Between Science and Spirituality

The Chronicle of Higher Education ^ | Nov. 29, 2002 | John Horgan

[beckett]

Between Science and Spirituality

By JOHN HORGAN

Can mystical spirituality be reconciled with science and, more broadly, with reason? To paraphrase the mystical philosopher Ken Wilber, is the East's version of enlightenment compatible with that of the West? If so, what sort of truth would a rational mysticism give us? What sort of consolation?

There are many claimed convergences between science and mysticism. Cognitive psychology supposedly corroborates the Buddhist doctrine that the self is an illusion. Quantum mechanics, which implies that the outcomes of certain microevents depend on how we measure them, is said to confirm the mystical intuition that consciousness is an intrinsic part of reality. Similarly, quantum nonlocality, which Einstein disparaged as "spooky action at a distance," clinches mystics' perception of the interrelatedness, or unity, of all things. I see a different point of convergence between science and mysticism: Each in its own way reveals the miraculousness of our existence.

The more science learns about the origin and history of the cosmos and of life on earth and of Homo sapiens, the more it reveals how staggeringly improbable we are. First there is the fact of existence itself. The big-bang theory represents a profound insight into the history and structure of the cosmos, but it cannot tell us why creation occurred in the first place. Particle physics suggests that empty space is seething with virtual particles, which spring into existence for an instant before vanishing. In the same way, some physicists speculate, the entire universe might have begun as a kind of virtual particle. Honest physicists will admit that they have no idea why there is something rather than nothing. After all, what produced the quantum forces that supposedly made creation possible? "No one is certain what happened before the Big Bang, or even if the question has any meaning," Steven Weinberg, the physicist and Nobel laureate, wrote recently.

Next questions: Why does the universe look this way rather than some other way? Why does it adhere to these laws of nature rather than to some other laws? Altering any of the universe's fundamental parameters would have radically altered reality. For example, if the cosmos had been slightly more dense at its inception, it would have quickly collapsed into a black hole.

A smidgen less dense, and it would have flown apart so fast that there would have been no chance for stars, galaxies, and planets to form. Cosmologists sometimes call this the fine-tuning problem, or, more colorfully, the Goldilocks dilemma: How did the density of the universe turn out not too high, not too low, but just right?

The odds that matter would have precisely its observed density, the physicist Lawrence Krauss has calculated, are as great as the odds of guessing precisely how many atoms there are in the sun. Some physicists are so troubled by the arbitrariness of the cosmos that they espouse a quasi-theological concept known as the anthropic principle. According to this notion, the universe must have the structure we observe, because otherwise we wouldn't be here to observe it. The anthropic principle is cosmology's version of creationism.

The next improbability is life. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins once declared that life "is a mystery no longer," because Darwin solved it with his theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet life is as mysterious as ever, in spite of all the insights provided by evolutionary theory and more-recent biological paradigms, such as genetics and molecular biology. Neither Darwinism nor any other scientific theory tells us why life appeared on earth in the first place, or whether it was probable or a once-in-eternity fluke.

Many scientists have argued that life must be a ubiquitous phenomenon that pervades the universe, but they can offer precious little empirical evidence to support that assertion. After decades of searching, astronomers have found no signs of life elsewhere in the cosmos; a 1996 report of fossilized microbes in a meteorite from Mars turned out to be erroneous. Researchers still cannot make matter animate in the laboratory, even with all the tools of biotechnology. In fact, the more scientists ponder life's origin, the harder it is to imagine how it occurred. Francis Crick once stated that "the origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have to be satisfied to get it going." In his book Life Itself, Crick offered the speculation that the seeds of life might have been planted on earth by an alien civilization.

