The “Cartesian Split” Is a Hallucination; Ergo, We Should Get Rid of It

The “Cartesian Split” Is a Hallucination; Ergo, We Should Get Rid of It
by Jean F. Drew

The Ancient Heritage of Western Science
The history of science goes back at least two and a half millennia, to the pre-Socratics of ancient Greece. Democritus and Leucippus were the fathers of atomic theory — at least they were the first thinkers ever to formulate one. Heraclitus was the first thinker to consider what in the modern age developed as the laws of thermodynamics. Likewise Plato’s Chora, in the myth of the Demiurge (see Timaeus), may have been the very first anticipation of what later would be referred to as the quantum world. Plato’s great student Aristotle was the first thinker to put science, or “natural philosophy” as it was then called — and ever after was called, until the 17th century, when philosophical positivism became influential — on an empirical, experimental basis.

Thus science was born in the ancient world of the classical Greeks. What motivated the great thinkers of this yet-unsurpassed era of human intellectual achievement was the irrepressible, inexhaustible eros, or desire, to understand the Universe, and thereby to understand man’s place in it. In this process the Greeks confronted a two-fold problem which Plato spent a lifetime elaborating. On the one hand, the original “pull” that drew these thinkers into their quest for knowledge of the Universe — or Cosmos as the Greeks termed it — was ontological. On the other hand, in order for the quest to become intelligible to the thinking subject and thus communicable to others, the engagement of epistemological issues was totally unavoidable.

By ontology we mean “the science of being”: that is, the science of what “is” or what exists, how it came to be, and by what rules or laws it is organized. By epistemology we mean the “science of knowledge”: that is, what can the human mind know, how does it know it — and by what means can such knowledge be verified.

To the Greek mind, the Cosmos was a single, unified, living Whole that is ever so much more than the mere sum of its parts. Rather, all of its parts were thought to be ordered and ultimately harmonically, dynamically unified into a single universal body according to a single universal blueprint. Likewise the sum total of true knowledge, or episteme was thought to be an undivided whole.

Fast-Forward to the Sixteenth Century….
According to Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, “The most fundamental aspect of the Western intellectual tradition is the assumption that there is a fundamental division between the material and the immaterial world or between the realm of matter and the realm of pure mind or spirit. The metaphysical framework based on this assumption is known as ontological dualism. As the word dual implies, the framework is predicated on an ontology, or a conception of the nature of God or being, that assumes reality has two distinct and separable dimensions. The concept of Being as continuous, immutable, and having a prior or separate existence from the world of change dates from the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides. The same qualities were associated with the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and they were considerably amplified by the role played in theology by Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy….

“Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton were all inheritors of a cultural tradition in which ontological dualism was a primary article of faith. Hence the idealization of the mathematical ideal as a source of communication with God, which dates from Pythagoras, provided a metaphysical foundation for the emerging natural sciences…. [T]he creators of classical physics believed that doing physics was a form of communion with the geometrical and mathematical forms resident in the perfect mind of God.”¹

In the 16th century the great French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Rene Descartes still recognized an ontological dualism that distinguished between body and mind, matter and spirit. And as Wolfgang Smith points out, Descartes, like Galileo and Newton, “is sometimes willing to resolve philosophical difficulties by recourse to Deity.”²

Descartes was a passionate champion of the idea of universal mechanics. He strove to lay down the theoretical foundations for “a rigorous mechanical science, based upon mathematical principles which would be able to explain the workings of Nature, from the movements of planets to the fine motions associated with animal bodies.”³

Descartes’ world is a mechanical world, “…made up entirely of ‘res extensa’ (the later Newtonian ‘matter’), moving in space according to mechanical laws. All the rest is to be relegated to ‘res cogitans’ or thinking substance, which exists in its own right as a kind of spiritual entity.”⁴

