Larson: "analytical science is intrinsically evil, but rather that it is intrinsically superficial simply because quantitative analysis can never touch or understand the nature of any substance created by God out of nothing..John Horgan’s best-selling book The End of Science (Broadway Books, 1996). Mr. Horgan, former senior writer at Scientific American, interviewed several dozen of the most famous and prize-winning scientists in the world as to their views regarding the “meaning of science”, the “end of science”, etc. He discovered and chronicles what he calls a world of “ironic” science: a world in which virtually no one is sure of any reality, or that there even is such a thing; there is total confusion in regard to the science of epistemology – whether there is or can be any true correspondence between the human mind and objective reality (or whether this is even a valid distinction or question); there appears to be a radical discontinuum between the world of ordinary human experience".
https://www.thefredmartinezreport.com/2024/06/larson-atomism-engulfing-westbruno_13.html
Reductive science is the most destructive heresy of our times. But it is more than a heresy. It is, as I have already pointed out, an ambience, a poisoned atmosphere, which modern man takes in with virtually every breath. This poison convinces modern man not only that material realities are reducible to accidental and quantifiable being, but it also creates that intellectual ambience which convinces him that he himself is reducible to accidental properties – that his love is reducible to hormonal reactions; his aspirations for truth reducible to conditioned responses; his belief in God a neurological reaction to fear and uncertainty.
But its most destructive effect is that it eliminates that fundamental mysteriousness about life and creation which leads a person to think about and hunger after God. This is why there is now so much indifference towards God. And this is also why, despite all the scientific and technological advance of our time, man becomes more and more confused not only as to his own nature, but also as to the nature of the smallest substance. It is not that analytical science is intrinsically evil, but rather that it is intrinsically superficial simply because quantitative analysis can never touch or understand the nature of any substance created by God out of nothing.
That modern, reductive analytical science has generated superficiality, confusion, and despair is not my conclusion alone. Anyone interested in this subject would do well to read John Horgan’s best-selling book The End of Science (Broadway Books, 1996). Mr. Horgan, former senior writer at Scientific American, interviewed several dozen of the most famous and prize-winning scientists in the world as to their views regarding the “meaning of science”, the “end of science”, etc. He discovered and chronicles what he calls a world of “ironic” science: a world in which virtually no one is sure of any reality, or that there even is such a thing; there is total confusion in regard to the science of epistemology – whether there is or can be any true correspondence between the human mind and objective reality (or whether this is even a valid distinction or question); there appears to be a radical discontinuum between the world of ordinary human experience and perception and the “scientific” apprehension of things; and yet most, including Mr. Horgan, still continue to believe in the supremacy of analytical science as an “unfolder” of the depths of reality, while at the same time holding to a contemptuous view of religious faith (and certainly Thomistic philosophy).
This is the world that science has built, and it is the world which now faces a decay and dissolution which will make any previous holocaust appear miniscule. The "scientific" experiments of Communism and Nazism are only mild precursors and foreshadowers of what is yet to come unless the hold is broken upon this "Brave New Scientific World," and we return to a truly Christian civilization, which achieved perfection of intellectual expression in the great synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas.
In Him We live, and Move, and Are
At the very center of the magnificent Thomistic philosophical understanding of man and his analogical relationship to God is the beautiful passage from the book of Acts in which St. Paul, while addressing the Athenians, proclaims:
“That they should seek God, if happily they may feel after him or find him, although he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and are.” (Acts 17:27)
The only philosophical approach, the only metaphysics, which makes possible this intimacy with God, without this in any way involving a false pantheistic identification of human nature with the Divine, is that understanding of creation which sees the substantial nature of all created substances as being the action of God creating and sustaining them out of nothing every moment of their existence.
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