Scientific Enlightenment, Div. Two B. Scientific Enlightenment Chapter 1: Daoist scientific enlightenment ACADEMY | previous section | Table of Content | next section | GALLERY

copyright © 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007 by Lawrence C. Chin. All rights reserved.

Introduction

The second mode of salvation has thus far been defined as the negation of the condition of thermodynamic finitude (the negation of one's status as a localized open dissipative structure: major salvation) through the acquisition of the enlightened state of mind which consists in the overcoming of illusion, and whose temporal effect -- the product of the enlightened state of mind in this life -- is non-attachment to the material meaning of life and the consequent order of the soul (minor salvation or the ascetic life). Enlightenment is the overcoming of illusion by which salvation (minor or major) is attained. As said, after the breakdown of the functional perspective in face of the structural perspective of modern science -- the invalidation of the concept of the "soul" -- minor salvation is all that is "literally possible."

The enlightened state of mind or illusion-overcoming is meant to destroy (makes extinct) all those judgmental and desiring subjectivities born of that limited, provincial, personal perspective. Buddha expresses these as the "three unwholesome roots" found in the chanting of the sets of three in Sutta 33.1.10 (Sangiti Sutta: The Chanting Together) of Digha Nikaya:

• (1) Greed (lobho akusala-mulam): greed for the material meaning of life: consumption and power (assuring the resources to be consumed): performing the open-dissipative function of life. (In Zhuangzi and Plato: the desiring.)
• (2) Hatred (doso akusala-mulam): also intolerance, inability to see via another's perspective, lack of universal empathy and compassion, inability to see from the global perspective, that of Dao. (In Zhuangzi: the judgmental.)
• (3) Delusion (moho akusalam-mulam): belief in individualities, non-understanding of the structure of reality and the truth of existence -- incapable of the perspective of Dao. Buddha also includes here the meaningless and delusionary oppositions between existence and non-existence, etc. (the 10 avyakatani or indeterminates).

The negation of these unwholesome roots constitutes minor salvation. There are many ways to the attainment of enlightenment or minor salvation. The three most developed but different styles of enlightenment left to us from the First Axial are the Platonic, Buddhist, and Daoist. Our ways -- the ways of scientific enlightenment -- are based on the synthesis and repetition of these three ways in the structural perspective. The overcoming of illusion or enlightenment is accomplished differently in these three styles. Yet there are also many overlappings among them. We may summarize by saying that all three styles converge in producing illusion-overcoming; that the Platonic style produces it through the study of the structure of reality (the standard model, the periodic table, etc.) -- which today necessarily implies the uncovering of the history leading to this present structure, just as to the study of eidoi, the functional equivalent of the modern "scientific project", Plato has added the evolutive (time) dimension in his Timaeus -- the Buddhist through anamnesis of the truth of existence, and the Daoist through carrying transparency and objectivity in everyday life; that the Buddhist style of "scientific Nibbana" will also share this anamnesis of the history of the universe; that the Buddhist and the Daoist enlightenment contain conservational anamnesis and both are characterized by Liebesakosmismus; and that the Daoist enlightenment furthermore contains scientific objectivity which can be assured by the study of the structure of reality that has figured in the Platonic style. Synthesizing the three styles we may thus structure our scientific Liebesakosmismus -- our goal, i.e. scientific enlightenment: scientific non-judgmental and non-desiring attitude and illusion-overcoming -- as consisting of four aspects: objectivity in daily life-leading: "scientific Daoism"; anamnesis of the history of the universe; the truth of the structure of reality; and the conservational truth or meaning of existence. Much of the truth concerning the structure of reality has already been outlined in "The Final Synthesis of the Structural Perspective and the New Structural Reality". It is the final goal of our history of science as a process of leaving the Platonic cave.

