Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

Given our puny knowledge, we can’t not accept living in the midst of mystery. It is precisely because mystery exists and is so great around us that those who claim to hold the keys to the mystery cannot be trusted.

We must choose between hiding away in empty truths or accepting the radical uncertainty of our knowledge—remaining, like the Earth, suspended in a void.

The point is that we are always immersed in a given culture, and it is impossible to step outside.

Given the ever-expanding confusion among different groups, the “voice” of the god, which used to speak to the Homeric heroes, and which Moses and Hammurabi still heard distinctly, became ever more remote and eventually was heard only by the priestesses at Delphi, Mohammed, or Catholic saints.

We do not think: thoughts pass through us. Asking how we manage to think a given thought may be analogous to asking how a stone in a river manages to raise a wave above it on the water surface.

The act from which this legitimacy emanates is rite, and the foundation of this legitimacy relies upon the Ultimate Sacred Postulates.

The essential point, I think, is that we do not know how and why we think what we think. We do not understand the complexity of the processes that give rise to our thoughts and emotions. Our body, which generates and expresses thoughts and emotions, is a vastly complicated organism, and our ability to understand it is limited.

Unfortunately, however, this sane recognition of the relative nature of systems of value and the contingency of judgments is often taken one step further—to complete relativization of all values, namely to the conclusion that all opinions about truth and falsehood are equally valid, or that all ethical and moral judgments must be considered equival

Substituting a judge for a priest, a parliament for the pope, a voting booth or attendance at school for Mass does not change this structure substantially. By enacting their rites again and again, human beings renew the social pact and, at the same time, anchor on a simple gesture their labile and vagabond thoughts about the world.