Finding Our Bearings
Reuniting Fact and Value in Science
Mark Gyopari
A dissertation submitted to Schumacher College and the University of Plymouth
in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Science in Holistic Science
August 2011
Finding Our Bearings: Reuniting Fact and Value in Science
A dissertation by Mark Gyopari, MSc Holistic Science, Schumacher College, UK.
Abstract
This enquiry is about the relationship between science, nature and the
human mind with a focus on how we can authentically and ethically come to
know and understand the natural world of which we are a part. It begins by
exploring the paradigm of modern science and examines its fundamental
epistemology and how (and why) it arose. It questions whether the
dominating ‘analytical-rational’ mode of consciousness in which science
operates is now considered unbalanced, obsolete, and on its own,
fundamentally inadequate to address emerging holistic world-views.
Through investigating ways in which we acquire knowledge, and the
importance of balancing the two modes of human consciousness – the
‘rational-analytical’ and the ‘holistic-integrative’, a vision is presented for
the adoption of an expanded science which embraces different ways of
knowing and reunites facts and values.
Science has unquestionably delivered astounding technological and social
benefits and has an incredible virtue and beauty in its purest sense. Yet we
tend to think of it as having developed through necessity, as a logical
progress towards truth and reality. In fact, it is deeply rooted within a
historical, cultural and religious context. What emerged from Medieval
Europe was a devout (and divine) dedication to the mathematical,
mechanical and reductionist ways of understanding the world. It is clear
that this was but one course we could have taken to make sense of the
world, it is not wrong, and it is a paradigm in which our culture and our
science remain firmly entrenched. Our (western) cultural landscape, with its
predominant scientific outlook, therefore conditions us to see the world as
an observer through an analytical, material and reductionist lens. We are
habituated to acquire and value only certain kinds of knowledge
This opens up a critical question: How can our science, embedded within
its own particular cultural context and strongly biased to a single
epistemological paradigm, give rise to a knowledge that holds universal
understanding and truth?
I argue that our scientific method is severely limited by its reductionist
worldview which is incapable of seeing coherence, relationships and
wholeness, and is therefore incapable of authentically seeing or
understanding living complex systems. We now realise that our orthodox
science-based epistemology, with its deep influence on the wider collective
cultural psyche, has cultivated a profound sense of separation between
ourselves and nature. We see nature as ‘other’ and as an objective inert
resource which we can relentlessly exploit.
As a culture and as scientists, we are arriving at a place where we realise
that the reality of nature is not separate and self-contained. Rather, we are
nature and the relationship of our minds to the world is fundamentally
participatory – we perceive ourselves to be deeply woven into the web of
life and as part of a complex coherent whole. To understand such a rich
world of potential requires quite a different pluralistic and expanded
epistemology which balances different ways of knowing. Holistic science
unites value, meaning and facts and is a way of knowing the world which
transforms and expands the boundaries of orthodox science. Holism comes
to the realisation that the human mind cannot examine nature purely
‘objectively’ as we are currently conditioned to do through our one-sided
analytical mindset. Nature can be revealed in different ways by different
kinds of science – thus nature can be ‘quantity’ or ‘causal mechanism’, but
it is expressed more fully and authentically through a science of wholeness.
Goethe developed a holistic, participatory and phenomenological method of
science which offers a practical, richly textured, ethical and seductive
approach to science; one which does not dismiss orthodox science, which is
seen as but one valid way of knowing reality. The structured three-stage
process of Goethean Science of immersion, incubation and inspiration (my
terminology) draws upon both empirical and intuitive-imaginative ways of
understanding natural phenomena with communal consensus. Practical
application of the Goethean method to an example hydrogeological study in
New Zealand has provided confidence that it could offer a solid, ethical and
transparent foundation upon which quantitative science could be based –
although not in the sense of ‘on top of’ or ‘in addition to’. The Goethean
process should rather be the ‘container’ which informs and guides further
scientific endeavour.
The pursuit of knowledge always takes place within a dominant paradigm,
originally seen as liberating, revolutionary and enlightening. But then as the
collective cultural psyche (and its underlying archetypal path) evolves, the
dominant paradigm inevitably comes to be experienced as limiting,
constricting, full of contradiction and leading to crisis. Our culture is now at
such a critical juncture as the collective psyche transitions to resonate with a
new paradigm of holism, participation and values.
Acknowledgements
I wish to express my gratitude to Dr Stephan Harding at Schumacher College for his engaged
and constructive support in the planning stages of this project. I am also grateful to my
supervisor, Dr Iain Stewart at the University of Plymouth, for his time and helpful comment
during an earlier incarnation of my dissertation. I must also mention the steady support of
several friends in Wellington who kept me on track and encouraged me to keep going – in
particular, Karen Stockwell. The consistent, delightful and playful presence of my fourlegged more-than-human Abyssinian friends, Hugo and Luka, also made a huge contribution
to my sustained sanity and general wellbeing during the writing of this work!
Table of Contents
Abstract
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Introduction .......................................................................................... 1
Chapter 2:
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
The Journey of the Modern Scientific Mind ......................................... 3
Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle ............................................................. 3
The European awakening and the Great Cosmic Machine ................... 7
Science in service of the divine ............................................................ 9
Science and freedom ........................................................................... 12
Chapter 3:
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
Crusades Against Nature and a Runaway Machine ............................ 14
The fight against magic ....................................................................... 14
A lost reverence for Nature ................................................................. 16
The eviction of God and a new faith ................................................... 17
The mechanistic dream ....................................................................... 18
Chapter 4:
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
Finding Our Bearings – An Enquiry into Knowing ............................ 20
Modes of consciousness...................................................................... 20
Ways of knowing ................................................................................ 21
The scientist’s worldview ................................................................... 23
Reviewing the scientific method ......................................................... 25
A personal practice of science ............................................................ 28
A reorientation of science: from reductionism to participation .......... 29
Chapter 5:
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
5.5
5.6
Reuniting Fact and Value – an Evolving Science ............................... 32
Introduction ......................................................................................... 32
Goethe’s remarkable insights .............................................................. 32
The basis of Goethe’s cognition ......................................................... 35
Goethean science – the process........................................................... 36
The stages............................................................................................ 37
Consensus in the Goethean method .................................................... 39
Chapter 6:
6.1
6.2
6.3
Applying Goethe’s Science to a Hydrogeological Study .................... 40
The Riddle ........................................................................................... 41
The process: immersion, incubation and inspiration .......................... 45
Discussion: The Goethean process as the container ........................... 50
Chapter 7: Concluding Thoughts .......................................................................... 51
References
i
Chapter 1: Introduction
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of
all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no
longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are
closed." Albert Einstein
This thesis is about the relationship between science, nature and the human mind
and focuses on how we can authentically and ethically come to know and
understand the natural world of which we are a part. It begins with an exploration
of the paradigm of modern science – how it has come to be the way it is today, and
how it might evolve into a richer and wiser form out of necessity. Ultimately, this
piece of work is an enquiry into knowing – the ways that we acquire knowledge
about the world around us, and the quality of that knowledge. My enquiry looks at
why this is important in the context of our current scientific paradigm and the
impacts, both positive and negative, that one particular way of knowing has had on
our culture and on the earth.
The question arises as to whether the methods and mindset of modern science are
sufficient to address a shift to a more holistic mode thinking emerging in many
spheres of science. And is our scientific epistemology directly responsible for the
massive breakdowns in ecological, cultural, economic, scientific, religious, moral
and political structures that we are now witnessing? I believe that we as a culture
are at a critical juncture, and are on the verge of a paradigm shift both within
science and within our wider culture.
We tend to endow the way that science has developed with a quality of necessity –
as if it could not have been otherwise (Bortoft, 2011). But it is clear that science
and the scientific method has evolved in a complex way contingent upon a
complex historical, cultural, personal and religious matrix. This does not mean
science is wrong, it was just one possibility, one way of understanding the world
which reflected an underlying collective psyche. But unless we realise this, unless
we open up to ways of counterbalancing the extreme Cartesian analyticalquantitative-material cosmology which characterises science, we cannot detach
from the current paradigm and our relationship to nature cannot fundamentally
change.
Taking up this challenge, the second part of my enquiry looks at a way of
balancing or evolving the modern scientific paradigm into a participatory holistic
framework which embraces meaning, values and wisdom. I explore whether this
can be used as a container and ethical guide for quantitative-analytical Cartesian
methods.
1
My motivation for choosing to undertake this piece of work lies in my scientific
background as a geologist and the personal insights that I have gained concerning
the way that science is conducted. Specifically I am interested in the
epistemological basis of science, its internal inconsistencies and conflicts, its
largely unconscious premises, its benefits and its limitations. How and why
science has alienated us from nature, denies the validity of values and qualities,
and operates within a haze of illusory objectivism both interest and disturb me.
On the other hand, I truly believe that the science we have refined and honed has a
certain virtue and beauty in its purest sense, and that it has profoundly transformed
the way we live in so many positive ways. But I have come to believe that it
provides just one narrow way of understanding only certain dimensions of nature.
This thesis is rooted in my belief that the time has come to search for other richer
ways of knowing and seeing meaning – as a participant within nature, rather than a
detached observer. I am interested in the exploration of new paradigms that can
enhance and expand science, embrace both value and fact (or qualities and
quantities), and operate within a paradigm of wholeness.
In Chapters 2 and 3 I embark on a journey to explore the roots of our modern
scientific mind and how we came to embrace reductionism and mechanism. The
journey starts with the early philosophers of ancient Greece and then progresses
through medieval and Renaissance Europe, ending up at the Scientific Revolution
and the founders of the modern scientific method. Eventually separated from
both God and nature, science was then propelled on an exciting, hugely
transformational, and treacherous course.
