Science and Religion


Foreword
By Shozo Ohmori,
Noriko Hashimoto,
and Kohchi Itoh
Translated by Takenori Noumi
and Ben Peacock


We were very much annoyed at being asked to give lectures entitled, 'Science And Religion.' Firstly because it is so formidable a subject and secondly because it is a subject that has been sullied by over-discussion. But the way in which we were to fulfil our task was made easy. It would be no use for us, three editors, to make long speeches. Instead we judged it best to exhibit many examples of thought which do not merely arrange and cook the lines of thinking that already have acquired authorities. Such, so to speak, 'original' thoughts may, we thought, stimulate and enlighten you, students, more than the lectures we three would make.
We selected about twenty lecturers who hold various religious belief while working at scientific or philosophical research and thus must have thought deeply about 'Science And Religion.' We asked them to talk freely about such experience, and we three also made up our minds, from the position we are in, to take part in it. In order to exclude our biases, if any, we didn't touch their theses and didn't classify them. We just let them stand as they were - even their order is random.
You, students, must not waste energy memorizing the contents of the theses to acquire knowledge or to gain units. You must listen to the various thoughts that succeed each other week after week and that contradict each other. Thereby you must foster the thoughts that come up in your mind from the lecturers, and you must try to articulate such thoughts.
In Japan, this method of lecturing is only possible at Broadcast University. But the lecturing of universities should originally be thus, should it not? We are proud of this, and on behalf of the university thank the lecturers who agreed with our intention and took part in this program.








The Source of Our 'Faith in Science'
By Shozo Ohmori
Translated by Takenori Noumi
and Ben Peacock


When talking about 'Science and Religion,' we very frequently encounter a tenacious attitude that could even be called a prejudice. An attitude that religion is an unscientific superstition and that it will be kicked away by science in no time. This rejecting-at-the-gate attitude is based on the uncritical, what we can call 'Belief in Science', attitude that presupposes anything called science to be true. Ironically enough, this 'Faith in Science' is itself in fact a strong religious belief, is it not? Anyway, this 'Faith in Science' has already been conceived so it must have some strong, or seemingly strong, basis. We will investigate this strength or seeming strength. This investigation will, I hope, let you see that it is not as strong as it first looks, and lead you to regard 'Faith in Science' critically. Although it may not be able to destroy the 'Faith' completely, it will act to a certain degree as an antidote to the harmful effect of its overwhelming power. Thinking thusly, I want to review the birth of science from a different point of view than usual.

1. Three Dimensional Things and Perception
We have two ways of looking at things. One of these is very natural for everyone, that is, the way things are seen as three-dimensional. Trees and stones, furniture such as tables and chairs, the bodies of animals and human beings, including one's own, are seen as three-dimensional. Not necessarily as the mathematical coefficients x, y, z of the Cartesian System, but we see things as having volume, with contents. Nothing is more natural than this.
But do we really see things three-dimensionally? No. With the exception of transparent things such as water or glass, the interior of things cannot be seen. In reality what is seen is only the surface of things. In fact, impressionist painters painted their scenery as such. Logical positivists (such as Bertrand Russell) assert that we only suppose that by seeing the surface of things that we understand them to be three-dimensional, having opposite sides, lateral sides and an interior.
I won't discuss here which of the two ways of looking is correct. I don't think it would be fruitful. (The discussion long continued during the first part of this century.) Rather let both of the two be true. Of course on one hand, it is true that a human body looks as a three-dimensional thing containing some interior, and on the other hand, it is also true that we see not its stomach or heart but only its surface, that is, its clothes or its skin. It would be wise to say only that we have two ways of looking, which vary according to the emphasis we place. Let's call these two ways 'plain viewing' and 'perceptive viewing.' When we are not acutely aware of what we see, we see things by 'plain viewing.' But when we are overly concious of what we see, the 'perceptive viewing' surfaces. 'Perceptive viewing' may seem to healthy people to be unnatural and artificial, but sometimes to patients suffering from schizophrenia 'perceptive viewing' dominates and 'plain viewing' is lost. (There are reports of examples of this in, for example, 'Renee -- a Girl Suffering from Schizophrenia' by Secie, or 'Chikaku no Jubaku' by Tetsuo Watanabe.')

