BEYOND THE TWILIGHT OF REASON
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verse as an aid to science than an analytic mathematics? This insight is an–
cient, in that it raises a question about whether Professor Wilson is right
in saying that philosophers are wrong. Because Lucithus and Democratus,
Pythagoras, and especially Plato believed that mathematics was at the
heart of everything. As Pythagoras observed, things are numbers. I believe
that there must be some truth in their speculation, even though they
probably couldn't prove it, either rigorously or otherwise.
In summary, Professor Wilson noted three distinctive elements in sci–
entific achievement: the expansion of the senses, a point also emphasized
by Professor Cohen, as he elucidated the advances made by a variety of
devices, such as the telescope. A classification of data and the develop–
ment of theory. In this analysis, Wilson remarked that science cuts no
slack for gender or ethnicity. Here he touched on the challenge to ration–
ality by the culture and politics in our time, the subject of this session.
The assault on Western culture is an assault that treats Western culture as
if it were a geographical term rather than a philosophical, historical, and
cultural concept. Western culture is multicultural in its origins, from
Egypt, from India, from Assyria, from many parts of the world. And its
purpose has always been universal. There is no "Western" mathematics or
"Western" science; there is no "Chinese" science, no "Asian" science, no
"African" science, or "African" or "Asian" mathematics. The dream was
the dream of the Western philosophers who just happened to be located
in Greece, as they sought universal truth, not the nature of man if he was
an Athenian, but the nature of man no matter what city he might live in,
no matter what nation or continent. This was a repudiation of provin–
cialism and it concerned universal truth. That is at the essence of what we
refer to as Western culture. Now we face an assault on this concept of
culture, in favor of the feminist story behind the story, the ethnic inter–
pretation, the multicultural interpretation, or the deconstructivist
approach to these issues.
This symposium asks the question about the relevance and usefulness
of rational procedures of thought, as we approach the end of a tragically
irrational century. At a time when the assault on reason and the principles
of the Enlightenment come not from without but from within our uni–
versities and colleges, we face not the barbarians of old, who stormed the
centers of civilization from without, but rather, the vertical barbarians of
which Ortega y Gasset spoke, those who rise within the walls to attempt
to tear down the civilization on which they are absolutely dependent.
These movements deny the transcendence of the human mind. They
generalize the Marxist epistemology that whatever we think, whatever we
believe, is a function of our relationship to something else. With the
Marxists, it was our relationship to the means of production. Having
