O sensowności w świecie, w metafizyce i w nauce

Abstract

The notion of objective sense is commonly used in various contexts, and is also frequently misused. It has been often criticised in the context of natural sciences during the last 200 years - the period of positivistically oriented science. In the ancient Greek philosophy the problem of Nature possessing its own sense was stressed, and from that problem the first germs of science started in the Ionic and Pythagorean schools. Contrary to that, the Aristotelean approach initiated the positivist tradition which banned from science the question of Nature as possessing an internal sense, and the scholastics introduced a concept of the Nature's sense being not intrinsic but granted to it by the divine action. The mathematisation of physics caused that the divine action started to be interpreted as »mathematical«, and in consequence, the sense of Nature was seen as expressed by mathematies. Later on, this mathematically expressed sense of Nature, as seen in physical theories, started to be perceived as indepen­dent from God and having not much to do with the supernatural: inside the mathematical science there was no place for any anthropomorphic Creators. Recently, however, when in the newest physics the mathematical structures have already been perceived not only as a language but also as a kind of ultimate reality, a place for quasi-religious feeling of mystery hidden in these structures has been welcome. It means that within the field of modern physical theories there is no place for the traditional religious concepts, but there is a place for a kind of mysties of objective mathematies in the Pythagorean style, related to the modern »new spirituality« mysticism.The situation is completely different in the area of less mathematised branches like biology The tensions between science and religion are strong there, and the alternative is as follows: traditional religiousness versus traditional atheism, but not a neutral science separated from religion versus a non-traditional mysticism of the mathematies being united with nature, as it is the case of newest physics. So, the biologists who are not ready to accept the popular traditional notion of God directly interfering with nature, e.g. creating the phenomenon of life or man, are ready to accept the old-fashioned »scientific« atheism. That is why the dialogue between science and religion is rather difficult in relation to biology, despite being so fruitful in relation to physics and cosmology.