The
Sociopathology of Mental Disorders in Science
Most people adhere to the cumulationist conception of cultural progress assuming
that the European history of science is one undivided spiritual tradition in
which new knowledge accumulates and grows to reach higher ad higher
syntheses. Modern philosophers of science (T. S. Kuhn 1965, 1970; P. K. Feyerabend 1989; I. Lakatos
1971) refuted cumulationist views by proofs that
human knowledge does not march forth in linear curves but waves in the same rhythm
of rises and declines as other phenomena in nature. As there are periods of
‘shadow’, ‘grey’, ‘dark’, ‘black’ and
‘brown economics’, there are perpetual returns of ‘shadow’, ‘grey’,
‘dark’, ‘black’ and ‘brown science’, fully corresponding to the wealth and
health of the social body. Science can prosper only in countries with bright
healthy economics when accelerated by rapid industrial growth. In dark ages
it periodically dies and gives way to religious scholastics marching hand in
hand with black occult sciences. Occult science is a disease of scientific
thought that infects the social brain in several gradual phases and distorts
its texture to the extent of reaching the lethal stage. Cultural streams in literature and
methodology do not arise as inventions of geniuses lasting in an eternal
tradition but form periodically repeated waves that reflect changes in social
and economic values and guide human collective behaviour in the same way as
our glands and hormones. Methods change together with attitudes, opinions,
tastes and manners, appearing successively as incubation phases of an
epidemic disease. This recipe for treating metaphysics was proposed by one of
its most remarkable rebuilders Carl Jaspers, who
later assisted Heidegger in founding Existenzphilosophie as an influential stream of modern
German cultural thought. In his young days he published a study Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (1919) in which he recommended to
study political ideologies as mental disorders. He noticed that cultural
opinions tide and ebb and spread like epidemics of contagious diseases. They
plague human thought with the same atrocity as real pestilence and cause also
similar fatal catastrophic disasters. As different cycles of economic
growth As different cycles of
economic growth in the post-war science have shifted the focus to social
engineering (eunomy), aesthetic design (esthonomy), industrial technology (technonomy),
consumers’ masses (demonomy) and finance (plutonomy), so the progress of science shifts its focus
on universal encyclopaedic knowledge (eusophy),
aesthetics (esthosophy), applied technology (technosophy), sociology (demosophy)
and financial magic (idolosophy). Science always
concentrates on truth and objective knowledge so its cultural contribution
does not consist of ideologic lies but rests in
different epistemic models of deforming reality. Religion and science seem to
fight as irreconcilable enemies but they both move the hand of the historical
clock to go clockwise, the former by devising false illusions and the latter
by disclosing true knowledge. They do exert energy in opposite directions but
their forces act on opposite ends of the lever and help rotate it in the
clockwise direction. Classicism, Physicalism, Normativism The psychopathology of mental disorders
in science must naturally start from the state of their absence when the
patient is in a perfect healthy state. As is made clear by examples from
Classic Greece, the Renaissance or Enlightenment (autarcheum),
rational creative science may exist undisturbed only in state-controlled
societies with a state-supported system of school education. In such
bureaucratic societies the state supports ‘royal academies’and can afford contributing subsidies to
education and academic research. The state-controlled school system promotes
secular science and impartial objective knowledge where the church-controlled
school systems of dark ages subordinate these to religious faith. The first
stage of every bright age brings political regimes of centralist state
bureaucracy (eucracy) displaying academic systems
of science called eusophy (good wisdom, rational
knowledge). Eusophy is a philosophical paradigm
exhibiting several standard symptoms: ·
Euphoria utopistica: social engineering and utopian dreaming
about an ideal planned, state-controlled society serving effectively the
natural needs of the collective public wealth and all common people. ·
Euphoria pantheistica: cosmic optimism combined with a fervent
love for the physical and material nature enlivened by human and divine
energy. ·
Euphoria encyclopaedica: enthusiastic love of objective
knowledge, rationality, science, education, literature and arts as vital
instruments of humanitarian enlightenment, spiritual illumination and human
perfection. ·
Pamphilia humanistica: all-embracing love for the
unbroken and unspoilt human nature, belief in emancipation proclaiming
equality between all nations and human races, ideals of a healthy mind in a
healthy body. Eusophia is a
stage of healthy cultural conditions known in the Renaissance humanism or
French encyclopaedism in the mid-18th century. Its science is
characterised by humanism, historical optimism (belief in historical
progress), encyclopaedism, physicalism (emphasis on
cosmic physics), materialism (the primacy of the material nature), uniformism (all areas of social life observe
prescriptions, regulation, standardisation and uniformity) and normativism (all phenomena should have their standard
moderate measure). Humanists tended to write political utopias about ideal
monarchs and states and compiled manuals instructing young princes how to
rule, run their estates and practice animal husbandry. Encyclopaedists wrote
compendious manuals, handbooks and encyclopaedias giving instruction in universal
knowledge. Sensualism, Civilism, Elegism All utopists
dream about constructing future ideal societies (Aufbau)
but all economic cycles had an alternative program of a gradual erosion of
utopias, their perpetual deconstruction (Abbau).