Prefiguration of "Scientific Daoism"

Scientific enlightenment means the attainment of Liebesakosmismus in the scientific perspective. Our first task is how we may bear in mind the structures of reality uncovered in sciences (disillusionment) during everyday circumstances which normally constitute occasions of judgments and desires, so as to "live in the perspective of the Dao", in Objectivity; i.e. to not live in "illusions". It is the study of biology which first introduced me to instances of this first aspect of scientific enlightenment. I discovered then that the knowledge of biological processes and of evolution underlying daily life, in particular the reduction of “people” to biological entities ("machines") which the knowledge of biology permitted, could induce a deeper understanding and appreciation of daily phenomena by allowing for the awareness of “foundation”. In our daily life we don’t see the foundation of our life, and so we constantly are thinking and acting as we do in accordance with the state of illusion. When a “person” (a category of our culture) appears before us, we interact with him or her, like or dislike him or her, express approval or disapproval of him or her, judge and weigh the worth of this person: good, bad, beautiful, fat, etc. We do all this because we do not see the foundation for the “personhood” of the person before us (the foundation for this cultural, daily life category of “personhood”); and it is in the function or under the effect (i.e personhood) of this foundation that we interact with this person, judgingly.

Dwelling in the function, in the effect, in the shadow of something else without awareness of even the existence of this something else, which is the foundation: this I call illusion. Illusion is the state in which the prisoners tied up in the cave subsist in Plato's allegory of the cave. Hence interpersonal relationship and interaction (which contains so much judgments: good person, bad person, beautiful person, nice person, etc.) as we know it is conducted largely in illusion and engulfs us, insofar as it occupies the entirety of our mental activity (work, marriage, friends – these are interpersonal relationships, and every encounter with another human being is interaction), deep within illusion: when we judge other people, we are prisoners tied up in the cave, taking shadows of things to be the things themselves, and ignorant of the source of these things. What, then, is the foundation of the personhood that we don’t see? What is this “something else” in the effect of which (i.e. in “personhood”) we live our lives composed of networks of interpersonal relationships and interactions and immersed in the routines of the economic cosmos? The foundation of “personhood” on which we build interpersonal relationship and interaction is the structure of the person, the person being the function of this underlying structure which generates on its surface the “person” we interact with. The function, or the person, is a total effect (i.e. consciousness materialized, in the manner of a singular totality, in a “body”, or given a reference point in the body: we can only refer to the consciousness – when we refer to a person we are really referring to his or her consciousness – by referring to the body it is embodied in.); and this total effect is generated by (1) the complex interactions among the constituents of the nervous system inside this person’s body and (2) by Weltlichkeit and Dasein. Let's look on the side of the physical structure first. Viewed functionally, “he” or “she” is a unity – for consciousness is by definition a unity – and judgment only applies to a unitary phenomenon. Viewed structurally, this unity dissolves. This person is a multicellular organism: many a cell comes to make up this “person” (or rather the embodiment or reference point of this person); in the process these cells lose their individuality because they are so distorted out of recognition from their original eukaryotic state in order to fit into their current positions in the total organism (the process is called ontogeny); then their individual distortions create interdependency and hence division of labour among themselves, and the interactions among them (i.e. their interdependency and division of labor) produce a certain totalized effect: within the interstices of the interactions among the somatic cells a chemoautocatalytic closure is constituted which is called metabolism; within the interstices of the interactions among the cells of nervous system a sensory informational closure (which is re-formulated symbolically via language in Homo sapiens sapiens, as distinct from other vertebrate animal species endowed with nervous system) is constituted which is called consciousness; the domination of the nervous system over the somatic (and reproductive) system produces the embodiment of consciousness or the anchoring of consciousness in a definite, tangible reference point which -- now we are getting on the side of Weltlichkeit -- since childhood gets "socialized" into the current worldhood with all the self-interpretations (the ontic modes of Da-sein) therein embedded as the centers from which the beings of the equipmental, economic cosmos obtain their Being (intelligibility, their be-ing as what they are). After this, this "person" finally enters into the picture of interpersonal relationship and interaction; our whole life, dominated by interpersonal relationships and interactions, only plays on the top, or scratches the surface, of this final embodiment, which is an effect of domination of one mass of cells over another in a network of interdependencies that is furthermore "programmed" by, and as the incarnation of, the worldhood. The programming of a biological structure by worldhood means that this biological embodiment only becomes a “person” ready for interpersonal relationship when it is itself nourished in the tradition – accumulation – of past surface-playings called interpersonal relationships and interactions -- plus past habits in the manipulation of things (Vorhandenes). The tradition is what Heidegger refers to with the term Weltlichkeit, and our judgmental interaction with people (Mitsein) together with the habitual manipulation of things for the sake of self-interpretation, In-der-Welt-Sein, which, as a process of self-interpretation, is Sich-vorweg-Schoen-sein-in als Sein-bei.

