Elastic horizon

In The Religious Sense , Luigi Giussani quotes from the Italian mathematician Francesco Severi, an associate of Einstein: He “proclaimed that the more he immersed himself in scientific research, the more evident it became to him that all that he discovered, as he proceeded step by step, was a function of an absolute ‘which set itself in opposition like an elastic barrier to its being overcome by cognitive means.’ The more his investigation advanced, the more the particular horizons which he approached would point beyond to yet another, thus convincing him to perceive his victory as temporary, as merely something which would then urge him on toward another x, a ‘something’ beyond the conditions in which he operated. Whenever the research would reach a certain end point, then the object of this operation, the ‘x,’ would move further away again” (50).

Giussani claims that “the most important characteristic of a scientist is a profound and open commitment to research, in front of any phenomenon or circumstance whatsoever.” And this commitment must include an acknowledgement of “the disproportionate gap between the ultimate horizon and the human capacity.” Without this gap, “one eliminates the category of possibility, the supreme dimension of reason. This is so because only an incommensurable object can represent an unlimited invitation to the essential openness of a human being.”The way of science is the way of life, which is “hunger, thirst, and passion for an ultimate object” (50-1).

Closure is the end of reason and of human searching, hence the end of humanity. “Only the hypothesis of God . . . corresponds to the human person’s original structure” (57), his character as searcher.