In Search of Truth: The Evasiveness of Reality and the Permanence of Beauty

Pi Gamma Mu, International Honor Society in Social Sciences

In Search of Truth: The Evasiveness of Reality and the Permanence of BeautyAuthor(s): Paul RomanSource: International Social Science Review, Vol. 57, No. 2 (SPRING 1982), pp. 82-93Published by: Pi Gamma Mu, International Honor Society in Social SciencesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41881304 .

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In Search of Truth

The Evasiveness of Reality and the Permanence of Beauty Paul Roman

State University of New York Plattsburgh, New York, USA

Our times witness an increasing tendency toward abstraction, a moving away from the directly observed and empirically analyzed layers of reality in the direction of the less and less tangible, abstract, and structural perception of truth. The "outside world" is becoming not only less comprehensible if scrutinized more deeply than before, but also it appears less important than the "inside world" of the individual. Disappoint- ments and dangers accompany these trends that emphasize the delicate balance between objective and subjective, and that are evident in science, in literature, in art, and in music. We review these topics through the interpretations of scientists, philosophers, literati, and poets and trace them back through the centuries to their probable origin.

"To believe that mystery and wonder are foreign bodies in the eye of comprehension is only one of the many rationalist superstitions ."

Erich Heller, 1965.

1. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this essay is to survey, discuss, and explicate a cultural phenomenon:

the ascendancy of abstraction and the concomitant conflict of the "outside" and "inside." At the very best, this is a paper on cultural history. Even though deep philosophical questions will unavoidably emerge, they will not (and, as far as I am concerned, cannot) be answered. No real "thesis" will be promulgated. On the other hand, I shall not hide my intuitive leanings.

I begin with a characterization of the problem in terms of the contemporary framework. Then, a historical review becomes necessary. Finally, if not a resolution, then at least a tentative statement of what directions of action are open to us will be presented.

2. THE 20TH-CENTURY SCENE Werner Heisenberg, undoubtedly one of the greatest pioneers of contemporary

Dr. Paul Roman was born in Budapest, Hungary. He received his M.S. in chemistry in 1947 and his Ph.D. in physics in 1948 at the Eötvös University in Budapest, and his D.Sc. in mathematical physics from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1956. He worked at several Hungarian universities before his escape toward the end of his country's revolution in December 1956. He settled in Manchester, England, teaching theoretical physics at the University there and finally moved to the U.S. in 1960. He was professor of physics at Boston University for 18 years. Since 1978 he has been dean of graduate studies and research at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. He has visited and worked for varying terms in many countries, including Russia, Czechoslovakia, Italy, West Germany, India, and Mexico. He has written six books and about 100 scientific papers in international learned journals. He is also seriously interested in the arts and humanities.



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physics and also a man of profound philosophical and humanistic learning, shortly before his death in early 1976, pointed out yet another remarkable parallelism between the scientific and artistic realms. In a contribution to a Festschrift in honor of Erich Heller, the renowned German literature scholar, Heisenberg commented 1 that the inward-turning and increasingly abstract, nongraphic,2 symbolic way of searching for and representing truth, which had been persuasively analyzed in relation to poetry and art some time ago by Heller himself, 3 is surely not restricted to the domain of the arts and humanities, but, as a historical process, characterized equally well the natural sciences. He brings up many examples in contemporary physics; some related observations can be found in his earlier essays. The best example is perhaps the shattering of our "self-evident" attitude of describing events in a rigidly objective space-time framework, which we have been accustomed to view "from the outside." The demise of this comforting objectivity was brought about by the advent of quantum theory. We can no longer idealize the analysis of natural phenomena by talking of an outside observer who "looks" at things in space and time and merely registers the events which are governed by immutable laws of nature. We now must accept, Heisenberg concludes, that laws "deal with the time-development of the possible and the probable. But the decisions that lead from the probable to the factual . . . can no longer be predicted. In this way the concept of reality, as expressed in classical physics, essentially lost its ground."4

Apart from his paramount role in formulating quantum theory, Heisenberg had many reasons to be rather involved with the implications of this subject. One of the recurring topics in his memoirs is the description of Einstein's obstinacy in never really accepting quantum theory. The story centers about an anecdote. Young Heisenberg was under the impression that he followed Einstein's dictum: a theory must not contain any unobservable entities. However, during their first personal meeting in 1926, Einstein nonplussed Heisenberg by explaining to him that every theory must necessarily contain unobservable entities, concepts, and formulations that cannot be preset from the outside but come only from the "knowledge" of that which is to be explored - a "preknowledge" would be a more appropriate word. To put it more simply, Einstein insisted that only the completed theory can decide what is "observable." When Heisenberg retorted that the ideology of building only on directly observable entities seems to have been Einstein's own personal motivating principle in the formulation of his theory of special relativity, Einstein only shook his head and said: "Perhaps I used earlier this philosophy and may have even written it down; nonetheless, it is nonsense." Heisenberg elaborates on Einstein's words and implies that he (Einstein) went as far as to call the very process of observation a problematic one. Apparently, he opined that the connection between the phenomena to be observed and the sensual perception thereof that resides in our consciousness can be ascertained only after we know the appropriate laws of nature. 5 If we now accept Heisenberg's rendering of Einstein's views, it should not be a surprise to see why science is bound to be driven deeper and deeper into abstraction and symbolic thinking.

