Sartre's Nausea & Philosophy of Science | Course Epigraph

My Philosophy of Science Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB4w-p0WTsoJSilTJWjG_l3yqo-ErGN7w

My Intro to Political Philosophy on COURSERA: https://www.coursera.org/learn/intro-to-political-philosophy

Quote from Sartre's Nausea:
"I look at grey shimmering of the town at my feet. How far away from the town's people I feel, up on this hill. It seems to me that I belong to another species.
They come out of their offices after the day’s work, they look at the houses and the squares with a satisfied expression, they think that it is their town. A ‘good solid town’. They aren’t afraid, they feel at home. They have never seen anything but the tamed water which runs out of the taps, the light which pours from the bulbs when they turn the switch.
They are given proof, a hundred times a day, that everything is done mechanically, that the world obeys fixed, unchangeable laws. Bodies released in a vacuum all fall at the same speed, the municipal park is closed every day at four p.m., lead melts at 335°c., the last tram leaves the Town Hall at 11.05.
The idiots. They make laws, they write Populist novels, they get married, they commit the supreme folly of having children.
And meanwhile, vast, vague Nature has slipped into their town, it has infiltrated everywhere…
But I see it – that Nature. I know that its submissiveness is laziness, I know that Nature has no laws. It has nothing but habits and it may change those tomorrow.
What if something were to happen? That may happen at any time, straight away perhaps: the omens are there.
For example, the father of a family may go for a walk, and he will see a red rag coming towards him across the street, as if the wind were blowing it. And when the rag gets close to him, he will see that it is a quarter of rotten meat, covered with dust, crawling and hopping along, a piece of tortured flesh rolling in the gutters and spasmodically shooting out jets of blood.
Or else a mother may look at her child’s cheek and ask him: ‘What’s that – a pimple?’ And she will see the flesh puff up slightly, crack and split open, and at the bottom of the split a third eye, a laughing eye, will appear.
Or else they will feel something gently brushing against their bodies... And they will realize that their clothes have become living things.
And somebody else will feel something scratching inside his mouth. And he will go to a mirror, open his mouth: and his tongue will have become a huge living centipede, rubbing its legs together and scraping his palate. He will try to spit it out, but the centipede will be part of himself and he will have to tear it out with his bare hands…
Then I shall burst out laughing, even if my own body is covered with filthy, suspicious-looking scabs blossoming into fleshy flowers.
I shall lean against a wall and as they go by I shall shout to them: ‘What have you done with your science? What have you done with your humanism?’ I shan’t be afraid – or at least no more than I am now.
All those eyes which will slowly devour a face – no doubt they will be superfluous, but no more superfluous than the first two..."
Sartre's Nausea (1938)

#sartre #existentialism #philosophyofscience