Date: Fri, 04 Nov 1994 15:05:19 +0200 From: Jukka Tapani Sarjala <juksar@utu.fi> To: h-verkko@sara.cc.utu.fi Subject: Re: On relativism
Martin Kusch wrote:
>Enlisting Nietzsche as a back-up for Itkonen is a bit of a curious move,
That wasn't my intention, I am sorry.
>let me
>only say that what I find most valuable in Nietzsche is his critique
>and ridicule of the pathos of suffering and pain linked to the pursuit of
>knowledge. It is just this pathos with which Jukka speaks.
You have misunderstood me. I don't like pathos (especially in a romantic sense), which is probably the target of Nietzsches' critique. I agree: to study history is a great fun. What I meant was that we can estimate and reject those sublime and rational theories, which scholars produce in humanities and science. Truth is always one step ahead of our knowledge. We can't wriggle our way out of it, that's why we are "doomed". Let's forget Herr Friedrich (but he did write about the bipolarity of human existence: on the one hand we try to construct beautiful theories about reality; on the other hand most of them collapse in the long run because they can't stand up the pressure of our experience of truth).
>Sociologists who have studied scientists' discourse and values
>have not found that scientists made much of absolute truth.
Perhaps that is because scientists have no need to do that. Truth-questions are latent. People usually don't talk about them. I can't imagine a scientist who would say that he has nothing to do with the truth. In that case he wouldn't have so many listeners and readers. I still insist that there is some kind of ideal of absolute truth. We can't compare theories with reality, but in spite of this fact they change. We couldn't compare different theories (in a certain discipline) with each other unless we hadn't a norm to search for absolute truth. Of course we can break against the norm - people make murders, too. This norm has its genesis, its historical background. And as some scholars have said, genesis and validity are two different things.
There's a good article on the history of universe by Steven Weinberg (I hope I recall the name right) in October issue of Scientific American. There the writer opens up with the question of beauty when we look up to the stars at night. He's right, our will-to-truth lies in this kind of experience (when we talk about cosmology). It's not an aesthetic experience in the first place.
Cheers, Jukka Sarjala