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| “You bet, I cut down that Cherry Tree, dad. And I’d do it again! There’s no Cherry Picking allowed around here.” Adapted from “Parson Weems’ Fable” by Grant Wood, 1939. Happy 294th birthday, George Washington! |
This universe we live in works exquisitely well.
It has been prepared for us to truly profound lengths, depths and breadth, encompassing Everything that we could possibly need. The Cosmos has come into a dynamic balance between change and consistency. Life has prepared Earth’s environment for our arrival for at least four billion years. Every comfort has been considered, every practical contingency accounted for, and all the tools and methods we could possibly need have been laid out before us within easy reach.
Beautiful. What a Comfortable Universe we have, indeed!
Then why, at this point in the conversation, do I just want to jump up off my cozy, comfortable sofa and SCREAM!?!
What I would scream is something along the lines of
“But that doesn’t mean that Science alone can tell us how this happened! Scientists: you have provided us with staggering improvements in human quality of life. But you’ve always been drawn to the low-hanging fruit. You’ve been CHERRY PICKING your areas of focus, dear people, and neglecting vast landscapes of valuable territory!”
To which I would add, after a pause and a deep breath, settling back down on the sofa: “Okay. … Tell me, please. What law declares that there must be a law to govern everything we experience? What law says that the few laws that Science has successfully picked from the Cherry Tree are in any way fundamental and, more importantly, immutable? Can you show me where you’ve found such BEDROCK?”
The Song of Everything, as I’m telling it here in this series of posts, takes a very firm stand that no such Bedrock exists.
Yes, that is a Paradox – the biggest one, in fact. It’s what we call the Big-P Paradox. We stand FIRMLY on the proposition that there is no possible proposition on which one can build a firm stance …
… well … except maybe this one: Sit back on your couch, relax, and accept (yes … on FAITH!) that Paradox, inconsistency, and intrinsic unknowability are the foundation stones on which all that we understand and experience (what we refer to as reality) is built.
What seems like super solid Bedrock to us sitting on our comfy couch, is, deep down at the fundamental level, nothing but quicksand—the more you struggle (to understand it) the faster you sink in and are swallowed in the mire. No, unless you enjoy the struggle for its own sake, you’re much better off just sitting back and relaxing. As we said way back in Songs 4 and 5, we don’t need to sweat the small stuff or try to use reason or science to reconcile the big stuff.
We (the rhetorical ‘we’ that really means your narrator, Dr. Pete) claim that this act of faith is the purest, most minimal one, because it requires no other belief, no supernatural or undiscovered forces or powers, and certainly no institutions and their power-mongering adherents (including the eminently laudable edifice we call Science).
This I proclaim: Science is but one of three ways of explaining the World. Its rigorous discipline is rooted entirely in our collective experience—our common Sense. Our collective experience is crystalized by our mental models—our Spirit. These three balanced aspects of our Song of Everything are how we build the fullest, most robust picture of Everything.
I began this series by posting this idea in a simple diagram.
In this post, I’m tempted to claim that it may be wrong. What we experience should be at the core, with Spirit being merely a shell surrounding it, and then the collective agreed-upon ‘Knowledge’ that we give the name Science being merely a thin shell surrounding that.
But that’s because I’m indulging in a bit of bias in this Song 24—my personal perspective—the collected and collated ordering of all the observing and reading and learning that I’ve crammed into my brain over the past 77 years.
But it’s time to get off my sofa/soap-box, take a step back, and revisit the wider view.
Not everybody thinks like me. There are those who accept, on faith (I claim), that Consciousness (Spirit—or our mental experience) cannot be reduced to anything physical. They propose that there is an independent realm of mind, and THAT is fundamental and foundational. Big-P Paradox requires me to accept that this position cannot be dismissed. The venerable old ‘Mind-Body Problem’ is one of the true fundamental Paradoxes. (The Wikipedia page in the link provides a fine example of how philosophers parse and nuance problems. The Paradox requires just one simple sentence: One’s mind actualizes the substance of which it appears to be constructed.) Therefore, this camp claims, Spirit is at the heart of all things, not Sense. Our consciousness directs our attention only to the elements of the physical world that need our attention, and only as needed. It taps into a universal collective consciousness from which Science then springs.
Okay, fine. They’re entitled to tell their story.
Then there are those who have been the pioneers of our Western Culture in this age of technological and scientific discovery, who accept, on faith (I claim), that Reductionism (Science—the objective, ideally ‘mind-independent’ construction of a model of reality from the smallest elements and the most basic governing precepts) is the most trustworthy way to perceive the world. I think they would reconstruct the second figure above by putting Science at the center and Spirit at the perimeter.
Science, in its purest form, requires inexhaustible doubt about Everything, most particularly about its own established theories and models of how the world works. I hear scientists profess this in one breath and then cling to their belief that there is some principle that declares that Everything can and will eventually (or should ideally) yield to the penetrating scrutiny of careful, rigorous inquiry.
Okay, fine. They are entitled to tell their story.
And so, my own bull-headed process, always seeking the biggest imaginable Big Picture, always seeking hidden assumptions and biases, always self-correcting, and rooted in a FOUNDATIONAL belief that there is ALWAYS a contradictory position to consider, forces me to return to the balance of that original Big-T Trilogy. All three ways of talking about our world should stand on equal footing.
Couldn’t this be considered a ‘meta-philosophy?’ We cannot ever decide which realm sits at the center of the circle in the second diagram above. It’s not even conceivable that we could extract ‘pure objective truth’ from any one realm alone or any ordering of the three, but as the story is succinctly told by the title of the long-running PBS series, those of us who enjoy the struggle for its own sake can always strive to come ‘Closer to Truth.’
The title of this post is a knee-jerk response to a recent article published online and to a podcast series that I've been working my way through. In my weaker moments, the science bias of the last century or two sometimes feels like an oppressive, opposition-squelching monopoly; and there are maverick scientists and science popularizers who have lately emerged to amplify those kinds of ‘conspiracy’ sentiments to gain notoriety. That’s even worse!
Should I name names? No. If it was at all possible to quote ideas and avenues of thought without associating names with them, that is what I would do. But quotes can be traced back to their sources. I’m choosing to generalize instead because the goal of our Song of Everything is to strive to be in tune with the frontiers of Science, to encompass cutting edge philosophy, and to consider new but always reasonable far-outside-the-box speculations. In other words, we value balance—equanimity—a Story that feels ... Comfortable.
Love the sinner, hate the sin.
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