Science and religion-part 2

It is indeed ironic that Whitehead and Russell, his student, would lead the effort to undermine and negate the importance of the religous consciousness and metaphysical thinking in general by the espousal of a defense of man's rational and scientific consciousness which was as absoultist in its claims as the most authortarian theology had been. This particular variant of positivism came from the area of mathematics called foundations and was essentially an effort to provide a foundation in logic and set theory for the fundamental axioms of geometry and arithmetic, the very basis of mathematical reasoning. Had this been successful, all of scientific reasoning would have been placed on an unasialable rational foundation, and the scientific and rational consciousness of man might well have displaced the spiritual entirely. Whitehead called his method the method of extended abstraction and the principia mathematica they produced certainly lives up to that expectation. More than thirth years would pass before the Whitehead Russell program in this area of the foundations of mathematics would be challanged, but when it happened it would be such a complete undermining of their program to establish the foundations of scientific and mathematical inquiry upon an unassailable metaphysical foundation that it would open wide the issue of a metaphysical component or dimension of scientific rational inquiry itself. The particular challange came from several papers published by Kurt Godel in the nineteen thirties which essentially and compellingly argued that for any mathematical system as rich as the integers there are certain axioms in the system which are 'true' for the system by are not provable except by arbitrary reference outside the system. In effect, no mathematical system is self-contained. A fatal blow was delivered to the philosophical school of mathematical realism which desired to establish a foritori (by the greater force of the argument) the absolute verity of scientific mathematical propositions of science and its metaphysical apologetic, positivism.

Science and religion

When A.N. Whitehead came to Harvard in the early 20th century, he discovered the unknown genius of Wm James. Harvard at this time was scaracly the major academic institution that it is today. Most serious students went to European universities for their graduate studies if they were able. Whitehead was so impressed with James that he arranged to get James' ideas exposed to the European intellegensia of the day by getting him invited to deliver the prestigeous Gifford lectures at the Univ. of Edenborough. These lectures became famous and were published as 'The Varieties of Religous Experience.' In them James essentially argues for the legitmacy of the religous consciousness as central to man's fundamental or intrinsic nature. For James, man has a spiritual side to him no matter what his anthropological setting. In fact, James maintains, it is his religous consciousness that separates man biologically from other members of the animal kingdom.

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