The idea of ‘dogmatism’ is associated by modern man with the Church and everything ecclesiastical; however, science in modern times has developed its own stable and dogmatic worldview, based, like any such worldview, on provisions excluded from free discussion. This dogmatism does not prevent, however, from referring to ‘sceptical, critical thinking’ as the basis, allegedly, of all scientific activity.

What are the scientific ‘dogmas’ or, rather, one indivisible dogma? Dogmatic science, firstly, believes that certain ‘objective’ or ‘scientific’ truths grow out of so-called ‘objective facts’ (note these words) independently, quite independently of our will; secondly, that by studying the facts, it cognises ‘objective reality’ in its pure, cleaned from the embellishments of imagination, i. e. in a strictly reasonable form; thirdly, it believes that the ‘study of facts’ leads us to the so-called ‘true picture of the world’ — simple, reasonable, thoroughly cognisable, with no room for mystery.

As I have already said more than once, these assertions are naïve, and naïve because they are made by people who use their minds to search for facts, but do not want to know that correct thinking, which philosophy teaches, must precede any search, much less the construction of a complete worldview. Moreover, this philosophically grounded thinking may even lead us to the idea that we have neither the strength nor the data for an integral worldview. However, I am getting ahead of myself.

Kant has long ago told us what we can expect from thinking and what we should not expect from it. Nevertheless, I would like to examine the arguments of modern mind-worshippers and show that their expectations and promises are at odds with reality.

Let us begin with the first claim: the power of ‘objective facts’ from which, when treated with the reagents of ‘critical thinking’, ‘scientific truths’ are produced by themselves.

Speaking of ‘objective facts’, we must say that their importance is greatly exaggerated.  We do not communicate with some ‘objective reality given to us in sensations’, but with an inseparable flow of experiences, which is then dissected into separate meanings (concepts) depending on what ideas about the world supplying these experiences live in our mind.

A fact is the event of the mind’s conscious encounter with an incomprehensible reality. That which the mind does not notice and about which it does not draw conclusions, does not join the ranks of ‘facts’, remaining a mere incident. Comparatively speaking: if we imagine the mind as a sphere, then ‘facts’ are those encounters of the mind with events of the external world which have left traces on this surface of this sphere. In any ‘fact’ the interpretation occupies as much space as the event that caused it, if not more. Without these interpretations, ‘facts’ would drum on the surface of our minds like rain on a roof, leaving no trace within that mind.

The fact-worship of our days is false also because ‘facts’ as such do not ennoble or educate the mind, no matter how much one tries to claim so. The mind in general consists not in possessing facts, but in weighing them. From this follows a paradoxical conclusion: it is possible to have a mind operating under conditions close to complete ignorance (absence of facts); it is also possible to have almost complete omniscience, involving weakness of judgement, if not absence of mind. Of course, these extremes are imaginary, but in general this is how science and wisdom oppose each other. It is a mistake to relate the power of the mind to how large hordes of facts it can bring under its banner.

But the main thing is not even in this. The main thing is that, referring to some ‘facts independent of our mind’, confirming the favourite theory, the scientist secretly, under the veil, sneaks into the laboratory the fruits of his mental labour, conjectures, conclusions, and even, dreadfully to say, convictions — all the motley trash of which the so-called ‘solid factual substantiation’ consists. How and why this happens will be discussed in detail below.

Let us move on to another claim of dogmatic science: to ‘cognition of objective reality’ on the way of accumulation of ‘knowledge’. But is it so? Can science really accumulate ‘knowledge’ as if it has some loophole through which thought can penetrate the external world? Unfortunately, there is no such loophole, and when we speak of knowledge, we mean perceptions consistent with present experience. In saying this, I am not belittling the feat of science, but pointing out its true significance.

The true feat of science consists not in ‘cognition of the external world’, but in building in the human mind such a picture of things, which would be characterised by a certain degree of breadth of phenomena united by it, and at the same time sufficient internal consistency. Cognition is the arrangement of facts (i. e. our perceptions) into a mutually consistent chain, but this chain exists first of all in the scientist’s mind; its connexion with the vast and mysterious world, where the fog of the unknown smokes, is deceptive and unclear.