On this point Wolfgang Smith observes, “It is noteworthy that Descartes came to this res cogitans at the outset of his meditations through the famous ‘cogito ergo sum.’ It appeared to him as the one and only immediate certainty, whereas the existence of a mechanical universe, external to the res cogitans, was to be arrived at later through a logical argument, in which the idea of God and His veracity plays the leading role.”⁵

As Wolfhart Pannenberg writes, Descartes maintained that the idea of God “is the prior condition in the human mind for the possibility of every other idea, even that of the ego itself.”⁶

Thus Smith exclaims, “It is indeed a remarkable irony that the basic premise of modern materialism should initially have been founded upon theology!”⁷

Descartes’ model of the universe as essentially mechanistic — constituted only by “matter in its motions” moving according to the physical laws — was taken up by Newton and, in due course, became the preeminent idea in all of modern science up to recent times.

By the eighteenth century, the idea of any metaphysical basis for “natural philosophy” had increasingly fallen into disrepute. The term itself disappeared from use, replaced by the word “science.” Mechanics was increasingly regarded as “an autonomous science,” leaving no role for God. The great French mathematician Pierre-Sinon Laplace was enormously influential in this transition. As Nadeau and Kafatos observe:

“Laplace is recognized for eliminating not only the theological component of classical physics but the ‘entire metaphysical component’ as well. The epistemology of science requires, he said, that we proceed by inductive generalizations from observed facts to hypotheses that are ‘tested by observed conformity of the phenomena.’ What was unique about Laplace’s view of hypotheses was his insistence that we cannot attribute reality to them. Although concepts like force, mass, motion, cause, and laws are obviously present in classical physics, they exist in Laplace’s view only as quantities. Physics is concerned, he argued, with quantities that we associate as a matter of convenience with concepts, and the truth about nature are only the quantities.”⁸

Thus the science of Nature is reduced to a quantitative mathematical description. This positivist vision of physical reality denies Nature any meaning other than the mathematical formalism of physical theory employed in its description.

The False “Cartesian Split”
Here we see the emergence of the full-blown body-mind, matter-spirit “Cartesian split,” as we have called it. The great success of the mathematically-describable “matter” side of the epistemological divide evidenced by a long series of brilliant scientific achievements utterly displaced the “spirit” side and eventually relegated it to virtual oblivion. Science was understood to be about the elucidation of quantities; questions of meaning were no longer relevant.

Thus the current orthodoxy of science reduces to four basis premises: “(1) The physical world is made up of inert and changeless matter, and this matter changes only in terms of location in space; (2) the behavior of matter mirrors physical theory and is inherently mathematical; (3) matter as the unchanging unit of physical reality can be exhaustively understood by mechanics, or by the applied mathematics of motion; and (4) the mind of the observer is separate from the observed system of matter, and the ontological bridge between the two is physical law and theory.”⁹

On this formalism, even “the mind of the observer” is reducible to the operations of physical-chemical laws: The modern-day scientific materialist insists that mind is only the epiphenomenon of the physical-chemical activity of the brain. This conclusion is seemingly inevitable, given the utter collapse of the “mind” or “spirit” side of the Cartesian divide, which historically has always connected man to a metaphysical, immaterial reality beyond the physical world. And yet notwithstanding (4) above, this scientific formalism evinces a paradox, a seeming self-contradiction: The formalism requires the observer to be not outside the material system he observes; for the observer himself is completely reducible to its rules. He is just another “cog” in the universal, physical machine. So how can the observer be “separate from the observed system of matter?”

I am not aware that this question has been much engaged in recent times. Suffice it to say that this formalism gives short shrift indeed to the problems of mind, consciousness, intelligence, free will, and even human existence per se. And these are the necessary qualities of “the observer,” in order for there to be an observer.