This structure, a synchronic one, is not even the whole story; it has a whole history behind it which makes possible its present formation, or rather re-occurrence, in ontogeny. Indeed, the foundation of this person lies in the past, almost a billion years ago, in those individual, free-living and –floating, single eukaryotic protist cells, and in the “supra-metabolism” (metabolism beyond or outside the elementary unit, cell, i.e. inter-cellular rather than intra-cellular) that gradually crystallized in their collective, colonial survival… (We are talking about the origin of the animal kingdom.) This relates then to the diachronic aspect of scientific enlightenment (the Platonic style), the history leading up to the present, the history which constitutes the diachronic aspect of "foundation". The "person" we see before us is the product, the effect, of things much more elementary and which have a time-depth of nearly one billion years. And longer in fact, if we continue to trace it. We interact with the person in the way we do only as we are seeing the mere tip of an immense huge iceberg, most of which lies hidden beneath the macroscopic surface of the “person” (his or her skin), deep in an invisible microscopic cellular and molecular world; or deep in an immense past long forgotten.

It surprises us that Life (or its foundation) could be so small, or extend so far back in time. But it is we who are too large, and we only see the Truth (structures, which are microscopic) in the manner of approximation as if over too long a distance (like looking at other galaxies: how much does that mere cloudy dot in the sky tell us about what is really going on over there?) Our size, in its largeness, deludes us as to the “true nature” of things, as to their foundation, the structures supporting them. While our size, in its smallness, deludes us as to the “total picture”, the large scale of the Universe, and possibly the Meta-Universe of which our Universe is merely a local phenomenon, an aspect, or an effect -- not to mention the eternal inflation ("the eternally existing, self-reproducing inflationary universe") of which this Meta-Universe itself is just an infinitesimal speck. And lastly our entanglement with our self-interpretations, with our ontic Da-sein, and consequently with the equipmental, economic cosmos, acts as the chain that ties up the prisoners in the cave in Plato's allegory, i.e. forcefully binding us to the illusions produced by our microscopic and macroscopic size.

The preliminary description of scientific enlightenment that I have just given teaches this then: “illusion” means living in the effect (function) of something else (structure) without knowing it; enlightenment (the enlightened state of mind) consists in becoming aware of this something else, and possibly grasping it, as a scientist does. This something else, the foundation, has synchronic (structural), diachronic (historical), and finally conservational aspects. Here, the scientific enlightenment in the Daoist style deals only with the synchronic aspect. In this Daoist style, while the mode of living in the realm of illusion is "judgment" -- and desire (greed, etc.), which however we leave to the Buddhist style later -- that with the awareness of foundation induces the suspension of judgment, or the Objectivity with which scientists study their "objects". Objectivity then produces non-attachment. This scientific objectivity, as has been emphasized, is the most conspicuous legacy of the Daoist philosophy, which teaches the attitudinal stance of neutrality, the decontextualized "cold" objectivity or non-judgmentality vis-à-vis the world and the things therein. The first attitudinal stance of scientific enlightenment, thus, is the objective, non-judgmental point of view with which the scientists "observe" and describe the process of nature "out there" and such stance (together with non-attachment, non-desiring), I will argue, promises Transcendence or Salvation.

Biology is the first step toward scientific enlightenment, since it is the level immediately below our functional world, the world of “people” (in the sense of person described above), society, nations, history, races, men, women, etc.

