Two questions:
Does modern science split humans from nature, and does such a split lie at the root of our problems?
What explains the success of the mechanical world view?
Three quotes:
“A second tradition, the magical, provided is scientific framework in which the world of nature was seen as a work of art. (I use the word ‘magical’ in preference to ‘aesthetic’ because it suggests the overtones of mystery which I think were involved.)” (Kearney, p. 24)
“When mechanical philosophers sought to explain pleasant and unpleasant smells or tastes by pointing to the rough or smooth texture of bodies’ constituent particles, where they really offering something different from, and inherently more intelligible than, the explanation of their Aristotelian opponents? The historical philosopher Alan Gabbey thinks not: in the mechanical philosophy “the phenomena to be explained were caused by entities who structures were such that they cause the phenomena. Previously, opium sent you to sleep because it had a particular dormitive quality, now it sent to you to sleep because it had a particular corpuscular micro-structure that acted on your physiological structures in such a way that it sent you to sleep.” From this perspective, the superior intelligibility, and therefore the explanatory power, of the mechanical philosophy was more limited than its proponents claimed.” (Shapin, p. 57)
“Darwinian evolution presented a continuation, a seemingly final vindication, of the intellectual impulse established in the Scientific Revolution, yet it also entailed is significant break from that revolution’s classical paradigm. For evolutionary theory provoked a fundamental shift away from the regular, orderly, predictable harmony of the Cartesian-Newtonian world in recognition of nature’s ceaseless and indeterminate change, struggle, and development.” (Tarnas, p. 288)
One Epic Rap Battle:
Who won?