Metamodern View of Science

Characteristics

Zachary Stein:

" Here I offer a partial and augmented version of Freinacht’s characterization of what philosophers must embrace under the emerging conditions of metamodern society (Freinacht, 2017 pp. 364-366):

METAMODERN VIEW OF SCIENCE

 To respect science as an indispensable form of knowing.

 To see that science is always contextual and truth always tentative; that reality always holds deeper truths. All that we think is real will one day melt away as snow in the sun.

 To understand that different sciences and paradigms are simultaneously true; that many of their apparent contradictions are superficial and based on misperceptions or failures of translation or integration.

 To see that there are substantial insights and relevant knowledge in all stages of human and societal development, including tribal life, polytheism, traditional theology, modern industrialism and postmodern critique. In another book, I call this the evolution of “metamemes”.

 To celebrate and embody non-linearity in all non-mechanical matters, such as society and culture. Non-linearity, in its simplest definition, means that the output of a system is not proportional to its input.  To harbor a case sensitive suspicion against mechanical models and linear causation.

 To have “a systems view” of life, to see that things form parts of self-organizing bottomup systems: from sub-atomic units to atomic particles to molecules to cells to organisms.

 To see that things are alive and self-organizing because they are falling apart, that life is always a whirlwind of destruction: The only way to create and maintain an ordered pattern is to create a corresponding disorder. These are the principles of autopoiesis: entropy (that things degrade and fall apart) and “negative entropy” (the falling apart is what makes life possible).

 To accept that all humans and other organisms have a connecting, overarching worldview, a great story or grand narrative (a religion, in what is often interpreted as being the literal sense of the word: something that connects all things) and therefore accept the necessity of a grande histoire, an overarching story about the world. The metamodernist has her own unapologetically held grand narrative, synthesizing her available understanding. But it is held lightly, as one recognizes that it is always partly fictional — a protosynthesis.

 To take ontological questions very seriously, i.e. to let questions about “what is really real” guide us in science and politics. This is called the ontological turn."

(http://integral-review.org/issues/vol_14_no_1_stein_love_in_a_time_between_worlds.pdf)

More information

See also: The Metamodern View of Reality