WITTGENSTEIN, MIRACLES, AND THE CAUSAL POINT OF VIEW

Ronald E. Hustwit Sr.

Inaugural Lecture

Ferris Chair

The College of Wooster

In discussing religion with Bouwsma, Wittgenstein said that he was much impressed with Cardinal Newman. Wittgenstein had read Newman`s Grammar of Assent in addition to his Apologia. In Bouwsma`s notes, Wittgenstein went on:

``[It] was puzzling. How a man of such learning and culture could believe such things! Newman had a queer mind.

Later I [Bouwsma] pressed him for an explanation. Did he mean by ``queer`` that a man like Newman should have become a Roman Catholic? Oh, no. My best friends and the best students I had are converts. What is queer about Newman is the kind of reason he gives for becoming a Roman Catholic. On miracles, Newman cites the case of Christians, who taken by savages had their tongues cut out, and yet they could speak. He gives a natural explanation for this – if the tongue is only half cut off a man cannot speak, but if wholly cut off a man still can [speak] – but Newman then goes on to say that it may nevertheless have been a miracle. ...

What was Newman doing? He argued that miracles occur still? How? What God has done once he contrives to do – usually. This is the sort of thing that is so queer in Newman.

O.K. Bouwsma, Wittgenstein Conversations 1949-51. P. 35

Wittgenstein means that what is queer about Newman is that the miracles are tested by rational means – by probabilities – and yet he still believes in miracles. The missionaries have their tongues cut out and can still speak – a miracle. Newman ruminates that it is possible for someone with no tongue to speak. This is a scientific (a physiological) rumination, yet Newman still regards it as a miracle. That is what Wittgenstein finds ``queer.``

Newman, Essays on Miracles

In North Africa, upon Arians from the Northern Roman Empire taking control of Roman provinces on the African Coast, Christians were persecuted in severe ways that included cutting the tongues out of the mouths of priests so that they could not proclaim the gospel. Records of these persecutions, Newman relates, present as a miracle accounts of the priest`s ability to talk after their tongues had been removed. There are multiple accounts of this same event.

Newman engages an objector (a liberal protestant, Middleton) who doubted the accounts of these miracles on the grounds that the number of those who could speak without a tongue suggests that such an event occurs naturally (i.e. not miraculously). But Newman seems to object to the objection on the same grounds of numbers. It looks to him that it is less incredulous to believe so many accounts of so many tongues removed. In other words, the account of the event as a miracle is more believable than the naturalistic explanation, because there are multiple testimonies to it as a miracle.

Still Newman entertains a naturalistic explanation of the miracle that one who had a tongue half cut out could not speak, but one completely cut out could. It is something like this: One might still walk, if he had his foot cut off. Wittgenstein thought Newman`s thinking queer, because he credits a naturalistic explanation of the miracle and yet still regards it as a miracle.

In his notes at the end of his Apologia, Newman summarizes the critical aspects of his Essay on Miracles, cited above. There are three critical questions Newman raises of a ``professed miracle``: 1) Is it antecedently probable? 2) Is it in its nature certainly miraculous, and 3) Has it sufficient evidence? He also speaks of the need for a ``proof`` of a miracle. By this he means that it has to be shown that the ``event occurred as stated, and is not a false report or exaggeration,`` and that it must be ``clearly miraculous, and not a mere providence or answer to prayer within the order of nature.`` If, for example, Charles II is said to have died a Catholic: 1) Did it really occur? Did he really articulate such a confession? And 2) Was it `clearly miraculous and not merely ``an answer to prayer that is within the order of nature?`` Newman, in using this illustration, is attempting to establish criteria of proof or reason for the Church`s admission of a miracle. Who heard Charles confess? Is that witness credible? Is a death confession truly ``miraculous?`` Here Newman`s use of ``miraculous`` gets wobbly. Are only those events truly miraculous that are inexplicable in naturalistic terms? Is a miracle only that which could not be explained by science? Newman seems to want to reserve ``miracle`` for such events as cannot be explained by science, even if God may have been at work – in providence of answering prayer. Under this definition, Charles II`s confession, if he did confess, was not necessarily miraculous any more than St. Peter`s confession was miraculous. Likewise, if African priests could still talk after their tongues were cut out because it is ``scientifically possible`` for this to happen, then it is not necessarily miraculous.

