Have the exact sciences tried to obtain their legitimacy from "outside" the human being?

Question

I'm not really specialized in the history of science. But it seems for me that as the time passed, the exact sciences tried to do that. For example: The second is measured in relation to the spinning of the electron along the nucleus of the atom and they tried to obtain mathematical certainty with methods that could be computed outside of mathematicians (this was part of the Hilbert's program). I believe that this happened because of the belief that we are bad observers and that there are some environments which are really not observable, for example: The set of all natural numbers.

So, does this trend have a name? I'd like to read more about it - supposing it is actually something that happened and not just something I made up.

Answer 1

The name of this trend is Jehovah’s or Rumpelstiltskin’s principle

Jehovah’s principle is based on projecting one’s identity (intension, aim) to an external instance, instead of keeping it to oneself; and so gradually all areas of life and concepts are reorganized for the purpose of outsourcing identities. One hence does not any longer really be oneself, because Jehovah prescribed that one has an original sin and is unworthy by oneself.

Hence, instead of explaining things out of our own identity, by connecting them with other identities, in this new system all is explained (circularly, i.e. tautologically) by mathematics, as for instance time as an atomic vibration. In this, it is instrumental that the discussion, whether this outsourcing makes sense, is tabooed since this would mean to blaspheme against Jehovah.

Jehovah taught his people that (though it may not worship Mammon because this could be a distraction of its focusing on him) it shall nevertheless fully concentrate on utility, since this is the road to manifest that it is the chosen people, because it may then reign over all other people. But the condition for this to become true, is that all things, men and other people lose their identity.

Jehovah’s principle may also be called Rumpelstiltskin’s principle, because the Rumpelstiltskin of Brothers Grimm’s°) fairy tales was a kind of demon that entices people to flog their own identity (here represented by the miller’s daughter’s child). Interestingly this tale contains likewise the solution how one may get rid of Jehovah’s enchantment: One must just break the taboo by calling it by its name.

Additional remarks in answer to the comment below by miracle173: I was inspired to my answer by gradually combining

• Waiblinger, Angela: Rumpelstilzchen – Gold statt Liebe, Zürich, 1983, who describes the Rumpelstiltskin principle, but I do not remember exactly whether she called it herself “principle” (though it is one). This book does not exist in English, and it is rather difficult to understand because it has something to do with projections. It is only a first clue, but when pondering over it very long, it becomes clear that Rumpelstiltskin is a projection of one’s own identity (or of central soul components). It is just handier to call it Rumpelstiltskin’s principle instead of (unconscious) projection.

Then after a while, I realized that Jehovah is identical with Rumpelstiltskin (or the mentioned unconscious projection). So it must, of course, be called Jehovah’s principle because everybody has an idea about Jehovah, but nearly nobody has a notable conception of Rumpelstiltskin.

• Jehovah’s principle may be extensively studied in the Old Testament (Tanakh, Torah). E.g. Deuteronomy 7.16: “And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them (…)”. And offshoots of it are the Talmud and the Schulchan aruch. The best synopsis of the problem is Th. Fritsch, Der falsche Gott, Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig, 1921. – But, as mentioned above, this whole question is shrouded in censorship by command of Rumpelstiltskin and his synonyms.

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Footnotes:

°) Nr. 55 of The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Random House Publ., New York, 1972.

Answer 2

Just about every argument seeks its legitimacy by appealing to something larger than an individual human being. Even when the advocate argues that an action is correct because the nation's leader says so, often the unspoken premise is that the leader is acting in the name of some broader principle.

The object is to avoid such logical fallacies as the appeal to authority, ad hominem, or even ad baculum (appeal to force), by asserting or demonstrating that the truth is objective, and thus beyond the power any one person to ignore. Isolating that truth amidst the noise is the trick.

Answer 3

This idea that we are flawed observers, because all observation is inherently flawed, is also now a basic principle of quantum dynamics. So I fail to see hot this is about the 'exact' sciences in particular.

All of our sciences, from anthropology to physics have different ways of counteracting the natural flaws of observation, which become immediately obvious when measurements based on different assumptions need to be integrated.

Whitehead, in "Science and the Modern World" declares the excessive reliance upon shareable frames of reference, which mechanizes science, to be one of its more limiting anti-intellectual factors.

He spends a good part of the chapters on modern theories of physics trying to lay out how that natural human facility can understand modern science without elaborate wrapping, through native ideas of event and organism that we have Procrusteanized in Western scientific culture.