00:45
Well, at least as far as joyous science goes -- the idea is that art and science are immature in their present form; insufficiently developed to see how a unified practice might be possible
For Nietzsche the question is always creation, and the critical question is what voice speaks through creation -- art and science are both creational practices, as is philosophy
The critical question being the nobility of the aims being achieved through the work of philosophy, science and art
Nietzsche has some really interesting questions around this, around what he calls the "meaning" of science
The question about the meaning of science, in Nietszche's hands, becomes about the coldness of science
(Nietzsche writes about the "cold monster" of science, a coldness he says most people don't really understand)
Then he asks us about scientists and their practices, right?
He asks what it is scientists are doing when they strive for robust objectivity, when they embody this coldness (and cruelty?) of a techno-scientific mindset -- Nietzsche asks us this critical question about who (or what) is speaking?...
In other words, the scientist becomes "pure" lens for empirical reality -- objectively capturing events.
Nietzsche asks us a very strange question here -- basically, who or what is "seeing" through the lenses which scientists have made themselves?
What cold monster sees through these pure lenses these human beings have sacrificed their essence to become? :)
Nietzsche talks of other cold monsters in other places, in particular the state and the church -- and the spirit of gravity which of course rules all of these
The real stakes of the problem with respect to Western techno-science is to me precisely about this critical question of the "meaning" of science -- it's "universal-historical" meaning; or the spirit moving it, the voice expressing it.
@QuietThud this is basically why Nietzsche's so important to me -- why his "propechy" of a reunification of art and science seems so urgent to me
Heidegger also raises the question (in his words, "concerning technology") in a slightly different, and more explicitly ontological register
His case is much neater -- basically that technology and science more generally can't escape or even meaningfully address what's taken as ontologically "given" in their composition
How could science/technology meaningfully address all the problems that will face us in the future, when it can't even solve all the problems it's already created?
Nietzsche's question is about the spiritual health, the 'joy' that is lacking in the scientific enterprise...
While Heidegger's is basically about the ontological structure of western techno-science, that render it incapable of addressing issues stemming from this structure.
(I was tempted to bring in Deleuze and Guattari on assemblages and machinic ontologies, but I didn't want to head immediately to the high seas...)
The Symposium
