1. The Enlightenment raised questions about exactly what ‘truth’ is.
As the enlightenment was about science and reason, it answered that question via same:
Classical physics suggests a world of matter in motion: atoms bumping around in the void. And, carried forward, the ‘Queen of the Sciences’ determined that the only things said to be real were mass, velocity, and, by extension, those things that could be quantified and described in mathematical formulas. Such are referred to as ‘quantities.’
2. Sensations such as color, sound, texture, taste, and smell were called ‘qualities,’ and considered not quite real in the same way: rather, they are said to be subjective effects produced by atoms impinging on our senses. Qualities, then, were considered less susceptible to being mathematically weighed, counted, or measured.
a subset of that category Included moral ideas, values, purpose, love, or beauty. They are merely illusions produced by the human mind.
3. The Industrial Revolution invested ‘quantities’ with import, significance, over ‘qualities.’ The central motivation of this transition of society was to harness technological power to satisfy purely material wants; there is a ruthlessness and power of the machine that fosters the idea of a universe governed by inexorable mechanical forces rather than one of biblical genesis.
a. The mechanistic worldview, therefore, is essentially a substitute religion.
b. One can see the attraction this had for the physicist, and those desirous to share their acclaim! On the one hand, it absolved one of the need to consider or obey anything not within their discipline, and on the other, everything not so contained, mathematically, was demoted to merely a creation of the human imagination, the mind.
c. Materialism: those things that could be measured. Covered in "Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning," by Nancy Pearcey, chapter seven.
There is a question that should logically follow the recognition of the above dichotomy...and that is the question of ....let's call it happiness, or satisfaction with one's life: an obedience to science, or to that quality called morality, or religion.
Or....is happiness really not important?
As the enlightenment was about science and reason, it answered that question via same:
Classical physics suggests a world of matter in motion: atoms bumping around in the void. And, carried forward, the ‘Queen of the Sciences’ determined that the only things said to be real were mass, velocity, and, by extension, those things that could be quantified and described in mathematical formulas. Such are referred to as ‘quantities.’
2. Sensations such as color, sound, texture, taste, and smell were called ‘qualities,’ and considered not quite real in the same way: rather, they are said to be subjective effects produced by atoms impinging on our senses. Qualities, then, were considered less susceptible to being mathematically weighed, counted, or measured.
a subset of that category Included moral ideas, values, purpose, love, or beauty. They are merely illusions produced by the human mind.
3. The Industrial Revolution invested ‘quantities’ with import, significance, over ‘qualities.’ The central motivation of this transition of society was to harness technological power to satisfy purely material wants; there is a ruthlessness and power of the machine that fosters the idea of a universe governed by inexorable mechanical forces rather than one of biblical genesis.
a. The mechanistic worldview, therefore, is essentially a substitute religion.
b. One can see the attraction this had for the physicist, and those desirous to share their acclaim! On the one hand, it absolved one of the need to consider or obey anything not within their discipline, and on the other, everything not so contained, mathematically, was demoted to merely a creation of the human imagination, the mind.
c. Materialism: those things that could be measured. Covered in "Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning," by Nancy Pearcey, chapter seven.
There is a question that should logically follow the recognition of the above dichotomy...and that is the question of ....let's call it happiness, or satisfaction with one's life: an obedience to science, or to that quality called morality, or religion.
Or....is happiness really not important?