By the way, it should be said that these very requirements of breadth and consistency make science exclude from consideration everything dark, enigmatic and unpredictable, in a word, mystery. The result is a worldview that is whole, solid, consistent, and based on the belief that there cannot be more than one truth about one subject. This belief is the link that holds the whole chain together. In the borderland between science and life, this belief inevitably leads to the emergence of so-called ‘one true worldviews’, which differ from science as such in their complete indifference to experience, to the accumulation of facts, and ossify even faster than the rather dogmatic, but still scientific views that gave rise to them.

It is time to bring together and complete what has been said above. A commonplace of scientific dogmatics is the opposition of ‘critical reason’ to imagination, to all creative thinking. Reason is looked upon as a sharp knife, a means of clarification, if not destruction. The critical capacity of reason is nowadays regarded as its only capacity. This view, however, impoverishes reality. The business of reason is not only to criticise, to analyse, to destroy, but also to create worlds. We do not think about this at all; we accept the picture of the world that the scientist approaches with his scalpel as if it had been given to us as a gift; in fact, this picture has been created by the mental efforts of generations.

However, we should not be afraid to say that ‘objective reality’, as if given to our sense, is a myth.

If we think about it, we shall see that all our life is possible only because between us and the darkness of random, terrible and mysterious events there is a coloured canvas on which is painted a bright and clear meaningful world that covers us from the abyss. It is this canvas woven and coloured by our mind that is usually called ‘objective reality’, although as a matter of fact it is only the most remote, almost independently existing part of our mind. This canvas or, rather, a strong wall protecting us from madness (at least, from life beyond reason and its protective charms) was before science; it was built by reason at a time when no one had ever heard of ‘critical thinking’…

The mind-worshippers of recent times oppose reason and imagination; reason and illusion (to which they include religious faith). However, this opposition is shallow. In fact, mind is the power of imagination bound by causality (to put it another way: the requirement of mutual consistency of mental constructions; we do not know much about true ‘causality’). In spite of this, of all aspects of mental activity, only the critical, destructive one is glorified; any mental labour that does not aim at destruction is declared unfruitful… which has led to the inevitable consequences: the constructive power of thought has dried up, and the once full-flowing river of science has broken down into streams formed by the collection of small facts — with the inability to make major generalisations.

The mind came to be seen exclusively as a critical (destructive) ability — and the mind repaid for it.

In reality, the ‘critical mind’ differs from the child’s mind or the mind of a primitive man only in the degree of certainty (which could be called something else: the degree of permissible unreliability), the verifiability of causal connexions. The mind of the ‘higher order’ prefers the simplest, most easily verifiable (preferably in vitro) connexions; the philosophical mind, and even more so the religious mind, deals with difficult-to-check dependencies; however, biblical truths do not cease to be truths because they are verified not in the laboratory, but in the space of human life. Only the childish mind, most prone to magic, is content with judgements like the following: ‘If you say “One, two, three!” and turn three times on your left foot, Monster will come!’ Here the connexion of events is not only difficult to verify, it is — at least at first sight, i. e. before our meeting with Monster — absent. But in all the cases considered, the mind commands nothing but the imagination; the difference is in the readiness of the mind to accept its offerings.

It is undeniable that critical thinking does not recognise Monster and seeks to confine itself to the domain of explained experience, but this is both its strength and its weakness. All that is not deducible from the available stock of representations; all representations that cannot be deduced from others accumulated before — all this is declared to be non-existent. In some areas, for some time it leads to great successes, and then — to stagnation, to dead dogmatism, because no new ideas can resist the battering ram of ‘critical thought’. It is not by chance, it should be noted, that science in its not very long history has developed through successive catastrophes, destructions; new ideas never entered it gradually, but burst in like conquerors.

This means that the aim of the notorious ‘critical thinking’ has always been to destroy the broad worldview that recognises the Mystery in the universe and to replace it with a narrow, special worldview, but one that is extremely resistant to all criticism. ‘Critical Reason’ was doing what a stone rolling down a mountain does, i. e., it has sought a position that can be held as long as possible with the least amount of effort, and its last word is an ultimate dogmatism far superior to that of the Christian Church.

So what are we to do? Give up on reason? Moderate its critical, destructive power? Hide in the enclosure of the Church from which our unreasonable great-grandfathers departed?

No, but to return from the ghost of ‘critical reason’ to the whole man, to the living and strong soul whose reasoning power is condensed in the mind (which must never, under any circumstances, be abandoned), and to learn to think again — after we have exercised ourselves too long in searching for facts and constructing from these facts a ‘scientific outlook’.

Timofey Sherudilo.
From the book Knowledge and Creativity. Essays on Cullture.

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