11/29/24

The Square of Opposition and Apophatic Theology

It's easy to misunderstand apophatic theology. Humans want to compare things to this or that. About God though the apophatic theologian might use Wittgenstein's "Whereof I cannot speak, thereof I must be silent" (probably an epistemological reference rather than a reference to his British fighter pilot bf while Wittgenstein was in the Austrian army during the First World War).  Apophatic theology relates that "God is ineffable, incomprehensible, and inconceivable, only as He is in Himself, as He is intrinsically."

Popper's falsification criterion is used to determine if a theory is scientific...that is it need be capable of being proven wrong, if it isn't right. Newton's gravity theory was falsifiable and true so far as they went, yet only conditionally so as Einstein's General Theory surpassed Newton's theory of gravity. 

https://happenings.lpu.in/newtons-law-of-gravity-proven-wrong/

True scientific theories may be conditional rather than absolute...like incomplete maps of explorers.

Perhaps Plato's Allegory of the Cave has a parallel to Newton's theory so far as science goes, or would if the inmates chained on the floor developed a theory of motion to explain when the shadows would appear that was true. If they predicted the dark demiurges of Mordor would appear through the walls at 1 pm every day and they did not then the theory was false though scientific.

The verification theory of truth is comparable on a square of opposition logically speaking I would venture.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Square_of_opposition%2C_set_diagrams.svg

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