2. Integrating the Two Ways of Looking
Ordinary people, however, integrate the two ways of looking by including 'perceptive viewing' in 'plain viewing.' To explain:
Firstly, it is natural that the concept of 'the world' is constructed within the domain of 'plain viewing.' That is, the world as a congregation of all things. It is also natural that the things that are arranged in this 'world' have their own three-dimensional positions. But there is one thing that is very peculiar amongst these: my body. [Translator's note: If this seems too abrupt, refer to Chap.18 'View of the World' of Flowing and Stagnating, Ohmori] And it goes without saying that the position of 'my body' is 'here.' Furthermore that 'perceptive viewing' is going to be positioned and integrated as a perceptive scenery of the world seen from the view point of 'here.' So repeating this process, firstly we make 'the world' by 'plain viewing', then scenes seen by 'perceptive viewing' are arranged within this world. This is the process of integration of the two ways of looking.
In this integration, 'things' and 'perceptive scenes' become the deepest bases of recognition. (Note: This very integration is the main theme of Kant's Critiques of Pure Reason. Furthermore, his 'Transcendental Synthesis' is nothing other than the integration of many perceptive scenes into a thing.) Perceptive scenes, such as ground plans, the side views of a plan, or the profile of a person, are the 'visible figures' of a side of three-dimensional thing. So this 'visible figure' becomes proof of the thing having a certain figure. Take as an example, how the three dimensional figure of Milky Way Universe in which we live is is determined by the perceptive scenes from telescopes of various view points.
Husserl, the creator of phenomenalism, called this perceptive scene the 'Abschattung' of the thing, meaning the 'integration based on some orientation.' But I want a more familiar expression. We are taught in elementary school to develop three-dimesional paper articles such as a die from a plan, so I will call perceptive scenes a thing's 'perception development.' This naming enables us to easily enlarge its relation into the relation between a scientific thesis and an experimental observation. Usually 'hypothetical deductive method' is the standard explanation. That is, a thesis is regarded as a hypothesis and a proposition drawn by it is compared with the result of experiment or observation. But is it not more natural or easier to compare 'perceived development of a thesis' with observation or experimental results? This comparison process is already very familiar to us all. Take, for example, a plan to explain how to reach a certain place. First, by looking at the plan, we make perception developments: how the curve of the road will look, how the bus stop will look, etc. And walking along the road, we compare these perception developments with the real scenes. I will give one more example. We can, by looking at a house from inside and from outside, guess how many rooms there are and how they are situated in the house. In this case, first we make a three-dimensional hypothetical house, make perception developments, and compare these with the real scenes. If there were any contradiction between them, we would change the hypothetical house previously made.
This integration of two ways of looking, 'plain viewing' and 'perceptive viewing' as perception development, is nothing but our usual, everyday understanding of the world. So let's call this understanding the 'living world.' In the case of the above schizophrenia, this living world is divided and perception developments fly astray losing their relation with things.
This living world is the world in which our lives are maintained, and it has its own certainty, not without reason. One supporting pole of the integration of this living world is the material world of plain viewing. Here the essential characteristic of the 'material world' is that it is not perceptive, that is, it is not the world that can be perceived. It is the world that can only be thought. (Note: Note that my contrasting of thought and perception is none other than reason and sensitivity. 'Thought' must be understood in a far broader sense than per its usual meaning. All of the linguistic understanding especially must be included within a 'thought.') The fact that the material world is a 'thought' world becomes utterly clear when it is enlarged into a 'scientific' world. The material world cannot be perceived. It does not have a view point, it is a 'view-point free world,' that is, it is not a world as seen from some view point. Therefore the 'material' world and the 'scientific' world are 'thought' in the Cartesian System. They resemble the world at which God looks. The material world is an intelligently conceived world with no view point and so it is a semi-divine way of grasping this world. Therefore, we feel that it is objective, independent of our individual views.
On the other hand, the essential characteristic of a perceptive scene, that is, the perception development of the material world, is that it includes its own particular viewpoint. The perceptive scene inevitably includes the point from which it is seen or heard. Now, this perceptive scene has a certainty or a matter-of-fact-ness that cannot be doubted. If something is seen as red, it is definitely red and to doubt so is meaningless. (Nobody doubts his toothache.) So logical positivists call perceptive scenes 'sense data' or 'Das Gegebenes.'
Then if things or the material world are thought about as a synthesis of a perceptive scene that has such certainty, the certainty of the perceptive scene is transferred to the things themselves. Of course this transfer is not complete. Some empty space yet remains between them. For example, the three-dimensional position of stars and the moon cannot be uniquely synthesised by their figures as we perceive them. Some arbitrariness (empty space) remains. This arbitrariness is the subject which logical positivists have unfairly exaggerated.
But if we close our eyes to this small empty space, the material world can inherit the certainty of perception development. Adding to this fact, the material world is, as I already pointed out, essentially objective.
Therefore, an understanding of the living world, which is no other than an integration of the material world and perceived scenes, possesses two very strong characteristics: certainty and objectivity. This certainty is, as we all know very well, what we have made, reinforced, and completed in everyday life. The certainty of the rock cave in which we lived, the certainty of the food we eat, the certainty of the weaponry we use, the certainty of the people we rely on, and the certainty of airplanes or cars. These certainties are made based on the certainty of the living world, which has been tested and forged by the certainty of everyday life.

