Sunday, 24 February 2008
knowledge for sake of action
Knowledge for the Sake of Action - Science and Torah - Science Is Torah.
In my last few posts and comments on them, I proposed that most
secular study such as the sciences and most of the humanities are
necessary to get to Yediat Hashem - Knowledge of God - which is the
objective of humanity. Rambam often tells us that we learn Halacha to
know how to do the Mitzvot which help us perfect our personality and
thinking so that we can understand the sciences from a perspective
that will lead us to God. In this sense, the Mitzvot and the Halacha
that teaches us how to perform them are tools that precede and at best
are equal in importance with the necessary sciences. The most telling
statement is in MN 3:51 where he presents the allegory of the king
living in the inner chambers of the palace and his subjects looking to
find the way in. He places the Halachik authorities who have no
philosophic inclination in the courtyard circling the palace, together
with those who learn the basic laws of logic and Math.
"Those who arrive at the palace, but go round about it, are those who
devote themselves exclusively to the study of the practical law. They
believe traditionally in true principles of faith, and learn the
practical worship of God, but are not trained in philosophical
treatment of the principles of the Law, and do not endeavor to
establish the truth of their faith by proof... My son, so long as you
are engaged in studying the Mathematical Sciences and Logic, you
belong to those who go round about the palace in search of the gate."
He places the scientist who has no philosophical training in the
antechambers together with those who seek to understand the proofs for
God.
"Those who undertake to investigate the principles of religion have
come into the antechamber; and there is no doubt that these can also
be divided into different grades... If you however understood the
natural things you have entered the habitation and are walking in the
antechambers."
However, there is one additional point that is not accepted by all who
read Rambam but is to me clear like day. The objective is Yediat
Hashem but not for knowledge alone. Knowledge of God is equated with
Olam Haba and with the highest levels of experiential attachment to
God - Deveikut - and "Kiss of Death" - Mitat Neshikah. Knowledge of
God however is not the ultimate objective but a stepping-stone and has
as its own objective the emulation of God. When one knows God through
His actions and analyzes them properly, he can understand what God
wants from us and what our role is in the universe. That is the
meaning of the 13 attributes of God that we declaim as part of our
Teshuvah process.
"Our Sages call them Midot (qualities), and speak of the thirteen
Midot of God ... only the thirteen Midot are mentioned, because they
include those acts of God which refer to the creation and the
government of mankind, and to know these acts was the principal object
of the prayer of Moses." (MN 1:54)
In other words if man wants to perfect himself, in the process of
searching for God he has to meditate on God's action or attributes so
that he can emulate them. As Rambam states many times "good" is the
promotion of existence and continuity. When we say God is good by
definition, we are saying that He is the reason and First Cause for
existence. If we want to do "good", there is only one approach;
emulate God who is good by definition and do our part in promoting
existence and continuity.
After explaining in MN 3:54 that -
"The fourth kind of perfection is the true perfection of man: the
possession of the highest, intellectual faculties; the possession of
such notions which lead to true metaphysical opinions as regards God.
With this perfection, man has obtained his final object; it gives him
true human perfection; it remains to him alone; it gives him
immortality, and on its account, he is called man... And that the
religious acts prescribed by the Law, the various kinds of worship and
the moral principles which benefit all people in their social
intercourse with each other, do not constitute the ultimate aim of
man, nor can they be compared to it, for they are but preparations
leading to it."
Rambam makes the point that Knowledge is not enough.
"The prophet [Yirmyahu 9:22-23] does not content himself with
explaining that the knowledge of God is the highest kind of
perfection... The prophet thus, in conclusion, says, "For in these
things I delight, says the Lord," i.e., my object [in saying this] is
that you shall practice loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness
in the earth. In a similar manner, we have shown (MN I: 54) that the
object of the enumeration of God's thirteen attributes is the lesson
that we should acquire similar attributes and act accordingly. The
object of the above passage is therefore to declare, that the
perfection, in which man can truly glory, is attained by him when he
has acquired--as far as this is possible for man--the knowledge of
God, the knowledge of His Providence, and of the manner in which it
influences His creatures in their production and continued existence.
Having acquired the knowledge he will then be determined always to
seek loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness, and thus to imitate
the ways of God."
Clearly, Rambam does not stop at knowledge of God alone. Humanity's
objective is to figure out how to act appropriately and perform its
role in creation through knowledge. I believe that this point is the
most important idea in Rambam's thought and without it, we miss the
greatest insight he teaches us. Only the intellectually perfected man
can know what his role is in creation and act appropriately. That
person is represented by the prophet and Moshe the greatest and unique
prophet is the paradigm of such a human being. Moshe gave the world,
through the Jewish people, the eternal Torah, the divine approach to
man's perfection. In practical terms, Judaism sees human knowledge as
a way of serving God by acting to fulfill His wish that each component
of the existence He created play its role in the continuity of His
creation.
The limits of human knowledge and the implications thereof will be the
subject of my next post.
oliver kamm
Oliver Kamm
I have been enjoying the blog of Oliver Kamm. Kamm is a true
rationalist. Most of my readers will be aware that people who call
themselves rationalists tend to be suffering from more delusions
than most. They have simply substituted what they took to be one
set of myths (usually religious) for another set (usually
reductionist and political). Kamm is far more clear-eyed. In fact,
the only illusion he allows himself is that he is a member of the
political left. And yet his main literary activity is to puncture
the bubbles that make up the worldview of certain members of
mainstream left.
