The following translation of a book by Brother Samuel Rouvillois is about science and philosophy. Despite walking hand in hand at the beginnings of western thought, the two have in recent centuries more often been brought into harsh opposition with eachother. This apparent clash of approaches to reality has the advantage of bringing us to question once again what understanding of reality is... or what type of knowledge leads us the closest to grasping something about the world and ourselves. The original French title of the book is "Quel reel?"... emphasising that philosophy and modern science not only often disagree about what reality is but now offer very different approaches to knowledge itself, such that when attempting understanding of things they seem to be talking about completely different realities.

We hope to progressively post a translation of the entire book. 

Approaches To Reality (1)

Foundations for a dialogue between science and philosophy

By Br. Samuel Rouvillois

Introduction

In today’s world modern science is experiencing a deciding moment in its history. Born with Galileo and cartesian thinking, it saw triumph in the domains of both discovery and thinking, to the point of becoming a philosophical model of thought in Augustus Comte’s positivism. But at the very moment of the explosive development of contemporary science, as it is enjoying unprecedented success through the mastery of reality it affords, it is paradoxically entering into a profound and unfamiliar crisis in its relationship with the truth.

Indeed, though at the height of its dominion, the scientific project which aimed to offer humanity objective, unified and universal knowledge, is today coming under question.

(to be continued...)