Chapter 4 is about finding our bearings and explores ways of knowing and modes
of consciousness in the context of science. Science does not concern itself with
the process of knowing so here I attempt to shed some light on basic
epistemological concepts as a basis for deepening my understanding of the
scientific mindset. Here I look into the scientist’s worldview of empiricism,
reductionism and mechanism and why this has been useful, but is also recognised
to be sorely deficient on its own. I also bring in my personal experience of
practicing science and discuss the myth of objectivism and the necessity of using
other unacknowledged way of knowing.
Chapters 5 and 6 explores a different kind of science which balances our rationalintellectual and holistic modes of consciousness and enables us to engage with the
natural world in a different participatory context. To investigate the feasibility of
such an approach I bring in a New Zealand case study from the field of
hydrogeology.
Finally, in Chapter 7 I conclude with some thoughts on how worldviews change
and am unexpectedly left in an optimistic space!
2
Chapter 2: The Journey of the Modern Scientific Mind
‘the history of science is science itself’ Goethe
In this chapter I attempt to journey into the roots of our modern scientific worldview as a means of building an understanding why we see the world as we do, and
how the paradigms that we have adopted arose.
Modern scientific thinking and logic are undeniably deeply rooted in classical
Greece when, some two and a half millennia ago, philosophers began to turn their
thinking away from purely mythological explanations of the world and towards
physical, or metaphysical, causes. The Greeks saw the world as a question to be
answered and established a tradition of critical thought, the legacy of which was to
have a significant impact on modern western thinking for the next two millennia
through philosophers such as Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle. A hallmark of the
Greek world-view seems to have been a belief in an integrated multiplicity of
cognitive modes together with a metaphysical perspective which encompassed all
of reality and the multiple sides of human sensibility (Tarnas, 1991). Also in the
mix were a dialectic scepticism, naturalism, secular humanism, and commitment
to reason, empiricism and mathematics.
It was not until some 1,500 years after Aristotle that the next major development
in the scientific mind occurred – this time in Medieval Europe. A massive
paradigm shift occurred in the psyche of our culture during the Renaissance of the
15-17th centuries when, with the birth of mechanistic science and the displacement
of traditional naturalistic world-views, we started to relate to the world in an
entirely new way.
We tend to think of science as having developed with a quality of necessity and
truth, yet I hope the following discussion opens up the realisation that science in
fact evolved within a deeply historical, religious and cultural context as just one
possibility of making sense of the world.
2.1
Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle
The time around 600 BC witnessed the emergence of the idea that natural
phenomena were effected not by gods but by processes inherent in a divine nature
which could be understood and predicted. In other words, we see the first
evidence in the belief that the world could be understood through the rational
mind. Pythagoras of Samos developed the idea that the reality of the natural world
could be understood through the magic of numbers, hence his famous dictums ‘the
creation of number was the creation of things’ and ‘all is number’. However his
3
rational mathematic world-view was fused with metaphysics and mysticism. In
fact Pythagoras was regarded foremost as a spiritual leader who espoused a simple
non-violent and virtuous way of life. His exclusive inner circle of male and
female disciples was allowed access to the divine knowledge of mathematics –
these were the mathematikoi, or philosopher-mathematicians, who were deemed to
be of pure enough mind and body to receive such knowledge. Pythagoreanism
was really an ‘ascent religion’ which used mathematics as a tool to free the psyche
from the body so that it could enter the heavenly numerical realm. In freeing the
psyche, the Pythagoreans were also attempting to escape from nature, for numbers
were equated with the eternal, immutable and incorruptible gods – unlike the
material realm which is subject to corruption, decay and death (Wertheim, 1997).
Mathematics was therefore fundamentally a religious activity through the study of
the realm of the number-gods and the psychic transcendence into this realm.
Pythagoras' faith ultimately lay in the realm of a higher world of mathematics
untainted by the uncertainty and flux of mortal, earthly life.
The science and philosophy of Pythagoras was not destined to become a dominant
force in the ancient world, but it was to have a significant influence on the
development of early modern science some two and a half millennia later. The
pursuit of physics and mathematics was a quest for a transcendent, holy blueprint
for a creation that was eternal, immutable and incorruptible. It was therefore a
natural step for the Pythagorean spirit to be embraced in the context of Christianity
in the European Middle Ages. And it is also easy to see the influence of the
Pythagorean philosophy in the quest for the ultimate, transcendent knowledge in
modern day physics.
Pythagoras had a strong influence on the great Athenian philosopher Plato, who
was to have a profound influence on European culture and knowledge into the
second millennia AD. Plato’s world-view around 400BC was entirely one of a
transcendent reality sitting above the concrete world of our immediate experience.
To the Platonist, the world was perceived as an ordered plurality of timeless
universals such as truth, justice and beauty which gave meaning and form to the
concrete reality of the material world.
According to several of the dialogues written by Plato for the students of his
Academy, every sensible thing - every entity that we directly experience with our
senses - is but a representation of transcendent timeless archetypal forms, or
ideals, the true reality. The concrete earthly world encountered through the senses
is subject to the shifting cycles of generation and decay - of coming into being
passing away (Abram, 2007). The archetypal principals included the
mathematical forms of geometry and arithmetic, cosmic opposites such as love
and hate, male and female, unity and multiplicity; the forms of man and animals;
4
and the Ideas of the Good, the Beautiful, the Just and other moral and aesthetic
absolutes. To Plato, such a dimension cannot be perceived through the senses and
the trained reasoning intellect alone is able to apprehend the transcendent realm.
The paradox here is that the archetypal principals often took the form of a
bewildering array of mythical personifications and gods.
Thus, Platonists believed that every aspect of existence was permeated with
immutable fundamental primary essences which were regarded to possess a reality
of their own above and beyond the concrete world of direct experience. In other
words, ‘reality is elsewhere’. In the hands of later philosophers, and of the
Christian Church, this notion led to an increasingly dualistic thinking in which
everything meaningful about the world really existed in some otherworldly
dimension and what we see and sense in the material world is but an illusion and
less than its divine source (Harding, 2006). For example, something is beautiful
because the archetype of beauty is present within it. The archetype is absolute
beauty, supreme, pure, eternal and not merely an attribute of a person or thing.
According to Tarnas (op cit) Plato’s doctrine of archetypal Forms and Ideas is the
single most important foundation for the evolution of the Western scientific mind.
True knowledge involved seeing the underlying archetypes or transcendent Ideas
that are the governing principles of the divine intelligence. In his Timaeus, Plato
states that ‘this world is indeed a living being supplied with soul and intelligence
… a single visible entity containing all other living entities’. The world was
considered to have a soul – the anima mundi (Harding, 2006). Such knowledge
was deemed only accessible to the ‘illuminated intellect’ involving different
cognitive modes – which for the Greeks were principally intuition, memory,
aesthetics, imagination, logic, mathematics and empirical observation.
Interestingly, the latter was the least valued and sometimes even considered a
hindrance. The Platonist was therefore required to go through the particular to the
universal, beyond appearance to the essence, to obtain true knowledge.
As a student of Plato, Aristotle (1384-322 BCE) brought Plato’s esoteric, idealistic
and transcendent universe firmly down to earth. He did not believe that
mathematics could explain the true nature of things or answer the questions that he
regarded to be important. Wertheim (1997) raises the interesting point of why
modern Europeans chose to pursue an essentially Pythagorean mathematical
approach as a basis for science whereas this was not an obvious or even desirable
choice for the Aristotle and others – highlighting the fact that science is driven by
cultural choices guided by a society’s needs and value paradigms, and what it
collectively decides to accept as a valid methodology.
5
Aristotle’s philosophy was centred on explaining the world through rational,
empirical means and his lasting legacy was that of a logical, empirical natural
science. All knowledge and wisdom comes from experience and careful
observation of the natural world. Aristotle also believed the physical world was
imbued with a multiplicity of natures, forces and ends or causes. Unlike the
esoteric Platonist view of a reality elsewhere, Aristotle expressed a more animistic,
immediate felt relationship with nature and that beings displayed their own
dynamic coming into being entirely from within itself (Harding, ibid). He also
believed that everything in the world strives towards an ideal – a stone dropped on
the ground because it strove to return to its home, the earth; animate things strove
to actualise their own potential perfection. This philosophy had an immense
influence on Greek thinking and on much later western scientific thinking. Indeed,
most scientific activity in Europe up until the 17th century was based on the 4th
century BC Aristotelian philosophy and methods – and even modern science has
adopted his conceptual tools:
‘since except intuition, nothing can be truer than scientific knowledge, it
will be intuition that apprehends the primary premises’ Aristotle on the basic
principles of science.
Although Aristotle’s philosophy was continually evolving throughout his life, this
quote suggests that he advocated a more direct intuitive way of apprehending the
basic principles of nature – in him we see an elegant balance, or tension, between
empirical rationalism and spiritual intuition.
This is picked up by Bortoft (1996) who considered that Aristotle developed a
kind of organic understanding of knowledge which was a mode of participation in
the phenomenon – an involvement in the knowledge of being. And Tarnas (1991)
further expands this notion in relation to Greek thought whereby they appeared to
see nature as expressive of a pervasive intelligence which was directly accessible
to human awareness if it is developed and focussed to a high degree. Knowledge
requires a plurality of cognitive faculties and that apprehension of the world’s
deeper reality satisfies not only the mind but the soul (Tarnas, ibid). Here we
encounter the concept that the knower as a participant in the observed – a
viewpoint which was to emerge again in the post Renaissance romantic movement
through Wolfgang von Goethe (see Chapter 5). Indeed, the 20th century
philosopher Owen Barfield draws a direct parallel between Aristotle and Goethe
(Bortoft op cit; p 113). There is no doubt that many other had a similar
philosophy with regards knowledge, of instance Leonardo da Vinci exhibited a
startlingly Goethean participatory approach to the study of natural phenomena.
