20. Science vs. Wisdom

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I have said, regarding the distinction of science from wisdom, that science is "oriented, not as wisdom is, by the existential question about the meaning of reality for us, but rather by the intellectual question about the structure of reality in itself" (Notebooks, 23 November 2002; rev. 10 September 2005). But this seems to me, as I think about it, misled and misleading.

If, as I've argued, we ask intellectual questions because we ask existential questions, then, clearly, our intellectual questions must be oriented somehow by our existential questions. Science, however, asks a certain kind of intellectual question. So, although it may indeed be constituted by the intellectual question it asks, it can be oriented only by the existential question from which that intellectual question is an abstraction.

If, on the other hand, it is correct that "one can and should distinguish between two levels of orientation, proximate and remote"; and that "a science constituted as well as proximately oriented by an intellectual question is oriented remotely by the existential question from which that intellectual question has been derived" (Notebooks, 24 June 2006, "Is Theology a Science?"), then, obviously, it is mistaken to say, as I just have, that, although a science "may indeed be constituted by the intellectual question it asks, it can be oriented only by the existential question from which that intellectual question is an abstraction." A science can also be oriented -- proximately oriented -- by the intellectual question.

23 November 2005; rev. 21 June 2008; 7 November 2009