I cannot find where Newman says explicitly what Wittgenstein said Newman said – that someone whose tongue was only partially cut out could not speak, but someone whose tongue was completely removed might still be able to speak. This does not fit with Newman`s objection to Middleton that the priests` speaking might not be a miracle, because one might be able to speak without a tongue. I have a hunch that Wittgenstein does not have Newman quite right on this. But Wittgenstein does rightly see a problem with Newman`s thinking on this ``African-priest-tongue`` miracle and with his thinking on miracles in general. Wittgenstein is worried about Newman`s establishing criteria for whether an event is to be taken as a miracle. He is worried too, I believe, about Newman`s implicit presupposition of a miracle that it must be something that cannot be given a naturalistic explanation. Wittgenstein`s account of the miracle of the African priests shows Wittgenstein`s worry about Newman`s making this presupposition. Newman takes seriously the objection that perhaps one could still speak without a tongue; but then reasons that one probably could not talk without a tongue and so it is still a miracle. My point is that whether or not Wittgenstein has represented Newman exactly, Wittgenstein has seen that Newman is introducing criteria, argument, and probability into the discussion of miracles, and that this is wrong-headed. I want to take up this worry of Wittgenstein`s in the detail of the miracle of the tongues.

The miracle of the tongues is considered an ecclesiastical miracle – one occurring in the life of the Church, not one of the gospels. Such ecclesiastical miracles came under scrutiny by certain protestant reformers, e.g. Middleton. So Newman engages the problem of whether there are ecclesiastical miracles and which of the reported miracles really were miracles. So he weighs, sorts, adjudicates. Did it happen as reported? Is it probable? Could it be explained in naturalistic ways? This is what bothers Wittgenstein.

A miracle is not the sort of thing that one can weigh or can prove or for which one can have probable evidence. If reports come from Africa that priests could miraculously speak after having their tongues cut out, then one either accepts it as a miracle or one does not. If Middleton, believing that ecclesiastical miracles no longer happen, says they might have been able to speak without a miracle, well that is the end of it for Middleton. Newman should not now take up the issue with Middleton saying, ``Well maybe. Let`s figure this out.`` In his ``Lectures On Religious Belief,`` Wittgenstein says that religious beliefs are not ``opinions.`` It is not as if Middleton has an opinion that this was not a miracle and Newman has a better opinion that it was.

One of Newman`s criteria for ecclesiastical miracles is that the event must be ``clearly miraculous,`` i.e. not occurring naturally. This is identical to Hume`s criteria of a miracle, namely, that it is a ``violation of a law of nature.`` Once we are engaged with this question, we have lost all sense of what a miracle is. We are looking for a naturalistic explanation among naturalistic facts. And in this search one will either find a naturalistic explanation or admit that while one cannot find it now, one is still possible. ``Miracles never happen`` is what R.G. Collinwood called an ``absolute presupposition`` about nature. From this causal point of view, faith and the miraculous disappear.

Newman made these remarks about the missionaries` tongues miracle in the context of identifying which reported accounts could be recognized by the Church as true miracles. The Church has a stake in identifying true miracles and separating them from marvelous but naturally occurring events, outright fabrications, misread events, enhanced stories, and so forth. Wittgenstein sees that this felt task is confused, in fact impossible. Newman, once engaged in the task, presupposes the definition of a miracle that it is a violation of a law of nature. But this definition will not due. Jesus directs his disciples to cast their nets on the other side of the boat and they catch fish. A coin is found in the stomach of a fish. Birds eat locusts in Utah. Manna falls from trees on a journey. There is no violation of laws of nature in these. Focusing on violations as the essence of miracle is odd because it ignores the miracle in the heart of the believer. Is there a law of nature that says that one cannot speak if one`s tongue is cut out? If there is, and Newman thinks it possible to so speak nevertheless, that possibility would rule out regarding the event as a miracle under Newman`s definition. If speaking with no tongue is not a violation of a law of nature, then it would not be a miracle. Either way it could not be a miracle. It is, nevertheless, a miracle, Newman says. This is the oddness – the queerness – that Wittgenstein notices. Working from Wittgenstein`s remark about the queerness of Newman`s view, the very idea that Newman or the Church should try to identify true miracles is a conceptual confusion.

