Izvorni znanstveni članak
The Observer’s Involvement – One of the Restrictions of Science
Neven Ninić
; Sveučilište u Splitu, Fakultet elektrotehnike, strojarstva i brodogradnje, Split, Hrvatska
Ivan Kešina
; Sveučilište u Splitu, Katolički bogoslovni fakultet, Split, Croatia
Sažetak
The introductory part of the work deals with the relation between science and other forms of cognition which has undergone various phases throughout history. The first chapter analyses the stages through which the relation between faith, i.e. religion, and science has passed: unity in medieval synthesis, divergence and conflict, dialogue and complementarity. Much credit goes to Pope Pius XII with his encyclical Humani Generis (1950.) for the development of dialogue between religion and science. However, Pope John Paul II made the greatest contribution to the dialogical relation between faith and science. He believed that their relation could be of great value and that only the dynamic relation between religion and science could discover the limits that hold the integrity of both disciplines. In the same way, scientists, those of the theological-philosophical thought as well as those of natural sciences, especially physicists, have made a great contribution to setting up a dialogue between religion and science.
This work is a step forward regarding the determinateness and concrete content of the limit that sciences cannot cross and beyond which is a space for other forms of cognition and for faith. The starting point is a standpoint that if one wants to study a subject, that subject has to be set apart from the observer, so that it can be objectively studied. In itself, that standpoint has been universally accepted in all sciences and in philosophy too, but it is too generalized to eliminate all the forms of interference and refined (which does not mean small) errors when drawing conclusions.
It is established that in thermodynamics and in Newton’s mechanics one can precisely define such a standpoint of the observer, by which he/she is completely detached from the phenomenon he/she is observing and from which he/she is able to research the observed phenomenon objectively. Such a standpoint quantitatively differs from other standpoints, by which he/she would be “involved” with the phenomenon he/she is investigating. In the sciences in which it is possible to do that, laws that can be called “objective” are experimentally passed and adopted. But even in such sciences there are forms of involvement that may remain hidden for decades and longer. This work points at such three forms of discrete involvement in thermodynamics and mechanics. For the sciences in which a precise quantitative separation between the observer’s objective and involved standpoints was not possible, or is not principally possible, there cannot be safety of involvement and consequently of refined errors in rational concluding. Hence, with considerable heuristic strength, the following conclusion is drawn: All sciences, including philosophy, should explicitly take and put forward a view that, by rational conclusions, it is possible to make a refined mistake in their areas of cognition and that there is room for other forms of cognition and for religion.
Ključne riječi
science; religion; conflict; dialogue and complementarity; thermodynamics; mechanics; observer
Hrčak ID:
62959
URI
Datum izdavanja:
21.7.2010.
Posjeta: 1.842 *