The thread "Second Enlightenment" (SE) is destined to discuss the rationality of SE as well as to inquire into the sources of the irrational manipulation of masses and to look for remediation.

Its basic structure is:

X1. Scientific Revolution X2. Ontology X3. Ideology X4. Social awareness X5. Establishment

with X=F/S respectively for the first/second enlightenment. We start by the first enlightenment as guidance to the formulation of the second and warning of errors to be avoided.

The present section deals with the steps F1, F2 of the first enlightenment. ===== F1, the First Scientific Revolution is mainly due to:

1 - Galileo: Relativity and axiomatic method restricting science to deductive theories inductively verifiable by facts.
2 - Descartes: Subjective foundation of cognition and its fuzziness
(permanent doubt); algebraizing of geometry which opened the way to calculus and to Newton's Model.
3 - Newton: Calculus and Gravity Model.

F1 was based upon the following axioms:

F1A1. Mechanics is covariant among inertial referentials by Galilean Transformation.

F1A2. Space and time are absolute and affine which leads to translative Galilean Transformation and its additivity of speeds.

F1A3. Space has the discrete fabric of "billiard balls".

F1A4. Action and causality is local, reduced to neighboring "balls".

We shall see below that F2-ontology took over and completed those axioms, which unfortunately led to paradoxes. However, F1 already leads by itself to two famous "Newton's paradoxes":

NP1. Gravity acts at large distances which contradicts the fabric of "billiard balls" and the principle of local action.

NP2. SPACE (distance) determines the Gravity Force, which does not act in any way on SPACE, thus contradicting the principle of action/reaction

The paradoxes falsified the axioms of absolute time-space and of the naive, discrete "billiard ball" locality. Yet, they were not dropped, but maintained as dogma, which paved the way to Aether and to ill-founding of logic and mathematics.

Warning for S1-the second scientific revolution: check if its axioms don't lead to falsifying contradictions and paradoxes.

=====

F2. Ontology of the first enlightenment was formulated by Kant. Instead of traditional empty speculations he chose the sincere, bona fide attitude of deriving Ontology from the bedrock premise of empirically verifiable science. However, no matter how rigorous the inference, the conclusion is only as good as the premise: from paradoxical science Kant rigorously derived a paradoxical ontology. While his ontology lost for us all avail, his method and attitude are excellent example and guidance for those who, in our days, seek to understand the Second Enlightenment. Example of sincerity, rigor and respect for Science. Guidance resumed in "Sapere Aude", "Dare to Reason!".

Brief recall of Kant's axioms:

F2A1: necessary and universal science exists. (Cartesian fuzziness has been skipped due to the general overwhelming enthusiasm about Newton's model).

F2A2: Science is created by inductive inference.

F2A3: Only a priori inference is necessary and universal.

F2A4: Induction a priori requires subjective representations a priori (categories) .

F2A5: Space and time are subjective categories.

Theorem F2T1, concluded from Axioms: Induction a priori is possible, necessary and universal.

COMMENTS

F2A1: The First Scientific Revolution had culminated in Newton's Model, whose rules and concepts were believed exact, necessary and universal. This unjustified belief underlay the F2A1, crucial for Kant's system.

F2A2: We nearly agree with it: for us the inductive inference "verifies" rather than "creates" science.

F2A3, F2A4, F2T1: We accept now only induction a posteriori.

F2A5: Kant's main objective and failure was to create the "Transcendental Logic" with induction a priori in its center. For this purpose F2A5 was a necessary addition to F2A1.

Kant's "Transcendental Logic" appears to us as a miscarried "prototype" of Propositional Calculus. He failed due to missing mathematical tools, mainly the Boole Algebra and to a basic confusion: He considered only statements, or, as we would say "operands", but neglected the operators. His 'Logic" was in fact just a classification of statements:

-Statements analytical a priori which we would call deductive,

-Statements synthetical a posteriori which we would call inductive,

-Statements synthetical a priori supposed to support the induction a priori, unacceptable for us.

This "logic" did not support in any way the inference, which is the very object and sense of logic.

Warning for S2-the ontology of the second enlightenment: Ontology properly derived from science has itself to be scientific, i. e. complete, axiomatic and falsifiable. It should not arbitrarily reject science's axioms, like Kant rejected the cartesian fuzziness. But it should not take them uncritically for granted as Kant did with the absolute and billiard ball structured SPACE. And, most important, it should ban noumenal phantasms such as Kant's categories. And last but not least, the proper ontology should found a scientific logic - empirically applicable and falsifiable.