The Church requires that a miracle be found before someone beatified can be advanced to sainthood, i.e. canonized. And how will that miracle be identified as a miracle? Mother Teressa, John Paul II, Dorothy Day, and Newman himself are contemporary cases of candidates for sainthood. What should the Church ask for as evidence for a miracle? A woman reported that she was healed after a papal visit at which John Paul prayed for her. What should be checked? If we think of a miracle as a violation of a law of nature, then we would have to check the woman`s medical records. Did she have the disease she said? Could the doctor`s have treated the disease or would the disease go away by the body`s natural healing processes? In either case, it would no longer be regarded as a miracle. The miraculous would be missing from the miracle. If a miracle is a violation of a law of nature, then Hume`s conclusion that it is unlikely that there are miracles is correct and that anyone who testifies to a miracle is either gullible or a liar. Laws of nature are the affairs of science and if miracles are turned over to science, they are no longer miracles. Miracles are the work of an eternal God living in time. Science cannot investigate God in time.

Consider how the Church actually thinks through whether someone is to be elevated to sainthood. When the question arises, there is a pubic life already known by the Church. That life is a life of obedience to God. The saint is one who sees God in his or her daily life. Mother Teresa and John Paul II saw God in the everyday. They asked: What does God require of me? What would God have me do today? To see God in the everyday is to see God in time. So the miracle is already there. A saint`s life is filled with miracles. It is a strange thing, then, to go on to ask if there is a miracle in his or her life.

Wittgenstein`s ``Lecture on Ethics``

In his ``Lecture on Ethics,`` Wittgenstein posits, for argument`s sake, that a miracle is something that has not happened before in nature. If we were to examine such an event scientifically, we would lose the miracle. It would not be seen as a miracle any longer. Suppose, he asks us to imagine, that I grew a lion`s head on my shoulders. As this has not happened before, I am surprised. But if I go to the doctor and he cuts me open and examines my new lion`s head, nothing of the miracle remains. We have shifted from one point view to another. Doctors can only find tissue, veins, cells, etc. If they cannot find what caused the lion`s head, that does not show that it is a miracle. It only says that we have not found a cause yet. We are operating within the scientific or causal point of view.

The remarks about the lion`s head come in an interesting context. Wittgenstein has been giving an account of three experiences that he connects with absolute value. The experiences are: 1) that the world should exist – the experience of wonder at the existence of the world; 2) the experience of absolute safety – that whatever happens, I am safe; and 3) the experience of guilt – that God disapproves of my actions. These experiences he connects to the idea of absolute value. They are basic experiences of religion and ethics. They cannot be explained by and in terms of facts, that is, science cannot explain them.

One may object to Wittgenstein that these experiences, as experiences, are just more facts. I had the experience of wonder at the existence of the world. Or, I had the experience of feeling absolutely safe. Wittgenstein admits that they may be described as facts, but they are facts that must have absolute value. But it would be nonsense to say that a fact could have absolute value. Nevertheless, this is what he is saying: ``I must admit it is nonsense to say that they have absolute value. And I will make my point still more acute by saying `It is the paradox that an experience, a fact, should seem to have supernatural value.``` (p. 43) Notice that Wittgenstein chooses Kierkegaard`s word ``paradox`` to capture the clash between facts and values.

Religious language, religious terms, Wittgenstein says, are to be understood as similes and allegories. The experiences of 1) wonder at existence of the world, 2) being absolutely safe, and 3) feeling guilt are experiences of religion. Religious terms are similes and allegories expressing these experiences. And so we get: 1) ``God created the heavens and the earth.`` ``When I consider the heavens, the works of thy fingers.`` 2) ``He prepares the table before me in the presence of my enemies.`` ``Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Thy rod and thy staff …`` 3) ``Jesus Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Have mercy on us.`` Wittgenstein says these are a part of a ``great allegory,`` but this allegory also describes the three experiences of absolute of value referred to. However, if we were to try to drop the simile and allegorical language and just state the facts, we could not do so. That is, I could state the experiences that I wonder at the existence of the world, feel absolutely safe, and feel guilty, but I could not state any facts in the terms of the religious similes and allegories. I cannot state any facts about God creating the heavens, God`s having fingers, preparing tables, carrying a rod and a staff, Jesus atoning for my sins, ``Jesus, Lamb of God,`` etc. So Wittgenstein, with Kierkegaard, calls this a paradox. Religious terms present absolute value in similes and allegories that connect with facts that do not and cannot express absolute value.

