In the following passages Berlinksi captures the vanishing quality of modern intellectual life
with silken nets of wit. I am impressed with how he understands that atheism, moral relativism, and materialism basically
are a form of "sentimentalism" -- see below. I think that is a deep insight.
There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are
capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time ….
But if you ask me just who is the more credulous, the more suggestible, the dopier, the more perfectly prepared
to convey absurdity to an almost inconceivable pitch of personal enthusiasm – a well-trained Jesuit or a Ph.D. in quantum
physics, I’ll go with the physicist every time.
Look, for thousands of intellectuals, becoming a Marxist was an experience of disturbing intensity.
The decision having been made, the world became simpler, brighter, cleaner, clearer. A number of contemporary intellectuals
react in the same way when it comes to the Old Boy – Darwin, I mean. Having renounced Freud and all his wiles, the literary
critic Frederick Crews – a man of some taste and sophistication – has recently reported seeing in random variations
and natural selection the same light he once saw in castration anxiety or penis envy. He has accordingly immersed himself
in the emollient of his own enthusiasm. Every now and then he contributes an essay to The New York Review of Books
revealing that his ignorance of any conceivable scientific issue has not been an impediment to his satisfaction...
Another example – I’ve got hundreds. Daniel Dennett has in Darwin’s Dangerous
Idea written about natural selection as the single greatest idea in human intellectual history. Anyone reading
Dennett understands, of course, that his acquaintance with great ideas has been remarkably fastidious.
The real mark of an ideological system is its presumptuousness.
A congeries of sentimental attitudes are at work in the humanities – atheism, moral relativism, materialism.
They are incarnated locally in the United States by Richard Rorty, a philosopher, I must say, who while espousing irony as
an antidote to anomie (and anything else that ails you) seems to me, at least, to exhibit an almost elephantine earnestness
in everything he writes. The man could paralyze an infantry battalion just by beginning a lecture.
Naturalism is sometimes taken to mean that there is only one body of human knowledge, and that is contemporary
science; at other times, it is taken to mean that there is only one method by which knowledge can be acquired, and that is
the scientific method. This is a little like arguing that cabbage is the only food and that prayer is the only way to get
it.
Where science has a method, it is trivial – look carefully, cut the cards, weigh the evidence, don’t let yourself
be fooled, do an experiment if you can. These are principles of kennel management as well as quantum theory. Where science
isn’t trivial, it has no method. What method did Einstein follow, or Pauli, or Kekulé? Kekulé saw the ring
structure of benzene in what he called a waking dream. Some method.
[Questioner] What is the connection between Darwinism and naturalism? …
DB: There is none – at least if by a connection, you mean a logical connection. There is, however, a sentimental
connection. A commitment to naturalism, however defined, very often makes Darwin’s theory seem more plausible than it
otherwise might be. Naturalism is sentimentally a sufficient condition for Darwinism. By the same token, Darwinism is sentimentally
a necessary condition for naturalism. ...