Let’s go deeper. Cruelty arouses in people (ordinary people with a good sense of good and bad) intense emotion called indignation, and hence brings them to high judgmentality. So, if one may come to reduce an act of cruelty to its bare structural foundation, achieving total objectivity and hence non-judgmentality in respect to it, then one has tasted a first preliminary of scientific enlightenment. A Daoist of modern time. Ironically but enlightenedly, the dissolution of indignation by objectivity in such circumstances actually reinforces universal compassion in all circumstances. This I will illustrate first with the case of Amistad, then with daily situations that normally would demand high judgmentality as their subjective correlate. The instances to this end are our political Da-sein, such as the highly ideal-minded, utopianist politicians.

I remember watching Amistad: these nineteenth century European slave traders, in this case the Spanish; they captured or bought Africans, abused them, packed them into a small ship insufficient for such massive transport; on the way starved them and whipped them; and when finding that provisions on board were insufficient due to mis-calculation earlier, these Spanish slave smugglers threw fifty of the captured Africans into the Atlantic sea, all tied to a massive rock that, dragging them down, ensured their demise in the deep sea. This was the first occasion when I became aware of the possibility of scientific enlightenment. When I watched the Spanish slave-trading men doing all these cruelties and the Africans suffering, struggling, and finally screaming while being thrown over board, twitching and swinging helplessly in the sea, a certain “transparency” suddenly overtook my mind, and I was seeing them only in terms of biological processes. When the slave-trading men are whipping the victims, the cells in their bodies are carrying out metabolism: the breathing of both the whippers and the whipped takes in oxygen molecules (O₂); the oxygen molecules are then taken up by the hemoglobins in the blood that departs from the lung and passes near every cell in the body to distribute the oxygen molecules to them; the oxygen enters the cell to serve as the final electron-acceptor; previous food remains within the digestive system of these self-motivating organisms (ones motivated to whip, others suffering from this self-motivating) have dissociated into its constituents: nucleotides, amino-acid bases, lipid sequences, and sugar molecules; these are distributed throughout the body to every cell; of these the sugar molecules enter the cell and dissociate via glycolysis; the remains enter the cell’s mitochondrion and disintegrate via the Kreb cycle therein into electrons; the electrons, carried by their carriers NADH, pass through the chain of electron carriers embedded in the membrane of mitochondrion, going through an energy-decline to finally merge with the oxygen atom (which enters the scene earlier via its carriers the hemoglobins) at the end of the chain, thus forming water molecules to be discharged; the down-hill road of energy decline, meanwhile, has released energy to allow for the transportation of hydrogen ions across the membrane to the exterior of mitochondrion; these ions then diffuse back into the mitochondrion through ATP Synthase embedded in its membrane, permitting the release of energy that powers the phosphorylation of ADP back into ATP, which will serve as the energy currency that enables the cell to do all its metabolic functions: the energy-extraction process just described; biosynthesis, the construction of body-parts and enzymes with the amino-acids, nucleotides, and lipids first mentioned; and the movement of body-parts (e.g. muscles doing the whipping on one side and the twitching on the other). At the same time the synapses in their brain are firing… I was seeing all this when the African woman got thrown into the water: her lung, influxed with water, could no longer perform the usual function of delivering to all cells the oxygen molecules that they need as electron-acceptors so as to continue their cellular activities of energy-extraction, biosynthesis, and movement. Without the necessary resources, all cells in her body cease functioning, including the cells of her nervous systems, which, these nerves, cease producing action potentials outside the brain and neurotransmittors inside the brain… With the subjective point of view (the immersion in effects, in the function of something else), one calls this “the death of the woman”, given that one is living in the illusion of free-floating, independent consciousness; or better, the “oppression” or “murder of the innocent African woman” with all connotations of injustice, given that, beyond the illusion of independent consciousness, one is also living in that of a culture, i.e. a society organized within a symbolic order, that is to say within a worldhood (Weltlichkeit), characterized by Heidegger as a system of "significations" (Bedeutsamkeit); and that one is furthermore living in that of a Human Interaction Sphere, i.e. a network of inter-dependent societies organized within symbolic orders (the global Weltlichkeit). But what was just described is the collapse of the functioning of a biological composite structure, the ceasing of interactions among the interdependent cells tightly knit up with one another, which results in the ceasing of functioning of every individual cell also. That is what I saw, and all I saw. Speaking of suspension of judgment! Or rather the transcendence of judgment. At that moment I was observing a biological processes, devoid of emotion and feeling, only with a sense of understanding, of why this was happening. Now “watching” the slave smugglers in the same (structural) light, reducing them to a structural network of biological processes: now have you come (or begun) to see the Truth behind the scene of an apparent instance of injustice, oppression, and cruelty.