Another lifelong concern of Heisenberg's was his interest in a realistic conceptualiza- tion of what the physicist usually (but superficially) calls an "elementary particle." As is well known, the concept originated in the somewhat obscure but strikingly presented thoughts of Democritus. Even in modern times, scientists firmly believed in "ultimate" constituents of matter, and when they failed to find them, they simply looked for smaller and smaller parts of the whole. What are the constituents of a certain system, if any? How are the parts kept together to form a composite system? What dynamical and geometric laws determine this or that structure, built up from elementary objects? We are so prejudiced by this way of objectifying the ultimate, even though it tends to slip more and more into the realm of symbolism, that, despite the fairly obvious lesson of a



84 INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW FOR SPRING 1982

possibly endless chain (massive body, molecule, atom, nucleus, proton, quark, subquark . . .), we still insist on searching for primary constituents. For one thing, ever since quantum field theory reached maturity, we have known that, with a certain probability, any system does contain systems not only as big and sophisticated as itself, but even bigger and more complex ones.6 Furthermore, the inability to produce in a free, observable state quarks (that, for years now, have been considered to be the ultimate building blocks) does not seem to deter those who insist on describing the fascinating world of the subnucleonic phenomena in terms of pointlike idealizations. The very dynamics of quarks is so formulated that these epitomes of elementarity are eternally confined inside the particles they make up. 7 Heisenberg had a very definite posture vis-à-vis these problems. "The concept of a 'particle,' or the idea of 'consisting of must be sacrificed," he said quite categorically. He knew perfectly well that "this giving up of earlier concepts is more difficult than the acceptance of new ones. We must reckon with this."8 But it is "very hard to avoid problems which are already contained in our language."9 "We will have to give up Democritus's philosophy and the concept of fundamental elementary particles," he tells us, and he also suggests a way, the route of the one who sees the world in terms of harmony and beauty. Indeed, continues Heisenberg, "we should rather accept the concept of fundamental symmetry , which originates in the philosophy of Plato." 10

We can perhaps see now why it is so difficult to accept the apparently inevitable trend that takes us from the tangible, verbalizable, comfortable world of the "outside" into the unchartered realms of the abstract, the conceptual "inside," and the symbolic. This difficulty, commonly experienced not only when one tries to understand contemporary science, but also when one desires to appreciate fully a modern string quartet, a poem, or a painting, is primarily a matter of philosophical and linguistic conditioning. The limitations and transmutations of the concept of objectivity are very hard to accept. "Our entire language is tied to this [earlier] concept of objectivity. All terms which we use in [modern] physics to describe experiments - such as measurement, position, energy, temperature, etc. - are therefore based on classical physics and its idea of objectivity," says Heisenberg. 11 As far as the scientific world picture is concerned, he then gives us a pointer to find again our peace of mind: it is not an abandoning but rather a readoption that we need: the rediscovery of an equally ancient but otherwise-directed philosophy. "Just as Copernicus and Galileo gave up in their approach the descriptive science of Aristotle and turned to the structural science of Plato," says Heisenberg, "so also we are probably forced to give up the atomistic materialism of Democritus and turn to the ideas of symmetry [expounded] in the philosophy of Plato."

For anyone who is consciously aware of the pivotal role played by design and structure in modern art (and also, naturally, in art esthetics), this advice to scientists ought to sound rather familiar. "Atomization" and a trend to more and more "nonobjective" art forms were (and partly still are) difficulties that the artists (and the puzzled public) of this century have had to face and come to terms with. Eugene Rabinowitch, a botanist with great learning in the arts and poetry, comments rightly that the "atomistic" spirit of science was precisely that feature which impressed nonscientists, and, at the same time, offended many artists. Yet, it was exactly this violently denounced characteristic of science which has been adopted by, and made a central element of, many new "revolutionary" trends in art. "Artists, musicians, and poets joined in the destruction of visual, musical, and verbal wholes, which men for ages had learned to cherish as expressions of an inner unity and integrity, endowing them with a spirit or soul," writes Rabinowitch. "The wholeness . . . was destroyed and replaced by a conglomeration ... of simplified, idealized, elementary building stones." He becomes quite furious when he describes the later phases of this development:



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"When . . . Picasso and the Cubists decomposed human bodies into blocks, a decisive step was made from 'synthetic' to 'analytic' art. The next step was to scatter the heaps apart - and then, in an ultimate simplification, to flatten them into squares and polygons, ending with the multicolored geometrical patterns of a Mondrian. . . . The ultimate refuge of art becomes the arbitrary arrangement of these parts into dazzling patterns." 12 This anger is shared even by some artists, of another aspiration. The sensitive neoclassicist German poet of the early part of our century, Rainer Maria Rilke, did not hesitate to refer to much of modern art as "mischief and senseless caprice." He despised "that anarchy of a vision driven to extremes through having become corrupted by microscopes and the increasing invisibility of so many experiences."13

A somewhat enigmatic, parenthetical remark may be in order at this point, which is this: It may not be a straightforward matter to classify, in the visual arts, what is "realistic" and what is "abstract." Even in a most conventional portrait there may be a high degree of "abstraction"; a rendering of not the obvious but of the intellectually filtered, thus abstract, essence of the image. Maybe it is mostly a distinction of degree and intent.