The grip this formalism has on the biological sciences seems particularly unfortunate. For example, consider a case from embryology:

“Geneticists appreciate that cell differentiation utterly depends on cells knowing how to differentiate early on and then somehow remembering that they are different and passing on this vital piece of information to subsequent generations of cells. At the moment, scientists shrug their shoulders as to how this may be accomplished, particularly at such a rapid pace…. As for the orchestration of cell processes, biochemists never actually ask the question.”¹⁰

Notwithstanding, as the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins freely admits, “Exactly how [cell division] eventually leads to the development of a baby is a story which will take decades, perhaps centuries, for embryologists to work out. But it is a fact that it does.”¹¹

It seems obvious that cells “knowing” and “remembering” are not processes that can be conveniently reduced to the comparatively simple operations of physics and chemistry. Nevertheless, this is precisely what Dawkins seems determined to do — which is why the needful explanations will take “decades, perhaps centuries” to work out. The possibility that the explanation cannot be given in terms of the force-field driven reactions of physics and chemistry alone is one that Dawkins seemingly refuses to entertain. But if this observation is valid, then maybe it wouldn’t just be decades or centuries, but maybe never, before an elucidation can be given on this basis. It seems a scientific materialist like Dawkins seemingly, simply refuses to entertain this possibility.

Reconciling Biology to the Insights of Quantum Theory
One gets the very strong impression that, today, scientific materialists working in the field of biology, and the Neodarwinists in particular, are extraordinarily resistant to the idea that quantum theory has anything at all to do with their discipline.

And yet everything that we observe in our 4-dimensional (S₁ + S₂ + S₃ + T₁) reality rests upon, depends on, what is going on in the “microworld” of quantum activity.

Quantum theory — and also relativity theory for that matter — places the observer squarely into the game of reality, in such a way that one is tempted to say that it is the observer himself who “constructs” the reality he observes.

Moreover, the microworld of quantum theory speaks the language of universal fields, of quantum indeterminacy, of non-local action, of superposition (“quantum entanglement”), of superluminal velocities, of the primacy of the observer — that is, of all sorts of “bizarre” phenomena which are not at all observable in the macroworld of four-dimensional reality.

Analogically speaking, it’s as if many present-day biologists wish to look only at that part of the iceberg that surfaces above the waterline, considering that the submerged yet immense depths supporting the iceberg’s visible tip are irrelevant to their concerns. And then they think they can arrive at an explanation of life and evolution by remaining blind to the deep structure of reality on which everything in the Universe is ultimately based.

-- In the 1920s, the Russian scientist Alexander Gurwitsch postulated that “a field, rather than chemicals alone, was probably responsible for the structural formation of the body.”¹²

-- Italian physicist Renato Nobili amassed experimental proof that [field-borne] electromagnetic frequencies occur in animal tissues.¹³

-- Russian Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Gyorgyi postulated that protein cells act as semiconductors, preserving and passing along the energy of electrons as information.¹⁴

-- F.-A. Popp postulated a field of electromagnetic radiation as the “mechanism” that somehow guides the growth of the cellular body.¹⁵

And then there is British biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who argues that biochemical processes associated with “gene activation and proteins no more explain the development of form than delivering building materials to a building site explains the construction of the house built there.”¹⁶

“…Sheldrake argues … Current genetic theory … doesn’t explain … how a developing [living] system can self-regulate, or grow normally in the course of development if a part of the system is added or removed, and doesn’t explain how an organism regenerates — replacing missing or damaged structures…. Sheldrake worked out his hypothesis of formative causation, which states that the forms of self-organizing living things — everything from molecules and organisms to societies and even entire galaxies — are shaped by morphic fields. These fields have a morphic resonance — a cumulative memory — of similar systems through cultures and time. So that species of animals and plants ‘remember’ not only how to look but also how to act. Rupert Sheldrake uses the term ‘morphic fields’ …to describe the self-organizing properties of biological systems, from molecules to bodies to societies. ‘Morphic resonance’ is, in his view, ‘the influence of like upon like through space and time.’ He believes these fields (and he thinks there are many of them) are different from electromagnetic fields because they reverberate across generations with an inherent memory of the correct shape and form. The more we learn, the easier it is for others to follow in our footsteps.”¹⁷

