29/08/2024

Philosophy

There is a unique role that the word ‘rationality’ plays in Western culture.

According to the standard trope rationality is a mystical quality. It has the following virtues;

Ancient Greek philosophy, it is claimed, was the birth of the first attempt to understand the world using rationality. One author writes: “Ancient Greek philosophy brought Logos to fore and defined it as the crucial problem and the postulate of the human. We translate the Greek term Logos in English as reason or rationality.”¹
Another author treats the Greeks as discovering rationality: ‘The Greek discovery of practical reason, as the skilled performance of strategic thinking in public and private affairs, was an intellectual breakthrough ‘²

There is then a competing narrative that rationality emerged with the Enlightenment. Underlying both is the role of Kant. Peter Park showed the importance of Kant in starting the revision of philosophical history³ ( Peter Park). In order to argue that Europeans were superior and had mental faculties that other humans lacked it was necessary to identify these faculties. It is quite important to follow the steps. Newton was identified with the emergence of scientific rationalism and that the Newtonian revolution was something uniquely European. Only Europeans could fully understand science according to Kant and certainly only Europeans could make advances in sciences. This view went so much against centuries of tradition that wholesale rewriting of history was required and slavishly completed.

A major problem would be that Newton was a deep mystic and spent more time on mystical pursuits than what we today recognise as science. This is quite important because we shall find over and over again is that the standard trope that any and all scientists do not believe in religion etc is simply false. Pew finds that over 50% of scientists believe in the divine. According to the poll, just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power.⁴ But let us not let a fact get in our way.

Europeans began defining ‘rational’ as following mere logic and calculation. Much of this is mere propaganda. Even Hegel dismissed logic as a pointless guide on the basis that nothing comes out of logic that was not explicitly put in the premisses in the first place.

For many people, the only way to define Western rationality is by defaming every other culture and defining Western culture by its proclaimed opposition. Much of early mathematics comes from non-Arab Muslim scholars, who, together with Greek-speaking Syrian inventors (some bio is disputed) living in Egypt, made steam machines thousands of years before James Watt. It is somewhat implausible to suggest that a scholar who can invent a steam engine is lacking in rationality.

In the world of medicine many attempts were made to make major medical discoveries to arise out of western science. Vaccinations were well known in Afric and basic epidemiology was practised effectively so some argue Europeans learnt it from Africa⁵

However, the full negative issue is the impact of this mythology of rationality on presenting and teaching Western science. It is standard practice to explain any scientific discovery as due to following this stereotypical method of rationality. Actual scientists do not pay any attention to these apparent rules, but the cultural pressure remains.

We now have aspects of economics, medicine and politics that are largely based on the myth of rationality which are destroying their fields of study all on their own. There is an element of self-hypnosis involved whereby the researcher persuades himself that he is following the ‘rational‘ path.

Consider the absurd syllogism: If A then B, and If B then C. I have A then there will be C. This is absurd because there is a hidden syllogism implied that if you do not follow logic you will make errors. THERE IS NO BASIS FOR THIS BELIEF. IT IS A RELIGIOUS AXIOM.

It is relatively easy to show that the truth of a statement does not follow from the truth or falsity of its premises. A false premise can give rise to true conclusions. Modern western culture imposes on itself the absurd belief that the nature of premisses guarantees the validity of conclusions and generates a complete mess. For example, in physics, we are asked to believe that objects can be in several places at the same time. What is not challenged is whether the tools used are being shown to be rubbish!! In medicine, absurd recommendations for improving health are invariably promoted. While the consequences are appalling, the medical establishment in the US maintains its strong belief regardless. Alternative medicine is really medicine not based on the absurd model of ‘rationality’. In economics and politics, the rise of neo-cons is entirely based on modern models of ‘rationality’.

Among other scholars, David Graeber and Wengrow⁶ showed how much of the political liberalism found its roots in native American culture, while Menzies⁷ found Chinese sources for much of Renaissance knowledge. None of this would be based on a modern Western notion of rationality.

We need a revival of true philosophy and an abandonment of the revision of history endorsed in the West for the past 200 years.