6
2.2
The European awakening and the Great Cosmic Machine
After Aristotle, and for nearly a millennium during the European Dark Ages,
Greek science was all but forgotten. The reasons for this were ostensibly related
to the rise of Christianity which placed more emphasis on spiritual development
than on philosophy or science. However, Aristotelian texts were at this time being
widely disseminated in the East during the ‘Islamic Golden Age’ where science,
mathematics, astronomy and medicine flourished at the end of the first
millennium. Natural philosophy or science progressed in the East relatively
independently from theology, that is until 12th and 13th centuries when liberal
attitudes were arrested, along with scientific thinking, by the pressure of
theological orthodoxy.
In Europe meanwhile, between about the 9th and 14th centuries, a new intellectual
atmosphere was awakening. Aristotelian texts, newly translated into Latin, made
their way into the monastic centres of knowledge. This was to be the catalyst for
the awakening of the European scientific mind. The Aristotelian philosophy was
readily integrated into the Christian doctrine, being embraced by prominent
theologists such as St Thomas Aquinas who regarded science as suitable
companion for religion. To him, science offered a path to a deeper knowledge of
God and the Creation and, since man was made in the image of God, it was
deemed appropriate for man to use his intellect to understand the world. Science
was therefore permitted to be practised and developed within a strictly Christian
framework and an unlikely and awkward union had been forged.
This was also a time of considerable turmoil in Europe with the break-up of the
church during the Reformation of Henry VIII, plagues and famines swept Europe
and it is thought that one third of central Europe’s population died. It was
therefore a period of great unease and break-down of old world orders. The new
Protestantism dictated a god detached from creation and was fervently intolerant
of ancient pagan animistic religions. The ‘creation’ was seen as a sinful, fallen
realm from which one escaped through death. It was into this context that modern
science was born (Harding 2006).
Scientific efforts to understand the physical world during the early Renaissance of
13th and 14th centuries were based on the conviction that reason, rather than simple
faith, was the way forward. They began with astronomy and a revival of
Pythagorean science and the language of mathematics. The driving force for such
a revival was the need for an accurate knowledge and understanding of the
motions of the celestial bodies to determine the Christian religious calendar.
7
There was in fact little interest in focussing attention on understanding earthly
(‘fallen’) phenomena. Under influence of the Pythagorean spirit, Gothic monks
such as Robert Grossetteste and Roger Bacon began to imagine the heavens and
the universe as a great cosmic mathematical harmony. The medieval cosmos,
apotheosized by Dante, was that of a giant perpetual motion machine governed by
angels (Ebert, 1999). This was a radical theological and scientific upheaval in
which God was re-cast as a creator and operator of the great cosmic appliance.
It is no coincidence that the first mechanical clocks were constructed at this time
inspired by the mechanical image of the cosmos. Medieval clocks primarily
served as astrological calendars to imitate the perpetual motion machine of the
heavens. Zajonc (1998) considers that the clock marked a decisive point in the
evolution of western thought as it promoted the idea of a created, mechanistic
natural world. People were no-longer regulated by the movement of the sun or the
stars at night, they were freed from nature and could order their lives by the hours
of the mechanical clock – mankind in some measure became shaped by the
machine it adored. The new science of mechanism allowed an explosion of
technological inventions at this time – such as mirrors, water mills, sawmills, the
spinning wheel, eyeglasses, the compass, guns, windmills, the printing press to
name but a few.
The shift in orientation of the western mind at this time was huge (Ebert op cit).
For the first time, it was suggested that knowledge of nature didn’t need reference
to super-natural powers, but that reasoning could be applied through mathematics,
experimentation and observation to understand the divinely created machine.
Inspired by the works of Plato and Aristotle, an intriguing central protagonist in
the development of science was Roger Bacon (1214-1292) – an English
philosopher and deeply committed Franciscan friar. By strongly promoting
experimental study and careful observation over reliance on authority, he rejected
the accepted method of undertaking study by blindly accepting prior authorities
(both in theology and science). His quest was for a ‘universal science’ that should
ultimately serve Christianity and, through its application, improve the human
condition.
Bacon might therefore be considered one of the earliest European advocates of the
modern scientific method and mechanistic thought. Variably described as
brilliant, combative and somewhat eccentric, he endeavoured to take advantage of
a new learning while remaining true to his Christian ideology and faith. Bacon’s
Opus Majus contains treatments, often resting heavily upon Greek or Islamic
forbearers, of mathematics, optics and alchemy - including the manufacture of
gunpowder, and the positions and sizes of the celestial bodies. He prophetically
8
anticipated inventions such as microscopes, telescopes, spectacles, flying
machines, hydraulics and steam ships. At one time he was reportedly flung into
prison on charge of making Faustian pacts with the devil – his envisioned
machines being considered evil manifestations!
In the Opus Majus, Bacon states that mathematics is the ‘door and key …to come
to certitude without doubt, and to truth without error, we must place the
foundations of knowledge in mathematics’. Bortoft (2011) remarks how
astonishing this thinking was some 800 years ago in encapsulating the one-sided
mathematical (mechanistic) approach that modern western science still has at its
heart
One cannot depart discussion of Roger Bacon without making reference to his
influence on the use of geometric perspective in art. Bacon can be credited as
being the driving force behind the use of three-dimensional Euclidian space which
revolutionised art through the development of geometric perspective imagery.
Employed exclusively for religious purposes, such imagery, portraying physical
rather than metaphysical relationships, appeared truly magical and astonishing to
ordinary people of the day and exactly what was needed to win over converts.
Painters became leading mathematicians and their art was a form of applied
mathematics and geometry – indeed Galileo is known to have taught geometric
perspective at an art academy. Wertheim (1997) considers such a
‘Pythagorisation’ of Christianity and the development of perspective imagery
conditioned a mathematical and rational mode of thinking which was to seed the
scientific revolution.
Science then flourished and diversified into the Renaissance of the 15th century
within an adventurous intellectual atmosphere which saw not only profound
changes in philosophy, aesthetics, art, literature, politics and religion but also in
science. Indeed, a radical shift in worldview was occurring and natural
phenomena were explained in rational physical or mathematical terms rather than
spiritual. There was a revolutionary new way of learning about the world through
focussing on empirical evidence, using mathematics and disregarding the
Aristotelian causes or ideals in favour of a mechanical worldview. Influential
proponents of such ideas included Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac Newton,
Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon. All were seeking God in his role as the
mathematical creator of the machine.
2.3
Science in service of the divine
Copernicus, with his radical heliocentric model for the heavens in 1514, and
Kepler with his theory of elliptical planetary orbits, were remarkable mathematical
achievements of this period. These revelations were to spark the so-called
9
scientific revolution when religion, superstition, and fear were replaced by reason
and empirical knowledge. Wertheim (1997) sees Copernicus as the very arrival of
modern ‘Mathematical Man’. The heliocentric theory ran entirely contrary to the
evidence the senses and Abram (1991) suggests that it precipitated a schism
between the sensing body and the reflective, thinking intellect. Suddenly, people
were told that they could not believe their sensual experiences of the sun arcing
across the sky and the stationary solidity of the Earth beneath their feet. The way
the world was perceived had been dramatically undermined and ‘henceforth a
new, modern distrust of the senses, and of the apparent world revealed by the
bodily senses, began to spread throughout Europe.’ (Abram, ibid).
Both Kepler and Galileo demonstrated that the universe was organised
mathematically and that scientific progress was achieved by rigorously comparing
mathematical hypotheses with empirical observations. Galileo’s great
accomplishment was his ‘discovery’ of the laws of motion for bodies near the
earth using a series of experiments. Still a deeply religious pursuit, Galileo
maintained that science should guide biblical interpretation concerning natural
truths; that science should aim for ‘demonstrated truth’ about the world.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), an English philosopher and scientist, together with the
French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650), elaborated on the Galilean
scientific method and distanced its practice from religious activity. Bacon was a
fervent lobbyist of the new science and became known as the ‘father of
empiricism’ and the originator of the Baconian (or scientific) method. In his
magnum opus, Novum Organum, or ‘new instrument’, Francis Bacon argued that
the scientist should proceed through inductive reasoning from fact to axiom to
physical law. Challenging subjectivism or other ways of knowing he wrote:
‘the imagination must be given not wings but weights’
‘man is but the servant and interpreter of nature: what he knows and what
he does is only what he has observed of nature's order in fact or in
thought; beyond this he knows nothing and can do nothing’
Bacon was a strong advocate for state involvement in scientific inquiry and when
in office under Queen Elizabeth I, he advocated for the employment of a Minister
for Science and Technology (which was never realised). Later under King James,
he wrote ‘The King should take order for the collecting and perfecting of a Natural
and Experimental History … so that philosophy and the sciences may no longer
float in air, but rest on the solid foundation of experience of every kind.’ For
Bacon, matters of policy were inseparable from philosophy and science by making
the future direction of government more rational and to avoid the mistakes of the
past. Ironically and intriguingly, it is thought that his dedication to his scientific
10
method probably led to his death by bringing him into contact into a rare historical
group of scientists who were killed by their own experiments.
At much the same time that Bacon was expounding his philosophy, on the other
side of the English Channel the philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes
was also developing his form of the new empirical mechanistic science. He was to
invent the Cartesian coordinate system and founded analytic geometry. And he
was of course author of the famous phrase ‘Cogito ergo sum’: I think, therefore I
am, or: I am thinking, therefore I exist. In the face of widely practiced and the
culturally entrenched and heretical animistic magi (the ‘natural magicians’ or
alchemists), Descartes fervently argued that mathematics was the foundation for
true knowledge of the physical world and of God.
