human faculties.  But this picture has been proven until now to illustrate the reality much more authentically and universally.  The more authentic illustration of the physical world became possible when the ego-centric concept of objective and universal human perception was abandoned.

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