Once life on earth started evolving, many scientists have contended, it was only a matter of time before natural selection produced a species as intelligent as Homo sapiens. But for more than 80 percent of life's 3.5-billion-year history, the earth's biota consisted entirely of single-celled organisms, like bacteria and algae. So not even the simplest multicellular organisms were inevitable. The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould has estimated that if the great experiment of life were rerun a million times over, chances are that it would never again give rise to mammals, let alone mammals intelligent enough to invent negative theology and television. Similar reasoning led the eminent evolutionary theorist Ernst Mayr to conclude that the SETI program -- the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which scans the heavens for radio signals from other civilizations -- is futile.

Multiply all of these improbabilities and they spike to infinity. As the psychologist Susan Blackmore has pointed out, we are bad at judging probabilities, hence prone to make too much of chance events; that is why we believe in ESP, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and other miracles. I do not believe in miracles, at least not defined in the conventional religious manner as divine disruptions of the natural order. But if a miracle is defined as an infinitely improbable phenomenon, then our existence is a miracle, which no theory natural or supernatural will ever explain.

Scientists may go much further in plumbing nature's secrets. They may decipher the neural code, the secret language of the brain. They may arrive at a plausible explanation of how life emerged on earth, and they may discover life elsewhere in the cosmos. They may find and verify a unified theory of physics, which will provide a more precise picture of the origin and history of the universe. Although there are good reasons for doubting the likelihood of such scientific advances, they cannot be ruled out. What can be ruled out is that science will answer the ultimate question: How did something come from nothing? Neither superstring theory nor any other of science's so-called theories of everything can resolve that mystery, any more than our supernatural theologies can.

Although we can never solve the riddle of existence, we can never stop trying. We must keep reimagining our relationship to the infinite. Skepticism alone --- and the cold, hard facts of science --- cannot serve as the basis for spirituality. Blackmore, a practicing Zen Buddhist, helped me reach that conclusion. She described Zen as a kind of rubbish-removal system that cleanses the mind of extraneous beliefs and emotions so that we can see reality as it truly is.

I found Blackmore's garbage metaphor appealing at first, because it provided a handy criterion for judging theories and theologies. The worst ones, I decided, distract us from the reality right in front of us by postulating parallel dimensions and universes, heavens and hells, gods and ghosts and demiurges and extraterrestrials. Too much garbage! Viewed this way, skepticism appears to be the ideal spiritual perspective. Skepticism clears away cumbersome beliefs on an intellectual level, just as meditation (ideally) clears away beliefs, emotions, and thoughts on a more experiential level. Skepticism can help us achieve mystical deautomatization, or so I wanted to believe.

My handling of real rather than metaphorical garbage gradually gave me a more complicated view of the matter. In my kitchen, we put garbage in bags that come in boxes of 20. After I yank the last bag from a box, the box itself becomes trash, which I put into the bag. Sometime after I interviewed Blackmore, every time I pulled the last bag from the box and stuffed the box in the bag, I intuited a paradox lurking within this ritual.

I went through more garbage bags than I care to mention before I solved the riddle: Every garbage-removal system generates garbage. Zen apparently works as an efficient garbage-removal system for Susan Blackmore. But as minimalistic as it is, Zen clutters more than it clarifies my mind. Once I started down this line of thinking, it was hard to stop. I began looking askance at skepticism, too. Maybe skepticism, instead of cleansing our vision, just substitutes one type of trash for another. Instead of belief in reincarnation, angels, ESP, extraterrestrials, parallel universes, and the Oedipus complex, the skeptic crams his mind with disbelief in reincarnation, angels, and so on.

The problem is that any truth or antitruth, no matter how initially revelatory and awe-inspiring, sooner or later turns into garbage that occludes our vision of the living world. Ludwig Wittgenstein had this problem in mind when he described his philosophy as a ladder that we should "throw away" after we have climbed it. At its best, art -- by which I mean poetry, literature, music, movies, painting, sculpture -- works in this manner. Art, the lie that tells the truth, is intrinsically ironic. Like Wittgenstein's ladder, it helps us get to another level and then falls away. What better way to approach the mystical, the truth that cannot be told?

