Wednesday, September 5, 2018

"Mechanistic ideology"

“THE widespread taking of mechanistic physics for the truth of a mechanistic philosophy proved to be, so warned no less a physicist than W. Heitler, “a superstition far more dangerous than the one about the existence of witches: It leads to a general spiritual and moral drying-up which can easily lead to physical destruction. When once we have got to the stage of seeing in man merely a complex machine, what does it matter if we destroy him?” In another context Heitler praised Dostoevski for foreseeing a global destruction as a consequence of the mechanistic ideology spawned by misguided reflection on science throughout the 19th-century.”

Stanley L. Jaki: The Purpose of it All, Chap. 6—Heuristics of Purpose.