3. Science as an Extension of the 'Plain Viewing' Method
When we look back at the formation of natural science in Europe, we find that it began with the material world and that its 'living world' was enlarged into a scientific world. At first, the subject of science was things, especially solid things, then it was extended to liquids, and then after a long interval it was developed to include gases. The foundation of such scientific research was observable perceptive scenes. Much more time was necessary for treating gas properly, because the perceptive scene of gas was transparent and could not be seen. But it is not only gases that cannot be seen. The interior of a solid or the detailed interior of a liquid cannot be seen either. But what we cannot see or perceive, we can think about. And thus we invented such particles as molecules, atoms, and electrons. Light makes us see things, but light itself cannot be seen. So photons and electromagnetic waves were thought up. Particles thus invented are very small, but they are thought to be things as well. The plain viewing method affects even these theoretical matters. Their existence is also testified to by perception development. The only difference from perception development of everyday life is that it needs a great deal of scientific observational equipment. Recognizing trace photos in a mist box or in a bubble box as the movement of elemental particles is not essentially different from recognizing a perceptive scene of Mt. Fuji from Yamanashi prefecture as the three-dimensional Mt. Fuji that streches its skirt to Shizuoka prefecture. Both see perceptive scenes from some view points as the perception developments of three-dimensional things. So the 'Natural Science World' which includes such theoretical things as elemental particles is nothing but the plain viewing method used in everyday life extended to invisible things such as gas or to the interior of oblique things. This treating of invisible things makes even clearer the characteristic of 'no view point' in the 'material world,' and makes the Cartesian System more appropriate. It also makes it inevitable to accept perceptive scene including its view point as perception development, thus acquiring connection with observations or result of experiments. In short, the scientific world is an extension of the world of our everyday life.
Corespondingly, the certainty of the scientific world is an extension of the certainty of the world of everyday life. This is because the scientific world inherits the objective material world of everyday life and its lack of a view point, and also inherits the certainty of the perceptive scene that the world of our everyday life has. The scientific world with its elemental particles exists objectively indifferent to how we look at it or how we feel it. And at the same time, what we see or hear, that is, the perceptive scene as the perception development of the scientific world is undeniably sure ... we cannot doubt what we perceive ... and this sureness becomes the evidence of the objective scientific world.

