The question for the upcoming class is: what is humanity? We all believe we all know what it is, don’t we? After all, there is hardly a subject more important for us, a question on the answer of which more other subjects depend – political, social, economic subjects, answers to questions such as: what are human economic needs and desires, what political structures are optimal for humans, is democracy, for instance, a universal human desire, should politics in every nation be democratic, or, perhaps, authoritarian governments are better, is freedom a natural need, does it make life better, does equality?
It is on answers to these questions that policies of all kinds, national and international, depend. Individual choices also depend on the answer to the question: what is humanity. For instance, should a society prefer arranged or love marriages, should a young woman get married or get a degree – these answers would vary alongside one’s understanding of humanity, human nature, human needs, what makes human life content, what makes it miserable. Finally, what for very many people, such as those who are interested in extracurricular studies, is the most important question – the question of self-understanding – also cannot be answered unless one first answers the question “what is humanity?”
So, we all should know the answer to this question, right? But it is sufficient to give it two minutes of thought for all of us to realize that no one knows it, not a single one of us. Very few exceptional thinkers throughout history have attempted to pose this question to themselves. But their answers neither ever achieved consensus, satisfying all other exceptional thinkers, nor even satisfied themselves.
Lazy thinkers prefer not to answer such questions altogether. They prefer to believe that those whose business it is to know must know and rely on such authoritative knowledge without prying any further. In the Western materialistic world, there is a widespread belief (of this lazy kind) that science surely knows the answer to the question “what is humanity?” and moreover, that this is a very simple answer: humanity is the biological species “homo sapiens.” The lazier one is, the more satisfied is one with this answer. But, again, actually think for two minutes, and you’ll see that this is nonsense: there is no way this would help you with self-understanding. And no way it would bring you any closer to the answers on political, social, and economic policies raised earlier, on whether arranged marriages are preferable to love marriages, or whether freedom and equality are natural human desires.
Thinking being the essential requirement of this class, we won’t allow ourselves to be lazy and we shall answer the question “what is humanity.” We shall answer it scientifically, using the logical and empirical scientific method of conjectures and refutations we have discussed in the first class of this extracurricular course. The foundation of our argument, therefore, will be empirical comparison which we will use logically. We shall utilize all the relevant data for this comparison. As a result, our answer will be reliable, that is, objective – the same for everyone, and accurate.
Please, begin thinking about this question. To help you, remember what we discussed in the last class (July 2), specifically, the evolution of science from the 17th century on.
Nationalism in England shifts attention from transcendental reality to empirical reality. Combined with logic, which within Western civilization (to be discussed later) is privileged, this makes science possible.
However, it is only possible in regard to the study of matter – physics.
This is so, because matter fits perfectly into the existing dualistic idea – matter/spirit – of the constitution of reality.
In regard to life, science is not possible until the publication of Darwin’s theory of evolution via natural selection, because before that the psychophysical dualism (matter/spirit) holds the understanding of life in a vise, between physical matter and empirically inaccessible spirit. Darwin frees life from the grip of material/spiritual dualism, making possible to regard it as neither spiritual nor material but logically consistent with material reality – and autonomous organic, emergent, reality.
This makes the science of biology both possible and necessary.
The same can be said of humanity and the science of humanity. But the institutionalization of the “social sciences” within the new American research universities prevents the science of humanity from developing.
Until July 9.
Hello Ma'am.
Can you please elaborate on , How Nationalism in England shifts attention from transcendental reality to empirical reality ?