We shall have more to say about the crisis of art and literature later on, and we have already talked about the difficulties of comprehension in modern science that often plagued (and continue to torment) even its greatest practitioners. Perhaps it will add color to listen to a "professional" philosopher as well. In his classic but no longer popular book, Creative Evolution , written in 1907, Henri Bergson grudgingly and with a sense of rebellion acknowledges that our way of thinking about the world and its realities retreated into working with symbolic images and into a mere search for relations between entities instead of being an attempt at "understanding" them as they are. "The essence of things escapes us, and will escape us always," he unhappily confesses, and "we move among relations; the absolute is not our province; we are brought to a stand before the Unknowable."14 Later on he muses about the curious circumstance that the objective order in the world (whatever that is) can be expressed only by mathematical structures, which, after all, are symbolic rather than concrete statements. "We cannot insist too strongly that there is something artificial in the mathematical form of a physical law,"15 he says. But it seems to me, Bergson understated his case because by mathematics he apparently means simply the numerical. For example, he is perplexed by noting that the process of "measuring is a wholly human operation" whereas "Nature . . . does not measure, nor does it count." He resolves the paradox by relating the objectivity of phenomena to the subjectivity of the creative act put into action by the scientist. However, I believe that the great contemporary mathematical physicist and philosopher of science, Eugene Wigner, who was also puzzled by the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences," reached deeper; or he realized that, truly, it is not the successful computational aspect of mathematics in science that is surprising; it should not be difficult to accept, on purely semantical lines, that established laws must be formulated in mathematical language. However, he says, "the role of evaluating the consequences of already established theories is not the most important role of mathematics in physics. . . . Mathematics does play . . . also a more sovereign role in physics"; and then he points out that the mathematical language is not only the sole language which we can speak, but "it is, in a very real sense the correct language." The structure- comprising and communicating power of abstract mathematical systems "applied" to the "real" world is in no way connected with the simplicity of the mathematical concepts. These are not chosen for their conceptual simplicity - far from it, especially if we think of quantum theory or relativity or particle theory - but because they miraculously are capable of reaching into the depth of reality and can render for us,




through their structural character, a pathway from the subjective to the objective, a golden bridge to connect the inner world with the external. Wigner very fittingly concludes the argument by noting that the clue to this miracle is probably "Einstein's statement that the only physical theories we are willing to accept are the beautiful ones."16

Of course, like Heisenberg ( supra , note 11), Wigner also tells us, perhaps less explicitly, that we must return to Plato and Pythagoras. After all, Plato was probably the first who said that reality can be understood through mathematics. 17 And this insight is being repeated over and over again by many great thinkers for all who have ears to hear. Still, within the realm of mathematics as a pathway to reality, we must quote Einstein again. In his 1933 Herbert Spencer lecture he pointed out that "the creative principle resides in mathematics . . . therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed." 18 This statement grew out of his conviction that the ultimate basis of the physical world picture cannot be extracted from experience alone, and that it is necessary, by turning inward, so to speak, to create freely the mathematical concepts that are suitable in the process of internalizing the objective realities. For those who, in the face of all new discoveries and cataclysms, still could not reconcile the need for abstraction with the dictates of tangible, outward reality, Einstein had this to say: "The theorist . . . should not be carped at as 'fanciful'; on the contrary, he should be granted the right to give free rein to his fancy, for there is no other way to the goal."19

Of course, "pure mathematics" itself had to struggle through a long period of uneasiness that led from the constructionist mathematics of the past to the new and crystal-clear axiomatic, structural, and necessarily abstract (let us avoid the derogative term "formalist") science and art that we now have. But the discussion of these developments would lead too far.20 We shall briefly return to this topic later.

3. A HISTORICAL REVIEW Up to this point in this essay we have reviewed the facts that throw light on the

conflict between the tangible and the internalized abstract facets of truth, as evidenced in contemporary culture; and we have hinted at both the root of the problems and at their generic solution. Perhaps it will be profitable to start all over again, and pursue the topic in historical perspective, going back to the Renaissance of the 16th century when, it can be said with some idealization, the era of "modern science" dawned.