4. Faith in Science
As stated above, science has objectivity and certainty. But it is also clear that these two never come from any mystic operation. The certainty of science really originates from the certainty of our everyday life. So it is pointless to worship science by tinkling bells or drumming hand drums. It is also pointless that when comparing religion to science, to judge religion quickly as non-scientific, and to rebuke religion with the momentum of hasty judgement. Praying aloud to the Grand Great God of Science is crude and hard on the ears. Conversely, it is also shameless to assert that science cannot explain all, that a vacant hole always exists, and to stealthily insert religion into this hole. I don't have the time or space to discuss this latter foolishness, but let us just say that only fair and detailed investigation can make a contribution, if any, to this formidable subject, 'Science and Religion.'















Existence and Meaning
By Shozo Ohmori
Translated by Takenori Noumi
and Ben Peacock

1.
When we think about such a big theme as 'Science and Religion' which, with long and wide skirts, scrapes high into the sky, we need to make a preparatory examination as to how to approach it. You will probably be too impatient to make such preparations, but compared to a hurried and over-direct approach, it can keep the perspective broader.
When we say 'Science and Religion,' we are apt to jump too hurriedly into the criterion 'Is it true or not?' Religious legends such as miracles or the religious stories in the Bible are undoubtedly, from scientific view point, less than factural if not total fictions. On the other hand, the proposition 'the earth rotates' is, whatever religion may say, true. Thus we are so easily led to make a true and false evaluation.
But it is dangerous not to look around the theme but to only fix our view at one point. Then we are inclined not to move an inch from that view point, and this attitude is the well-known formula for us to become prejudiced.
So I suggest to not deal directly with the theme 'Science and Religion,' but to approach it from another point of view. That is, the linguistic point of view. There is a scientific language in which science is told and on the other hand there is a religious language in which religion is told. The above stated 'truthfulness' is also formulated separately within each language. So the 'truthfulness' must be understood separately within each language. I will try to compare these two languages from the linguistic point of view.
However, I must recede one more step from the starting point. I don't have enough experience in one of these two languages: religious language. I have never believed in religion, nor had any religious experience.
So I won't try to compare scientific language with religious language but, receding one step, with everyday language. But by doing this, I don't think I shall be too far back from the original theme: Science and Religion. The difference between scientific and religious languages is retained sufficiently in the difference between science and everyday languages, and everyday language retains their difference in a more fundamental form. What is the difference in fundamental form? It is, as will be related later, the existence and the meaning. To put it briefly, everyday language and religious language are the languages that form 'the meaning' this world has for human beings, whereas scientific language neglects all such 'meaning' and tells only about the existence of this world.
Summing up, I want you to understand the difference of scientific and religious languages as the difference between existence and meaning, and to understand, from this point of view, the difference between Science and Religion. What I try heretofore is the aforementioned part, that is, to understand the difference between scientific and everyday languages as the difference between 'existence' and 'meaning.'