For some of this group, to call yourself leftwing requires that you
hold to certain propositions. These include that America is to
blame for most of the world's problems, that the Soviet Union was a
glorious experiment that went wrong and that the Palestinians are
entirely innocent of the causes of their suffering. Economically,
you must be anti-globalisation, against free trade, in favour of
protectionism (which you call fair trade) and impatiently awaiting
the collapse of capitalism. On the domestic front, you must hate
Margaret Thatcher, laud the Trade Unions, believe that the
Argentine battle cruiser, the Belgrano, represented no threat to
the British fleet when it was sunk during the Falklands War and
blame the Middle Classes for everything that is wrong with the
British education system.
As far as I can gather, Kamm does not subscribe to any of these
propositions. Nor, I should hasten to add, do many people in the
Labour Government, which could be described as social democratic
but never as socialist. The Labour Party's activist base, on the
other hand, is well to the left of the leadership.
So Kamm is a liberal who delights in destroying the myths of the
left (and occasionally the far right too, although he restricts
himself to holocaust denial debunking in this respect). Anyone who
enjoys forensic prose coupled with high intelligence laced with a
Tabasco of arrogance will find his blog well worth perusing. He is
especially strong on the continuing legends of the Cold War,
especially those that seek to show a moral equivalence between the
democratic United States and the tyranny of the Soviet Union.
Like many other signatories of the Euston Manifesto, on one subject
he is quite misguided. As an atheist, he occasionally feels a need
to be rude about religion. This has also led him to praise the
recent books by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. I can
only assume that this is one area of study where he is not as well
briefed as he is in modern history and contemporary politics.
Consequently, he is unable to distinguish between useful
scholarship on the subject and the rhetoric that he despises in
other areas. Not that he would convert; but he should be aware that
the history and science of religious belief bears little
resemblance to Hitchens' and Dawkins' caricature. Sadly, I don't
think he would consider brushing up on theological questions would
be a valuable use of his time and so this flaw in his thinking is
likely to be maintained.
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the
Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely
free.
: Posted by James : Permanent Link :
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frontiers of junk science global
Frontiers of Junk Science: Global warming snow job melting?
"According to a recent National Center for Policy Analysis report,
last year's declaration of impending doom from the UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the form of its
Fourth Assessment Report was based on opinion instead of science. As
hard data continues to emerge, global warming becomes increasingly
difficult to defend. Hundreds of highly qualified scientists and
climatologists unrelated to the UN's IPCC pocket-science squad are
contesting the assumption of so-called "experts" that CO2 is the
primary force driving climate change. A number of scientists discount
the warming theory entirely. In fact, many believe that the globe may
be getting cooler--and some of them are putting their money where
their mouths are. Believing that the world will be cooler in ten
years, a pair of Russian scientists have even waged a $10,000 bet with
British climate "expert" and global-warming alarmist James Annan.
Meanwhile, China is battling its coldest winter in a century. Scores
of people are dead and millions are stranded. Will Leftmedia shills
report the events there with newfound skepticism for global warming?
Don't count on it."
-The Patriot Post
posted by HeavyHanded at 6:56 PM
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2006_10_01_archive
Are hard science fiction readers squeamish?
Science fiction author Chris Moriarty (most recent book: Spin Control)
has an essay on his web site about "hard" science fiction. He points
out that until recently some considered the biological sciences were
considered to be too "fantastic" to be science fiction. He speculates,
though, that perhaps part of the problem that the biosciences have had
in being accepted into the "hard science fiction" realm is that
descriptions of biology (particularly human biology) make some readers
uncomfortable.
Hard sf may be a broad field and getting broader daily -- I
remember when people said C. J. Cherry's Cyteen wasn't hard sf
because cloning was 'fantasy science' (5) -- but it will always be
a genre written by and for people who are passionate (albeit at
times foolishly passionate) about science and technology.
(5) Actually, I think there may be another, non-political factor
behind the longstanding reluctance to include stories based on
biology in the hard SF cannon. Part of it is a straightforward and
perfectly understandable aesthetic impulse; until the advent of
genetic engineering and mathematical biology, there was a truly
deplorable absence of equations in most biology texts, which made
biology-based sf stories a hard sell for the numerophilic hard-cord
hard SF fan. However, I can't quite buck the suspicion that part of
hard SF's historic biology phobia was mere squeamishness. The kind
of squeamishness so entertainingly encapsulated in the old Star
Trek episode, Amok Time, where Spock precedes a highly euphemistic
discussion of salmon spawning procedures with the shamefaced
admission that his illness "has to do with biology . . . Vulcan
biology."
Is that true? It certainly sounds plausible to me. I've certainly met
"engineering types" that are much happier in a simple universe made up
of numbers and circuits and metal than the fluids and squishiness of
the biological world.
Oh, and the dialog from Amok Time"? Here is a sample of the dialog
where Spock dances around the basics of Vulcan biology:
"There are precedents in nature, Captain... the giant eel-birds of
Regulus Five. Once each eleven years, they must return to the
caverns where they hatched. On your Earth, the salmon. They must
return to that one stream where they were born, to spawn - or die
in trying."
"But you're not a fish, Mr. Spock-"
"No - nor am I a man... I'm a Vulcan. I had hoped I would be spared
this, but the ancient drives are too strong. Eventually, they catch
up with us... and we are driven by forces we cannot control - to
return home, and take a wife... or die."
(pause) "I haven't heard a word you said - and I'll get you to
Vulcan, somehow."
- Spock and Kirk
It's silly dialog, but I suspect it was written as much to get around
television censorship of anything having to do with s-e-x as
squeamishness on the part of the writers and fans. I could be wrong,
of course, since Star Trek has a long history of really crappy
biology. (But happily for me, lots of blog fodder).
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