At the heart of Descartes rationalism lay God, and he envisaged a science that
would harmonise with Roman Catholic theology (Wertheim, 1997). He also
believed that science and religion (true to his reductionist philosophy) could be
separated into distinct compartments and perused in isolation from each other. But
fundamentally, science was a kind of natural theology which was expected by the
church to provide an insight to the creator and guide theological thinking.
Of importance in terms of our present day cultural world-view, Descartes
promoted an extremely mathematical, reductionist and mechanical conception of
the world as matter in motion. Phenomena not reducible to matter in motion (such
as thought and sense perceptions such as colour) he considered as separate from
the natural world and therefore off-limits to science. Within such a convenient
strictly mechanical, cause and effect view of nature he regarded all non-human life
forms as mindless machines but he regarded only humans to have soul on religious
grounds – thus promoting the idea of the mind-matter dualism or split. His radical
separation of mind and matter retains a strong presence in our culture today – with
immeasurable consequences: the split between what he called res extensia – the
material world of matter in motion (including the human body), and res cogitans,
the immaterial world of spirit, thoughts, feelings, emotions.
Cartesian science involved a mix of empirical, philosophical and teleological
thinking. But it must be noted that Descartes had an aversion to searching for a
divine purpose in Nature as he regarded it presumptuous in the extreme to
speculate on Gods purpose. Echoing Spinoza, he thought that invoking Gods will
in science is to take refuge in the ‘sanctuary of ignorance’. Thus, perhaps the
origin of an abhorrence of any whiff of teleology in our practice of modern
science.
Undoubtedly the genius of the ongoing scientific revolution was Isaac Newton
(1642-1727) who absorbed the Galilean, Baconian and Cartesian philosophies of
11
mechanical cause-and-effect and evolved then greater heights to forge a
‘Newtonian cosmology’. Born on Christmas day of the year of Galileo’s death
and inventor of the telescope (which propelled him into the public arena), he
completed the Copernican revolution by quantitatively establishing the incredible
notion of Universal Gravitation (Tarnas, 1991). His astonishing courage,
imagination and originality led to his great achievements in optics, physics and
mathematics which dwarf those of any other natural philosopher – he is ranked
with the likes of Darwin and Einstein.
It is also not widely appreciated that Newton, like many of his forebears in
science, was also secretly deeply interested in natural magic or alchemy, and later
in his life he spent more time on it than on physics (he left over half a million
words on the subject!). He was secretive both because the alchemists regarded
themselves as an elite illuminae who shielded their knowledge from unworthy
minds, and also because he wanted to project a strictly orthodox view of himself.
Newton synthesised Descartes mechanistic philosophy, Kepler’s laws of planetary
motion, and Galileo’s laws of terrestrial motion under his three laws of motion,
and the more esoteric but quantifiable theory of universal gravitation. All the
major cosmological problems were solved – what moved the planets, how they
remained in orbit, why objects fall to the earth. Newton had apparently discovered
the grand design of the universe and was hailed a genius. After the publication of
his Principa Mathematica Philosopiae Naturalis in 1687 his method and
conclusions were recognised as the paradigm for scientific practice. In fact, no
subsequent modern scientist, except perhaps Darwin, has had such an immense
impact on our western society and upon science as Newton.
2.4
Science and freedom
Science and the Newtonian-Cartesian enlightenment began to break free of an
oppressive medieval theology between the 15th and 17th centuries, but it was not
until much later (probably the early 20th century) that science severed all its
connections to religion to become ‘truly’ secular. Up until now, scientists were
deeply convicted that that they were recovering the true knowledge of God. The
potent germ of the modern scientific world-view of mechanism, materialism and
the rights of the individual therefore began with an uneasy compromise and
awkward tension with the church and spirituality. Whilst still enamoured and
inspired by the classical past, science effectively liberated thinking individuals
from the grips of oppressive religious hegemony, superstition and ignorance.
Yet as science made more and more radical discoveries, it became increasingly
difficult to reconcile it with theological doctrine. Although the deeply rooted
Christian faith remained a strong cultural influence, science gradually came to
12
pertain to an entirely different realm and no genuine integration seemed possible.
Science and religion were simultaneously vital but discrepant, the cultures’ worldview was split (Tarnas, 1991). Religion became compartmentalised from the outer
world, but remained important to many, but is very clear that the church
experienced science and the enlightenment as heretical and a very serious threat.
Increasingly, individuals realised a freedom to think for themselves, were
encouraged to be curious about the world and to be sceptical of religious
orthodoxies. Ultimately, it offered a new epistemological certainty focused now
on the material, physical world – the improvement of the human physical
condition, technical invention and the control of nature. The unfolding scientific
worldview was also transmitted into the social realm – antiquated dictatorial
monarchies, aristocratic power and privilege and clerical censorship were
gradually replaced by new structures based on individual rights (Tarnas, ibid).
Midgely (1992) also views the enlightenment value-system as being centred on a
strong moral campaign exalting values such as freedom, independence, activity,
autonomy, honesty, moral courage over the more hierarchical ones such as loyalty,
love, reverence, faith and discretion. The central unit of this new cosmology was
to become the individual, not society. No dogmatic authority was needed and
every individual could attain knowledge of the empirical world.
So the shift to a scientific cosmology brought western culture an apparent
independent maturity, and indeed it must have appeared to some as an invigorating
freedom. Goodwin (2007) ponders that the truly liberating aspect of the scientific
method developed during the enlightenment may not have been originally the
experimental study, quantification and mechanisation of nature, but the process or
procedure whereby individuals reach consensus about their knowledge through
engaging with a community of practice. This captures the essence of the modern
scientific paradigm, the scientific method, which encompasses a set of beliefs,
values and methods agreed upon by a scientific community.
What is significant is that the scene was set for the transformation of western
culture to one based on individual liberty, rationality and materialism. It is a
mistake to generalise the shift to the early modern scientific worldview as a kind
of inclusive enlightenment, a sudden epiphany. In reality it must have been a
continuously evolving process seeping gradually into the western psyche over
centuries. It is a process which is still continuing, although hopefully we are on
the cusp of steering away from a worldview which places us not in the centre as
masters and controllers, but rather as participants in the web of life on this planet.
13
Chapter 3: Crusades Against Nature and a Runaway Machine
In this chapter I wish to further examine the evolution of science as the dominating
influence on the western psyche, in particular how it separated from its religious
roots and simultaneously caused a profoundly destructive rupture between the
western psyche and nature. In this dialogue, the role of the conflict between
Christianity and the traditional, deeply entrenched culture of animistic ‘natural
magic’ is particularly interesting. The eventual triumph of mechanistic
reductionist science, through its alignment with religion, marginalised and
persecuted the age-old deeply animistic traditions and set western culture on an
exciting yet treacherous course. Eventually God, as original creator of the great
cosmic machine, was evicted from the picture and we are left with a secular
mechanistic cosmology devoid of meaning or soul or creativity, which still
harbours fundamental relics of the Christian cosmology it tried to rout.
I conclude the chapter asking the question: has the radical mind-matter split,
epitomized by the reductionism and mechanism of the scientific method, bought
western civilisation past a ‘golden era’ of astonishing technological advance and
dominion over nature, to the brink of unprecedented social, economic and
environmental crises?
3.1
The fight against magic
With the scientific revolution, the human mind and the material world became
well and truly separated in the early modern mind. It is fair to say that the human
mind was conceived as separate from, and superior to, the rest of nature. The
modern universe came to have an intrinsic order, but not one emanating from a
cosmic intelligence in which we are all participants, as the Greeks had thought.
Rather, the subjective mind and objective world became distinct and operated on
different principles. A rationally empowered capacity to manipulate and control
the material world and nature became the modern paradigm of the human
relationship with nature (Tarnas, 1991).
The pioneers of mechanism therefore reshaped the very concept of nature in our
psyche in a very profound and somewhat destructive way. The first step was a
radical depersonalisation which was followed by a zealous attitude akin to all-out
war against nature – to wring out her secrets and conquer her. To illustrate the
emerging worldview in early modern science and its destructive attitude to nature,
Midgely (1992) presents common adjectives and phrases used by early science
writers of the 16th to 18th centuries: ‘to tame’, ‘to torture’, ‘to lay bare’, ‘to
conquer’, ‘to vanquish’, ‘to fight’, ‘to overcome’. Indeed, it is not at all
14
uncommon to hear some of these expressions even today when referring to the
natural world. Francis Bacon provides a particularly colourful example of the
prevailing attitude to nature: ‘mankind must conquer and subdue nature, to shake
her to her foundations’. Later the eminent 19th century geologist, Adam
Sedgewick, professor at Cambridge and staunch evangelist not to mention antiDarwinist, expressed that following the formulation of laws, that scientists must
always ‘again put nature to torture and wring new secrets from her’.
What strikes me in such language is that it communicates a fanatical tone of
struggle, persecution and brutality – for it was not just inanimate matter they were
referring to, it was the whole of the non-human realm of organisms as well. I need
to get to the bottom of this somewhat disturbing attitude for it seems there is
considerably more going on than a curious and innocent quest for knowledge. Is
there a dark underbelly to the disturbing zealous crusade against nature – remnants
of which persists in our modern western psyche? It clearly must be rooted in
man’s perception of himself a lord and master of the universe, even in our present
secular culture – the origins of which lie in a Christian ideology. But this does not
explain the zeal and brutality against nature from the 17th century onwards.
Abram (1991) offers an illuminating discourse around this question. He
propositions that many of the Renaissance natural scientists that we associate with
the mechanistic worldview in fact had intimate links with alchemy and animistic
‘natural magic’. The alchemists held a magical participatory worldview in which
the world and all matter was living and imbued with a matrix of subtle powers and
immanent forces. For instance, Copernicus quotes Egyptian magician Hermes
Trismegistus in writing of the sun as the visible God; Kepler’s mother was
imprisoned and nearly executed for practicing witchcraft on the evidence of
Kepler's own writings; Francis Bacon, the ‘father’ of experimental science, saw his
scientific method as a refinement of the tradition of natural magic. Isaac Newton
was, according to Abram, one of the greatest of all natural magicians, who
engaged in extensive alchemical researches that occupied him throughout his life.