2. Everyday Language
Now I see, on the other side of the street, a dog sitting on the sidewalk. Here let's suppose that I don't know the word 'dog.' What I see is probably an ensemble of patches of colours: brown, white, black etc. I may not see a 'dog'. If I don't know the word 'sit,' I may see a dog posing in some posture, but I may not see 'a dog sitting.' A rooster's 'kokke kokkoh' cannot be heard by Americans, and 'cock-a-doodle-doo' cannot be heard by Japanese. Then the scene of a 'dog sitting' is, I must say, a thing that the words 'dog' and 'sit' produced, and a rooster's crowing is a thing that the words 'kokke kokkoh' produced, aren't they? Because if we didn't have these words, or if we didn't know the meaning of these words, there would be no figure of a dog and no sound of a rooster.
Recently 'language symbolism' prevails and the thought that language is a kind of symbol seems to more than ever be valid. To say that the word is a symbol and that it represents a real dog or a real house seems so natural that we are tempted to think as such. But this thought is too superficial and shallow. At first sight language only plays the role of a code or symbol of a real thing. But only at first sight. It is only a pretention of language. Language does not represent real things as a symbol but it produces real things. For example, when we call something 'a house,' we make it a house. We produce a house there. 'A house' has some complicated 'meaning.' It has a roof. Its windows are sometimes opened. It is built on a foundation. Several rooms exist. Carpenters make it with timber, stones or cement. Furniture is in it. Some people sleep in it and get up in the morning. It may be bought or sold. It varies in kind from a hut to a gorgeous mansion, from the top class to the bottom. If I regard a thing built in front of me as 'a house,' it means that I give it the above meaning of 'house.' And the thing built in front of me becomes 'a house.' That is, the word 'house' makes the thing a house. What I mean by saying 'to produce a house' is this. If there were no word 'house,' no
'house' would be produced in this world, so no houses would exist. So I want to say that language does not represent, but produces, things.
Then where and how was the meaning of words made? We cannot but answer that our ancestors made it by living their lives. For example, 'a house.' We have a long history of the word, beginning from digging holes, erecting pillars, and making a roof, to skinflintedly earning money and buying a modern flat of an apartment. Living in such innumerable 'houses' we, Japanese, have given meaning to 'house,' enlarged it, changed it, and rearranged it until it becomes the word 'ie' [Japanese 'ie' is 'house'] that we are now using. So the word 'house' that we now understand is the condensation and the accumulation of long Japanese lives from the Jomon and Yayoi periods, or even from far before than these periods. In short, the Japanese language is the accumulation point or the limit value (of a convergent series) of the history of Japanese lives.
The scientific language that I will discuss later neglects meaning and is only interested in 'existence.' Thereby the world it describes absolutely lacks human 'meaning.' In fact, recent geological and astronomical reports clearly show this. Since the Big Bang 150 billion years ago matter has accumulated into stars, the stars have exploded as supernovas, and have dispersed into small particles. During such gathering and dispersion of small particles, a planet is made. And on one such planet there happened to appear hereditary material called DNA, the evolutionary changes of which over a very long history gave birth to us, human beings. In this grandiose process, there is not even a fragment of human meaning. It is a process absolutely indifferent to us, human beings. It is a world that never needs us, and it is a world we, human beings, never need. This world is for us meaningless and absurd. But we have lived in this meaningless world. Of course it was never our desire to be given birth to, just meaninglessly we were made to appear here. (As Heidegger said, we can say that we 'were thrown into' this world.) But living creates meanings. When we eat, the meanings 'a meal' or 'delicious' are inevitably made, and when we live, the meaning 'a house' is made. As we were thrown into the world in this way, deprived of meaning, we could not help producing human meanings. To live is to create meaning. Pronounciation, and later letters and language, to fix and save these meaning were thus produced. When we use a word now, the meanings it has accumulated and condensed are projected to the world. By this projection we produce a dog or a house, and we live in the house thus produced, and we keep in the house the dog thus produced. In this way we live in the world produced by the meanings which have been created by our ancestors.
But what the language produces is not restricted to such banal and usual things and matters. Everyone knows that beautiful scenery or a beautiful person that excel the norm of our usual everyday life are produced by poetic language. In the same way, something supernatural or an ability that exceeds our imagination can also be produced. Such would be produced by religious meaning, and those who understand this meaning are called devotees. And even those who don't understand it, such as myself, can easily acknowledge that they were produced by linguistic meaning.

