Science
Science and Mysticism: Are They Compatible?
.Pat Duffy Hutcheon, Humanist in Canada (Winter 1996/97), p.20-24.
KEY TERMS: mysticism -- transcendentalism -- indeterminacy -- Chaos Theory -- systems emergence -- the anthropic principle -- explanations -- world view -- Cosmological Proof -- postmodernism -- scientific attitude -- contingent causality
Much has been written in recent years to the effect that science, in its upper reaches, merges into mysticism. It is often said, by certain New Age physicists and astronomers, that Atraditional" premises about order in nature, and the goal of objectivity in knowledge, are no longer justified. Proponents of this view argue that twentieth century advances in physics have demonstrated a reality chaotic in its ultimate "essence". They claim this supports the conclusion of an arbitrariness at the very core of existence: a scientifically unpredictable interference by some transcendental "holistic" force or Mind. And they would have us believe that the principle of indeterminacy -- as articulated by Heisenberg -- necessarily implies a human species reflecting just such an irrationality in its substantive being. Moreover, they now add, the new "chaos" theory confirms what the mystics have been saying all along. Nature, at all levels, is without internal order. All -- all is mystery, it seems, and we must seek new, more appropriate ways of tapping into the Creative Oneness above and beyond the chaos of "knowable" experience. We are told that we must learn to believe in the "unknowable", even though we can never know it in any scientifically predictable sense. And we must accept the "fact" that observation and analysis are but crude and limited tools in the search for that mystical Truth of transcendent "chaos" -- of which the uniquely sophisticated physicist, at the outer edge of human knowledge, has only recently become dimly aware.
This comes across to the layman as powerful and convincing stuff. If even leading physicists
.Pat Duffy Hutcheon, Humanist in Canada (Winter 1996/97), p.20-24.
KEY TERMS: mysticism -- transcendentalism -- indeterminacy -- Chaos Theory -- systems emergence -- the anthropic principle -- explanations -- world view -- Cosmological Proof -- postmodernism -- scientific attitude -- contingent causality
Much has been written in recent years to the effect that science, in its upper reaches, merges into mysticism. It is often said, by certain New Age physicists and astronomers, that Atraditional" premises about order in nature, and the goal of objectivity in knowledge, are no longer justified. Proponents of this view argue that twentieth century advances in physics have demonstrated a reality chaotic in its ultimate "essence". They claim this supports the conclusion of an arbitrariness at the very core of existence: a scientifically unpredictable interference by some transcendental "holistic" force or Mind. And they would have us believe that the principle of indeterminacy -- as articulated by Heisenberg -- necessarily implies a human species reflecting just such an irrationality in its substantive being. Moreover, they now add, the new "chaos" theory confirms what the mystics have been saying all along. Nature, at all levels, is without internal order. All -- all is mystery, it seems, and we must seek new, more appropriate ways of tapping into the Creative Oneness above and beyond the chaos of "knowable" experience. We are told that we must learn to believe in the "unknowable", even though we can never know it in any scientifically predictable sense. And we must accept the "fact" that observation and analysis are but crude and limited tools in the search for that mystical Truth of transcendent "chaos" -- of which the uniquely sophisticated physicist, at the outer edge of human knowledge, has only recently become dimly aware.
This comes across to the layman as powerful and convincing stuff. If even leading physicists