Only beginning to see the Truth, because there is more to the situation than bio-molecular interactions. Why do the smugglers do "bad things" here? Why do "bad people" do "bad things"? After all the biological reductionism that exposes the mechanism for doing bad things, the structural reality behind the motivation for doing bad things is still left in ignorance, because even the firing of action potentials and the production of neurotransmitters in the central nervous system are no more than part of the mechanism, not the reason, in the production of human motivations. That "reason" is Dasein, Weltlichkeit, and, finally, temporality (Zeitlichkeit). Recall, now, how temporality leads to self-interpretation (Dasein) which then leads to the manipulation of equipment in the equipmental whole (Bewandtnisganzheit, e.g. a workshop, a barnyard) and finally to the equipmental world (worldhood in general).

Today, the worldhood is primarily the human economic cosmos with its equipmental totality, from which radiates outward a total system of human self-interpretation.

Now bad people do bad things not merely because they need to feed themselves to keep their biological mechanism (just exposed) going, but also in order to construct a self-identity, to give a meaning to their life and to leave that meaning behind: this is the modern condition as opposed to the primitive condition where people do not ask for "the meaning of life" beyond sustaining their biological mechanism or constitution. The slave-smugglers in this case are not simply trying to make money in order to support their family, their wives and children, and thereby satisfy their biological urges, but they are interpreting themselves as something respectable -- as "somebody" -- within the economic cosmos of the Spanish empire, and such interpretation in this case happens to require the degradation of some other human beings not regarded as "same as themselves." This necessary (modern) human need for self-interpretation is the true reason (Vernunft) for the motivation of the smugglers, but a Daoist would realize, through Ojbectivity, that this complex of human self-interpretations intertwined with the equipmental world is just so much illusion, and so would disengage him- or herself from "Da-sein."

"Das auf Bewandtnis hin freigebende Je-schon-haben-bewenden-lassen ist ein apriorishes Perfekt, das die Seinsart des Daseins selbst charakterisiert. Das ontologisch verstandene Bewendenlassen ist vorgaengige Freigabe des Seienden auf seine innerumweltliche Zuhandenheit." (S & Z, p. 85.) This apriorishes Perfekt characteristic of Dasein -- that, by virtue of their very structure (Da-sein), human beings constitute things as equipment ("Freigabe") by involving them ("bewenden-lassen") while at the same time constituting their Being -- is precisely the construction of illusion. "Aus dem Wobei des Bewendenlassens her ist das Womit der Bewandtnis freigegeben." (Ibid.) This is continuing the construction of illusion (Wobei, Womit), for Bedeutsamkeit itself is just a big illusion. Only with the illusion in place can entities be encountered as meaningful, i.e. as equipment ("Dem Besorgen begegnet es als dieses Zuhandene"). This Care of Dasein, Besorgen, its concern for self-interpretation, what it is (a good husband, i.e. a good provider, a good trader, a "good smuggler") in the economic cosmos, is the illusional state of mind, the opposite of the salvational or enlightened state of mind, for, also, only with Bedeutsamkeit in place can people be encountered as good, bad, inferior and exploitable. "Sofern sich ihm ueberhaupt ein Seiendes zeigt, das heisst, sofern es in seinem Sein entdeckt ist, ist es je schon umweltlich Zuhandenes und gerade nicht 'zunaechst' nur erst vorhandener 'Weltstoff'." (Ibid.) As can be seen from the previous biological reductionism, the ability to see things as mere "vorhandener Weltstoff" deprived of meaning, of equipmentality, in precisely the ordinary, everyday circumstances where they should be encountered as umweltlich Zuhandenes, is the state of enlightenment where illusion (Zuhandenheit!) is overcome. This is because judgmentality (on people as well as on things) is precisely the function of meaning, of Zuhandenheit, of Bedeutsamkeit. Hence the illusional state of mind -- the concern with self-interpretation and the consequent Freigabe of things as equipment -- is prior to but the steppingstone for enlightenment for, finally seeing the Truth.