His secrets, only recently revealed, lead Wertheim (1997) to pronounce:
‘mathematician and magician, physicist and alchemist, no one has stepped more
firmly on the ‘true’ path and yet made so many excursions into the arcane
wilderness as Isaac Newton’.
It is poignant to ask why so many of the brilliant scientific minds of the
renaissance were engaged in alchemy and natural magic – I proffer that they were
expressing an innate need to connect to nature in a way which was denied by a
mechanistic detached science.
15
Yet, paradoxically all these and other great scientific minds claimed also to be
campaigning on behalf of Christianity. Midgley (1991) thinks this was not just a
political move to appease the church hegemony, but a matter of real conviction.
So we have an apparent tension between natural magic and a powerful,
authoritarian theological doctrine – often within the same person. It appears that a
powerful religion won the day (the Roman Inquisition was a formidable persuasive
force at this time) and came to dictate the course of science, and through it came a
necessity to stamp out a personified nature imbued with heretical meaning.
Abram (op cit) goes on to explain that the Christianised mechanistic worldview
came to dominate science due to the abhorrent threat perceived by the church from
the deeply heretical tradition of alchemical and natural magic, or ‘witchcraft’.
Since the true source of reality was deemed to be the external Christian god, a
mechanical philosophy – that of a metaphorical machine – allowed for the role of
an external creator, the builder of the machine. A mechanical philosophy implied
a denigration of corporeal matter – not exactly as fallen, sinful and demonic, but as
barren, inert, and ultimately dead. Such a cosmology enabled an alliance between
17th century science and the church to be forged without fear of reprisal or the
banishment of scientific activity. In order for science to survive, mechanism
needed to become its central tenet – and continues to be so.
So the early 17th century scientists believed themselves responsible for purging
and purifying the world in a destructive cleansing, sweeping away superstitions
and rubbish that lay in the way of true, divine knowledge. Nature, the magicians
and alchemists were their target. The disinterestedness or impersonality of modern
science, Midgley believes, was founded entirely on this attitude.
3.2
A lost reverence for Nature
I believe we all possess a conscious or unconscious, often suppressed or
unrecognised, deep reverence for nature. It is part of our humanity, or naturalness,
for deep down we know we are nature, and she is us. The Greeks, and Aristotle in
particular, encouraged wonder, awe and reverence towards nature. But this was
unacceptable to Descartes and others of the scientific revolution who found any
reverence or personification of nature abhorrent. Robert Boyle (1627-1691), the
founder of modern chemistry and a pioneer of the scientific method, was to write
‘the veneration wherein men are imbued for what they call nature has been a
discouraging impediment to the empire of man over the inferior creatures of God’.
Wonder, reverence and a sense of mystery were to cease. Explanations were to
become so clear that there would be no mystery – everything was to become
depersonified and matter (including all non-human life forms) became inert,
passive, mindless, and above all destitute of any creative power. All pleasing
16
forms in nature were credited not to belong to matter, but to the Creator. God was
seen as active, intellectual and creative – there was no concept that these attributes
could be assigned to nature herself. At least this was the story they told
themselves and expected others to abide by (in public at least).
Yet as Midgley (1992) reasons ‘if we claim that it is worth pursuing the physical
sciences, we are surely committed to thinking that awe and reverence are
appropriate reactions to the physical world’. I would argue that many scientists,
now and during the Renaissance, do approach nature in this way – for it is a very
human and natural attribute. For this is the very reason I pursued my passion for
the natural world through the sciences. I believe there is a yawning gap between
the individual scientist and the collective scientific mind, or the scientific
community which is filled with subjective, organic, imaginative and intuitive
spirit. Much like the Renaissance mechanistic idealists who engaged in alchemy,
it is the collective that dictates a dispassionate, disinterested, objective stance into
which the individual must conform to achieve any kind of credibility.
3.3
The eviction of God and a new faith
Even God was eventually evicted in the 19th and 20th centuries and, some two
centuries after Newton, the emphatic secularity of science was fully established.
Science could no longer be reconciled with the Christian faith and attendant
supernatural phenomena. It seems likely that the rift was caused by factors such as
the newly found right of any individual to question the establishment, a
widespread questioning of scriptural authenticity, the freedom to confront
theological dogma, and the challenge posed to the creation story and the primacy
of man by Darwin’s theory of evolution. The west began to loose its faith – and
discovered a new one in science, and in man.
However, it is interesting how our modern western secular psyche has retained
essential unconscious elements which are central to Christianity, notably: ethical
values, the faith in human reason to understand the universe, the belief in man’s
dominion over nature, moral self-responsibility; the right to overcome and subdue
what it perceives as a threat. Perhaps the most poignant for our present discussion
is the belief in mans linear progress to ultimate fulfilment in prosperity, happiness
and freedom (‘salvation’) based on an underlying trust that we can be saved by
expanding human knowledge (Tarnas, 1991). These are all patently recognisable
traits of our modern secular world-view – traits which have resulted in a profound
influence on the history of western culture, the kind of society we have built, our
values, how we relate to others of different cultures, and how we relate to our
environment.
17
All in all, ‘secular’ science took over the divinely created mechanistic
mathematical worldview piecemeal and unaltered, while at the same time it
eliminated the Creator who gave sense to it, and eliminated the immortal soul
which gave man his elevated status. The idea of the machine and man’s status
were clearly too precious to relinquish! As Midgley so eloquently expresses:
‘The metaphor of matter as machinery still continues to run around like a
chicken with its head cut off, though the Designer who gave sense to it has
been removed’ Midgley 1992
3.4
The mechanistic dream: an adolescent ideal leading to inevitable
crises?
We tend to view science as having developed with a quality of necessity and
ultimate truth, yet the preceding account makes it all too clear the founders of
modern science were deeply rooted in both magical and alchemical gothic and
medieval world-views, and embedded within a very powerful Roman Catholic
theology. What came out of this complex historical morass was a devout
dedication to the mathematical, mechanical and reductionist ways of knowing. It
is not the only way of understanding the world, of obtaining reliable knowledge,
but it was a way that was generated by a historical and cultural context.
David Peat (1999) reflects on the dream of the scientific revolution, that of the
perfectly ordered universe in which each part smoothly fitted with each other, like
the cogs of a Swiss clock. Scientists could then understand the workings of nature
and control her, thus providing us with the illusion that everything can be
predicted through detailed analysis of cause and effect. It is an astonishing dream
which we see today expanded to embrace absolutely everything – from human
psychology to economics, to sub atomic physics, to anatomy. Clearly there must
be considerable benefit for the adoption of this world-view, though arguably the
pendulum has swung too far at the expense of an immeasurable impoverishment of
both our own wellbeing and that of all nature.
So, has the dream turned into a nightmare in which there is no room for values,
ethics, spirituality or qualities? The world has become a machine with no creator
or meaning, and mankind’s status is elevated to that of the God he evicted, holding
a deep belief in his own primacy and his right to dominion over the earth. Matter
has become devoid of meaning, purpose creativity and intelligence – reduced to
nothing more than a chemical accident within an indifferent universe.
18
Western culture has lost reverence for, and belief in, something greater than itself.
We have replaced reverence with feelings such as contempt, horror, resentment,
fear, hostility and the ambition to dominate and exploit. If our curiosity is in no
way respectful, if we don’t see the material world of phenomena as joined with us,
as related to us, then it appears that our curiosity shrinks, corrupts and becomes a
form of predation (Midgley, 1992). Such an impoverished world-view is surely a
recipe for disaster.
Are we now just beginning to see the negative consequences of the Frankenstein
we have created, the hitherto miraculous reductive, mechanistic dream predicated
on a relentless exploitation of nature – like an accident happening in slow motion?
Are these consequences reflected in the overwhelming current social, economic
and environmental crises? There seems to be a growing consensus amongst many
scholars and visionaries today that this is sadly the case.
One of the most hotly debated subjects amongst scientists and philosophers today
is that of the limitations of science. Bouratinos (2011) poses the question: is there
something lacking or wrong with the scientific method? Should the fundamental
premises underlying the scientific method be examined and is there something
wrong with the very way that nature is objectified? He argues that the scientific
method provides us with only one, albeit very useful, way of understanding the
world and we have become blinkered to other equally valid ways of knowing. Our
world-view has become dangerously unbalanced and skewed to the
rational/material realms. Karl Jung talks of the ‘rationalist neuroses’ and
‘rationalist superstitions’ of our age. Others, such as Mary Midgely, speak of the
‘myth of science’.
The very call for us to reflect on the way we do science implicitly challenges our
entire cultural paradigm, for the two are so tightly interwoven. So is there hope
and what are the alternatives? Indeed how can world-views change, through
catastrophe or intentionally considered ethical design, or through a natural
evolution a deeper collective psyche? First, an exploration how we obtain
knowledge as a basis for exploring these very big questions.
19
Chapter 4: Finding Our Bearings – An Enquiry into Knowing
The previous chapter identified that the root cause of the crises we face at the
moment is fundamentally a crisis of perception. Our (western) cultural landscape,
with its predominant scientific outlook, conditions us to see the world as an
observer through an analytical, material and reductionist lens. But how can our
science, embedded within its own particular cultural context and strongly biased to
a single epistemological paradigm, give rise to a knowledge that holds universal
understanding and truth?