At a scholarly meeting on mysticism I attended in Chicago, one speaker warned that if we can't talk about mysticism, we can't whistle about it, either. In other words, all our modes of expression, including art, fall short of mystical truth. But unlike more-literal modes of expression, art comes closer to uttering the unutterable by acknowledging its own insufficiency. It gives us not answers but questions. That does not mean mystical insights cannot be expressed within other modes of knowledge, like science, philosophy, theology -- and, of course, journalism. But we should view even the most fact-laden mystical texts ironically when they turn to ultimate questions. Some mystical writers, notably the psychedelic raconteur Terence McKenna, supply their own irony, but we readers can supply it even if the author intended none. We can read the Upanishads, Genesis, Dionysius the Areopagite, and the neurotheological suppositions of Andrew Newberg just as we read Blake or Borges or Emily Dickinson.

Viewed ironically, even the most fantastical ghost stories, including the old stories of religion, can serve a purpose. Whether they postulate superintelligent clouds of gas, insectoid aliens in hyperspace, a demiurge with multiple-personality disorder, or a loving God who for inscrutable reasons makes us suffer, well-told ghost stories can remind us of the unfathomable mystery at the heart of things. Our creation myths and eschatologies, our imaginings of ultimate beginnings and ends, can also help us discover our deepest fears and desires. But even the most sophisticated theologies and theories should never be mistaken for ultimate truth. What Voltaire said centuries ago still holds, and will always hold: "It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God defined the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one."

ther than art, is there any method particularly suited to evoking mystical awe without the side effects that so often attend it? In Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, first published in 1979, Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar suggested that the chief benefit of psychedelics is "enriching the wonder of normality" -- that is, enhancing our appreciation of ordinary consciousness and ordinary life. That is the spiritual value cited most often by advocates of psychedelics. But those compounds can have the opposite effect. This world may seem drab in comparison to the bizarre virtual realms into which LSD or DMT propel us. Instead of opening our eyes to the miraculousness of everyday reality and consciousness, psychedelics can blind us.

All mystical technologies that induce powerful altered states pose this risk. One mystical expert who has reached this conclusion is Jean Houston. A pioneer of the human-potential movement, she works as a kind of spiritual psychotherapist, usually for large groups rather than individuals. She seeks to rejuvenate her clients' psyches through dance, song, chanting, guided imagery, and role-playing, often with a mythological dimension. She and her husband, the anthropologist Robert Masters, proclaimed in 1966 that investigations of LSD and similar drugs could help human consciousness expand "beyond its present limitations and on towards capacities not yet realized and perhaps undreamed of."

Houston subsequently became quite critical of the via psychedelica. "l am by nature not pro-drug," she told me. Timothy Leary was one of the most charming people she had ever met -- and one of the most irresponsible. Too many people lured onto the psychedelic path by this Pied Piper suffered breakdowns and ended up in mental hospitals, Houston said. "If I were to take the American pragmatic tradition and say, 'By their fruits ye shall know them,' then I'd have to say I haven't seen too much evidence" that psychedelics promote a healthy spirituality. "Some might say it is a shortcut to reality. But the fact is, it doesn't seem to sustain that reality."

Houston's disillusionment with psychedelics led her to seek safer means of self-transcendence. In the early 1970s, she and Masters devised what they called the altered states of consciousness induction device, or ASCID. It consisted of a suspension harness in which blindfolded subjects could spin around in three dimensions. The contraption worked so well that Houston and Masters discontinued its use. "People would get addicted to it and even refuse to explore their inner states without first taking a ride," Houston recalled. The experience reinforced her suspicion that any spiritual practice or path -- particularly those emphasizing altered states -- can become an end in itself, which leads us away from reality rather than toward it.

Anything that helps you see --- really see --- the wondrousness of the world serves a mystical purpose. According to Zen legend, when a visitor asked the 15th-century master Ikkyu to write down a maxim of "the highest wisdom," Ikkyu wrote one word: "Attention." Irritated, the visitor asked, "Is that all?" This time, Ikkyu wrote two words: "Attention. Attention." Fortunately, life itself is so wildly weird and improbable that sooner or later it is bound to get our attention. And if life doesn't grab our attention, death will. Whenever death intrudes upon our lives, we feel the chill of the deep space in which we are suspended.

