“According to the Map, We’ve Only Gone Four Inches”
Moreover: then, you say, science itself will teach man (though this is really a luxury in my opinion) that in fact he has neither will nor caprice, and never did have any, and that he himself is nothing but a sort of piano key or a sprig in an organ; and that, furthermore, there also exist in the world the laws of nature so that whatever he does is done not at all according to his own wanting, but of itself, according to the laws of nature. Conxewuently, these laws of nature need only be discovered, and then man will no longer e answerable for his actions, and his life will become extremely easy. Needless to say, all human actions will then be calculated according to these laws, mathematically, like a table of logarithms, up to 108,000, and entered into a calendar; or, better still, some well-meaning publications will appear, like the present-day encyclopedic diuctionaries, in w which everything Weil e so precisely caulcated and designated that there will no longer be any actions or adventures in the world. And it is then -this is still you speaking- that new economic relations will come, quite ready-made, and also caclculated with mathematical precision, so that all possible questions will vanish in an instant, essentially because they will have been given all possible answers. Then the crustal palace will get built… Of course, there’s no guaranteeing (this is me speaking now) that it won’t, for example, be terribly boring then (because what is there to do if everything’s calculated according to some little table?), but, on the other hand, it will all be extremely reasonable. (Notes, 24-25)
We should point out that Anglo-American philosophy is dominated by an altogether different and alien mode of thought - variously called analytic philosophy, Logical Positivism, or sometimes merely “scientific philosophy.” No doubt, Positivism has also good claims to being the philosophy of this time: it takes as its central fact what is undoubtedly the central fact distinguishing our civilization from all others - science; but it goes on from this to take science as the ultimate ruler of human life, which it never has been and psychologically never can be.Positivist man is a curious creature who dwells in the tiny island of light composed of what he finds scientifically “meaningful,” while the whole surrounding area in which ordinary men live from day to day and have their dealings with other mean is consigned to the outer darkness of the “meaningless.” Positivism has simply accepted the fractured being of modern man and erected a philosophy to intensify it. [Barrett, 21]
…Suits asks, what will people do in Utopia. What activities will they engage in? He answers that they’ll place unnecessary obstacles in the way of the ends they could achieve instantaneously, just so they can enjoy the process of overcoming them. One character he describes decides that rather than get houses by pressing telepathic buttons he’ll build them by traditional carpentry, just for the sake exercising that skill. Another decides not to access the scientific information in the computers he can discover it by old-fashioned experimentation…Likewise for other activities. But then what people in Utopia do is in effect to play games, just as golfers and hockey players do: they willingly p-ursue a goal y what they recognize aren’t the most efficient means. And the fact that this is the central Utopian activity shows that game-playing is the supreme good, the one most worth choosing for itself, or apart from its effects. [Grasshopper, XVI]
I realised that what all these views had in common was a Platonic ideal: in the first place that, as in the sciences, all genuine questions must have one true answer and one only, all the rest being necessarily errors; in the second place that there must be a dependable path towards the discovery of these truths; in the third place that the true answers, when found, must necessarily be compatible with one another and form a single whole, for one truth cannot be incompatible with another – that we knew a priori. This kind of omniscience was the solution of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle. In the case of morals, we could then conceive what the perfect life must be, founded as it would be on a correct understanding of the rules that governed the universe. [Berlin, 5]