Science does not concern itself with the process of obtaining knowledge about the
world, let alone question it! The idea of this chapter is for me, as a scientist, to
explore the different ways we acquire knowledge about the world and assign
meaning. In no way is this meant to be a detailed academic discourse, rather I
wish to grasp basic epistemological concepts as a means of deepening my
understanding of our scientific mindset and the way we are conditioned to acquire
and value only certain kinds of knowledge. This will form the basis of my
subsequent exploration of how we can regain our bearings so that we can
honourably and sustainably participate in life on this earth by enriching the ways
we see.
4.1
Modes of consciousness
A good starting point to this subject is the recognition that we innately have two
modes of consciousness (or ways of seeing) which are complimentary, and which
must operate together as a whole. These are what can be variably called the
analytic (or reductionist, materialistic), and the holistic (or integrative) modes of
consciousness. We could also say this in another way – that humans have two
cognitive poles: ‘science-knowledge’ and ‘meaning-values’ which do not tend to
overlap. This is also expressed by the separated realms of science, knowledge and
reason on the one side (to which our education system is geared almost
exclusively) and religion, arts and meaning on the other. To have a balanced life
we engage in both, separately.
The two modes are thought to have manifested in different ways in different
cultures at different times (Harding, 2006). For instance, clearly our western
techno-scientific culture is dominated by the analytic-reductionist mode, whilst the
holistic mode is severely diminished and largely unconscious in a general sense.
In the analytic mode, everything is perceived to be external to everything else and
it is this separation which leads to a reductive, sequential and analytic way of
thinking. The principals of mechanical causality, separation and division are
20
typical ways of thinking in this mode. It has the effect of placing us ‘outside’ and
has consequently facilitated extraordinary practical and material expertise, and at
the same time has freed us from the dogmas of tradition and fundamentalism
(Kaplan, 2002). But it also appears to have paradoxically led us into a new kind of
materialistic fundamentalism. Could it be that this way of thinking and being is
the easiest and most comforting way to live in a world of infinite complexity,
change, paradox and mystery? By reducing and simplifying on a purely material
level we can build the illusion that we can know and explain all, and ultimately
control our fate. It perhaps originated as a basic survival mode whereby our basic
day to day needs could be met. Such a paradigm has nonetheless provided
extraordinary practical and material expertise but at the same time has created a
growing and problematic disconnect between ourselves the rest of nature. Within
the dominating analytic mode of consciousness, our focus has shifted to the
individual as an observer within a purely material realm.
The holistic mode of consciousness is complementary to the analytic one – and
could be described as systemic thinking. It is non-linear, simultaneous, concerned
more with relationships and pattern than discrete elements, intuitive, imaginative
and creative. Indigenous cultures, for example the San in Botswana or the
Aborigines in Australia, have a consciousness dominated by the holistic,
integrative mode which is expressed through their animistic worldview. The
holistic mode results in a way of being which fosters a sense of being part of, or
being participants in the web of life (the antithesis of analytical mode).
4.2
Ways of knowing
The two modes of consciousness can be further elucidated by exploring different
epistemologies – ways in which we gather knowledge and see meaning in the
world. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung described four basic psychological functions
(ways of knowing) that are capable of becoming conscious: intuition, sensation,
feeling, and thinking. These are explained by Jung (1921); comments in brackets
are mine:
♦
under sensation I include all perceptions by means of the sense organs
(direct apprehension of things around us by means of our physical
bodies);
♦
by thinking, I mean the function of intellectual cognition and the
forming of logical conclusions (the logical, rational mind);
♦
feeling is a function of subjective evaluation;
21
♦
intuition I take as perception by way of unconscious contents and
connections (yields a sense of deeper meaning).
The functions are envisaged as two pairs of opposites (as a ‘mandala’) as shown
by the diagram below.
Intuition (perceptive)
Feeling (evaluates) Thinking (interprets) Sensing (perceptive) Jung goes on to explain that, in his experience, there are only these four basic
functions which we employ to acquire knowledge and interpret the world. Each
person has a propensity towards one of each of the pairs of the functions, whilst
the opposite ones tend to remain unconscious or undeveloped. When one
conscious position is extreme, the position of the other extreme will exist in the
unconscious, causing a neurosis or a maladaptation to consciousness. Ideally, to
have a balanced view of the world, the four functions should work in equal
measure in the psyche since each function provides its own special kind of
knowledge.
‘Since every man, as a relatively stable being, possesses all the basic
psychological functions, it would be a psychological necessity with a view
to perfect adaptation that he should also employ them in equal measure’
Jung
The interplay and tension of conscious and unconscious opposites, as well as
opposites in general, is a feature of Jung's thinking and in his writing. Could it be
that optimal freedom and creativity can only occur when this is the case?
It is possible to apply the Jungian modes of knowing on a more general level to
communities and cultures since the prevailing individual paradigms and values
22
will tend to dictate the collective cosmology or psyche of a culture as a whole.
Our western culture with its secular scientific core strongly values and encourages
the thinking mode. The opposite undeveloped mode is feeling, the evaluative,
ethical function which is certainly discouraged or avoided by science. The other
two modes of intuition and sensing are clearly essential for science and I would
argue that they underpin the thinking mode. However, they are not fully (if at all),
acknowledged in the scientific method – being strongly tainted with subjectivism.
According to Jung, such a severe imbalance and a forced lack of freedom to
develop balancing modes inevitably results in neuroses or a maladaptation.
We have already explored the likelihood that modern science has led its host
western cultures to a severely unbalanced view of the world resulting in evident
neuroses and negative consequences on an inconceivable scale. Science embraces
a purely thinking/analytical mode of consciousness and currently repels any
holistic counterbalance. So it appears that the crises we face must indeed be crises
of how we collectively as a culture perceive the world.
Would a good model for science therefore be to ensure that the two modes of
consciousness and Jung’s ways of knowing are integrated and balanced? How can
such cognitive pluralism be achieved in science? We are already beginning to see
the emergence of holism in science which embraces both qualities and quantities.
But first, I wish to be clear on the current epistemological paradigm of the
scientific method as a starting point.
4.3
The scientist’s worldview
‘Man is a stranger in the world he has created’ (Willemain le Roux)
Science is a blend of empiricism and rationalism and is distinguished more by its
method than by its subject matter. It is emphatically dependent upon the
rational/analytical mode of consciousness which values the power of logic and
reasoning above all else. Kaplan (2002) provides a very insightful description the
basic empirical standpoint (propositioned by philosophers Hume and Kant) as
being informed by the following fundamental supposition:
‘that while we can legitimately apprehend, and comment on, that which is
present directly to our senses, we cannot make other than subjective
suppositions about the connections between phenomena’
In other words, science believes that discrete phenomena perceived through our
senses can be objectively validated, while the relationships between them (our
concepts) are subjective ideas. The only things that can be really known about the
23
world are single unrelated parts, we cannot see wholes and we cannot trust our
concepts. According to Kaplan, this leads to the most profound scepticism in
which divided and dead matter is all we have legitimate access to. Meaning,
perceived wholeness, and the formative forces which give rise to the material
world are regarded as subjective and figments of our imagination. Kaplan
chillingly propositions:
‘that by so dismissing our own involvement in the world and reducing
ourselves to be onlookers rather and participants, have we not condemned
ourselves to a cold alienated existence?’ (Kaplan, 2002)
It is this form of thinking that frames our mental landscape – characterised by its
sceptical, reductionist and observer (rather than participant) approaches.
According to Harding (2006) the scientific analytical mode of being marginalises
the phenomenon under investigation and denies any kind of perception of intrinsic
value which would require other cognitive modes of knowing such as intuition,
sensing and feeling.
The style of thinking that modern science values most is reductionism – we break
down the phenomena into its component parts in order to understand the workings
of the whole – much like a machine, the great divine machine of the Renaissance.
We then create abstract models and theories to represent our findings. In the end
we eventually mistake our theoretical constructs and models for reality itself.
There is a certain kind of intellectual slaying that occurs when we distance
ourselves of the physical world in such a way and replace it with a mental
abstraction.
Harding (ibid) goes on to explain that reductionism, as being the central axiom of
western science, is built on a broader set of assumptions:
♦
♦
♦
objects matter more than relationships
the world is ordered hierarchically
knowledge can and must be objective – the knower can be totally
detached from the known.
These characteristic not only apply to science but also to every other facet of our
culture - such as in social situations (focussing more on structure than
relationships), education and economics.
To quote quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg, such a paradigm ‘[exposes] not
nature itself, but nature exposed to our mode of questioning’. It is perfect for
advancing technology and for practical and material mastery over the external
24
world. But because reductionism removes connections, relationships and context
we loose a sense of coherence and integrity, indeed we loose life itself. For these
reasons it is becoming increasingly apparent that the success of reductionism is
very limited in areas such as physics, biology, geology and ecology, not to
mention in the human social realm, where complex non-linear interactions and
relationships are more important than the quantification of matter (Harding, ibid).
Is science therefore inadequate on its own for the study of living process and the
rich and hugely complex web of life? That science does provide one useful way of
knowing the material world, a concrete description of a reality, is patently evident.
But the denial of balancing ways of knowing is beginning to undermine its
concrete foundation and the alarm bells are now ringing loudly in many quarters.
In the same vein, Sir Arthur Eddington (1929) provides a lucid evaluation on the
paradigm of the physical sciences: ‘We have therefore learned that the exploration
of the external world by the methods of the physical sciences leads not to a
concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods
are unadapted for penetrating.’
Having therefore attempted a characterisation of the general cultural paradigm of
western science, it is important to spend some time grounding ourselves by
examining the experience of the individual practitioner of science in the field, or in
the laboratory. Through personal experience, I believe that at this personal level
we see an innately human and earnest engagement with nature using different
ways of knowing. Unfortunately, the practice and processes of the individual
usually go unnoticed, and our work soon gets projected into a detached objectivist
space to be presented to peers and the scientific community under the unspoken
auspices of the ‘scientific method’.
