The previous article ends with: “In a world mysterious to us, we have no goals.” We perceive a lot in the world of manifestations, our senses deliver us a flood of impressions. We recognize a lot, and a lot seems familiar, and some of it leaves us wondering. The more questions we ask, the more possibilities we get to develop. Mysteries are good and important, and they demand our action. We want to solve mysteries, as long as we are healthy. We have an interest in finding answers for the questions that we ask.
There are many methods to find answers. When we are young and have little experience, then we usually ask confidants like our parents. We can continue to use this method as we get older and simply switch to other confidants who we believe have more experience in the relevant field. For this purpose we are provided with experts, and we can simply adopt their answers. As we get older, our experience grows and it becomes possible to find our own answers with a reasonable effort. As children our trust is so complete that an answer from our parents gives us all the certainty we need. When we get older, certainty usually requires us to comprehend and understand the answer, or even work it out ourselves. That is what defines an adult human. If we simply shift our trust from parents to experts, without wanting to understand the answers, we stay on the development stage of a child. Also, sooner or later an answer given to us will be in conflict with an answer that we got earlier in life. Then there is a situation where we want to become active and where we really should take the time to do so.
To answer questions, solve conflicts and create knowledge we can make use of the scientific method. Specifically, science is the knowledge of relations. Every science tries to find relations and causalities within the observed phenomena of its field. Our perception needs a supplement from our mind. Science enriches the observed reality with concepts that we find within our minds. The fundamental error of modern science is to regard the sensory perception as something complete and finished. However, our senses do not deliver a complete picture of reality, but only fractions, a perspective, a specific appearance. Our thinking gives us access to the other part of reality, that purely sensory beings would never find out about. Thinking is not just used to process and sort sensory inputs, but also to find and add the part of reality that is concealed from the senses.
There are two types of dogma that science can fall victim to. The dogma of revelation gives us truths about things that are beyond our filed of view. Here we must believe, we cannot get to the reasons. The dogma of experience on the other hand puts forward a claim based on an observation without getting to all the forces that are at play. In the old days, science was suffering from the dogma of revelation, today it is mostly suffering from the dogma of experience. It has also become a common practice to begin an observation with existing expectations and in search of confirmation for a theory that has previously been specified as correct. Then our attention is directed towards what we expect and assume to be important. Other impacting factors remain unseen and are not considered. Then causalities are quickly postulated when only correlations can be observed. Then the research gets stuck, fallacies can no longer be found and an ideology determines the direction.
Therefore it is important to observe unprejudiced and open-minded when approaching something in a scientific manner. Our perception gives us immediate access to the appearance of many phenomena. These appearances usually result in a few questions. It is our task to find the answers, the phenomena behind the appearance, using our ability to think. If we succeed, then we gained some knowledge. The idea behind the appearance, the concepts that complement our perceptions, can only be found when we think. We need both, perception and thinking, if we want to know reality and build our Vorstellung. That is how we collect experience.
Scientific confidence arises from our own mental abilities, not from finished claims imposed on us from the outside. Our knowledge must not surrender to outside norms and standards, but must come from within us. Beginning with our own experience it has to strive to understand the entire universe. A scientific teaching must not be forced on people. The interest in wanting to understand must come from each individual. Demanding acceptance or consent is not a task of science.
A few readers might have noticed that also today we are exposed to some trends that demand us to agree and act, and that are claiming to do so in the name of science or moral. Every human is free to decide whether to trust those trends and use them as an orientation, or to question them and find orientation based on personal experience. We need people who choose the last option for a system to develop in the interest of human nature, to not drift away into a system that only serves itself. To further develop society in today’s world requires a development of the individual, that is not only driven by perceiving and feeling, but that seizes thinking and makes use of it.