Science, Religion, and Philosophy in Tanabe and Nishida

Abstract

Tanabe's concept of “Philosophy of Science” after Metanoetics is unique and original : it is an unflinching inquiry into the Koan, i.e. insoluble paradoxes and antinomies of reason where science meets religion. It is radically different from logical positivists' idea of “scientific philosophy” which repudiates religion as irrelevant to philosophy. Metanoetics means both our death/resurrection through repentance (metanoia) by Amida's grace (Other Power), and the transcendence of our theoretical reason (noesis) through paradoxes met in the historical practice.
To retrieve the importance of the philosophy of science in Tanabe's sense, the present writer first shows that Tanabe's criticism of Nishida's logic of place will be most clearly understood when we compare it with the historical development of mathematical philosophy since George Cantor ; mathematical paradoxes discovered by Russell, and the breakdown of mathematical Platonism followed by Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
Secondly, the present writer discusses Prof. Sueki's analysis of Nishida's theory of place (basho) on the basis of Cantor's infinite set theory. Tanabe's criticism proves to be valid in so far as it points out the ploblematics of holistic approach of Nishida's logic of place. If we interpret, as Sueki and Tanabe did, the concept of Absolute Nothingness as the Infinite Self-Predicative Whole, then the set-theoretical consideration shows that we cannot consistently conceive the set of non-self-predicative sets as the self-determination of the whole in the place of Absolute Nothingness.
Thirdly, the present writer discusses Tanabe's paper “the historicity of the spatio-temporal world”. The concept of a “differentiable but non-integrable” system, originally discovered by contemporary physics, is generalized by Tanabe to the philosophical concept of the dynamic historical world which is unpredictable even by omniscient beings.
In Nishida's logic of place human subjectivity is grounded on the place of Absolute Nothingness as its contradictory self-identity in the Eternal Now. This logic must be complemented by the dynamic creative principle of the historical world. In this respect the examination of Tanabe's philosophy is necessary, because Tanabe reformulates Nishida's concept of Nothingness from our limited existence essentially related to the historical practice.