3. Scientific Language
If we had only been interested in the above meanings that are created in our everyday life, modern natural science would not have come into existence. Natural science began by neglecting the meanings of our everyday life, and it had to.
Had we been interested in its taste or colours upon seeing an apple fall, or had we been interested in its feather's pattern or the bird from which the plume was plucked upon seeing an arrow fly, we never would have arrived at the laws of motion. For science, meanings in everyday life are trifle and should be neglected.
Then in what is science interested? I answer that it is existence. Whether something exists or not, how it moves -- this is what science is interested in. The subject of science is material, we usually say. But if asked, 'What is material?' we are at a loss as to how to reply. Of course, once science is constructed, 'The sum of scientific knowledge' would be the answer to the question. But before that construction, 'material' would be 'something that exists,' would it not?
In any situation, what science is interested in is existence. So the errors science committed are also caused by its impatient pursuit of existence. Frogiston that should have existed in thermal phenomena and ether that should have existed for the propagation of electro-magnetic waves are well-known examples. Even today, in weather forcasting, we talk of the 'movement of cyclones or anti-cyclones' or the 'direction of typhoons.' But cyclones, anti-cyclones or typhoon don't exist. What exists is only such and such situation of air pressure. We are so scientific and so easily led to talk about existence.
Of course there are innumerable cases that scientific existence pursuit succeeded in. To illustrate I will quote two of them. The pursuit of existence of the source of the disease 'AIDS' arrived at a kind of retro-virus. The pursuit of the existence of heritage material that causes the heritage law of Mendel arrived at the double spiral structure of DNA.
Science only talks about the existence of such things and utterly neglects the meaning this existence has. This is the fundamental contrast between scientific and everyday languages: one is the language of existence, the other is the language of meaning.
Many people have an antipathy to science or its way of speaking. It is too mechanical and inhuman, it even gives us the impression of being cold-blooded. The reason is that scientific language only talks of existence, deprived of meaning, so that it is intentionally a language about the 'dead.' Of course scientific language is also a language and has some meaning. Electrons or cromosomes have definitions which are much more rigorous than these of our usual everyday language. But this is not the meaning that I mean. The meaning that I mean here is the meaning in our lives, that which concerned with human beings. Scientific language intentionally lacks this meaning.

4. 'Science and Religion,' a Perspective
When we think about Science and Religion, we have to underline the above mentioned difference: one belongs in the domain of meaning, the other in the domain of existence deprived of such meaning.
For example, when we judge by the concept of 'truth,' we must do it within each language, because the two are fundamentally different languages. Truth too has been formulated within each language. Therefore, if we judge some religious proposition, we must do it within the parameters of religious language. If we don't and refute it decisively within scientific language, it is, I must say, a very prejudiced judgement.
Truth in scientific language was constructed by its consistency with scientific theory, the evidence of experiments and its conformity with many people's testimony, and is now universally taught in school education. On the other hand 'truth' in religious language was constructed differently. For example, the meaning of the religious proposition, 'That mountain has a soul,' should be understood independently of science. 'The montain gets angry' might be taken to mean 'The trees on the mountain shake with the wind' as expressed with scientific language. Here if we say that mountain cannot get angry and that because of its impossiblility it is false, it would be we that would be mistaken. There is some meaning when someone takes 'A mountain that makes noise in the wind' to be 'A mountain that gets angry.' If some other person understands this meaning and agrees with it, he cannot be mistaken. For this person, this proposition is, without any doubt and without any further explanation, true. Of course we do not have to agree with this person. But we will be able to understand in what context the person agrees with the proposition.
If we can understand that, we will have a more open perspective to the problem of 'Science and Religion.'




















Knowledge and Opinion
By Shozo Ohmori
Translated by Takenori Noumi
and Ben Peacock