Spiritual seekers have employed mementos mori, like a human skull, to keep themselves mindful of death. An extreme version of this technique, used in certain Buddhist sects, involves sitting next to or on top of a rotting corpse. It seems that this practice may merely desensitize you to death rather than sensitize you to life. Moreover, dwelling on death, the abyss, nothingness, may convince you that it is the only abiding reality, and that all finite, time-bound phenomena, including our mortal selves, are ephemeral and hence, in some sense, unreal. To be enlightened, Ken Wilber once wrote, is "to snap out of the movie of life." This is perhaps the greatest danger posed by mysticism -- that you will be left with a permanent case of derealization and depersonalization.

If you are lucky, your glimpse of the abyss will make this life seem more real, not less. You will feel what Albert Hofmann -- the chemist who, in 1943, discovered the psychotropic properties of LSD -- felt after emerging from the psilocybin trip in which he had found himself all alone in a ghost town inside the earth. When he returned from this hellish solitude, back to the world and his dear friends, he felt "reborn," and he was overcome with gratitude and joy at the "wonderful life we have here."

This is by far the greatest gift that mystical experiences can bestow on us: to see -- really see -- all that is right with the world. Just as believers in a beneficent deity should be haunted by the problem of natural evil, so gnostics, atheists, pessimists, and nihilists should be haunted by the problem of friendship, love, beauty, truth, humor, compassion, fun. Never forget the problem of fun.

John Horgan writes about science. This article is adapted from his book Rational Mysticism: Dispatches From the Border Between Science and Spirituality, to be published in January by Houghton Mifflin. Copyright © 2003 by John Horgan.

[betty boop]

It seems to me that our ability to communicate and explore these questions will be hampered if we cannot agree on the distinction between an observer in terms of consciousness versus an observer in terms of quantum mechanics.... Perhaps the phrase conscious observer could be used? That would exclude all physical limitations: space/time coordinates, matter, velocity, uncertainty etc.

"Conscious observer" sounds better than "obsense" to me, A-G! :^) I guess we really do need to come up with a way to distinguish between conscious observer and QM observer after all.

VadeRetro took me to task for "anthropomorphizing." Guilty! But what is it, if not "anthropomorphizing," to designate the event that induces state vector collapse as the "observer," as QM does? Better to call it "kumquat!"

In the experimental tests of Bell's Theorem, a conscious observer (CO) "intended" (within the meaning of the intentionalist mode of consciousness described above) a particular experimental design, which was then put into effect, and whose results were carefully observed. An event -- called state vector collapse (after Schroedinger's equation) -- was observed by the CO. Looking at the effects, the CO surmises that it was the act of measurement itself that induces the collapse (after Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle) -- which measurement QM calls the "observer" but which I propose to call the "kumquat." He finds that it is the measurement itself that determines how the particles under study (a particle and its particle "twin") would work out their completely correlated "destinies" under the physical laws.

So it seems plain enough we do have two distinct kinds of "observer" here. In the experimental setting, the CO observes the kumquat. On the basis of the CO's observation, he draws conclusions that serve as the basis of further theoretical elaboration. One of the conclusions he draws is that the kumquat doesn't need the CO "to be there" in order to "do its thing": That is, such things as this routinely happen outside of the experimental setting.

Needless to say, none of these conclusions was the conclusion of the kumquat. The kumquat does not appear to be a bearer of intentionalist/luminous consciousness; and that little kumquat would not even "exist" at all, if there had not been an intentionalist/luminous consciousness to "discover" him. That which does not "exist" for us in consciousness, for all intents and purposes, does not exist at all -- for us.

That is, if we do not become aware of something, then we assume there is nothing to be aware of. I do not see how it is possible to remove the consciousness of the human observer from science in general, and QM in particular; for without it, there would be no science and no QM.

