V.J. Chalupa

On Post-Modern Politics

CHAPTER 21

CRITERIA OF CRITERIA

Man being a free agent has the option of deciding to endeavor to achieve the unachievable and may deceive himself temporarily into thinking he is succeeding, especially since the ultimate effects are not immediately recognizable (even if predictable) and can be postponed by escalation of pressure on subjects of duty. In reality, he is then contributing to a cosmic regression, to universe's entropy which is the opposite of the unfolding of the full potential of creation.. Preventing change, inhibiting variability of thought and/or competition of ideas, breaking up integration of culture, civilization, institutions causes chaos and breakdown of society, and thus failure of intended political objectives - because they were unachievable from their inception and thus doomed to fail.

Limitations of Science

Science is the main instrument used by man to seek out and verify causal chains and their effects. The authority of science derives from the successes of natural sciences, which proved them to be an instrument both reliable and fruitful. In the examination of nature, causal chains are relatively easy to isolate and straightforward. The situation is different when science examines the activities of man and the development of society where the causal chains are so complex and intertwined that they can be explained only by recourse to the principle of "freedom," to be understood as activity which cannot be explained by the cause and effect relationship at all or at least not completely. In many instances,  insufficiently critical reliance on science produced unsatisfactory results: societies and measures undertaken by politics by application of certain scientific discoveries and theories collapsed with catastrophic consequences. Just recently, humanity freed itself from two systems derived from science: nazism derived from anthropology, communism derived from economics, but there is no shortage of learned professors and their followers who are absolutely certain that the discoveries in their field and especially their own discoveries are a certain way towards a better future of humanity, if only the benighted mases would obey: population control, eugenics, managing the environment, integration of races and/or multiculturalism and other discoveries of biology, medicine, sociology and economics. There is a short way of transforming a scientific discovery into ideology, building a movement around it and imposing its demands by the power of the state, even if the coercive methods are far from the primitive violence used by the former autocratic movements.

The failure of science as an sole criterion of usefulness of selected means is caused by several circumstances:

-    Science is an open system; it assumes that its results are not final, that they will be corrected, completed or reversed by the results of further research and discoveries. Therefore actions undertaken always in accordance with the latest scientific fashions will inevitably demand corrections which, when affecting society, cannot fail to produce significant losses of material and cultural assets. The fact that political and sociological changes always limp behind technological progress is common knowledge.

-    The scope of knowledge gained and attempted is so vast that research, inquiry and scholarship must by specialized. Specialization leads to professional deformation of the mind: overrating one's own specialty in its application to the problems of society. Each specialist considers as erroneous such division of resources which does not allocate to the full and total implementation of his conclusions all the necessary means, and does therefore consider the inclusion of his recommendations into the material solidarity with other derived objectives, with the ensuing limitation, as faulty.  

-     Science is a system of theories abstracted from experience. Its accuracy therefore depends on the completeness of the experience and of the inclusion of all pertinent observations in the abstraction. The validity of scientific theories is verified by experience (if artificially induced or isolated, called "experiment"). As long as all observed phenomena agree with a theory, the theory is considered as accurate, as truth; if any one phenomenon fails to correspond with the theory, the theory is considered as invalid, as untrue. The probability of discovering such a disturbing phenomenon decreases in proportion to the extent to which a given theory relates, depends on and mutually confirms theories of a more general nature. The more general such theories are, the safer it is to assume that the scientific findings are correct. Such an agreement, however, still does not guarantee of the truth of a theory, because it is impossible to exclude with absolute certainty the possibility of the discovery of an entirely new factor. This is true primarily to the sphere of human actions -- the discovery of producing energy by fusion rather than fission would bring about an era of almost unlimited and free energy, uproot the structure of the entire industrial civilization and render "untrue" many present political, sociological and economic presuppositions and "laws." The same applies also to the knowledge of physics whose known "laws" are held to lose validity in the conditions during the origin and collapse of the universe.

-    The opinions of scientists seldom agree; majority opinions, specially those of scientific authorities bolstered by the media, are taken as true, but it can be considered as proven that neglected or minority opinions have at least a part of the truth. This fallibility of scientists is enhanced by the fact that pursuit of knowledge is not the only component of their primary purpose of happiness: other derived (secondary, tertiary etc.) objectives exert influence on their judgement; sometimes unknowingly, sometimes knowingly their conclusions are biased in favor of objectives other than pure truth, or doubts about their accuracy are not voiced. Such were the prognoses of scientists concerning the effect of nuclear weapons, of industrialization on the weather, of population growth on the environment. Added to the individual human frailties of scholars is the impact of the corrupted science subservient to the sources of funding scientific research: in totalitarian regimes to government, in individualist regimes to corporations, industry subsidized endowments, business conglomerates.

-     Observation interferes with the activities of the observed object. This is well recognized in subatomic physics; it is less obvious in induced experiments of social sciences: observed samples of individuals act differently when aware of the observation, than without such knowledge; if unaware, however, they do not act in a way which furnishes the desired data.

-    The finiteness of the cosmos interferes with the accuracy of mathematics. The equation of the proverbial "one plus one is two" can be expressed in reality also as 1+1 = 1+0.99999... or 1+1=1+1/2+1/4+1/8+1/16+1+1/x.... infinitely. However, because the universe is finite, these infinite sequences in reality end short by an infinitesimally small fraction of "1"; however, in view of the size of the universe, these missing "infinitely" small fractions create an undefined or undefinable discrepancy between mathematical formulas and reality.

