996. Modern science has achieved . . .

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Modern science has achieved its great advances over the Greeks by taking seriously concrete particulars, as distinct from abstract forms, and contenting itself with probability instead of certainty. But even science has had to deal with the concrete somewhat abstractly, ignoring all of its characteristics but those that are perceptually identifiable and measurable. Even so, science views the abstract as means for exploring the more concrete, not vice versa (cf. LP: 118 f.).

So, also, I should say, modem metaphysics. Although it, too, has to deal with the concrete "somewhat abstractly," it is the more concrete that it takes most seriously, viewing its abstractions as means for explicating concreteness (as well as, derivatively, abstractness) and thereby more fully enjoying and contributing to concrescence, i.e., creativity, as precisely creation of the concrete.

Science aims most basically at power rather than foresight. To foresee the future is not the purpose of life, which is rather to maximize the opportunities for good in the future. Deciding what use will be made of these opportunities is no business of the present, but belongs to the future (cf. 172 f.).