Note also that the CO has decided in his intentionalist/luminous consciousness, that the work of Schroedinger and Heisenberg is directly relevant to what he's testing for at the QM level. That is, he draws on the intentionalist/luminous consciousness of other thinkers, including Bell's work and Einstein's work, into consideration as relevant to his present investigation.

On this basis, he draws the supposition that the kumquat is free in some way of his observation; he has concluded that kumquat's activity is not dependent on his observation outside of the experimental setting. None of these things, arguably, is strictly the product of the intentionalist mode of consciousness; for they are based on critiques of the work of others, experience, etc., which are not strictly speaking properties associated with the intentionalist mode.

Science seems to have great confidence in the instrumental mode of consciousness -- intentionality. But increasingly it seems to be highly suspicious of the "other pole," of luminosity. Yet the point seems to be that, to explore the quantum world, you need more than pure intentionality. We as conscious selves do not belong to this domain of the very, very small, albeit the parts of which we are constituted do. We can never "cut ourselves down to the size" of the quantum neighborhood we are exploring, to walk the streets (so to speak) and poke into the nooks and crannies of its reality in a perfectly direct manner. The things we see there are things that can only be seen in their effects, which experiments are designed to produce.

At some point, it seems to me that if we are really to understand the facts and the meaning of what is actually going on "down there" in that neighborhood, then the CO will need to have greater appreciation for the luminous pole of consciousness -- for it has always been implicit in his work at some level anyway, whether he denies it or not.

[VadeRetro]

Terminology accepted. Now let me say that kumquats happen all the time, collapsing wave functions right and left, without the involvement of a CO. In fact, CO's depend upon kumquats for their ability to sense their world. The reverse--kumquats depending upon COs--does not hold.

Occasionally, a CO detects an event not actually supported by kumquat events. This can be interpreted as supernatural but is more often a sign of defective CO operation. If the condition clears up after a day or two in the drunk tank, the latter interpretation is warranted. ;^)

[VadeRetro]

CO's

Bad Vade, bad bad, pluralizing with apostrophe!

[betty boop]

Occasionally, a CO detects an event not actually supported by kumquat events. This can be interpreted as supernatural but is more often a sign of defective CO operation. If the condition clears up after a day or two in the drunk tank, the latter interpretation is warranted.

Hahahahahahahahaha!!!! VR, you so funny! Yet such an event need not necessarily be termed "supernatural." We could just suppose we've seen something that we haven't seen before, and thus don't understand what we've seen. So go design an experiment to try to track the crittur down!

Of course, the design of experiments seems substantially to fall into luminosity territory.... So we'd have to wait for the alcoholic stupor to wear off before tackling such a design...so as to assure we have sufficient "clear light," which alcohol can dull....

[Alamo-Girl]

Excellent, excellent, excellent! Kudos!

At some point, it seems to me that if we are really to understand the facts and the meaning of what is actually going on "down there" in that neighborhood, then the CO will need to have greater appreciation for the luminous pole of consciousness -- for it has always been implicit in his work at some level anyway, whether he denies it or not.

I most certainly agree! And that's where it really gets interesting...

[cornelis]

Yet such an event need not necessarily be termed "supernatural."

And even if it were, there is always a suspicion that after anyone of us has isolated such an event and termed it "supernatural" that we go ahead and treat it as natural anyhow. This will even be the sloppy habit of those who popularily recognize the phenomena of consciousness. Of course if one is feeling the heat and needs to slip out of the kitchen, they can easily treat what is natural as supernatural.

[cornelis]

popularly

[Consort]

The Conscious Observer will someday be called the Conscious Creator after scientists make that giant leap that they are cautiously inching towards.

[VadeRetro]

Occasionally, a CO detects an event not actually supported by kumquat events.

This is perhaps best restated, "Occasionally, a CO seems to other COs or even to the CO himself to be detecting events not likely supported by kumquat events." Your default assumption tends to be that what you see is real, at least until something tips you off that you're dreaming.

