States of Denial

This seems to be a call against stringent skepticism.

Science can no more deny that there is something to "know" and that knowledge stands for a worth, than can religion deny that there is something to worship.

from Robert Duncan, As Testimony (San Francisco: White Rabbit Press, 1964)

But it seems to invoke for this reader Francis Bacon's categorization of Idols (and hints at a serpentine return of skepticism were it not for the divine idols).

According to Aphorism XXIII of the First Book, Bacon makes a distinction between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine mind: whereas the former are for him nothing more than “certain empty dogmas”, the latter show “the true signatures and marks set upon the works of creation as they are found in nature” (Bacon IV [1901], 51).

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/#NatTheIdoSysSci

Could it be that two senses of "deny" cover different domains? Deny: contradict. Deny: reject, rebuff. The one action belonging to science and the other to religion, respectively.

And so for day 1463
15.12.2010