At this point, we must speak up against a popular misconception which the eminent physicist, philosopher, and statesman Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, one-time student and lifelong close friend of Heisenberg, calls the "Galileo Myth." It is usually taken for granted that the "scientific method," born in the 16th and 17th centuries through the labors of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and their immediate followers, consists simply in substituting empiricism for the speculative approach of the Middle Ages. Of course, it is true that the fascination with the modern experimental method of approach to unravel truth was well founded, successful, and enjoyed quick acceptance because, as Heisenberg reminds us,21 it gave one the possibility to repeat and reproduce the experiments that served as the primary input to the acquisition of knowledge. Weizsäcker summarizes the role of sense-experience as the basis for modern science by saying that "it is sufficient [to know] that some researcher had an experience through sensual input and that, in principle, anyone else could repeat it. [However] it is not the act of experience that matters, but rather the fact of affairs which he reported. And the fact itself is not important as a single case but as a 'type.' "22

But now we come to the root of misunderstandings. The Galileo Myth assures us, writes Weizsäcker, "that in the Middle Ages one admired Aristotle's speculations,



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which did not care about observations, and that Galileo put science on the track, since he described the world so as we really experience it. But I think, this [interpretation] completely obscures the true nature of Galileo's achievement - The main point about Aristotle is that he was too empirical. That is why he never arrived at a mathematical theory of Nature. Galileo's giant step forward was to have the courage to describe the world in terms that we do not [sensually] experience. He formulated laws which, in the form as he expressed them . . . can never be verified via a single observation, but which are, instead, simple in the mathematical sense."23 Anyone who has pondered over the difficulties that plague junior high school physics instruction when one talks about the law of inertia (the first law of Newton24) will understand what Weizsäcker means. He summarizes (as though speaking the mind of Galileo and his companions): "True science, by force of its very nature, must transcend that which we learn through our senses."

From this analysis of 16th and early 17th century scientific thought, it appears that those pioneers turned from Aristotle to Plato. There is much truth in this. "For Kepler, astronomy was nothing but an adoration of the Creator through the medium of mathematics."25 "Kepler . . . says: God created the world in accord with his conceptions of Creation . . . called by Plato 'Ideas,' and they are comprehensible to men as mathematical connections. They are comprehensible . . . because man was created as the spiritual likeness of God. Physics is a reflection of the divine ideas of creation, and thus, Physics is Divine Service."26 Similarly, somewhat later, "Galileo said that Nature, the second book of God (the first being the Bible) had been written in mathematical symbols and we should learn this alphabet if we want to read Him."27 However, Weizsäcker reminds us that the parallelism is not without flaws. Whereas for Plato only pure mathematics had the epistemological aspiration of truth, Galileo thought that "mathematical laws hold strictly true in Nature and that they can be discovered via an effort of human thought, which includes experimentation."28 The dichotomy of modern scientific thought in relation to Platonic ideology may be explained, says Weizsäcker, by the fact that Plato's God is not the creator of matter, hence science, a gift of God, cannot have a direct relevance to the material world. In contrast, the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches us that God is the creator of everything. Therefore, continues Weizsäcker, "man, created in His image, can understand all created things, in particular, the entire material world. Especially the idea that word became flesh, i.e., the dogma of incarnation, shows that the world of matter is not too lowly to be adopted by God; consequently it is not too lowly to be understood through the light of reason which is a gift of God."29

At this point, I must insert a cautionary remark. My colleagues in "professional philosophy" warn me that Weizsäcker's viewpoint is not unanimously shared in the field. Apparently, it is possible to quote passages from Plato which imply that the Demiurgos, in some way or another, is the creator, or at least the indirect "author," of the material contents of the world, too.

Irrespective of details, it should be obvious that the background of the 16th-17th century "scientific revolution," the beginning of modern science, has a clear-cut theological background. It surely had little, if anything, to do with the socioeconomic developments of that age. Even the most rationalistic of all innovators, René Descartes, meditated on the essence of material things in terms of the properties of God and the theological transmutation of Platonism into the Christian world. "The existence of God would pass with me for a truth at least as certain as I ever judged any truth of mathematics to be," he says. "I easily believe that the existence can be separated from the essence of God . . . nevertheless ... it appears that the existence can no more be separated from the essence of God than the idea of a mountain from that of a valley." 30 It is equally important to note that Descartes himself was quite clear about




the relatively limited importance of the "experimental method" in the scientific revolution. "The perceptions of the senses do not teach us what is in reality in things," 31 he admonishes his readers.

Nevertheless, as it is only too well known, the essentially spiritual (as opposed to materialistic) orientation of the founding fathers of modern science did not imply adherence to the organized church of their day. Weizsäcker32 compares them with the early Christians (of the first century) inasmuch as they both insisted on the discovery and possession of Truth, notwithstanding their great differences regarding the nature of Truth.