There can thus be something positive about the "Modifikation des umsichtigen Besorgens zum theoretischen Entdecken des innerweltlich Vorhandenen" if it is done correctly: a right way to deprive the world of its readiness-to-hand which leads to spiritual enlightenment and a wrong way which leads to spiritual depravation (recall the structure of the evolution of consciousness set down earlier). Too often only the wrong way has been trodden and criticized. We are here to show the right way. Now this proper way of decontextualization is the state of structural, or scientific, enlightenment, or Objectivity. It is fundamentally Daoist, in that it consists in the realization that “Everything Is Simply, In The Way It Is.” There is no vestige of judgment in this “way of looking at things”, but only pure observation of the underlying structural processes. When we regard the abusing smugglers and the suffering slaves through the lens of decontextualization -- biological reductionism and the analytic of Dasein and worldhood which together bind "bad people" to do "bad things" -- we see no longer right and wrong, good and bad. What is more important: If the smugglers themselves see themselves as bio-mechanical processes and their actions as the function of Da-sein and worldhood -- would they still have any interest in what they do, in "doing bad things"? The suspension of judgment, on our part, as the result of the realization that everything is simply the way it is, and the suspension of motivation, on the actors' part, as the result of the same realization. Total acceptance of all. It is mediated through a total fascination with, and absorption by, the structure of reality.

Scientists who observe other living beings are in a position to attain this Objectivity, this Non-Judgmental Acceptance-Appreciation (or Appreciation-Acceptance) of what they study in particular and of Nature in general. Take as an example a scientist studying chimpanzee social behaviour in the wild (the reference is to Jane Goodall). A certain romanticization persists among us experiencing alienation in modern society with which we package animals in the wild in their sweet, evil-lacking innocence with which they are supposed to comport toward one another. But these chimpanzees in the wild, exactly like us Homo sapiens sapiens, display horrifying mutual aggression to the same degree as they exhibit innocence and charity and mutual love. The scientist studying them, Jane Goodall, has observed one band of chimps waging war on another: several males of one band ambushing the male member of the targeted band who is temporarily outside his group, and killing him, sometimes tearing him alive to pieces. (“When the last kahama [the targeted band] male had been eliminated, the Kasakelas [the attacking band] annexed their territory and absorbed their females. The gruesomely violent attacks were carried out deliberately, with members of the troop moving stealthily together into the rival’s territory.” Such that in the end Jane Goodall came to the conclusion that “if they had had firearms and had been taught to use them, I suspect they would have used them to kill.” [James Shreeve, The Neanderthal Enigma, p. 295])

But the scientist, returning to civilization, advocated the protection of chimps in the wild and in the laboratories as if to protect innocent children. She loved the chimps. Not withstanding that she has observed the full range of variation in their behaviour, extending from gruesome group-to-group violence to their familiar innocent peacefulness. They are no lovable angels, that is, not to each other and all the time. But too intense an observation has resulted in Objectivity, in which the chimps have become transparent in their behaviour, in the whole of their being. Just as in the previous “experience”, i.e. the “cold” observation of the unjust death of the African woman, the surge of “purity” or “transparency” in mind and perception has pushed aside all ordinary judgments, extinguished indignation (“Oh the murderous white men!”), and destroyed all the usual cultural categories that would otherwise accompany such perception (“oppression”; “victimization”; “must overturn the enemy that crushes my freedom”; “redemption”), and all the group distinctions also (“white men”, “blacks”, “Europeans”, “Africans”)… When the scientist has concentrated her entire mind on the how and, sometimes, the why of the animals’ social behaviour, on explanations – what science is about – she ends up divesting herself of the context in which automatically and naturally to apply judgments, the “shoulds”, to feel indignations, disdains… she has divested herself of Bedeutsamkeit and Weltlichkeit. The room is left only for awe-ful appreciation, loving acceptance, of the mere fact of existence, that thus it is, that things are just the way they are. The chimps are just wonderful creatures. This is a shift in the perspective upon Reality.