In due course every ‘positive utopia’ painting blissful idylls expires and
decays into a ‘negative dystopia’ that depicts the
world as a nightmare. The first stage of this metamorphosis
are ‘sentimental utopias’ that lose the cosmic historical perspective
and plunge into everyday personal life. The humanists of the Augustan Age
(Virgil, Horace, Varro)
faced the opposition of the Gilded Youth and young elegiac poets (Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid) who
wrote elegies about fictive beauties and poetic epistles about ars amatoria. Such periods pay attention to
aesthetics, court revels, naval adventures and elegant rhetoric skilled in ars poetica.
Their paradigm is esthosophy with
these symptoms: ·
Sensualitas amatoria: the disease of love manifested
in desire for an idealised
sweetheart, the courteous cult of a beautiful noble lady
in the medieval Minnesang and Provensal courtoisie. ·
Sensualitas aesthetica: focus on aesthetic pleasures,
ideals of beauty, pleasure-seeking Epicureism and
voluptuous sensualism. ·
Sensualitas intima: intimism
as a philosophy of everyday private life. Formalism,
Geometrism, Technicism The second step in overcoming utopism is made by ‘zero utopias’ that indulge in
scientific formalism. Technocratic
antiutopias turn
attention to applied sciences because the rapid industrial growth requires transition from universal science to applied
technology. Their scientific philosophy may be called technosophy because it meets
historic demands of technocracies and technocratic engineering elites that
come to the rule in the heydays of industrial revolution. Technosophy
loves logic, mathematics and geometry because it has lost a sense of beauty,
reality, cosmos and history. Young technocrats signal their ascent by a deep
methodological scepsis, by depolitisation,
weariness and fatigue from social utopias. Their “vision du monde“ (L. Goldmann 1964) has
abandoned natural idylls and frozen into geometric abstractions and cold
numbers. Their mind suffers from a loss of all social and historical
illusions, a loss of sensibility and sense of historical progress. It is
vexed by a syndrome of stupor with several symptoms: ·
Stupor formalis: formalist artism
and an unhealthy admiration for empty forms, cold abstractions and formal
signs. ·
Stupor geometricus: the loss of historical
perspectives accompanied by a descent into the world of abstract geometric
figures and numbers. ·
Stupor antiutopicus: the loss of utopian
perspectives, disillusionment in utopias and their absurd deformations
(Orwell’s Animal Farm). ·
Stupor nonsensualis: formal
signs lose their natural meaning and become absurd puns (E. Lear’s and Ch.
Morgenstern‘s poetry of nonsense). Realism, Demotism,
Populism If eusophy
pursues universal knowledge detached from applied technology and industrial
production, technosophy meets their demands but
remains blind to human society and common consumers. Booms of consumers’
goods turn attention to ordinary needs of common people and adopt populistic views of social emancipation typical of demosophy. Demosophy
implies a philo-sophical sociologism
that strives for social and cultural materialism and analyses phenomena in
their historical, geographic and social profiles. Its methodology definitely proved prolific in
Aristotelian Peripatetics, Huguenot
historiographers and modern Positivism. Its goal of impartial and objective
universal knowledge suggests J. A. Comenius’ ideal
of pansophia. ·
Pansophia comparatistica: a comparative approach to social phenomena
and a tendency to analyse them on large statistic samples. ·
Pansophia sociologica: a tendency to visualise phenomena on their social background and
depict them in the setting of a large social panorama. Traditionalism, Personalism, Historicism Demosophy
brings a culminating peak of scientific prosperity but also announces the
first tokens of a coming rapid decline. The crisis of economic stagflation
stupefies science by a strong conservative counter-reaction and turns it into
a sort of sterile religious scholastics. The bloom of scientific studies is
regularly terminated by rehearsals of St Bartholomew’s Night, one of fanatic
campaigns conducted by the Catholic League. Science has to give way to
metaphysics, a mental disorder manifested by blindness to reality, evolution,
society and logic. The final result is idolosophy
showing several symptoms: ·
Idolatria scholastica: science collapses and
degenerates into religious scholastics, it turns into a cult of saints and an
exegesis of their texts. ·
Idolatria sectae (sectarianism): scientific
sectarianism conceiving research as persevering in an orthodox doctrine
