"When modern physics exerts itself to establish the world's formula, what occurs thereby is this: the being of entities has resolved itself into the method of the totally calculable"
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Modern physics, in Heidegger's telling, doesn’t just discover the world; it recruits it. The line has the cold snap of a diagnosis: once physics “establish[es] the world’s formula,” reality is no longer met as presence, mystery, or even stubborn fact. It shows up as something already pre-sorted for computation. “The being of entities” resolving into “the method of the totally calculable” is Heidegger’s way of saying that ontology has been quietly outsourced to technique. What things are becomes indistinguishable from how we can measure, predict, and manipulate them.
The intent isn’t anti-science in the naive sense. It’s a warning about a metaphysical regime: modern science doesn’t merely use mathematics; it pre-interprets the real as that which must be mathematizable. The subtext is that calculation isn’t a neutral tool but a lens with teeth. Once the world appears primarily as a set of variables, everything from rivers to human attention is pressured into the status of “resource,” available for optimization. That pressure can feel like progress while still narrowing what counts as truth.
Context matters: Heidegger is writing in the shadow of industrialized war, mass bureaucracy, and the rise of cybernetics-like thinking. His target is what he later calls enframing (Gestell): a total orientation in which method devours meaning. The phrase “exerts itself” hints at strain and ambition, as if physics is compelled toward a final, total account. Heidegger’s cynicism is quieter than a satirist’s, but sharper: the triumph of explanation risks becoming a conquest that leaves the world perfectly knowable and strangely gone.
The intent isn’t anti-science in the naive sense. It’s a warning about a metaphysical regime: modern science doesn’t merely use mathematics; it pre-interprets the real as that which must be mathematizable. The subtext is that calculation isn’t a neutral tool but a lens with teeth. Once the world appears primarily as a set of variables, everything from rivers to human attention is pressured into the status of “resource,” available for optimization. That pressure can feel like progress while still narrowing what counts as truth.
Context matters: Heidegger is writing in the shadow of industrialized war, mass bureaucracy, and the rise of cybernetics-like thinking. His target is what he later calls enframing (Gestell): a total orientation in which method devours meaning. The phrase “exerts itself” hints at strain and ambition, as if physics is compelled toward a final, total account. Heidegger’s cynicism is quieter than a satirist’s, but sharper: the triumph of explanation risks becoming a conquest that leaves the world perfectly knowable and strangely gone.
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