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Is there an Ancient and Modern tension?

So much of the scholarship and the scholars do not seem to see such a disagreement.

Rather they see the Ancients world within the horizon of contemporary science as

Socrates/pre-Socrates thinks as the intellectual precursor of modern rationality. hey seethe history is thought as a single continuality. !et" the earlier stages erred in arenas" only

if due to lack of either perspecti#es or insights $or tools which opened up new

perspecti#es and insights%.

!et if one looks at and reads the thinkers/philosophers who founded modern science

$&escartes" 'o((es" Machia#elli" )alileo" *acon%. +e find them at odds with and

attacking the dominant Aristotlean/Scholaristic science or Socratic/,latonicunderstanding of the cosmos or the whole of human eistence. he early modern

thinkers" if you read them" are engaged in a proect to (reak away from the older modes

of science and knowledge and gi#e to man new modes and orders" modes and orders that

allow men to master the uni#erse and impro#e the human estate.

aken on the terms of what the founders of modern science themsel#es say" they seethemsel#es e#ol#ed in a (reak away from a dominant" and what they (elie#e mistaken"

misguided and unworka(le #iew of science that frustrates rather than assists man in their

attempt to impro#e their condition.

So why do the scholars and much of the scholarship on the early modern thinkers fails to

see this (reak as well? +hy are they (lind to it?

hey are (lind (ecause modern science" and with it modern rationality itself" although

resting on the disco#ery and re#olution of the early modern thinkers" they are moreengaged in furthering that proect rather than understanding it. he successor of themodern proect continue with the proect of controlling nature and shaping the material

world of mans eistence $#ia technology% to impro#e the human condition. hey are no

so much concerned with understanding what their proect is and what is (ased upon.Rather it is concerned with furthering that proect. In fact in the sciences one rarely finds

scholars knowledgea(le of authors of the thoughts and the true origins and meaning of

the ideas/concepts that those authors held that much of their sciences rest. +hat they

know of such men or such things is what they learned in the tet(ooks that shaped theirknowledge" and what are in those tet(ooks are little more than a form of intellectual

pa(ulum that can (e easily digested in their undergraduate studies0especially in their

philosophy of sciences classes.

'eideggers gift is the destruction of the tradition that so masks and hides the sources

and origins and meaning of the #ery sciences and their key concepts themsel#es.'eideggers destruction leads to a redisco#ery of the sources of that tradition on their

own terms. 1urrent scientists and scholars are #ery much like dwarfs on the shoulder of

giants" unaware of the giants as the predecessors whom without they would not see or

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