Poezja i metafizyka w nauce

Abstract

Both the romantic criticism of science and the positivistic rejection of metaphysics contributed to the sharp epistemological separation between physical science on the one hand and metaphysics and poetry on the other. The latter were regarded meaningless and devoid of any cognitive value. The author points out that psychoanalysis, developed in Vienna at the lime of the peak activity of the Vienna Circle, never applied to the positivist standard of science and it remains much closer to a poetic perception of the world than to empirically testable scientific theory. The same appraisal should be extended upon strong metaphysical statements contained in theories belonging to the so-called new physics and new biology. All these facts indicate that in scholary practice one cannot follow the traditional positivist distinction between meaningful science and cognitively meaningless poetry and metaphysics.