It is time to summarize, and I think we do well if we quote Heisenberg once more. In his view, the truth of the matter is that, rather than just replacing speculative knowledge by empiricism, "Galileo rejected the traditional science of his age (which has been based on Aristotle) and adopted Plato's philosophical ideas. He replaced Aristotle's descriptive science by the structural science of Plato Galileo, exactly as Copernicus, understood that by relinquishing immediate experience, and by idealization of experience, one can discover mathematical structures in the phenomena and that, in this manner, one can arrive at a newfound simplicity as basis of a novel understanding."33

We now move to the turmoil of the 18th century, when the Ancient Regime fell apart, and to the 19th century when, the "satanic mills" of industrialization notwithstanding, poets, scientists, and revolutionists struggled to achieve a new synthesis of the inner and outer reality.

Erich Heller, to whom we referred at the very beginning of this essay, makes the strong point that the evolution of epistemological viewpoints in this period, the contrasting of the empirical and the abstract, was essentially a struggle between classicism and romanticism. In his famous work, The Artist's Journey into the Interior , Heller's take-off point is Hegel's doctrine , according to which the history of art (and, it seems, by extension, the history of esthetic and perhaps even scientific thinking) is a reflection of "the changeable relations prevailing between the Spirit, or the Idea, and our sensually perceptible reality; between the principle of meaningful form and the principle of unformed matter."34 He then clarifies Hegel's views by explaining that for him, and for other "theologians of the Greeks," idealization meant "the rendering of an idea in the likeness of a natural form." For the true classicists of this period "Greek art ... as the embodied resolution of the grievous dualism of essence and appearance, of meaning and reality, of content and form, was art 'under the aspect ... of its highest appointment.' "35 In this supreme classicism there is "no room for the mind to play with its distinctions between . . . form and content, or 'being' and 'meaning.' "36 Hegel's contemporary, the greatest German classicist of all, Goethe, felt also assured that "it is as hard to learn a thing from models, as from Nature" and, in fact, "Nature and Idea cannot be separated without destroying art as well as life."37 On another occasion, he said that the most admirable feature of Greek art was that it "proceeded from an immediate intuition of the inner and outer world."

Unfortunately for Goethe and so many other great classicists, "classical art had to die because the Spirit could not abide by the perfect understanding it had reached with concrete reality; for it lies in the Spirit's true nature that in the end it should be rid of all sensuous encumbrance. . . . Classical art could not last because it was in contradiction to the true idea of the Spirit" - this is how Heller sees the wave of change that came upon intellectual life in the 19th century. 38 Classicism had to give way to romanticism, says Heller,39 because already Hegel knew that "there is something higher than the beautiful radiance of the Spirit in its immediate sensuous shape," and "that the ultimate realization of the Spirit can be achieved only ... 'iti that form of existence which is truly appropriate to it: in the feeling and in the inward soul of man, indeed in



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human inwardness,' in a sphere inaccessible to the senses." Goethe himself saw all this very similarly. In his commemorative volume edited in

honor of the great archeologist Winckelman, he lamented that, while the necessary evil of atomizing unity was always looming in the background, modern man "is in the danger of dispersing himself via the process of specific clarification of the manifold of knowledgeable things, and to get lost in unconnected understandings, without enjoying the good luck of the ancients who could compensate for the unattainable {"das Unzulängliche ") by the completeness of their personality."40 On another occasion Goethe complained that, after all, art is only a mediator of the inexpressible, and it is useless to reinterpret it by words.

It is interesting to note that in some sense, Goethe prepared the ground for romanticism which he then rightly blamed for the obliteration of the classical spirit of unity. In fact, in one of his conversations with Eckerman in 1836, he spoke quite openly about this, but added that he could not identify himself with the movement; and he deplored that "nowadays everyone talks of classicism and romanticism, a thing unthinkable 50 years ago." A year before, in another conversation, he became quite acerbic on the subject: "In my language, 'classic' means healthy, and 'romantic' means sick."41

This is the place where one should digress a bit with a discussion of the topic "Goethe and Science." Much, perhaps too much, has been said and written on this subject. 42 To start with, we should consider Goethe's own assessment about his role in science. "I am like an ancient mariner who has spent his life traveling from isle to isle in the ocean of Nature," he wrote, "who has observed the rarest marvels of all three elements, divining the mysterious laws of creation which they all share; but who, paying heed to oar and sail and helm, has been unable to devote himself to these tempting sights."43 This, it seems to me, is an honest self-assessment; but in another mood he felt carried away and exclaimed: "Who can rob me of the secret joy when I realize my own zealous and unceasing striving brought me so close to many a great, world-shaking discovery that when it appeared, it seemed, as it were, to burst forth from my own inner being?"44 Unfortunately, it was this kind of boisterous language which inspired many writers who never ceased to present Goethe to us as not only a genius endeavoring to obtain a synoptic, unified view of Nature and Man (which he was), but also as a great scientist of his time (which he never was). As a matter of fact, the only areas of science where Goethe made some contribution were, quite significantly, comparative anatomy and plant taxonomy. His meticulous and imaginative experimentation with light and color did not lead to a really meaningful theory of color perception, as is often claimed; and charity prevents one from making any comment on his stubborn argumentation aimed at refuting Newton's physical optics. Goethe's greatest shortcoming was his conviction that perception, and perception alone, , was the prerequisite for understanding Nature. He wanted "to banish mathematical and philosophical theory," at least from certain areas of exploration,45 which, after all, may not be a bad idea, but unfortunately he applied it indiscriminately. Could it be that his errors stemmed from his pantheistic heresy?

