All Myth is Existentially Real:
Science is existential or Quasi-Myth
Some other philosophers say that it is not posible to summarize existentialism in a brief statement. I disagree. Watch me:
Existentialism defines human experience as "seeming is being".
That's it.
Things are as they seem to be, or they may just as well be so.
No person can act, as a sovereign individual, on any level of consciousness that is not dominated and controlled by his own perception. We can take a positivist approach that says all communication of any perceptions of what may be regarded as facts must be able to be distilled from words that have "positive" definitions. That is, definitions must be definable in terms of a recipe for anyone to follow in order for her to experience, with any or all of her 5 senses, its real and true literal meaning. But, it still boils down to perception and perception is malleable and under the control of the individual.
Perhaps she is very tired and her eyes barely function while she is nearly asleep. She will perceive her smoking cigarette very differently from how she would see it if she was alert and attentive. But it is just a fuzzy white stick with a warm red tip that has a blurry grey cloud above it. Let it go. It is unimportant - until it falls on the sheets, catches them on fire and she is immolated in her own bed.
But, she perceives the cigarette as harmless and of no concern. For her, at this moment, it is, or may as well be. Because she is compelled to act on her perception, her perception is her reality. It does not matter that the consequence is her own demise. She never knows what kind of a disaster would strike her. She dies believing little white sticks with puffs of grey cloud above them should be and are indeed harmless
The businessman who wakes up in the morning and looks in the mirror seeing a grasshopper's ugly face staring back at him is compelled to think he really is a grasshopper and begins to act out. His perception is what counts and his perception is his reality. It is not solipcism because the error still can catch up to him and destroy him, but most of the time the illogic never falls down hard on him. It just intrigues, baffles, amuses or enrages his friends and acquaintances. In principle, he could live out his whole life this way and even convince some of his friends of his delusion.
He might become a guru and establish a new religion. He could become a New Jesus. He could establish a NeoJesus Movement that changes the world. His perception, silly as it may be, could result in a history changing philosophy in the essential sense of Joseph Campbell's contention that philosophy controls human destiny.
But, no matter how many pertinent facts our Grasshopper Philosopher draws upon to impress his disciples, no matter how much good sense the facts make in the logical sense, they are drawn on and based upon a fundamental misperception and are therefore mythological. If millions of followers come to Believe and their Faith lasts for millenia, then the mythological stories that our Insect Prophet spins is High Myth, especially if his philosophy, having turned to deep religion, manages to actually change lives and influence major human events.
But we, as third parties looking at all these developments, also see it according to our own particular perceptions. This sets up a second order of perception for the framing of a Baroque and Rococo filigree to be festooned around and upon the original Myth and historical resume of The Grasshopper.
The Scientist
may be thought of as
The Grasshopper
In the sense that Science has a strong existential element due to the constraints on perception discussed above, regardeless of the protests of the positivists, it qualifies as Quasi-Myth.
It is "quasi" because it is "almost" myth, an approximate Myth. It is a surrogate Myth. It serves the same function as High Myth. The difference is that it would be difficult to convince the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the Bomb is Myth, quasi or not.
There is a hypothetical possibility that anyone could repeat the experiments that are done in science to come to the same conclusions that do scientists, but, in a practical sense, this is utterly impossible. So, the Truth that scientists espouse is really Myth because it must be taken on Faith that someone else's perceptions are accurate and precise (when they may well NOT be). So, it borders on religion because we must take it on faith the truth of that which we are being told.
Science as religion has no Pope or bishop, no Dalai Llama, no Buddha, Mahatma or even Exalted Grand Wizard. But, it does have Conventional Wisdom, the virtual Pope of Consensus.
The CW Consensus is treated like dogma by the media and by very many scientists themselves, even though they hippocritically give lip service to openmindedness and free speech. When it comes to the crunch, when decisions must be made, they are as dogmatic as any Christian Revival Bible thumper.
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