The title of this chapter might suggest theauthor's intention to hypostatize
laws, but this is not the case.Once science could sound into the law
formation zone1,
we could have further insight into the material world and this
would cast new light on the whole history of science. Before having
such a glimpse, the whole science from Copernicus, Descartes,
Galileo, Kepler and Newton to Faraday and Maxwell, Einstein and
Plank, Louis de Broglie, Schrodinger and Heisenberg, looks like
a block, like a science aimed to account for the given universe.
This frame-objective has been the same for both classical and
quantum physics which have gone as far as the borders of the law
formation zone. Let us note in this respect that the Romanian
philosopher Lucian Blaga has also regarded the whole of the modern
science as a block as "... the emphasis falls ... on the
discovery of laws"2.
By virtue of an approach methodologically grounded in mathematics-experiment,
science possesses a theorizing level, referred to by Blaga as
the law level. Adopting this view on a whole period of scientific
development, in what follows we shall resort to the entire historical
scheme furnished by Lucian Blaga in support of several considerations
concerning the science of the law formation zone.
Blaga's scheme reads as follows:
1. During the prehistorical age, when science
was not yet at work, human thought was prevailingly mythical
and magic, remnants of this way of thinking being increasingly
weaker in the course of history;
2. The beginnings of science relate to theobservation and rational
understanding of immediate phenomena."In order to make observations,
man has only to awaken hissenses and to move in his environment in pursuit of
his aims"3.
This is empeiria, which is intimately connected to human
practice. Science begins however as soon as the empirical reality
gets rationalized. "Science could not develop without rationalizing
activities ... one of the rationalizing modes consists in organizing
the empirical knowledge into forms of logical
thought"4.
This was done already by the Ancient Greeks, though the concepts
they employed were not that different from the common sense, from
the ordinary empeiria. What really matters is that with the Ancient
science "the logical structures ... of the human thought
develop to the detriment of the mythical and magic structures.
This means ... a functional emphasis on the logical thought, which
succeeds in bringing myth and magic out of
practice"5.
Notwithstanding the experimental, dialectical elements and the
atomic conceptions vehiculated by the Ancient Greek thought, the
prevailing view of the world was statical. According to
Blaga, the Greeks attempted to rationalize the empeiria by virtue
of identity (the logical principle of identity), which "is
conducive to an immobilization of
existence"6.
The principle of identity leads to tautological judgements, "to
the negation of empeiria, to
sterility"7,
to a rationality divorcing itself from empeiria and from other
sources of knowledge. Let us note here Blaga's idea to ensure
an openness to the principle of identity so as to have
a more effective rationalization. Thus, he refers to "rationalization
along weakened identity ... rationalization guided by the identity
postulate to a certain
point"8.
Blaga made the subtle remark that "The identity postulate
is of course present in the human mind, but it is a historical
fact that the human thought does not let itself become maneuvered
by this postulate".
Experiment as a research method was first
practised by the Arabs. During the Middle Ages, it became ordinary
in Europe, where Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt of Picardia (1269)
and Roger Bacon (1214 - 1294) theorized on its use. Roger Bacon
introduced the concept of scientia experimentalis. Motion,
dynamics were beginning to gain in importance. Nicola Oresme (1323
- 1382) claimed the mathematical determination of motion. Lucian
Blaga viewed the Gothic style as a representation of
motion9.
With the Greeks, rationalization came to beexpressed by both logical and
mathematical means. Morris
Kline10
observes that already some 600 years B.C., the Greeks became aware
of some order in nature, working invariably according to a scheme,
and came gradually to believe that the human mind can grasp this
order as it is endowed with supreme powers.
To Plato, the world had been geometrically
designed, and this explains his attempt to substitute nature for
mathematics. The Greeks "saw in mathematics the ultimate
truth about the structure and the project of
universe"11,
and "Aristotle's writings are fully convincing that he derived
logic from
mathematics"12.
Unlike Aristotle, Plato describes an objective, universally valid
world, consisting of forms and ideas. In modern terms, what is
the informational seed of a like conception ? Does this not show
that although the Greeks, first the Ancient geometers and then
Aristotle, were the first virtuosi of deductive proofs,
seeking the truth by means of rigorous proofs, while attempting
to sound deeper by intuitive means into an ultimate realm which
they assumed to be pertinent to laws or to the everlasting
support of laws !? This ultimate realm is with Plato a statical
world, a world of motionless forms and ideas, whereas motion can
only arise in the world of sensibles which is assumedly semi-real,
derived from the world of idea. This tentative approach to an
ultimate realm of world profundities is an idealist counterpart
of an objective requirement which contemporary science is beginning
to validate.
Towards a Science of Law Formation Zone
37