[betty boop]

Your default assumption tends to be that what you see is real, at least until something tips you off that you're dreaming.

And your default assumption seems to be that consciousness is either illusional or delusional. (If this is so, then what purpose does a "drunk tank" serve?)

I assume that things of which I can become conscious are real, even though the way they may appear to me may not be what they really are, "in themselves."

[VadeRetro]

And your default assumption seems to be that consciousness is either illusional or delusional.

I guess I wandered too far off point, as you've lost my default assumption. Consciousness is generally rooted in the perception of reality, but some people do see things that aren't there. My original point, now going over the falls never to be seen again, was that sense organs incorporate kumquat-type measurements (which happen all the time anyway) and consciousness incorporates the input.

While noting that perception is not necessary for kumquat, I wanted to say that kumquat is necessary for perception. It is, for accurate perception, but some perception is spurious. People with the DTs--and here we are back in the drunk tank--may see snakes that aren't there or feel insects crawling over them. (At least such sufferers have already taken their snakebite medicine.) People deprived of sensory input experience hallucinations. The silly movie Altered States was about that phenomenon but is not a great source of info thereon.

[betty boop]

Consciousness is generally rooted in the perception of reality, but some people do see things that aren't there.

And some people don’t see things that are right under their noses.

What an absolutely marvelous post, VadeRetro! It is truly to be savored (by me for its wit, its acumen, its penetration)….

I agree that Altered States is a “silly movie.” You don’t want to take your evidence from there. But maybe the mise on scene got to you: a chemically-altered consciousness!!! What is the mechanism of its alteration? And then, what does consciousness do?

It seems to me, before you can get into the issue of “altered consciousness,” it might be profitable first to have an idea of what consciousness is, in the sense of having a specific nature in the first place, such that there is something "there" that can be “altered.”

At this point, science probably has enough information so it can run right out there, and instantly start taking “measurements” of the problem. But of what value are the measurements, if it is not explicit what has been measured?

It might be said that the difficulty can be satisfied simply by taking EEG readings prior to the inducement of cognitive alteration. Then you can compare them with another series of EEGs taken after the fact. Their “difference” becomes the new “fact.”

Then I would have to say: Well, wow, that’s really interesting. But what does it mean?

And does it really have any relevance, beyond the merely instrumental (i.e., other than as a basis for further theoretical development), for the advancement of the Human Project?

[VadeRetro]

What an absolutely marvelous post, VadeRetro!

You're too gracious with my mumbling and stumbling.

... what does consciousness do? ... of what value are the measurements, if it is not explicit what has been measured? ... what does it mean?

We often can identify rather nicely what's altering a consciousness down to the level of metabolic pathways and brain regions. If anyone still doubts that the brain provides the hardware to run the mind, there was already an abundance of functional mapping when I took physiological psychology over 30 years ago.

And does it really have any relevance, beyond the merely instrumental (i.e., other than as a basis for further theoretical development), for the advancement of the Human Project?

I used to think psychology was the place to be. It was my major back in '71, but I had to go into the Air Force right after that and never got back to psych.

No regrets. It's a rather sterile pursuit. Most of the progress in the last 30 years has come from what you might call the "hardware" side. Pharmacology, cellular biology, disciplines like those.

[betty boop]

If anyone still doubts that the brain provides the hardware to run the mind, there was already an abundance of functional mapping when I took physiological psychology over 30 years ago.

Ain’t no doubt about it ( to me at least), but modern science has performed virtually Herculean miracles in explicating the “hardware” side of life.

What seems to be going begging these days, however, is folks to fill the role of “champion” for the “software” side. If I might put it that way.

[If anybody is wondering about my selection of the term “champion,” well…I could say that immersion in Six Sigma philosophy and methods (an occupational hazard) has turned my brain to mush….]

Good night, VR; I wish you pleasant dreams. The thought has struck me that, though we might be coming from different routes, maybe we're headed in the same general direction. And I'm grateful for the company. Hope to see you again soon.