4.4
Reviewing the scientific method
In essence, the scientific method encompasses a set of beliefs, values and methods
agreed upon by an informal peer network which we call ‘the scientific
community’. The tenet of consensus is central, yet subtle and complex, for there is
no single community ‘out there’ and there is no ultimate hierarchical authority.
The following description of the scientific method (purported to be a ‘transcultural’ activity by the author) has been directly copied from the University of
California website:
25
The scientific method is the best way yet discovered for winnowing the truth
from lies and delusion. The simple version looks something like this:
•
•
•
•
•
1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent
with what you have observed.
3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and
modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory
and experiment and/or observation.
When consistency is obtained the hypothesis becomes a theory and
provides a coherent set of propositions which explain a class of
phenomena. A theory is then a framework within which observations are
explained and predictions are made.
Implicit in the terminology is the principle that ultimate truth is only attainable
though empiricism and analytical reasoning leading to an abstraction of the
phenomenon observed.
The almost arrogant and dogmatic tone of this description of the scientific method
is indeed a sad and disturbing indictment to our culture, and a profound tragedy
both for humanity and for the earth in the light of previous discussion. However, I
do believe that such a paradigm is now realised by many to be antiquated and
deficient, and that such a realisation is providing impetus for a new kind of
science.
From a different perspective, and from within a sociological context, Merton
(1942) provides a judicious description of what he sees as the four ideals of
science that he takes to be its goals and methods, under the well known acronym
‘cudos’:
•
•
•
•
Communalism – the common ownership of scientific discoveries,
according to which scientists give up intellectual property in exchange for
recognition and esteem.
Universalism – according to which claims to truth are evaluated in terms of
universal or impersonal criteria, and not on the basis of race, class, gender,
religion, or nationality;
Disinterestedness – according to which scientists are rewarded for acting in
ways that outwardly appear to be selfless;
Organized skepticism – all ideas must be tested and are subject to rigorous,
structured community scrutiny.
26
There are positive qualities inherent in the way we practice science which we
should be careful not to dismiss. Organised scepticism could perhaps be reframed
as consensus which I belief to be very crucial within science; the concept of
universalism is also a laudable goal. Another positive quality of modern science is
that each individual is hypothetically perfectly free to pursue his or her own
agenda. The term ‘hypothetical’ is stressed since this freedom is rarely realised
due influential political, commercial or institutional agendas which today control
much scientific activity. But in theory, this freedom is in fact the beauty of the
scientific method in its purest form, although paradoxically it throws up all sorts of
questions regarding the supposed objectivism that scientists hold as sacrosanct.
A serious challenge to the paramount goal of objectivism in science comes from
the implicit assumption that we can rely on our senses to provide pure objective
knowledge of the physical world. Modern advances in cogitative neuroscience
now tell us that we could not function in the world if this were the case – rather we
instantaneously assign meaning in the moment of perception; we unavoidably and
unconsciously ‘see’ (subjective) meaning not merely sense impressions. We are
now aware that science is in fact a ‘hermeneutical’ activity – meaning that the
perception of phenomena should not be thought of as a reception of objective data
but as already containing unconscious meaning or interpretation which we assign
in the seeing. In this sense, the act of perception is simultaneously an act of
interpretation. The nature of hermeneutic activity is to become invisible and
seamless with the act of perceiving.
This clearly calls into question the coherence of the scientific method and its claim
to pure objectivism. I return to this fascinating subject in the following chapter
when I explore a way of encountering phenomena ‘upstream’ of meaning from the
most unlikely source.
An enquiry into how science is actually conducted at a personal level is interesting
because it seems to also contradict the scientific method in a not insignificant way.
Such an enquiry is potentially valuable because it can help guide the way towards
a more authentic values-based science – one which innately connects with the
human spirit.
27
4.5
A personal practice of science: projecting the subjective into an
objective framework
Do we really as individual scientists abide by the strictly ‘objectivist’ and
disinterested requirements of the scientific method? Or must we necessarily, as
human beings as well, incorporate different modes of knowing into our practice,
only to project the real subjective process into objective space when we
communicate our work with our peers and colleagues in the scientific community?
Unfortunately, scientists rarely, if ever, concern themselves with the process of
obtaining knowledge, rather they focus entirely on presenting objectified results
and abstract models or theories.
From personal experience as an earth scientist, I tend to convert the rather organic
process of observation and discovery into a dry inauthentic objectified
presentation of results and abstracted models of discovery. Discovery and
credibility are my focus. But I propose that the path to discovery needs to be (and
in fact always is) highly organic, individual, intuitive and non-linear. The process
is usually left to chance in the individual. There needs to be freedom, imagination
and creativity so that we can dance and play with concepts and ideas. Great
scientists such as Albert Einstein consistently and explicitly stressed that such
imaginative, intuitive freedom is vital to scientific endeavour and discovery.
Indeed, it would be hard to deny that science is ultimately dependent upon
intuition and passion as much as objectivity and logic. But sadly, unlike the
privilege that Einstein held, we are rarely allowed to publically acknowledge such
a process, let alone cultivate it within any teaching curricula.
So, our real process as scientists implies that the scientific method is but the ‘shop
window’ for what really happens behind it. Grinell (2009) offers that the requisite
objectivity in science is found not in the individual at all but in the community of
practice. The individual operates subjectively according to his or her own passions
and cognitive traits but then projects his or her work into an objective framework
overseen by the consensual process of the scientific community. If true, this
proposition makes the ethos of the scientific method entirely incoherent and
inauthentic.
Kuhn (1962), who coined the term ‘paradigm shift’, similarly stressed that
scientific judgements depends upon culture, personal biography and personality –
suggesting that tacit subjective, intuitive knowledge is fundamental to science.
The importance of our personal experience, passions and our human participation
in the phenomena we study is recognised also by a number of writers including
Polanyi, Fleck and Piaget.
28
Sadly then, the scientific method seems to be our accepted formal structure into
which we project and objectify what actually happens in the individual practice of
science. In his philosophical writings, Michael Polanyi argues that such idealistic
positivism not only gives a false account of the practice of science, it also, if taken
seriously, undermines our highest achievements as human beings. I believe that
the true process of science becomes hidden – there is no space to explore, debate
and cultivate the way we do science as guided by intuition, imagination,
personality and passions of the researcher every step of the way. It is exactly this
space that we need in order to have the freedom to evolve science.
So what of the sacred cow of objectivism? Many philosophers of science now
believe that it is in fact impossible to achieve true objectivism. I argue that
objectivity in science is nothing more than an illusory dogma which is demanded
by a culture founded on an impoverished and outmoded scientific doctrine.
However, at the same time I believe that consensus in science is extremely
important which is quite different to the smoke and mirrors of objectivism.
4.6
A reorientation of science: from reductionism to participation
‘Classical science cannot progress without making sense, making connections,
thinking in terms of relationships’ (Kaplan, 2002).
Yet, continues Kaplan, science holds that such thinking is hypothetical and
subjective and is therefore not valid. We have discussed the limitations inherent in
the scientific method and how it is incapable of understanding living complex
systems because reductionism is blind to seeing connections, relationships and
context – there is no concept of coherence or wholeness. It also operates within a
paradigm of illusory and contradictory objectivism.
Acknowledging the benefits that this paradigm has provided, where has this
globally dominating worldview bought us? It is evident that we have had our
snouts firmly in the trough and are relentlessly gorging on the earth’s natural
resources to the point that many ecosystems are on the verge of collapse. The
alarm bells are ringing loudly to deaf ears in many quarters – from economies on
the verge of global collapse, based on the paradigm of limitless growth and natural
resource consumption; to a changing climate with increasing frequencies of
extreme climatic events; to the biggest extinction of species the planet has
witnessed; to the impoverishment and annihilation of traditional cultures and
wisdom; to increasing hunger and poverty. The list seems endless and desperate
and I apologise for bringing a sense of gloom and hopelessness, for I believe there
is hope.
29
Of the benefits of science it is worth acknowledging that it is only a minority of
the world’s population that has experienced the benefits of science and the
phenomenal material wealth it has bought; there is an astounding imbalance in the
distribution of the rewards that science is capable of bringing. Science and the
west aspires to address this imbalance, but as time progresses it seems to lean even
more to one side.
Certainly it appears that we can attribute these crises to a way of thinking – which
in the western culture is implicitly a scientific way of thinking. There are no quick
fixes, but the long term solution must therefore lie in challenging our thinking and
transitioning into a more epistemologically balanced paradigm of understanding
the wider context of our actions in the world. Indeed, we must carefully consider
and challenge the primacy of those sacred dogmas that lie at the very heart of
science: the subject-object separation, the reductionist and mechanistic paradigm,
the avoidance of acknowledging the value of ‘subjective’ consciousness, and
above all the belief that qualities (the so-called secondary qualities) are not real.
Many scientists and non-scientists will find such a proposition deeply threatening,
yet there is a gradual realisation amongst a growing community of holistic thinkers
that a radical epistemological paradigm shift must occur.
We are therefore being coerced to see ourselves as indivisibly part of the natural
world, rather than as standing apart from it. To achieve this, we could wisely
evolve a way of thinking whereby we regard ourselves as deeply woven into a
complex web of life. This entails a different kind of knowing which balances both
modes of consciousness (analytical and integrative) and moves on from the
imbalanced adolescence of reductionism. The concept of the ‘Ecological Self’
was a term adopted by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss to describe the
process of self actualisation when we transcend the individuated egoic self. The
concept of the Ecological Self aligns our psychological sense of who we are with
the biological reality of what we are (Næss, 1986). Næss suggests that the
enlargement of the ego-self to the Ecological Self results in environmentally
responsible behaviour as a form of self-interest. Our interests and the interests and
well being of the ecosphere thereby become inseparable.
