World riddle

Mystery is a term that came into use in the 19th century and developed the catchphrase later. With it, one called metaphysical questions that perhaps can never be answered.

Puzzle is used here in a wide range of meanings between mystery and puzzle. The speech moves between a erkenntnisoptimistischen and a pessimistic epistemological position, a World Declaration competence on the one hand and a skeptic attitude of the principal unknowability of the world - and the insolubility of its mystery - on the other side.

History of Philosophy

Already in the 18th century, the whole of the world was certain even referred to as a permanent mystery of their areas or man.

David Hume presented the certainty of a priori judgments in doubt, rejected metaphysics, looked at the science as accumulation of probabilities and referred to the force of habit.

The mind should not digress into supersensible regions, but be limited to the field of experience, without the knowledge and truth can not be spoken. In contrast to the continental tradition of rationalism Hume stressed that the mind are failing to grasp truths, but only can receive sense impressions which formed the basis of knowledge. From the sensory data but no picture of the whole of the world was build. Since even the causality was attributed to habit ( problem of induction ) and the possibilities of reason were questioned in this skepticism, the insight into human blindness and weakness was the result of the philosophy of Hume. The enigmatic character of the world described Hume as saying: "The whole world is an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, abstention of the judgment are the only conclusion to which the keenest and most careful investigation can lead us. "

For Arthur Schopenhauer the world appears as Will and Representation. While he was on the knowledge level - in the tradition of Kant - the world as presented and looked at the things as phenomena, for him was actually metaphysical, Wielding behind things and on Kant's intelligible " thing in itself " beyond principle - the will.

The human body - like all other life - be objectified, will incarnate in different forms. The human being as animal metaphysicum is his own existence puzzling: it was in its consciousness that is conditioned individually different qualified by intellect and powers of the mind, so that there was for Schopenhauer people who have a " least tenfold higher degree of existence " than other. While most people spend their existence, driven by the needs and duties of life, in the form of a " dull conscious ( n ) driving ( s )" as the troubled and confused dream, the scholar is aware of the existence as a whole. But only by a philosopher and poet prudence " existence itself " reached a level not to explore a particular element in existence, but. This refers to Schopenhauer as the Great Sphinx, before which stand there puzzled the philosopher, to make it his problem.

The Sphinx itself was often regarded as a symbol of the world puzzle. and the puzzle -solver Oedipus had, as Nietzsche wrote, " his excessive wisdom 's sake [ ... ] fall into a confusing maelstrom of misdeeds. "

To have While Schopenhauer in his pessimistic idealist suffering metaphysics that thing saw itself in irrational wandering through eternity will and it looked as " solving the mystery of the world," thought Friedrich Nietzsche of the world riddle in the will to power discovered .. In one of the posthumous fragments are found the words: " and you also know what my world is [ ... ] the world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end [ ... ] an ocean in itself storming and flooding of existing forces, eternally wandering, forever running back [ ... ] - this, my Dionysian world of the eternally - to - own - creation, Diess my Beyond Good and Evil, without aim, if not the luck of the circle is a goal [ ... ] you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? [ ... ] This world is the will to power - and nothing besides! "

The seven puzzles

It was the German physiologist Emil Heinrich Du Bois -Reymond, the " seven world-riddle " postulated and this introduced his eponymous lecture in 1880. He was referring to seven trouble for thinking, which he presented in the span of possible solvability to unsolvability:

The first three riddles you called Bois- Reymond in the Kantian sense as transcendent, therefore, in principle unsolvable. The origin of life and the convenient arrangement of nature held Du Bois -Reymond, however, for in principle solvable, though not yet solved for. The ability of rational thinking and the related question of the origin of language is also principle indetectable. Whether the mystery of human free will is solvable, however, he had openly sought, however, this mystery - how the human language - educate the declaration part of a psychological determinism.

The Mystery relate at Du Bois- Reymond - unlike Schopenhauer - only to worldly matters, but not to the existence of the world at all.