Correctives

Results of science are to be accepted critically; the question then arises, what criteria are to be applied to them.

Common sense

The most common one is  common sense: it is the judgment of the average person. Research and scholarly work in a limited field of knowledge are the privilege of a relatively small number of people. An average person is exposed to a wide variety of challenges and therefore reasons on a basis of a greater wealth of life's experiences than specialists do. The variety of experience joined by a variety of ways of mastering it (intuition, art, feeling in addition to reasoning) described also as "horse sense" or "gut feeling" provides a balance to the one-sidedness of specialists. (This is also a the justification of democracy -- see Chapter 6, section on "People know best.")

Customs and Traditions

There is also the network of customs and traditions. Tradition is not what happened in the past, it is what has proven its survival value. The origin of custom and tradition can often be traced to prehistoric times and their similarity to the behavior of social animals: division of functions, between sexes and generations, superiority of the preservation of life and interests of the whole (herd, hive, pride) over the life of its individual members, rules of inborn "morality" and "decency" of behavior is remarkable.  (See Attachment No. 7.)

Christianity

Finally, there is religion, more specifically Christianity because the dominant civilization of humanity is historically based on Christianity, and the survival of a civilization is not aided by subversion of its own foundations. Theories are verified by experience, and experience indicates that anti-evolutionary phenomena appeared whenever politics contradicted the tenets of Christianity and that postmodern politics are adopting isolated Christian values as remedies to acute ills of the presence. The main examples are:

-- renewed emphasis on family values,

-- distrust of the power of a centralized state (the theory of "subsidiarity"),

-- establishment of  a supranational organization integrating sovereign states,

-- preservation of "inalienable rights of nations,"

-- assistance to the economically disadvantaged ("preference for the poor"),

-- international solidarity of the human race (humanitarian aid, development).

There are other reasons than expediency arguing for the recognition of Christianity as one of the correctives of science.

Christianity places being over non-being.

Christianity recognizes the imperfection of human nature: man's reason is flawed and his will is inclined to evil; the need of betterment of the human race is the basis of  all political programs and movements.

The universe appears to have order, direction and sense, i.e., a purpose, therefore, it is the act of intelligent will; and it is not unreasonable to assume that such a will entered in communication with its creation and creatures, in order to assure that its purpose will be accomplished.

Christianity shifts the priorities of human life from natural and reasonable purposes -- increase of wealth and power -- to contrary values -- humility and poverty -- as the true meaning of human life; this is a shift which transcends human nature and which is of transcendent origin .

Political science poses questions it cannot answer, and it seeks their answers in political philosophy. Political philosophy shifts its unanswerable questions to general philosophy; but philosophy is unable to answer all questions it itself generates. It would be unreasonable to disregard, to deliberately ignore, answers given to these questions by revelation (see James V. Schall, At the Limits of Political Philosophy, ed. Catholic University of America Press, 1996 )

An explanation that the cosmos alone gave itself its beginning, that it itself on its own strives to prolong its existence and that it created man through its own powers attributes to cosmos intelligence and will which experience does not find. Christianity places the word (the "Word") which produced the equation dividing nothing into plus and minus near-infinity, outside the universe. It attributes it to an actor who, by his own definition "I am Who AM" - is the absolute existence endowed by absolute life subsisting in dynamic relations between three poles whose integration forms one - the trinitarian God. This God omnipotent vis-a-vis the nothingness pronounced his creative word and maintains and develops the harmony of being out of limitless generosity, to enable the product of his creation -- man -- to share in his absolute being and in his creative act. Such participation is possible only to someone who is a likeness of the Creator in possessing reason and will, possessing freedom. Freedom allows the created being to go against the Creator's plan, to pronounce judgment over God (John Paul II, On the Threshold of Hope), to condemn, reject him and to act regardless or in opposition of the plan of Providence, to do "evil" (disturb the symphony of creation pre-programmed by God) rather than "good" (complementing and enriching this symphony).

According to Christianity man used his freedom to accumulate negatives (to pile up evil in the past, present and future) to such an extent that to offset it, God himself became man and through his life in total conformity with God's plan  restored the balance of the cosmic equation and regained for humanity the possibility to synchronize its being with its creator.

Christianity asserts that being is better than non-being because the Word has been spoken, God created the universe, He pronounced it good in its original form. Christianity also agrees that the universe will end, that the symphony will play itself out and its equations will be solved. "The Sun will vanish and the World will perish," says an old song; but this will not end by balancing the plusses and minuses on the level of 0=0. On the contrary, all the pluses will accumulate on one side of the equation and all the minuses on the other, and will remain so past the existence of time: the ones in opposition to the Creator, the others in communion with Him.

Summary and Tentative Conclusion

In order to remain on the basis of political science, the three above mentioned correctives can be only what they are: correctives. Science remains the main dynamic force propelling humanity on its way to the preservation of the human spirit, of life in general and of being in the abstract. The correctives cannot replace science in its function of gaining knowledge of being and of application of such knowledge. However, where such application leads to politics which contradicts common sense, destroys tradition and traditional institutions and violates Christian ethics, it is reasonable to assume that such politics either misinterprets scientific knowledge or generalizes scientific findings beyond the limits of their validity. It is prudent to avoid such ideologies and such policies.