Soren Kierkegaard

lives of peoples and individuals. People had stopped merely interpreting the
world. They had begun to change it.
Preeminent in contributing to these changes were the natural sciences,
which according to Kierkegaard made the frightful error of failing to limit
themselves to “plants and animals and stars” but wanted as well to intrude
“upon the domain of the spirit.” He noted bitterly: “Most of what flour-
ishes luxuriantly nowadays under the name of science (especially the natu-
ral sciences) is not science at all, but curiosity.In the end all corruption will
come from the natural sciences. Many people admiringly... believe that if
investigations are made with a microscope, this is scientific seriousness.
Foolish superstition about the microscope. No, with the help of micro-
scopic observation, curiosity merely becomes even more comical. When
a man makes the statement, both simple and profound, that ‘I cannot see
with my naked eye how consciousness comes into being,’ this is perfectly
proper. But when a man has a microscope in front of his eye and then
looks and looks and looks—and yet cannot see it, this is comical. And what
makes it especially ridiculous is that it is supposed to be serious.” The
journal entry continues: “If God walked about with a cane in His hand,
things would be especially rough for these serious observers who employ
the microscope. God would take his cane and knock all the hypocrisy out
of them and out of those who do research in the natural sciences. The
hypocrisy is this, that the natural sciences are said to lead to God. Yes,
indeed, they do lead to God, in asuperiormanner, but this is simply imperti-
nence. One can easily prove to oneself that the researcher in the natural
sciences is hypocritical in this way. For if one were to say to him that a
conscience and Luther’sSmall Catechismis all anyone needs, the scientific
researcher would turn up his nose. In his superior manner he wants to
transform God into a coy beauty, a Devil of an artist who cannot be under-
stood by everyone. Stop! The divine and simple truth is that no one, abso-
lutely no one, can understand Him, that the wisest person must cling hum-
bly tothe same thingto which the simplest person clings.”
What Kierkegaard is defending here is the principle of equality, but of
course the problem is that God does not walk around like some sort of
dramatic personage, carrying a “cane in His hand” in order to enforce the
justice He requires. On the contrary, God is a hidden God, and the only
thing visible is the frightful fact that the development of science seems to
have its own intrinsic law, which in principle cannot acknowledge other
boundaries than those it cannot itself transgress. It was this relentless and
inexorable progress of transgression that Kierkegaard criticized, but in vain.
It is not surprising that as the years passed, his capacity for objectivity steadily
faded, ending in the harsh testiness of an old man.