“One fact which led to the development of this theory is the remarkable ability organisms have to repair damage. If you cut an oak tree into little pieces, each little piece, properly treated, can grow into a new tree. So from a tiny fragment, you can get a whole. Machines do not do that; they do not have this power of remaining whole if you remove parts of them. Chop a computer up into small pieces and all you get is a broken computer. It does not regenerate into lots of little computers. But if you chop a flatworm into small pieces, each piece can grow into a new flatworm. Another analogy is a magnet. If you chop a magnet into small pieces, you do have lots of small magnets, each with a complete magnetic field. This is a wholistic property that fields have that mechanical systems do not have unless they are associated with fields. Still another example is the hologram, any part of which contains the whole. A hologram is based on interference patterns within the electromagnetic field. Fields thus have a wholistic property which was very attractive to the biologists who developed this concept of morphogenetic fields.”¹⁸

Hello, can we say “field-mediated collective consciousness,” anyone? At least as a scientific hypothesis worth pursuing?

The point is, given its presuppositions, Darwinist evolutionary theory has absolutely no use for such a hypothesis: The doctrine calls for random mutation plus natural selection — premised on the purely physico-chemical “behavior” of matter — which supposedly explains everything about the evolution of the biota. Forget about fields, forget about information: It’s a “billiard ball,” mechanistic, purely material universe governed by chance unfolding under the exclusive influence of the physical laws. And that’s that. End of story.

Which is deliberately to turn one’s back to what Niels Bohr recognized as “the very nature of quantum theory,” which

“… forces us to regard the space-time coordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the description, symbolizing the idealizations of observation and definition respectively. Just as … relativity theory has taught us that the convenience of distinguishing sharply between space and time rests solely on the smallness of the velocities ordinarily met with compared to the speed of light, we learn from the quantum theory that the appropriateness of our visual space-time descriptions depends entirely on the small value of the quantum of action compared to the actions involved in ordinary sense perception. Indeed, in the description of atomic phenomena, the quantum postulate presents us with the task of developing a ‘complementary’ theory the consistency of which can be judged only by weighing the possibilities of definition and observation.”¹⁹

Classical physics — which arguably deals only with “the tip of the iceberg” of reality — is a workable approximation of the doings of Nature that seems precise only because the largeness of the speed of light and the smallness of the quantum of action give rise to negligible effects. In other words, classical physics and chemistry work just fine at the level of the macroworld.

But the effects produced in the microworld (i.e., the quantum world) and the world described by relativity theory are there nonetheless. It’s just that the quantum of action is so small as compared with macroscopic values that obtaining reliable results respecting the behavior of macro-objects is not affected by it. And the speed of light is so great that we need not take it into consideration in most of the “macroworld” problems that we wish to solve.

Bohr, father of the Copenhagen Intrepretation of quantum mechanics — a world-class epistemologist as well as world-class scientist — concluded that “quantum mechanics [and not classical mechanics, which Bohr regarded as a “subset” or special case of quantum mechanics] … is the complete description, and the measuring instruments in quantum mechanical experiments obey this description. Although we can safely ignore quantum mechanical effects in dealing with macro-level phenomena in most cases because those effects are small enough for practical purposes, we cannot ignore the implications of quantum mechanics on the macro level for the obvious reason that they are there. Bohr argued that since the quantum of action is always present [and always subject to Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle and likewise Cantor’s incompleteness principle] on the macro level, this requires ‘a final renunciation of the classical ideal of causality and a radical revision of our attitude toward the problem of physical reality.’”²⁰

The problems of Life, its origin, and laws; and of consciousness, informative communication, intelligence, so far have been devilishly resistant to explanation by the “rules” of the macroscopic world — that is, by the physical and chemical laws alone. Studying the behavior of a classical gas cannot give us much insight into the “mysteries” of biological self-organization, or explain the ability of living systems to be self-mobilizing, “choosing” systems. For gases and lifeforms are entirely different “orders of being.”

