The Comprehensibility of the World: A Jewish Perspective

Abstract

The comprehensibility of the world is a major problem in the philosophy of science. There are two possible approaches to dealing with this problem. The first is that of naturalistic science and philosophy, and the second is that of Jewish thought. The main emphasis of this article is on analyzing the first type of scientific consciousness, which describes a world from which God is absent. The article will claim that the world as portrayed by naturalistic science and philosophy is itself incomprehensible, and in it human beings have no way of discovering the basic laws of nature. In contrast, the approach of Jewish philosophy will be portrayed by analyzing the biblical description of the Creation and philosophical works of Maimonides, Rabbi Kook, and Rabbi Soloveitchik. According to this approach, the world is comprehensible and the act of scientific consciousness derives from the association with the supreme mind.