Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Divinarum Personarum; Wissenschaft allgemein (Wege zum Ziel); Analyse, Synthese, Geschichte

Kurzinhalt: This first movement is called (1) analysis, because it leads from what is apprehended indistinctly to well-defined causes or reasons, (2) the way of resolution, because it resolves things into their causes, (3) the way of discovery, because through it ...

Textausschnitt: Section 4: The Threefold Movement to the Goal

755d After having discussed the goal and the act by which it is attained, we must now consider more carefully the movement that proceeds to that goal. (Fs)

755e In any science that is little developed, it is easy to distinguish between analysis and synthesis, that is, between the way of resolution and the way of composition. For, since we attain a knowledge of causes through inquiry and investigation, there necessarily exists some ordinary, prescientific knowledge by which we apprehend an object without as yet knowing its causes. Therefore, the first movement by which we proceed to acquire scientific knowledge begins from ordinary prescientific knowledge of things and terminates in knowing their causes. This first movement is called (1) analysis, because it leads from what is apprehended indistinctly to well-defined causes or reasons, (2) the way of resolution, because it resolves things into their causes, (3) the way of discovery, because through it are found hitherto unknown causes, and (4) the way of certitude, because the ordinary prescientific knowledge of things is most obvious to us, and therefore the arguments that are most certain to us begin from this ordinary knowledge to bring to light what are more remote from us and more obscure. (Fs; tblStw: Wissenschaft) (notabene)

757a Since science is not only the knowledge of causes but the understanding of things through their causes, consequent upon the first scientific movement there is a second movement that begins from the causes that have been discovered and terminates at things understood in their causes. This movement is called (1) synthesis, because fundamental reasons are used both to define things and to deduce their properties, (2) the way of composition, because causes are used to produce or to constitute the things, and (3) the way of teaching or of learning, because it begins from fundamental and very simple concepts in order that, with the gradual addition of other elements, it may proceed in an orderly fashion to an understanding of the science as a whole. (Fs) (notabene)

757b For examples of the two ways, you may compare the history of physics or chemistry with the textbooks used for teaching these sciences. For from the history it is clear that these sciences begin from sensible data, go on to examine these data, and produce proofs from the most obvious data available. And yet if you go to the textbooks, you will find that they begin [in chemistry] with the periodic table of the elements from which 300,000 compounds are derived, or in physics, Newton's laws of motion, Riemannian geometry, and those strange 'quantum' operators. For inquiry or research or proof begin from what is obvious; but teaching begins with those concepts that can be understood without presupposing an understanding of other things. (Fs)

757c In addition to these two movements there is a third. For the two movements described above are not performed once for all but are continually repeated. Nor is it the same two movements that are repeated, but later research discovers more remote and truer causes, so that the first prior movement is corrected and the second prior movement is sometimes completely revised. In this case what we have termed the third scientific movement is simply the history of the sciences, which embraces within its concrete unity the entire series of all that down through the centuries has been discovered in the way of resolution or set forth in an orderly way in the way of composition. (Fs)