ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with neither the way in which Jacques Lacan’s stance towards science developed of his engagement with psychoanalysis, nor with how his ideas have been received within the various psychoanalytic schools. ‘‘Science and truth’’ builds on the results of an inquiry concerning the status of the subject in psychoanalysis which Lacan had been conducting for a number of years, and it paves the way for epistemological reflections on the origin of psychoanalytic knowledge and the nature of the psychoanalytic act. Lacan argued that the function of truth as cause within magic, religion, modern science and psychoanalysis always follows one of the four causes within Aristotle’s theory of causality. The function of truth as an efficient cause in magic indicates that the truth of a magical phenomenon, whether a shamanistic healing practice or the cursing of natural forces, is always attributed to power, energy or natural abilities.
