To aim reality: the language issue in quantum physics, phenomenology and neopatristics

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleTo aim reality: the language issue in quantum physics, phenomenology and neopatristics
3. Language term English
4. lemma author Tampakis, Kostas
5. lemma category Modern physics :QM - Philosophy of science/epistemology
6. Publication date 2012
7. lemma work To aim reality: the language issue in quantum physics, phenomenology and neopatristics
8. lemma manifestations Annals of the University of Bucharest-Philosophy Series
9. Keywords Phenomenology - Staniloae, Dumitru - Florovsky - Neopatristic movement - Reality - Experience
10. Url Click Here
11. Lemma body

    1. This article was written under the Knowledge Based Society Project. Its main point is that there are some kinds of experiences which seek to reach a non-mediate and an effective access to reality, no matter how reality is understood. They are attempts to overpass the mediation provided by the normal human functions in the act of knowledge, which are carried on in rather exceptional situations, in exceptional contexts, by exceptional people. The article provides as examples mystical experiences (hesychasm), philosophical enterprises (phenomenology), and some experiments in sciences (quantum physics). But the article concludes that, even if these experiences are possible and effective, it is a very difficult task is to express them and communicate them to others. The paper begins with a discussion of Husserl’s phenomenology and with its critique by Heidegger, which the author finds also incomplete. As the main point of the phenomenological turn, the paper identifies the shift from knowledge of phenomena to knowledge of their mode of occurrence. It then discusses the ramifications of this turn. The paper subsequently moves on to discussing what it sees as the difficulties encountered by modern physics when confronting reality through language. Using Bernard D’ Espagnat as a source, the author underlines how certain levels of reality in the quantum scale cannot be subjected to explanations based on classical physical realism. They seem to require a different kind of human experience. In the final part of the paper, the author identifies the Eastern Christian tradition as able to provide this different spiritual experience needed, as it was elucidated by the Neopatristic movement, and especially the works of Dumitru Stăniloae and George Florovsky. He takes these authors to provide a synthetic and direct, patristic, intuitive understanding of the consciousness of higher meanings and purposes of nature. In this view, reality is much more complex, the locus of infinite virtualities, plastic and capable of subtle change. Phenomena arise as a result of the simultaneous presence of the created with the uncreated. The paper ends by discussing the influences of Gregory Palamas’ thought on this view.