[Buddha-l] Query about Francisco Varela

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Vera, Pedro L. schreef:
>  
> Erik wrote:
>  
>   
>> Heidegger accuses science to
>>     
> focus only on things that exist and forget aboute existence itself.
> Like Barnaby suggests, this is all water that has passed under the
> bridge long ago, but more recently philosophers like Bruno Latour have
> stressed that science is not delivering truth. It is nothing more than
> an industry that delivers explanational models and technology, but the
> model never coincides with the explaned.
>
> Dear Erik:
>
> As a scientist, I am very happy to focus only on things that exist. What would be the use of focusing on things that do not exist? As a matter of fact, it seems that is the provenance of philosophy, and frankly, not much has come out of those efforts, although there has been a lot of argument for roughly 2000 years.
>
>   
Dear Pedro, I'm sorry if I've offended you by the mere word 'only'. Personally I don't go along with Heidegger all the way. I think we all owe science a lot. Science is very usefull and gives joy and comfort and releves a lot of suffering. But I'm one of those funny guys who don't want to do away with the useless (frankly that's the only reason why I'm still on this list ;-) ). And to me it's not so terrible that science never tells the truth, because  in fact (as Nietzsche once wrote and Nagarjuna agrees) the truth is quite useless. 

Erik


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