It is in this context that Wittgenstein presents his illustration of the lion`s head as instructive about the concept of ``miracle.`` If someone suddenly grew a lion`s head and began to roar, and if we took this person to a doctor and the doctor performed all sorts of tests and examinations, the miracle would disappear. We would have adopted a causal point of view. From this point of view there are no miracles and there is no paradox of absolute value. But notice that the same paradox may be presented through noting the grammatical fact that there is no absolute value expressible in this causal realm.

The word ``miracle`` in its absolute sense – that is – in the sense in which it is used to speak of the supernatural, what is beyond facts – is the paradox that Wittgenstein speaks of in connection with religious terms as allegories about certain experiences. The experience of wondering at the existence of the world is a miracle. It is inexpressible. ``Why should something exist rather than nothing?`` is not a question entailing the proposition: ``God must have created the heavens and the earth.`` It is rather an expression of awe.

What Wittgenstein says next, what he connects the miracle of existence to, is striking. He connects the miracle of the existence of the world to the existence of language. He says: ``Now I am tempted to say that the right expression in language for the miracle of the existence of the world, though it is not any proposition in language, is the existence of language itself.`` (p. 44) The existence of the world and the existence of language are the same miracle. They harbor the same paradox. There is no explanation of either.

From the Tractatus, we get: The world, is apprehended in language. The world is what we propose the world is. The world presents itself in propositions. The world is a collection of facts not of things, and a fact is not a something outside of what is expressed in a proposition. We need not worry here that this is the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus rather than The Blue Book and Philosophical Investigations. In fact, Wittgenstein wrote the ``Lecture on Ethics`` at the same time as The Blue Book. The attention to natural expressions, sentences – rather than exclusively to the proposition – still holds the idea that the world is known in language. The world and language are one. Essence is expressed by grammar. The meaning of a word is not a something in the world to which the word refers. The meaning is revealed in the use of the word – in language. So, again, whether Tractarian or later Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein identifies the world as we know it with language. The world and language are one, and the experience of wonder at the world and at language are one and the same.

Why should there be anything at all? Why should I be here experiencing ``the world as I know it`` in language? Why should I be here asking questions? What is self consciousness? Is it the awareness of my asking this and other questions of myself? What is the mind but the conversation I am having with myself. (Plato: ``thinking is the soul in conversation with itself.``) And the experience of wonder at self consciousness is the experience of wonder at this conversation. Why should there be a conversation? And this is equivalent to: Why should there be language at all rather than silence? Of course silence is the absence of language, the thought of which itself requires language.

The miracle of language too cannot be expressed. We speak – that is a fact. We may experience wonder at the fact that we speak – if we do, that is a fact. But the mystery of the fact – which is to say the miracle of language – that is not expressible in the language. The paradox can be made clear – ``shown,`` as Wittgenstein said in his earlier work. The miraculousness of language, Wittgenstein says, is not something that can be explained by a theory of language, but the very existence of language is the miracle. It is in language that we ask the questions: Why should there be anything at all? and, its transformed equivalent, Why should there be language – thought – at all? In language we conduct our investigations – ask our questions. Our investigations presuppose the existence of language. So if we were to investigate language and to ask questions of the very existence of language, we are in the paradoxical position of using the very tool of investigation to investigate itself. Investigating language itself might be done as a grammatical investigation, i.e. describing the grammar, but the question of the very existence of language, that must remain a mystery – a miracle.