The “Cartesian Split” Is a Hallucination; Ergo, We Should Get Rid of It
It seems that if ever there is to be an explanation of “the tricky machinery of Life,” it will not be found in classical physics. Quantum physics is what opens up the vast new vistas needed to engage the problem of the emergence of Life, and to explain its behavior.

That, in the opinion of the present writer, is sufficient reason to recognize the so-called Cartesian Split — which attempts to divide natural science from the “spiritual sciences” — as a total illusion that we’d best be rid of, for two main reasons that presently come to mind.

(1) Quantum theory (and also relativity theory) places preeminent emphasis on the role of the “observer.” This observer is an intelligent agent. That being the case, he is firmly planted on the Geisteswissenschaften side — that is, on the “spiritual side” — and not the Naturwissenschaften side — that is the “natural sciences side” —of the Cartesian divide. It seems science needs a better method to re-integrate the observer into its formulations than it now has. It is a profound fallacy to regard the observer as the mere product of physico-chemical actions. The “problem of the observer” simply cannot be comprehensively, logically understood in such terms.

(2) Each and every one of the eminent, world-class scientists cited in this article was also a world-class philosopher, consciously or unconsciously. Not a single one of them failed to touch on the most fundamental problems of ontology and epistemology. And the insights of each of these great thinkers shaped the evolutionary course of human knowledge — of the total episteme or, in the German, the Wissenschaft — in the most profound ways.

At the end of the day, it seems profitless to split the “knower” from “the known.” For the knower — the observer — is on the one hand a part and participant of the system that he observes; and on the other, his observation constitutes — or has profound implications for the further development of — the system he observes.

Yet effecting such a division is exactly the program of the “Cartesian Split.” Thus the present writer considers the split to be false, and ultimately tending to divide a man against himself — as well as dividing man from Nature itself, of which man is plainly, ineluctibly “part and participant.”

¹Nadeau, Robert and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, p. 83f.
²Smith, Wolfgang, Cosmos and Transcendence, p. 29.
³Smith, op. cit., p. 28.
⁴Smith, op. cit., p. 29.
⁵Smith, ibid., p. 29.
⁶Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Toward a Theology of Nature, p. 42. ⁷Smith, op. cit., p. 29.
⁸Nadeau/Kafatos, op. cit., p. 85.
⁹Nadeau/Kafatos, op. cit., p. 84.
¹⁰McTaggert, Lynne, The Field, p. 46.
¹¹McTaggert, Lynne, op. cit., p. 46.
¹²McTaggert, Lynne, op. cit., p. 47.
¹³McTaggert, Lynne, op. cit., p. 49.
¹⁴McTaggert, Lynne, ibid., p. 49.
¹⁵McTaggert, Lynne, op. cit., p. 47.
¹⁶McTaggert, Lynne, op. cit., p. 46f.
¹⁷McTaggert, Lynne, ibid., p. 46f.
¹⁸Sheldrake, Rupert, http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Morphic/morphic1_paper.html
¹⁹Nadeau/Kafatos, op. cit., p. 91.
²⁰Nadeau/Kafatos, ibid., p. 91.

Darwinist evolutionary theory ... random mutation plus natural selection

Just like to add one bit. With regard to life, and scoped within current understanding of thermodynamics, it also calls for an external source of energy. In instant case, the Sun.

However, I have reservations about whether there is a theoretical ability of random energy, being applied according to some Darwinistic process of mutation and "natural selection", to create complex dynamically highly-ordered systems. In all cases I am familiar with it creates iether more disorder or simply ordered regular systems such as the hexagonal-cell flow patterns seen in liquids just before bubbling.

