Krum as a bagel has a good post on one of R. Soloveitchik’s most important essays, “Catharsis” (Tradition, Spring 1978). Krum’s particular interest is the implication it has for apparent discrepancies between Torah and science. The Rav writes:
Judaism insisted upon the redeeming of the logos and maintained that there is an unredeemed cognitive gesture, just as there is an unredeemed carnal drive… I do not refer to mythical thinking… but to the most modern system of scientific inquiry. The latter may be considered unredeemed if the scientist does not subject his cognitive act to an extraneous catharsis… I do not mean to suggest that the scientist should conduct his inquiry without thoroughness or inconclusively. On the contrary every scholar is guided intuitively by an ethical norm, which tells him to search the truth assiduously and not to rest until he has it within his reach. Cognitive withdrawal is related, not to the scientific inquiry as a logical operation, but rather to the axiological experience of scientific work. Knowing is not an impersonal performance which can be computerized, emptied of its rich, colorful, experiential content. It is, instead, an integral part of the knower as a living person… Next to the religious experience, knowledge is perhaps the most vibrant and resonant personal experience. It sweeps the whole of the personality, sometimes like a gentle wave infusing the knower with a sense of tranquillity and serenity; at other times like a mighty onrushing tide, arousing the soul to its depth and raising it to a pitch of ecstasy.
This touches on an important recurring theme in R. Soloveitchik’s writings, in particular as it relates to Torah study: the experience of knowledge. In the Rav’s understanding, our encounter with the world has two elements, the quantitative and the qualitative. Much of the Rav’s writing deals with the relationship between these two approaches to knowledge. R. Zeigler elaborates on this point in his notes on “Catharsis“:
In the scientific realm, cognitive catharsis implies recognizing the ultimate mystery of being… [O]nce a certain phenomenon has been assigned a scientific explanation, this does not imply that there is nothing more to be said about it. According to a theory of science subscribed to by the Rav, modern science merely creates an abstract mathematical world which parallels the functioning of nature. This quantitative correlate is useful as far as technology is concerned, but it operates on a wholly different plane than the qualitative world experienced by us. We experience not a world of abstract quantities, but rather one of living qualities, of impressions and sensations. An equation describing the flight of a bird or the wavelength of a red flower cannot elucidate the great mystery of qualitative being, in which we live our lives and to which we react with awe and wonder.