The Causal Point Of View

The following are three fragments on the causal point of view prompted by three separate remarks taken from Wittgenstein`s notebooks collected under the title, Culture and Value. They fit with Wittgenstein`s bold remark in Zettel #610 that it is ``high time that our concept of causality is upset.``

1. ``The insidious thing about the causal point of view is that it leads us to say: `Of course it had to happen like that.` Whereas we ought to think: it may have happened like that – and also in many other ways.``

– Culture and Value, p. 37

``The causal point of view`` – What is that? Calling something ``a point of view`` suggests that there may be other points of view from which to look at things. Asking for the cause is approaching something of interest with a question that we may not have asked. We might, for example, look at something – anything – and not ask: What caused this? A rabbit jumps out from the bushes and runs through a field. It may not cross my mind to ask for the cause. A map lies on the table and I do not ask how it came to be there. I suddenly remember something from my childhood, and be pleased by the memory, without asking what the cause of the memory was. We need not ask for causes.

So the causal point of view involves asking for the cause of something, when we might not have asked for it. People who are very good at science will sometimes notice something that others do not and ask what caused it. Or they may ask for the cause when others see the same thing and do not ask for it. Einstein is said to have noticed that the sand at the water`s edge was hardening as the waves withdrew. Wondering about the cause of that, led to his giving an explanation of the surface tension of a liquid. A good scientist notices what others do not, and his noticing is a function of his interest in causes – in his having a causal point of view.

Wittgenstein seems to have in mind, in this remark, that in science we bring the belief that everything must have a cause to all our considerations. That is, when we look at the world, we are looking at it and its parts as caused – that the events of the world are all linked in a causal chain. But this is a perspective. It is not the only way we can look at the world. But this is not the ``insidious thing`` that Wittgenstein is referring to in this remark.

The ``insidious thing`` he says is that we, in adopting the causal point of view, will come to think that what happens must have happened in this way and not in some other way. There is a grammatical pattern behind this insidious misstep. When we see the repetition of events in a causal chain, we come to say that the events ``must`` unfold in just this way. We say that the explosion must have followed the gas leak, etc. Here ``must`` is taken for a necessity, and of course, it is a form of necessity. But it is not a logical necessity. An effect is not the logically necessary conclusion of a cause. The grammar of the word ``must`` in such causal successions led us by a surface similarity to the grammar of the word ``must`` in its logical sense.

Wittgenstein probably had more in mind by his remark. Could it be that he also thought that there are some events that, from a causal point of view, look as if they must be a part of a causal chain, when in fact they are not. The causal point of view suggests that the causal chain, is taking us inexorably to a certain outcome. But maybe that particular causal chain is not in place at all. This may occur in the natural sciences as well as in human affairs.

In thinking of human affairs, we say that the causes of the civil war were slavery and the clash of an industrial and an agrarian society. Is this a causal chain? ``Slavery had to end in violence.`` We can understand this, but remember that it is not equivalent to ``the gas leak had to end in an explosion.`` ``Causes`` in history might better be thought of as reasons.

The causal point of view drives us. Through it we look at the world in a particular way. Adopting that perspective, we look for the cause of something when we might not have. We presuppose a cause and effect chain that lies behind the event of interest. No counter-evidence appears that would encourage us to give up our belief in the causal point of view. In it, we feel caught in the grip of inevitability. ``Things must have turned out as they did.``

2. ``What a curious attitude scientists have – : `We still don`t know that; but it is knowable and it is only a matter of time before we get to know it!` As if that went without saying.``

Culture and Value, p. 40

Wittgenstein claims that the scientist`s thinking contains an ``attitude`` and then notices that the scientist is not conscious of this attitude. Wittgenstein is describing what other philosophers have called a presupposition. The presupposition, ``Every event has a cause,`` forms the descriptions of the world that scientists give, but is not itself one of those descriptions.

Notice that there are two beliefs involved in the attitude. The first is that what is unknown is ultimately knowable. And the second is that the unknown is knowable in time. They are correlated.

