Science, Philosophy, Music, Skiing do not exist, but are reified phantasms. So
are Scientists, Philosophers, Musicians and Skiers.
What exists are humans whose existential modalities encompass certain
activities called for convenience science, philosophy, music and skiing. We
shall use the reified terms as linguistic shortcuts, always
remembering their above signification. Thus we shall call "scientist"
a person exercising occasionally "scientific" activities.
Some activities may be qualified with respect to various criteria like
elegance, clarity, coherence or efficiency but all of them fall into
two classes:
1.Rational, i.e. empirically verifiable, which we shall call "good",
2.Irrational, i.e. lacking empirical verification, or "bad".
Irrationality stems usually from the "common sense" and from the
laziness to overcome it.
A beginning "skier" traversing a steep slope perceives the depth as
danger and the wall as security. His "common sens" tells him to incline
the upper body away from the depth and close to the wall. His weight
passes on the upper foot, he skids and falls.
He stays now on crossroads. He may choose to stay irrational, i.e.to be
too lazy to overcome his "common sense" and "natural reactions".
In that case his skiing will stay bad, clumsy and inefficient.
But he may choose the rational attitude, acknowledge the factual
falsification of his "common sens" and invest a lot of effort to
overcome it and to become a good "skier".
A "scientist" may conceive good or bad philosophy, with certain bad
tendency to transpose uncritically his scientific concepts to the
more general philosophical inquiry. The quality of his philosophy
will be anyway intrinsic and independent of his science. The same
applies, vice versa, to "philosophers".
However, unlike "scientists", who cannot afford to be lazily
irrational, many "philosophers" elevate laziness to their principal
virtue and exalt their elucubrations for being irrational - not
verifiable empirically. This attitude is additionally boosted by
the establishment, where professional "philosophers" have to
"publish or perish" and publishing of a rational paper would indispose
the lazy boss.
Georges
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