Du Bois - Reymond's position towards metaphysical questions is that of agnosticism. He was already formulated in the earlier work, " On the limits of natural knowledge ", culminating in the popular saying ignoramus et ignorabimus and led to considerable controversy.

The Riddle

In contrast to Du Bois - Reymond, the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel held the world mystery to solve. He made the expression of the late 19th century with his book " The Riddle " extremely popular. The oriented to Spinoza and Goethe monistic philosophy, which he had already based on previous works, reflected the unadulterated faith in the progress of science and aimed at the unification of world views.

Haeckel's philosophy of nature explained the origin of the universe from a single primordial substance, which unfolded on the principle of development. He understands it under a uniform monism, pantheism consideration of the " totality of nature ." After his presentation are one God and the world, the world itself a " cosmic unity ". Haeckel wanted to overcome in this way the anthropism, the idea that man is the ultimate goal of creation and separated from the rest of nature.

After Haeckel science can solve all the riddles in principle. The " largest, most comprehensive and most difficult " was in the process " that of the origin and development of the world", while the most important question that remains to the origin of man.

Haeckel believed that the world consists initially and continuously by itself. As Du Bois -Reymond he not turned his attention to the general mystery of the world existence at all, but rather to individual questions of some natural phenomena.

The monistic theory in the tradition of the materialism of the 19th century, although Haeckel himself protested against the assessment to be Materialst. He went from a concept of substance, which allocates her spirit and energy as attributes. These attributes were recorded according to Haeckel's view through the fully formulated by Lavoisier mass conservation law and the First Law of Thermodynamics by Robert Mayer.

From a mechanistic- causal explanatory principle based, Haeckel regarded the humanities only as branches of natural science, and thought so, to find solutions to the riddles of the universe that had been previously considered by metaphysicians as largely intractable.

Another key to solving the riddle of the universe behold Haeckel in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which he supported and promoted aggressively. The deep secrets of the origin of life, of thought and language were aired by the theory of evolution; the apparent teleology of nature refuted by the theory of natural selection. The since Rousseau and Kant discussed the problem of freedom considered Haeckel because the principle of causality as obsolete, and as the immortality of the soul is a fiction, the mind can be explained as a biological phenomenon.

With his carefree superstructure of the empirical research, the then-popular popular science of his thoughts and the optimism of progress, Haeckel was found to be typical " child of the 19th century. " His theses, his rejection of metaphysical and mystical questions and transcendental speculation led to a long dispute, a "Battle for Haeckel ," was also a polemic in which between the supporters and opponents. On the other hand, Haeckel's " Riddle " the state of the natural sciences in wide circles reader familiar and supports the acceptance of evolution.

20th century

The early Ludwig Wittgenstein did not believe in impossible conundrum. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus he put it: " For an answer that you can not pronounce, you can not pronounce the question. The riddle does not exist. If you can ask a question at all, then it can also be answered " " The correct method in philosophy would really this:. Nothing to say than what can be said, ie propositions of natural science [ ... ], then whenever wanted to say something metaphysical another, to demonstrate to him that he has given to certain signs in his propositions no meaning " the work ends with the famous words: ". . Whereof one can not speak, thereof one must be silent "

This position is reminiscent of Martin Heidegger's attempt at a fundamental ontological reconstruction of metaphysics by the basic question: "Why are there beings rather than nothing? " Which Heidegger had raised referring back to Leibniz. In contrast to his later pejorative use of the term " metaphysics " he presented in the Metaphysical Foundations of logic in the output of the Leibniz Daseinsanalysis in their mutual relation as metaphysics.

Philosophers of the Vienna Circle and the logical empiricism of Rudolf Carnap as representing a scientific world view, which left no room for theological and metaphysical speculation, a radical position that has been relativized by Karl Popper later. His interest in science and philosophy, he declared, inter alia, thinking about " over the riddle of the world in which we live, learn " something you want.