Note I am avoiding the word "information" -- for no one has yet put a handle on that, except for it being patterns -- which is a poor and incredibly limited definition. And I am shy of getting detailed on what "natural selection" means. For the purpose of tying down the scope of my reservations, I'll take "natural selection" to include some arbitrary combination of death rate and reproduction rate. And I'm not at all touching what "mutation" means. Does it include viral induced cross-dressings of DNA and RNA? Does it include transpositions? Sex? Etc. What is a "mutation" and what is a variance on a theme? So for the sake of scoping my reservation I'll include all of them.

[I challenge anyone to show me that evolution as a process is necessarily a good or progressive scheme.]

You don't challenge small!

Before tackling this, I would like a little clarification of your definitions of "good" and "progressive". Do you define "good" in a moral or ethical sense, or in the sense of being useful, beneficial or favorable? And "progressive" I take to mean moving or advancing in some direction, or toward some goal. Please let me know.

A Frog in a well, straining to understand, greatest feat is to realize that "he" is just a Frog in a well.. commanding humility..

Maybe thats what being a human(frog) is all about.. Wearing proper humility as clothing so you/he can appreciate the ultimate clothier.. when the fitting comes.. and Bride of Christ kisses the frog to reveal the handsome Prince hidden inside..

LOLOL! What a delightful metaphor! Thank you, dear hosepipe!

Thank you so much for the additional insights! Indeed, the Jews brought history into focus and it has been that way since.

But of course, the writing of history is not the only legacy we have from Israel, let alone the most important one. The main thing is the spiritual revelation to the People of Israel by their God, and their subsequent ability to enter into direct spiritual communication and relationship with Him. After this, God is "personalized," not some mere abstraction. And the Logos is the manifestation of His Will, as the Word of the Beginning ("Let there be Light!") and (for Christians) the Son of God.

Amen!!!

(1) The physical world is made up of inert and changeless matter, and this matter changes only in terms of location in space;

If you are to be rigorous in your analysis, you must concede that this premise is inherently wrong.

E = MC² declares that to be the case.

Thanks for the ping. The article is somewhat interesting, but this topic no longer interests me very much. Quite some time ago I realized that man makes his own reality within the limits of his perception.

Isn't the universe itself awesome? All these infinite possibilities within God...and so much apathy.

so, the question is, where did the knowledge to pick through the top of the milk bottle reside between the generations of birds?

Hi chilepepper! Great question! I think Rupert Sheldrake's proposal of a morphic field might be a candidate for where such intergenerational knowledge resides. The idea goes that once a behavior is learned, its related information is picked up and registered in the field. Thus the "knowledge" is preserved that later generations can access via the field. The time cycle for sparrows to "relearn" the behavior is enormously time-compressed compared to the learning time cycle of the first generation of sparrows because later generations of sparrows can access the relevant information from the field. A major point is once something is learned the first time, it gets easier for others to learn it later. As I recall the Italian physicist Dallaporta also says something to that effect. (I'd have to track that down though.)

Anyhoot, a morphic field would seem to facilitate the broadcast as well as the reception of signals. And like all fields, it is universal in scope. It's an interesting idea, similar to speculations about the existence of collective consciousness.

Why knows, there might be something to it after all!

Thanks so much for writing, chilepepper!

...this premise is inherently wrong.... E = MC² declares that to be the case.

Your correction duly noted, TXnMA! Perhaps Kafatos -- a Romanian physicist -- and Nadeau -- an American historian of science -- have oversimplified a bit. Then again, one might give them a pass by qualifying their statement as an observation from the Newtonian point of view. I imagine prior to relativity theory and quantum theory, such a statement would have been accepted by scientists as essentially correct.

Yet one of the major points Nadeau and Kafatos stress in The Non-local Universe is the insufficiency of the Newtonian ("classical") view to explain what is really going on in the universe.

So "go figure!" :^) (I really did like the book.)

Thanks so much for writing, TXnMA!

Thank you so much for your insights, dear sister in Christ!

I also find Sheldrake's experiments, research and theories to be quite engaging. The bottom line, IMHO, is that science continues to search for a source of information (successful communications) in the universe - and a universal vacuum field is a logical candidate for medium.

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