Provability
Shmuel Klatzkin
Provability — the probing mind yearns for it. Yet although the reasoning process proceeds step by step to its conclusion, that process is both preceded and succeeded by things unprovable.
This is a lesson taught Moshe in the Torah. Looking for certainty, Moshe keeps asking G‑d to provide for him whatever he will need to feel secure and safe in his mission. G‑d’s reply is to say “the sign that I have sent you is that when you have freed the people from Egypt, you shall worship G‑d at this mountain.”
What kind of a proof is that? It will only come into effect after an entire course of action has been taken, and until then, something other than proof will have to do.
The Rabbis see this idea crystallized in the response of the Jewish people as a whole to the voice of G‑d at Mt Sinai: “All that G‑d has said –naaseh venishma —we will do and we will understand.” First one must do; only then can there be understanding.
Experimental science has shown the truth of this outlook in a very basic way. One must set the questions before nature, obtain data, and only then come to a provable conclusion. Many things supposed as true based only on valid abstractions turn out to be of extremely limited application in the real world.
Although it is provable that “If all cows are green, and Bossy is a cow, then Bossy is green,” that syllogism can never tell us whether the world in which we live contains green cows.
Judaism is not so different in this respect from experimental science. To understand how living in harmony with G‑d changes us and through us, the world, we must actually conduct the experiment. Our disconnected speculations are for the most part irrelevant, and yield information useless to the understanding we seek.
This experiment differs however from those neat lab demonstrations we experienced in middle school. Those demonstrations distilled an understanding passed down from Descartes: that there is a complete and utter separation between the experimenter and the experiment. We stand outside and observe what happens to objects we manipulate. Those objects are affected; we, as observers, are not.
Based on that kind of model of science, it’s hard to understand what religion is about at all. What exactly are we observing? What are we even talking about? When we look back and take a detached view of even our language in talking about G‑d, where are those measurable things we can put under a microscope, or those numbers that can be crunched?
But if it was science on the Cartesian model that found religion bewildering, then it is science on a different model that seems to find it understandable. For in a number of ways, modern rational thought has denied an absolute distinction between the observer and the observed.
The observation of physicist Nathan Rosen quoted in “A Secular Mystic” is typical. The field of inquiry of a modern cosmologist is the cosmos as a whole. But the cosmos as a whole is not subject to reproduction; and as we are contained within that cosmos, we are a part of what is observed. We share its identity.
This understanding opens up the way to understand the nature of the experiment in which the Torah bids us to engage. We ourselves are the object as well as the subject of the experiment of Judaism. We are the only ones who can observe ourselves sufficiently; yet the nature of our observations change as we change.
A classical case: the Rabbis claim that eating non-kosher food produces a coarseness of consciousness. How can that be evaluated? Certainly not from without; in the pithy Yiddish proverb, the mark of a coarse person is that he does not recognize his own coarseness. One can only test this by taking on the Torah’s program of kosher eating and experiencing the result. Just like Moshe, we must go ahead and do the program, and only then will we have the results.
But there is still a very reasonable objection to such a proposal. How can one know beforehand that one is not getting involved with something that will cause further harm? Accepting that we are like a computer, evaluating the data impartially—if we admit corrupted code into our program, won’t all the results be tainted? How can we know whether or not the program in which we engage is not the equivalent of a corrupted program? How do we know that we are not setting down the path of delusion and harm, headed towards a place like Jonestown, Waco, or the Spann Ranch?
Maybe this is a clue to what went on after G‑d proposed His test to Moshe. Moshe did not stop asking questions when G‑d told him that the proof would be found in the future. For faced with the unavoidability of existential commitment, Moshe’s question was—what is Your name? I as well as my people must be able to address you directly, know enough about You to speak to You and of You.
G‑d’s reply was “I shall be what I shall be… That is My name.”
And this is the starting point before provability. We cannot prove that the universe is, that there is such a thing as existence, or even that a+b=b+a. But we exist without proving; we assume our own identity without it being proved; and in the being of what is, we have enough to enter into the relation with G‑d.
And that is the beginning. As we change, the data will accumulate, and their conclusions will push us on yet further beyond what we have yet established.
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