Rather than trying to elevate Goethe into a sphere where he does not really belong, let us pay homage to and enjoy his fine views - philosophical, despite his professed aversion to this discipline. "Nature and Idea cannot be separated, without destroying art as well as life," he wrote. "When artists speak of Nature" - and surely this is what he did - "Idea is always understood, without their being clearly conscious of it. So is it with all who prize experience exclusively. They forget that experience is only half of experience. . . . That very thing that strikes the uncultivated as Nature, in a work of art, is not Nature (outward) but man (inward nature). We know no world, but in relation to man. We know no art, except it be an expression of this relation."46




How can we reconcile these alternating moods and views? For one thing, despite his protestations, Goethe was carried into, or perhaps was even responsible for, romanticism emerging despite his own will. Then again: is it simply that Goethe's world view, especially his interpretation of symbols and models, changed much as he aged? "In the youthful works of Goethe," says Weizsäker,47 "meaning and symbol are one as they ever have been in great poetry - In the years of maturity . . . they separate and yet they are held together through a concept of style In the days of old age meaning is recognized as meaning; symbol and meaning are distinguished as a matter of fact; yet for the very same reason there exists a free interaction between them." The ultimate judgment on Goethe the scientist follows now easily: "he is not like unto the lighthouse which indicates the harbour, but rather like the light of a star that will accompany us on all our journeys."48

Quite apart from Goethe's occasional outbursts that sound more like Helden- gesänge of romantics rather than well-constructed edifices of classicists, I cannot avoid an objection to Heller's interpretation of the parallelism "classical-empiricist versus romantic-abstract." My point is that romanticism, as opposed to classicism, lacks solid structure, whereas abstraction, especially the kind we meet in modern science and art, is characterized by, nay, based upon, structure. But then, Plato the idealist, so strongly anchored in universal structures, is thought of by many as a romantic dreamer.

Whatever the value of these objections may be, let us now return to Heller's analysis. It was Nietzsche, says Heller, who, though unknowingly, following Hegelian thought patterns, diagnosed "the Romantic malady of his age as a severance of mind from world, soul from circumstance, human inwardness from external condition ... a contrast unknown to the Greeks."49 The ultimate blow came when the Platonic trinity, Truth-Good-Beauty, all subsumed in the Divine, was torn asunder by "modern" art and science. The real epistemölogical danger inherent in romanticism consists in the fact, correctly pointed out by Heller, that "there is a Romantic limbo of misunderstanding providentially fixed between the inner and outer worlds."50

This poignant formulation leads Heller, quite naturally, from Goethe to the 20th century German classicist, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He characterizes Rilke's central preoccupation as the analysis of "the correspondence, or as the case may be . . . the disproportion, between the inner life and external world."51 To understand Rilke, one of the most enigmatic poets, living in the opening third of this troubled century, we should perhaps ponder on the commentary on Rilke's Duino Elegies , written by his translators Leishman and Spender: "Love, like death, he regarded as an extension of human life into the infinite ... as a plunging of it into the eternal stream. Its passion and hunger cannot and should not ... be satisfied by the object that awakens it; it is for something infinite ... it can find its fulfillment only in 'the Whole.' "52 Further enlightenment comes from Rilke's own characterization of the "Angel," a recurring, yet, I believe, constantly changing personage in his Elegies. In a letter to his Polish translator, Rilke says: "The Angel of the Elegies is the being who vouches for the recognition of a higher degree of reality in the invisible. Therefore [he is] 'terrible' to us, because we . . . still depend on the visible."53 Who could have better expressed the agony of the contemporary artist, scientist, poet? But there is more to countenance: the inadequacy of language - language that cannot follow the transmutations that lead from the phenomena to the inner meaning, language that we do not want to force us to give up the understanding of the Whole, yet language, the only one we know: human language, incomplete, insufficient, when it is most needed. "One is left with a mere intimation of the kind of speech that may be possible THERE, where silence reigns,"54 Rilke confides.