The chimps themselves who were involved in the “tribal warfare”, presumably, were not experiencing the situation in the same way as the observing scientist. They experienced it, we could safely assume, in the context in which to automatically and naturally apply judgments and feel emotions. The scientist had divested herself of such context much easier because, as the Chinese proverb goes, “Those involved in the situation are confused and mesmerized, those outside, only observing, see clearly.” This is the contrast between subjectivity and objectivity, the former promising illusion and the latter enlightenment, or disentanglement from illusion. The Kahama male chimps, caught up in the world of chimpanzee intergroup competition, would have experienced injustices, despair, anger… “Oh, why does it happen that they robbed us off and killed us so unjustly!” Then it would be Kasakelas’ turn to experience injustice, despair, anger, when later on they themselves were being eliminated by another group. But the scientist would not be seeing the Kasakelas males robbing off resources (females and territories) from the Kahama. Or rather, not merely that. Such perception of “robbery” is what would ordinarily arouse indignation and judgmentality, because one identifies oneself with the “victimized”. (The very word “victimized” itself is what one uses when still immersed in illusion or judgmentality, in Bedeutsamkeit and Weltlichkeit.) And the foundation, the spring and fountain of such perception is a limited experiential or mental horizon. The scientist’s mental horizon is significantly larger or more comprehensive than the involved, judging chimps. Always searching for the “why” of the spectacle, she would focus instead on the ecological conditions, for example. She would think of the whole phenomenon of “robbery” in terms of an interaction sphere… the abundance or scarcity of resources which has prompted the interactions among different groups of chimpanzees occupying the same ecological niche (and interaction is always a two-sided coin: trade and warfare). This is going towards enlightenment on the macroscopic aspect of the phenomenon. She is divested of the Bedeutsamkeit and the Weltlichkeit of the interaction sphere by studying it. The situation is much like that of food chain… The animals involved in the carnivore-herbivore relationship experience the strenuous effort to alleviate hunger, to suspend death in the case of the former, and fright, threat, and effort, and to suspend death in the opposite direction in the case of the latter. If their consciousness were more “awakened”, they would have also experienced “injustice”, “oppression”, “those oppressors” or “justified, necessary killing or evil” or some other such rationalizations. But the scientist’s experience of the relationship is simply one of energy-transfer within a large network constituting an open, dissipative structure called the biosphere, which is the foundation of the surface, cruel carnivore-herbivore relationship. He or she is completely devoid of any emotion and judgmentality such as the participant animals would experience.

The scientist can also focus on the microscopic side of foundation: the physiological and biological structures (e.g. the hormones) involved in aggression, in preying, etc. This, for example, we have done in the previous example of Amistad.

And the microscopic and macroscopic sides of foundation together do not yet constitute the whole picture, the whole truth, the whole of foundation. But really, only the synchronic aspect of it. The whole truth can be spun only when one weaves this synchronic aspect with the diachronic, seeing the former in light of the latter. For example, seeing the carnivore-herbivore relationship, or the chimpanzee interaction sphere, in the light of evolution. This we'll do next, as the Platonic aspect of scientific enlightenment.

Once judgment is suspended in such intense search for the “foundation”, it is easy to be struck by the beauty and complexity of the scene of Nature, which commands awe-ful respect. This is the same thaumazein mentioned before. Liebesakosmismus in Weber's words. This opens the way to the unconditional Love of the scientist for the wonderful, autonomous creatures of Nature.

Staying just with the synchronic aspect of enlightenment: you would no longer judge yourself, reprimand yourself, feel yourself to be an unworthy person, perhaps in consequence of some terrible or degrading accomplishment on your part, if you suddenly realize that you are just a machine, albeit auto-mobile and biological, propelled by complex internal organizations (the microscopic) and conditioned by your role in a larger game, in a larger auto-mobile system (the macroscopic, the Bedeutsamkeit and Weltlichkeit of the human interaction sphere). You would then have reached the Truth, which leads you to an unconditional acceptance, or Love, of yourself. Liebesakosmismus toward yourself. You would have achieved this enlightenment state by being objective vis-à-vis yourself.