The first, that what is unknown is knowable, involves the belief that a causal explanation is possible even when no cause is immediately apparent. The operative belief is that our observation of some event calls for a cause, as if we had said to ourselves: ``All events have causes.`` Believing this, we may set out to look for a cause. The curious thing is that the scientist persists in his belief in a cause, by pursuing a cause when none presents itself. Cause finding is a preoccupation of the scientist. This seems in order. If we are fixing a light bulb and all lights in an area go out, we look to the blown fuse that connects all lights in the area as the cause. If lighting strikes, we may ask for the cause of the discharge in the cloud. But if the lightning strikes me, and I live to ask: ``Why me?`` the causal explanation found in the cloud is not satisfying. If I put one lug nut on before another when changing a tire, is there a causal explanation for that? Or if I suddenly remember someone`s name, guess what card I will draw next in poker, or choose to have asparagus rather than green beans with dinner, are these all caused? That we do not ordinarily ask for the causes of such things is no surprise. That someone would ask for the cause might be very odd, even misplaced, in most circumstances. Still, a scientist might distinguish himself by asking for a cause where no one else would. ``Why are water drops round?`` for example, is a very productive causal question that most of us would not think to ask. ``Why are there four birds at my bird bath?`` is probably less productive. And, ``Why did I choose asparagus?`` is likely to be a source of confusion for the one who is looking for a causal law governing the relationship between brains and a taste for asparagus.

The latter search for causes tries to connect our bodies with our language. This connection produced the conceptual knot that interested Wittgenstein. In the Philosophical Investigations he wrestles with ``the causal theory of language.`` What would it mean for a proposition to be caused? And in Zettel #610, he asks: Why does there have to be a cause in the brain for a memory? Memories, remember, are what we say we remember – `` I remember that …``.

Wittgenstein is noticing that not all asking for a cause is productive. The curious attitude of the scientist might lead one to ask for a cause at times that are not appropriate. Why did the lightning or disease, etc, strike me? Of course, this might be a question of religious doubt. But in religion, asking for the cause of something can be all wrong too. ``How did Jesus perform a certain miracle?`` is not productive. Nor is seeking a cause for how bread can become the body of Christ. Asking for the cause of a ritual is wrong-headed as well. Why do people fast? Why are priests celebrate? Why do Catholics make the sign of the cross? A causal explanation of such rituals is neither possible nor interesting.

Wittgenstein`s calling attention to this first aspect of the scientist`s curious attitude is calling attention to the unstated form of the question that the scientist, as scientist, persists in asking. ``What caused this?`` Calling it ``curious`` points out that he might not have asked it and that he might sometimes ask it when it is out of place to ask it. When it is in place and productive of science, noticing the presence of the question is an important part of understanding what the scientist does as scientist. He looks for causes and forms his descriptions of the world as causal laws. Realizing that the scientist puts the question to phenomena, is to see science as the human construction that it is. One realizes that science is not, as it were, the reading of laws from the book of nature, but the result of a human pursuit with human interests. And realizing what the scientist`s question is and that he might not have asked it, is to become aware that an event might not be understood in a causal chain and that a causal chain might not be what is interesting about the event. How a piece of bread can become the body of Christ is not of the least interest to anyone who believes it. And, supposing a brain trace caused a memory is not of interest to one who wonders why he remembered something and is based on a groundless presupposition that there must be a cause. Believing that something must cause a memory reveals that one has not yet entertained the possibility that 1) such a thing is not caused and 2) one is connecting conceptual unconnectables.

The second belief of the scientist in his curious attitude is that the unknown cause, which he supposes is active, will be known in time. This temporal aspect of the supposition pre-supposes that what is known is knowable. The model here is the set of unknown causes in the past that have come to be known in the future. The cause of the retrograde motion of mars, for example, was a mystery in the past, but came to be known by Kepler in the future. The causes of beri-beri, anthrax, and other diseases, once unknown, are now known. So we have a well-founded belief that the causes of now unknown diseases and astronomical phenomena will be discovered in the future.

But we must balance this optimistic line of thinking against another model of discovery. In mathematics too the proof of a theorem may be unknown now and discovered later. But there may not be a proof for some theories; and there cannot be proofs for conceptually confused propositions in mathematics. Is the scientist`s search for the cause of my growing asparagus like looking for a thought in a garden? The neural surgeon never finds a memory, a dream, or love in his work. Is he ``looking for love in all the wrong places``?

