The Act of Volition as an Ultimate Principle of Classical Rationality

The author, considering an ideal of classical rationality, reveals three its fundamental premises: 1) everything, occurring in the world, is carried out according to rigid laws strictly and precisely described by mathematical language; 2) these laws have universal character and operate in the same manner without an exception everywhere in the Universe; 3) an universality of these laws has not only spatial but also time character as these laws always operated, operate and will operate. The first of these premises was introduced by R. Descartes, which into the Discourse On Method asserts that “a thing is clearly and distinctly perceived that it is of itself true.” The second premise is rooted in I. Newton’s statement that the laws of mechanical interaction act absolutely in the same manner in all the pars of the Universe. The third premise is introduced by C. Lyell, arguing an invariance and eternity of laws of “natural history.” Thus, the ideal of scientific rationality is based on a number of volitional statements that express strong belief in a certain model of the world order. Though founders of this scientific tradition realized the conditional character of these statements, their followers not always take into consideration their presumable nature and accept the paradigmatic statements as the “reality itself.”

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