Chapter 10
The Philosophical Experiment



1. In dealing with existence, philosophy should proceed from a fundamental experiment. The instrument of this experiment is our being, our nervous system and finally the brain which is similar to a material device.
We shall not survey here the images by which the human mind reflected the problem of existence given that the aim of this book is not to be a philosophical anthology. Instead, our objective is to demonstrate the validity of the idea of such a fundamental experiment as a starting point in philosophy. It is not surprising that parts of this experiment re-state things known or cogitated by any philosopher or by anyone concerned in such issues if we bear in mind the similarity of our mental structures. The author's own thinking and experiment were conducive to results which may be only partly original.
I. To most philosophers a statement of existence is sufficient for it to exist in itself.
The echoof this statement covers all time and space, before and after. Statement (I) does not however imply an explicit statement on time and space. Before making statement (I) we are not aware of either nothingness or of existence. In case the statement of existence entails space and time, nothingness is understood as nothingness in space and time, irrespective of whether the nothingness is achievable or not. We know however that by asserting existence, nothingness is ruled out.
In its ordinary concept, existence is related to space and time, and if our mind cannot embrace it in this form by some thought that could grasp it entirely in the simplest terms, then we can only resort to fields of existence that might range beyond space and time, or just doubt our capacity to seize the truth. An intermediate solution would be to admit only a limited human ability to know the truth. Taking into account the scale of the animal kingdom, which contains species inferior to man but might cover mental beings considerably stronger than man somewhere in the universe, or which might be commenced by today's man for a future development, we may expect that beings who could grasp existence simply and generally exist or might exist. Nevertheless, man belongs to that class of animals who might and will exist with the ability to know the world more or less limitedly, but once he has identified the problem, he will be able to solve it, though with more difficulty and during a longer time span.

Historical experience has incontrovertibly showed that progress relies on the gains taken over from one generation to another, and as long as historical experience allows the cognition process will not cease. Only a serious degeneracy, or the disappearance, of our species, which might by caused by insufficient knowledge and wisdom or by an accident which we may be unable to prevent, could put an end to cognition. Within the available time, we may solve profound issues of existence, and extend this time in some way by deciding and devising in terms of the sources of the universe. However, our attempt might be ephemeral. We might fail to come to the future type of cognition society1, and in case we do, we may be unable to go beyond that critical threshold after which our superior volition in its own right should search for new meanings in matter via creative activities. Despite of all limitations inherent to any material device, we are endowed with a substantial source of knowledge, which is called upon to cope with some active processes in the surrounding space-time reality.


2. Any attempt at understanding the space-time existence as the sole existence comes across certain limits of the thought and possibilities of our being. The immediate question is why shouldn't we use these nature-given limits and work with them ? Why shouldn't such a procedure be a way of philosophical cognition ? Our limits are an objective reality. Experimenting and cogitating about these limits we might obtain some new results. Another question is whether by focussing about these limits we just come to a philosophical experiment or also to a scientific one. Indeed, to work scientifically in philosophy does not mean to take philosophy for science.
A fundamental philosophical experiment may also become a fundamental scientific experiment, since a like experiment must range along the science-philosophy frontier. The philosophical thought can proceed from such an experiment.
In a way, philosophy ranges along the frontier between science and what has not become science yet. Philosophy can go deeper than science, but to a less safe and more hypothetical degree. Philosophy is more similar to a dynamics of search, whereas science, which is likewise approaching the unknown, leaves behind a safe system of knowledge for the definite fields. If venturesome, philosophy may become science.

Philosophy should not be referred to science alone, since it has an object and questions of its own. The concept of the ring of the existence justifies this statement. The matters on which science cannot have a say fall into the range mastered by philosophy. Philosophical views may turn out to be false or partially true, but their influence on man is still paramount, as can be seen from a cursory glimpse of the historical experience of mankind. What philosophy achieves is frequently a philosophical projection, or a certain glimpse of the serious question on matter.
The philosophical projection cannot however break away from science, it is a function of present-day science and of man's ways of thinking, as varied as they are. Likewise, the philosophical projection assumes a certain continuity, and the present-day projection, which brings corrections to the past one, will be itself subject to correction in the future. In the past, the philosopher used to believe that he has reached some truth or that his mind would state truths, so much bewildered he was by what he managed to establish via thinking on nature and the world. Today's philosopher seems to have given up the continuity of the philosophical projection, given the uncertainty that any confident statement of presumptive truths may cause.

The Philosophical Experiment 85