Wittgenstein`s thinking here is that conceptual confusions are put into play when this aspect of the scientist`s ``curious attitude`` goes unnoticed. We may know what is knowable in the future, but not everything that looks like a knowable proposition is a knowable proposition. There are words put together that may pass for knowable propositions, and not be propositions at all. They are nonsense. It is not that they present unknowable claims, but they do not present sensible claims at all. Wittgenstein has described his work in philosophy as exposing disguised nonsense – making it patently clear that it is nonsense. This work he does by showing the language surrounding a proposition – showing the proposition in the context of its natural surroundings that make clear its sense or its nonsense. More specifically in this remark about the ``curious attitude`` of the scientist, Wittgenstein exposes the question, which the scientist uses successfully though unconsciously in his work, as the question that gives shape to his thinking and the question that can mislead him to nonsense.

3. ``The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn`t absurd, eg. to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is a delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are.``

Culture and Value, p. 56

Wittgenstein said of himself that he was not a religious man but could not help seeing the world from a religious point of view. Surely the ``apocalyptic view of the world`` presented in this remark is one seen from a religious point of view. A Christian religious point of view, at least, includes the sinfulness of man, the triumph of justice after resurrection, and the endurance of suffering as a condition of human life. From the perspective of the scientific view, these features of the landscape disappear.

Scientific knowledge is progressive. We know more today than yesterday. But about what? – about the earth and stars and about gems and human anatomy. It, scientific knowledge, suggests, however, that human life will be better tomorrow than today. But what does ``better`` mean as an adjective modifying human life? We have shifted from ``It is better that we can treat a disease`` to ``Humans are better.`` It is not, however, as if we can be more honest, more courageous, more magnanimous, in short, more virtuous than someone in the last century or in Aristotle`s.

It is worse than that. Scientific knowledge gives the illusion that we have progressed morally beyond our ancestors. We say that we now know that slavery was a great wrong and we do not engage in such practices. And yet new forms of slavery exist under our very noses that we write off as the price of progress. Unless, that is, we do not regard contemporary alienated labor as ``wage slavery.`` The wage slave, whose oppression appears mitigated by the fact that he watches a lot of television, is often a pawn moved in a game for the economic interests of others. This passes for progressing beyond serfdom.

Wittgenstein felt this scientific view as a malaise. It is not the outcome of an argument. He could feel the malaise in the music of his time. He said he could hear the ``crunching of machinary`` in modern music. He could see the blind arrogance in the claims of science. In the Tractatus, he compares the views of the ancients to the views of the modern scientist. The former sees its terminus in myth, the latter does not see its terminus at all, but supposes that it has provided the explanation of the world without arbitrary starting points: ``The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.`` (6.371); and ``…the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained.`` (6.372) Here again, he discusses causality as a presupposition of the scientist. ``The law of causality is not a law but the form of a law.`` (6.32)

Where is Wittgenstein`s home?

Some have taken Wittgenstein as a postmodernist. His philosophy of mind clearly counters modern philosophy – Descartes, Locke, Hume. This passage too is an obvious counter to the modernist reaction to the birth of modern scientific knowledge. But Wittgenstein could no more sit quietly with the postmodernists than he could with the Vienna Circle, where, legend has it, he turned his back and read poetry when they discussed the verification principle. If one had to identify a period place for Wittgenstein, one could not. He is out of place in any time. He longs for a period before the Moderns. He chose to open the Philosophical Investigations with the quotation from St. Augustine, calling the reader back to a pre-modern period and a religious perspective. He read St. Augustine in Latin and, incidentally, Kierkegaard in Danish. These tastes in philosophy suggest a longing for a religious view of the world not to be found in modernism. But Wittgenstein, who perhaps longed for a medieval world, was not at home there either. With respect to the ancients, he never speaks of Aristotle. When he speaks of Plato, he treats him as harboring a fundamental misunderstanding of language. And Socrates, he quipped, had followers who were ``ninnies.`` Where, then, is he at home? His philosophical journey left him homeless. With respect to this philosophical homelessness, he is, like Walker Percy`s Will Barrett, a southerner at Columbia, who does not fit in the north, returns home to a south that he cannot find. Still, Wittgenstein resides homeless, outside of a philosophical country, like a prophet, speaking of the ``apocalyptic view of the world.``

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