[Phaedrus]

Before it slips away, I want to say that #273 is quite beautiful. Thank you, beckett.

[Phaedrus]

I not particularly fond of "kumquat" so I won't be using it, with your kind permission ... ;-} Fine short essay, though. As usual. It emanates from a fine and gracious mind.

At some point, it seems to me that if we are really to understand the facts and the meaning of what is actually going on "down there" in that neighborhood, then the CO will need to have greater appreciation for the luminous pole of consciousness -- for it has always been implicit in his work at some level anyway, whether he denies it or not.

We see in accord with our expectations and some can attain a laser-like focus in this. The Western mind is molded to the material. It is our great strength. And our weakness. We know, now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that at the most fundamental levels there is some"thing" operative, and powerful, that is wholly intangible yet is active everywhere at all times. We also know that in some strange way everything intimately relates, scientifically, to everything else. There is no"thing" that is truly separate. We've actually known that there is something weird and intangible going on for a long while but it has taken us almost a century to convince ourselves, by experiment, that it is true.

I am inclined to think that those higher dimensions in which the mathematicians so comfortably work actually exist and that our universe emerges as an expression of those dimensions.

I am also inclined to think that the smooth texture of daily conscious experience is analogous to a continuum of motion-picturelike very fine but discreet slices of reality in which the CO plays an active part in smoothing. Planck length and discrete quanta and the specific orbital requirements for electrons move my mind in this direction.

These speculative ideas may be easily dismissed from the "scientific" perspective and they may be entirely wrong but I believe that our inability to cope, philosophically, with the reality described by quantum mechanics, for a century, is a failure of scientific imagination, as much as anything, and so I feel free to speculate in what appears to be newly wide-open territory, at least for Westerners.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

[Aric2000]

Placemarker for me, thanks for the link Alamo-girl!!

May even get involved, but will probably lurk a while...

[VadeRetro]

What seems to be going begging these days, however, is folks to fill the role of “champion” for the “software” side. If I might put it that way.

Not even Bill Gates can do software without the hardware!

Thanks for the dance, BB!

[Alamo-Girl]

You're quite welcome! I'm glad you are enjoying this. These participants are so engaging to me, I routinely search for their posts.

[cornelis]

some people do see things that aren't there

I will not be the first to deny that imagination plays a fundamental role in the success of science.

But we are talking about the ability to see things that aren't there. This "ability" can be quite effectual--even successful by certain standards--because that "ability" has consequences that are actually preferred. That "ability" is not nothing.

Here's an excerpt on the seeing a green rose (how many facets does such sight have?):

< There is a modern classic usually praised as the beginning of modern literature, a work [James Joyce, The Portrait of an Arist] centrally concerned with imaginative willfulness . . . The work begins with a gifted child who is puzzled, as all children are likely to be, by his relation to all existence beyond his consciousness. Stephen Dedalus as a small boy reaches a point in his awakening to the world where he says, "But you could not have a green rose." Then he adds at once, "But perhaps somewhere in the world you could." Even before he is aware of the nature of his revolt, he is questioning Aristotle (and St. Thomas), for whom the accident of greenness is controlled by the essence of being, so that though the color is properly speaking an accident, it is no random accident . . . Joyce himself, in his final days, will wonder whether he as artist is not an artist of the fancy rather than of the imagination, taking up Coleridge's famous distinction. The young Stephen is setting out as artist in the direction of the fancy as the supreme virtue of awareness, as the principal weapon in a manipulation of being.

My argument is that his is an inclination common to any man in any time, but that in our world it is an action of aberrant will, now generally raised to the status of a virtue, whereby more mischief is done to the fabric of individual and community existence than we have been able to accomodate. If one examines the record of the Western mind, its art and philosophy since the Renaissance, one notices this inclination growing and, by the twentieth centry, largerly dominating that mind. Joyce's Stephen, then, is a culmination, if Joyce's art is itself revolutionary.
--Marion Montgomery, Virtue and Modern Shadows of Turning