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4. WHAT NEXT? We can now understand what Rilke meant in a poem written in 1924 at Ragaz when

he said, "World is outside, can't be comprehended," or, even more explicitly, in his "First Elegy": "it is strange ... to inhabit the earth no longer . . . not to interpret roses, and other things that promise so much. . . . And it is hard ... to espy a trace of eternity."55 These sentiments, so much the echo of the theoretical physicist in this epoch, are persuasively put into perspective by Heller. The Duino Elegies , he says, are "concerned . . . with the seemingly contradictory task of rescuing the visible world in the invisibility of inwardness."56 They, in fact, touch upon the mystery of transsubstantiation. "Rilke has turned [this mystery] into the apocalyptic poetry of a human inwardness that takes over the divine agency of salvation: 'Nowhere will be world but within.' "57 The painful realization of the ever more retreating character of reality into the inner world, welcomed by a romanticist but bemoaned by Rilke and classicists before him, is the central idea of the Elegies. Heller summarizes Rilke's ultimate resignation in these words: "No longer is it the visible things that save the unquiet inner spirit by granting it a refuge in their unshakable 'objectivity' ... on the contrary, it is the invisible inner spirit that redeems the visible world threatened with destruction. . . . Salvation lies in infinite subjectivity."58

The sadness of the poet is shared by the brooding of the scientist. "Since a vivid understanding always requires graphic representation,"59 concludes Heisenberg in his Festschrift article in honor of Heller,60 "the end of the journey [into the abstract] presents us with an inexorable clarity regarding the boundaries which inevitably limit rational understanding ." Eugene Wigner talks more explicitly about these insights in his remarkable paper entitled "The Limits of Science,"61 when he tells us that "it will be necessary to introduce deeper and deeper concepts into physics and . . . this development will not end by the discovery of the final and perfect concepts. . . . We have no right to expect that our intellect can formulate perfect concepts for the full understanding of the inanimate nature's phenomena. . . . We will have to acquiesce in the fact that our intellect's toil cannot give us a satisfactory picture of the world such as the Greeks dreamed to attain."

The theoretician may take refuge in a full adaptation of a practical solution: the strict reliance on the so-called axiomatic method, sometimes misleadingly referred to as the "formalist approach." We already touched upon this subject when we discussed Wigner's ideas about the role of mathematics in science; and it would lead much too far to characterize in detail the process, so fully successful in modern mathematics, which starts with definitions and axioms and proceeds via strictly controlled steps of logic to the theorems of the discipline. The power of this approach lies in the fact that true knowledge consists of the formulation and analysis of relations - relations between elements of the external world as well as relations between external reality and our personal selves. Moreover, the masterly, imaginative use of structural analysis enables us to follow the advice we have already referred to: a renewed attempt at the realization of the Platonic ideal, where Truth and Beauty, and perhaps as a consequence, Good, become unified. Thus, it may be often possible to solve the philosophical problem of the "unattainable" - the Goethean Unzulänglich - by resorting to the formal device of studying relations and analyzing structure. But this can yield only a partial solution. Even disregarding the question as to whether every science can be "axiomatized," it is fairly clear that structural analysis alone will not solve the modern artist's or musician's dilemma. And surely, it will give but little consolation to the soul that yearns for a "real" understanding of Truth.

Perhaps we traveled much too far from the 16th-century turning point and we cannot hope for a second Platonic revival, as advocated by Heisenberg and Wigner, to redeem for us the lost unity of external and internal. But every ending carries within




itself the seeds of a new beginning. "Systems of human knowledge represent particular structures of human relations with reality and are subject to change with these relations," observes Erich Jantsch, the philosopher at Berkeley, in a very recent challenging essay;62 "subjectivity and objectivity fall together in complementarity."63 "It is the whole man with his curiosity and ambition, likes and dislikes - and not just his rational skills - that generates knowledge in particular, ever-changing, evolving structures. Knowledge is not unraveled, but generated; it is part of the self- organization of the universe."

Perhaps, here are the germs of a new beginning: a more modest attitude to our cursory understanding of rationality and, concomitantly, a more serious commitment to spiritual values.

NOTES * I am greatly obliged to Drs. D. Mowry, C. List (Plattsburgh), and J. Kalas (Albany) for illuminating

discussions and criticisms.

NOTES 1 W. Heisenberg, " Gedanken zur Reise der Kunst ins Innere ," in Versuche zu Goethe , edited by V. Dürr

and G. Molnár, Heidelberg: Lothar Stiehm, 1976. Translations of all quotes from German into English are my own throughout this paper unless otherwise explicitly stated.

2" Nicht anschaulich " is the correct, but untranslatable term. 3E. Heller, The Artist's Journey into the Interior , New York: Random House, 1965, 4W. Heisenberg. " Begegnungen und Gespräche mit Albert Einstein in Tradition in der Wissenschaft ,

München: Piper, 1977. 5 A vivid description of exchanges between Einstein and Heisenberg can be found supra , note 4. 6 For example, a proton is, strictly speaking, a superposition of a proton, a proton plus one or more

mesons, a proton plus an antiproton plus another proton, and so on, endlessly. 7 Of course, with the more recent talk about a possible structure of quarks and leptons themselves, even this dogged picture-making is bound to go the way of its ancestors. 8W. Heisenberg, "Die Anfänge der Quantenmechanick in Göttingen supra , note 4. 9W. Heisenberg, "Development of Concepts in the History of Quantum Theory," in The Physicist's

Conception of Nature , edited by J. Mehra, Boston: Reidl, 1973. 10 W. Heisenberg, "Tradition in Science," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , 1973, pp. 4-10. It appears that Heisenberg^ views on Plato are not universally accepted by historians of philosophy. Many claim that Plato's world view is not structural. In fact, some say, Plato's framework does not at all permit physics as a scientific enterprise. To me, it appears that this controversy has its origin in the interpretation of Plato's theory of Ideas. Where reside these Ideas? Many philosophers say that they "live in a third world." Heisenberg and other scientists appear to interpret Plato otherwise: the Ideas are, or can be, part of our subjective self.

