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Science
and Life
by Michael Bakunin
Historically speaking, there are three
fundamental principles that constitute the
essential conditions for all human development.
These principles apply to the individual as well as
to collective humanity. They are: human animality,
thought, and rebellion. The first corresponds with
individual and socialized relationships; the second
with science; the third with liberty.
The gradual development of the material world is
one of a natural movement from the simple to the
complex. Organic and animal life, the historically
progressive intelligence of man, individually and
socially, has been from the lowest species to the
highest; from the inferior to the superior. This
movement conforms with all our daily experiences,
and consequently it also conforms with our natural
logic; with the distinctive laws of our mind, which
are formed and developed only by the aid of these
same experiences; that is, the mental and cerebral
reproduction or reflected summary.
Real and living individuality is perceptible
only to another living individuality, not to a
thinking individuality; not to the man who, by a
series of abstractions, puts himself outside of and
above immediate contact with life; to such a man,
it can exist only as a more or less perfect example
of the species -- as a definite abstraction.
...
Science is like a rabbit. Both are incapable of
grasping the individuality of a man. Science is not
ignorant of the principle of individuality; it
conceives of it perfectly as a principle, but not
as a fact.
What I preach, then, is to a certain extent, the
revolt of life against science, or rather against
the government of science; not to destroy science
-- that would be treason to humanity -- but to
remand it to its place so that it can never leave
it again.
Excerpted from God and the
State, by Michael Bakunin
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