developing an esoteric wisdom founded by sacred texts of a prophet. ·
Idolatria heraldica: ardent idolatry as a cult of idols, icons, emblems,
coats-of-arms, relics, ossuaries and sacred texts. ·
Idolatria aboriginalis: sciences adopts a primitive
savage mind’s optics by failing to see essential but invisible meanings (real
genetic categories) and managing to see only accidental but visible signs:
icons, idols, flags, relics. ·
Dyslogia lombardica: scientific dogmatism as an utter inability to
beget a meaningful thought or to understand foundations of any science,
typical of all scholastics, the disease of ‘ritualistic absent-headedness’
manifested by the first great scholastic philosopher Petrus
Lombardus or by the first scholastic Marxist
philosopher Mikhail Lifshitz who wrote florilegia of their prophets’ sentences but failed
to utter a single sentence of their own. ·
Jesuititis emblematica: the disease of jesuitism resting in a blindfolded demonisation
of all heretics, infidels and apostates of faith manifested in an unsound
cult of religious orthodoxy and unwavering loyalty to church. ·
Intolerantia satanica
(exorcism): rational science,
protestant heretics and progressive social theories
are demonised as devilish devices worth wiping out of the world’s surface. ·
Obscurantia irrationalis: scientific irrationalism
waging pogromist campaigns against scientific
objectivism under auspices of irrational cults. ·
Calumnia pogromistica (inquisitionism):
witch hunts, practices of hidden terror and illegal trials abused by secret
lodges against all heretics ·
Calumnia coprophilica
(calumnism):
efforts of right-wing tabloids to throw dirt, dung and shit on all positive
progressive social values (impregnative tabloid
journalism, ‘hovnomazalská euforie’,
graffiti terrorism) Catastrophism, Apocalypticism, Balladism Idolosophy is
only the maturing incubation phase of a deep cultural crisis that continues
with cacosophy (bad knowledge) or mystosophy (occult, esoteric, mysterious wisdom). In dark
ages they may occupy three or four 7-year cycles while in bright ages they
are contracted into one cycle. Cacosophy is
a convenient catchword for fates of science in the era of cultural cata-strophism (apocalyptism),
a trend symptomatic of culminating social and eco-nomic
criminality and growing negativism in culture, art, politics and morals. ·
Paralysis regressiva (regressivism):
a belief in regressive (Spengler), apocalyptic
(Derrida) or catastrophic future (Stoic Chrysippus,
Buffon). ·
Xenophobia nauseatica: an
anti-humanist philosophy of xenophobia,
physical disgust and contempt for all alien races, or for all
humankind. ·
Nausea alienans: the
philosophy of nausea as a universal sentiment vexed by mean anti-humanist xenophobias, an inveterate hatred against all immigrants
and foreigners seen as ‘impudent aliens’ and ‘slimy monsters’. Symbolism, Hermetism,
Esoterism The inflexion point of cacosophy is followed by a period of hermetic
spiritualism manifested in astrology and occult sciences. Their designation
as mystosophy indicates predilection
for the mysterious and the esoteric. ·
Pestilentia hermetica (hermetism): a radical turn
from objective knowledge of outer reality to the transcendent supernatural
world. ·
Toxoplasmosis semiotica: a semiotic plague indulging in interpreting irrational signs
and tokens in different ambiguous allegoric connotations. ·
Claustrophilia infernalis (infernalism): the myth of a
subterranean cave combined with belief in a hollow globe and a hollow
underworld inhabited by a subterraneous race of mysterious over-men. ·
Militantism, Monumentalism, Heroism The final phase of dark ages is
represented by ‘sacred wars’ that cause large-scale destruction and
necessarily result in periods of peaceful reconstruction. Its characteristic
ideology may be termed monumentalism as it
combines religious fundamentalism with military heroism (Carlyle’s hero
worship). ·
Obscurantia militans (crusaderism): calls for ‘a bloody bath’ and ‘a
sacred war’ (Christian crusade, Islamic jihad, Greek hagios polemos)
waged against all aliens, heretics and heathens, calls for conquering the
land stolen by barbarian infidels (Bernard de Clairvaux,
Ignatio de Loyola, Joseph de Maistre
and Adolph Rosenberg). ·
Inflatus heroicus (exaggerated
bonapartism, caesarism and hero worship): the theory of a higher race of over-men
dwelling in a subterranean cave or a higher race of ‘nazists
surviving in the cosmic space’; their outer appearance may take shape of
astronauts, extra-terrestrials, ufonauts, slimy
monsters or subterranean supermen. Extract from Pavel Bìlíèek: The Postmodern Crisis of Humanities and Goals of their Recovery, Prague 2004, pp. 70-76 |