Usually the last chapter is dedicated to summary or conclusion, but in this program, 'Science And Religion,' there is no summary and no conclusion. As we told you in the 'Foreword,' we didn't classify or order the theses. The opinions of each author are combined at random. Because of the character of the subject, 'Science and Religion,' we couldn't help doing it that way. If we were dealing with some concrete knowledge, or knowledge that had already gained authority, we could change the order of the theses we received, add commentary to them, or at the end of them describe a kind of conclusion or make a so called summary. But 'Science and Religion' is not any firm knowledge: the usual Western brand of knowledge that can be transplanted into Japanese by merely changing the horizontal writing into vertical. It is not knowledge but a problem - a very important problem - and as it is a problem, against it there are only the opinions of each individual. You may be left drenched and confused after the torrential rain of opinions. But originally university lectures should be thus. Lectures of this kind are authentic. 'Even if you are exposed to a heavy shower of opinion that you have never before heard, you can hold in reserve the presence of mind to think about something that remains undiscussed. This placidity of mind is one of the aims of education. Only with this placidity of mind can we survey the wide range the problem covers and attendant variety of opinions. For the students who already have fixed opinions, these lectures will be a good chance to change their combination of opinions by confronting them with opinions different from their own. A change of combinations sometimes brings about a completely new type of opinion, just as genes do. You may come across an opinion that always finds you in sympathy and agreement. Even in this case you may find a new conception or an unexpected word by which you would be able to reinforce, decorate or remodel your opinion. Or on the other hand, each word of a lecturer may bring about your antipathy, disagreement and irritation, and may make you angry. And in this case too, if you try placidly to understand why it makes you angry or causes your antipathy, you may be able to look at your own opinion more humorously. This should of course be a happy thing for you. You may have a variety of reactions as you hear a variety of opinions. Anyway, we three editors hope that this program will be a good chance for you to form or reform your opinion, to reinforce or modify it.
The Broadcast University is supposed to be a Culture Faculty. When the Culture Department and Culture Courses were created after World War Two in (Japanese) Universities, the concept of 'Culture' was ambiguous. Even half a century after that, we, Japanese, could not pinpoint the meaning of Culture. We had no other way to define Culture during this period of cultural vacuum than that Culture is a preparation or appendix for some specialty, or some temporary or patched-up way of thinking. This concept of culture affected the curriculum and budget of universities, and even affected their personnel management. But this bureaucratic and businesslike attitude must now be thrown away. Instead, we should introduce a new concept: to regard Culture as opinion, and to regard specialty as knowledge. That is, pursuing special knowledge, being the research of specialty, we must regard the meaning of culture as the formulation or forging of opinions. Of course in order to formulate or to forge an opinion, we need a certain amount of knowledge concerning the corresponding subject. This knowledge must be supplied and learned by the stock of special knowledge. Conversely, special knowledge is stocked only because it is necessary to formulate opinions. Then the relation of Culture and Specialty will be reversed. Culture is not preparation for Specialty but Specialty is preparation for Culture. Only by this reversing, I think, will creating Culture courses in universities or in the Broadcast University be justified.
It will bring about great change to the education programs in universities. If the education in universities aims at bringing up researchers of some special subject, then understanding and memorizing authorized knowledge and training for the pursuit of new knowledge will be its principal purpose. But if it aims at Culture, as is the case at Broadcast University, it can never stop there. To acquire knowledge of a special subject is but an intermediate or a preparatory step. After that, the training of formulating opinions must be added. That is, firstly to hear as many opinions as possible and to understand, to criticize and to compare them, and secondly to formulate one's opinion on as many subjects as possible and to articulate them. Culture does not mean to have much knowledge but to have articulate opinions. Such training was called 'Rhetoric' in Medieval Europe and was thought to be the subject that created total humanity. In fact, even today total humanitarian culture means to have balanced opinions on nature, on history, on humanity, on science, on religion, on tax systems, on brain death, and on everything in life, does it not? These opinions should not only be ambiguous feelings. They should be expressed with the words that come from one's own heart, can be discussed with other people and, if possible, can persuade others. In short, opinions are thoughts, and language is the core of the thoughts. (It is not without cause that culture courses in Japanese universities are constructed based mainly on foreign languages.)
The lecture 'Science and Religion' presented here is edited aiming at the culture course I have just mentioned. I expect that you will receive this lecture with an attitude totally different from the one with which you listen to the lecture aiming at knowledge. Please do not 'receive' the lecture but 'react' to it. This lecture has no conclusion. But if it were to have any ending, it would be your own opinion that will be formulated as a reaction to this lecture. Please add your opinion as the last chapter of this lecture. By that last chapter this lecture will be, for the moment, completed.