11 Supra, note 9. 12 E. Rabmowitch, Integral Science and Atomized Art, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1970, pp. 64-

67. 13 From letters written by Rilke, as quoted supra , note 3, pp. 162-163. 14 H. Bergson, Creative Evolution , New York: Random House, 1944, p. xxi. "Ibid., pp. 238-240. 16 E. P. Wigner, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," in

Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics , 1960, No. 1. 17 Panos D. Bardis, School Science and Mathematics , 1963, pp. 52-67; and C. F. von Weizsäcker, " Griechische Philosophie und ¡Cosmogonie" in Die Tragweite der Wissenschaft, Erster Band , Stuttgart:

Hierzel, 1964. 18 A. Einstein, On the Method of Theoretical Physics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933. Interestingly

enough, in the 1979 Herbert Spencer Lectures, A. Salam amplified this theme. "All science ... is concerned with discovering WHY things happen as they do. The WHYS . . . must be 'deeper,' more universal, more axiomatic, less susceptible to direct experimental testing than the immediate phenomena we seek to explain." Cf. "The Nature of the 'Ultimate' Explanation in Physics," in Scientific Explanation , Oxford: University Press, 1981. 19 A. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, New York: Bonanza, 1954. 20 J. Dieudonne, "Modern Axiomatic Methods and the Foundations of Mathematics," in Great Currents

of Mathematical Thought, edited by F. LeLionnais, New York: Dover, 1971, Volume 2. 21 Cf. supra, note 10.



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22 C. F. von Weizsäcker, " Über einige Begriffe aus der Naturwissenschaft Goethes ," in Die Tragweite der Wissenschaft, Erster Band , Stuttgart: Hirzel, 1964. 23 Idem, "Kopernikus, Kepler, Galilei," ibid. 24 " A body retains its state of uniform motion until an external agent acts on it," or some similar

formulation; seemingly contrary to all common experiences. 25 Supra, note 23, especially p. 106. 26 Supra, note 10. 27 Ibid . 28 Supra, note 23. 29 Ibid. 30 R. Descartes, Meditation V, in J. Veitch, Meditations and Selections from the Principles of Philosophy,

LaSalle: Open Court, 1964. 31 R. Descartes, The Principles of Philosophy, Part II, Thesis III, ibid. 32 Supra, note 23. 33 Supra, note 10. 34 Supra, note 3, p. 110. 35 Ibid., p. 114. *>Ibid., p. 111. 37 "Aphorisms," first published in Goethe's posthumous works. In S. Ward, Essays on Art by Goethe,

Boston: Munroe, 1845. 38 Heller, op. cit., p. 115. 39 Ibid., p. 149. 40 J. W. von Goethe, Antikes, in Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert, 1805; quoted in G. Senior and C.

Bock, Goethe the Critic , Manchester: University Press, 1960. "Ibid., pp. 40-41. 42 A good summary is given by R. Magnus, Goethe as a Scientist, New York: Schuman, 1949. 43 Ibid., p. 33. 44 Ibid., p. 36. 4Ubid ., p. 234. 46 Supra, note 37. 47 Supra, note 22. 48 Ibid. 49 Supra, note 3, p. 103. so Ibid., p. 137. ^Ibid., p. 153. 52 R. M. Rilke, Duino Elegies, New York: Norton, 1939, p. 123. ^lbid., p. 87. *Ibid., p. 18. ^lbid., p. 25. 56 Supra, note 3, p. 170. 57 The last phrase is a quotation from Rilke's "Seventh Elegy." The full impact of this line comes through

only in the German original: " Nirgends , Geliebte, wird Welt sein, als innen." CF. supra , note 52, p. 60. ™òupra, note 3, p. Ido. 59 Anschaulichkeit is the untranslatable but correct expression used by Heisenberg. 60 Supra, note 1. 61 E. P. Wigner, "The Limits of Science," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, October

1950. 62 E. Jantsch, "Ethics and Evolution," in Absolute Values and the Search for the Peace of Mankind, New

York: International Cultural Foundation Press, 1981, Volume 1. 63 When discussing these points with some "professional philosophers," I learned that, probably, here we

face an oversimplification. It appears that there is a middle road between empiricism and subjectivism, which may be called conceptualism. Of course, there may be many more subtle gradations.



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In Search of Truth: The Evasiveness of Reality and the Permanence of Beauty