This is not to say we should disregard reductionism and mechanism, for they have
a very useful practical function, but we need to cultivate them alongside other
ways of knowing. Capra (1996) calls such a holistic approach ‘systems thinking’
which places emphasis on integrated wholeness. Focussing attention from objects
to processes and relationship, from hierarchies to networks, and from objective
knowledge to contextual knowledge. Harding (2006) explains that we can
understand a great deal more about a natural system if we focus on the pattern of
relationship between the parts, rather than studying the parts themselves as
isolated entities. An entirely new richly mysterious world appears when we start
30
to think in this way – a world pregnant with creativity and potential; self
organising and emergent. Wholeness becomes our focus within a self-organising
and emergent living realm. We blend analytical and holistic modes of
consciousness within our Ecological Self take us to a place of participation in
nature, rather than as dispassionate observers. It is a rather seductive and
refreshing concept indeed – the world becomes larger, richer and infinitely
complex.
Implicit in the concept of the Ecological Self, Midgley (1992) believes that in
order to move away from the ecological, social and economic morass of the
present time, it is essential that we let go of our belief in dominion and see
ourselves as small – to recognise our own unimportance. But at the same time we
need to see ourselves as participants of a greater whole. In a sense if we enlarge
our world-view to one of inherent wholeness we automatically move away from
the growing pains of reductionism and control.
Gould (1981) observes that science progresses by hunch, imagination and intuition
reflecting shifts in cultural context or changing world-views, rather than evolving
linearly to some greater illusory truth. Kuhn (1962) also believes that science
undergoes paradigm shifts rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous
way and that these open up new approaches to understanding that scientists would
never have considered valid before. The notion of ‘scientific truth’, at any given
moment is defined by a consensus of a scientific community which is essentially a
network of individuals with no over-arching structure or hierarchy – rather like a
complex living system bearing the same unpredictable and emergent properties.
Our task is therefore to cultivate a powerful new paradigm for science based upon
both our reasonable material needs and on our deeper sense of connection to
nature which will make it untenable and unthinkable to continue with the status
quo. Goodwin (2007) believes that scientists are already increasingly finding it
necessary to embrace such a holistic understanding of reality without losing the
essence of the scientific way of gaining reliable knowledge through consensus in a
community of practice.
I also believe the Naess’s Ecological Self offers a good epistemological basis for
the transformation of our scientific worldview. We move from a place of
separation, mechanism, objectivism and dominion over the natural world, to a
place of innate participation and belonging to a greater whole. The vast
complexity and intelligence of this world is to a larger extent undoubtedly beyond
the human intellect, yet if we can create space through shifting to more balanced
modes of consciousness, we can open up to a rich world of qualities, intelligence
and communication.
31
Chapter 5: Reuniting Fact and Value – an Evolving Science
5.1
Introduction
In this chapter I explore practical ways in which we can achieve a balanced and
participatory cognitative pluralism in science which embraces both qualities and
quantities. My thesis is that by combining such a methodology based on an holistic
integrative mode of consciousness with orthodox science (employing the rational,
analytical mode of understanding) we can gain reliable, balanced knowledge
through consensus in a community of practice.
The work of the 17th century German poet, playwright, artist and natural
philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), has only recently come to
be widely understood (although much of Rudolph Steiner’s later work is grounded
in Goethe’s science). It is a little known fact that Goethe, in addition to being an
artist, was also an accomplished scientist studying and writing on anatomy,
geology, botany, zoology as well as colour theory. In fact he regarded his
scientific achievements to be far more valuable than his writing. Goethe
developed a phenomenological and participatory approach to scientific
investigation. His is a qualitative, sensitive approach to nature in which we are
participants rather than detached observers based on his belief that to understand
nature we require different types of knowing. In effect, he was bringing together
the arts and the sciences.
Goethe offers a very real, richly textured, ethical and seductive approach to
science; one which does not dismiss orthodox science which is seen as but one
valid way of knowing reality. Central to his belief is there is no right approach to
studying nature, or conducting science, but that epistemological pluralism is
essential. The wider the range of viewpoints we adopt, the more comprehensive
our perceptions and understanding become (Naydler, 1996).
5.2
Goethe’s remarkable insights
For Goethe, what is sense-perceptible is already formed hence he believed that we
need to see through what is already formed to understand the underlying formative
principles that weave the parts into a coherent living whole. Living beings cannot
be reduced to their component parts and Goethe found it important to consider ‘the
whole in so far as it lives and acts and in so far as an immaterial power is at the
basis of this life’.
32
To see the real world of natural systems in terms of relationships, connections,
ambiguities, continual change, cycles of activity, and of coming into and out of
being is entirely different to seeing a world of static detached objects or matter
frozen in time. In science we are traditionally used to thinking analytically in
terms of the latter. As discussed above such a mode is alone incapable of
understanding the systems view of dynamic form and relationship, for this we
need to move to the integral or holistic mode of consciousness which has a
quality-value focus.
It is important at this point to stress that the holistic-intuitive mode of
consciousness is a way of seeing and organising our seeing. But intuition is not
intangible and mysterious – it is the simultaneous perception of the whole (Kaplan,
2002). It moves us into a richly textured space of perceiving relationship and
wholeness as participants. As such it has to be experienced and cannot be
accessed through our default analytic thinking mode. And Bortoft (1996)
reiterates that Goethe’s way of science can only be understood by participation in
the way of seeing because this science can only be understood in its own terms.
This is a radical departure from the way we are taught and conditioned to see the
world within our culture, and as such it required significant effort and practice. But
rather than working with the two modes side by side, Goethe offered a way
whereby we can bring the two modes of consciousness, the ‘science-knowledge’
and the ‘meanings-values’ modes into deeper relationship so that we experience
the world as one organic whole.
Goethe was deeply embedded in European culture and, to a not insignificant
extent, contributed to its development. He was not only fully versed in the arts but
also had a strong interest and knowledge in the newly developing Newtonian
science. He was aware that the two could not be easily reconciled, although he
believed both provided real knowledge about the world. So he set out to ‘recraft’
science into what he believed was a more authentic practice – to challenge and
broaden it, and to understand knowledge differently so that it could extend into the
world of aesthetics, ethics and values, and incorporate the spiritual dimensions of
life (Zajonc, 2003).
Goethe was a thoughtful critic of the unconscious reification of scientific
hypotheses whereby abstract models come to represent reality and explain natural
phenomena. In Goethe’s time most scientists really thought that the models
depicted reality, of a world of matter in motion. Indeed, this is a very deeply
embedded belief even today. Goethe critiqued this assumption and developed a
more phenomenological stance – that observations themselves are the reality and
that models are basically a kind of useful scaffolding. Goethe in effect believed
33
that we can at best obtain an insight to any natural phenomena whereby the
moment of discovery is when one perceives the hidden coherence in nature, its
wholeness (Zanjonc, ibid). Ultimately he wanted to maintain intimacy with, and a
deep respect for, nature. This is in stark contrast to the currently held concept that
a scientific insight results in an objectified abstract model or theory about how
something works, often in terms of a mathematical or mechanical system. It has
the effect of distancing or separating us from the natural world.
So within the practice of ‘Goethean science’, the phenomenological engagement
becomes the focus. Bortoft (1996) writes that Goethe saw that knowledge of a
phenomenon as being intimately related to the phenomenon itself – for him the
state of ‘being known’ was a further stage of the phenomenon itself whereby it
reaches into human consciousness. So, the knower is no-longer a mere onlooker,
but a participant in natures processes. The processes act in consciousness to
produce the phenomenon consciously, and act externally to produce it physically
or materially (Bortoft, ibid). We spiritually participate in natures productions
according to Goethe and thereby become a true theory – the original Greek
meaning of theory meant to come to a place where one sees more deeply and
beholds (Zajonc, 2003). Thus for Goethe, the ultimate aim for science is nothing
other than the metamorphosis or transformation of the scientist!
According to Bortoft, this participatory view of consciousness within knowledge is
an evolutionary one because the state of being known is itself an evolutionary
development of nature itself. When consciousness is properly prepared, it
becomes the medium in which the phenomenon itself comes into presence. To
some, this may appear incomprehensible or pure fantasy – but our participation in
the creation and behaviour of matter is exactly what scientists have discovered in
the field of quantum physics. Quantum mechanics reveals a physical reality that is
tightly interdependent, connected and holistic. We know now that we affect what
we see by what we are looking for – the act of observing changes or causes what is
observed, and we choose the world we want by how we see it (Kaplan, 2002). So
we can only be participants according to quantum theory.
Within the mainstream paradigm of science we generally consider that knowledge
is a subjective experience – a process which does not affect the phenomenon itself
– a kind of passive perception of what is there. Goethe, and modern physics,
therefore radically challenges this notion and turns it inside out!
34
5.3
The basis of Goethe’s cognition
Prior to plunging into the Goethean methodology, it helps to have some
understanding of his cognitive process and the underlying ontology. Goethe’s way
of science leads to a re-balancing of our consciousness modes – from the purely
analytical and towards the holistic-intuitive mode in order that we can cultivate a
way of knowing which leads us into the deep essence of the phenomenon.
We know we interpret the world through experience which we generally interpret
as sensory perception – we open our eyes and use other sensory organs. What is
transmitted by these sensory organs to consciousness is regarded to provide
objective knowledge of the world. Science is based on this premise. However, we
now understand that this is not the case at all – knowledge of the world is based on
sensory experience, but knowledge is not the same as sensory experience (Bortoft,
1996). There must always be a nonsensory factor in cognitive perception –
whether its everyday or scientific cognition. Hence, science can never be a truly
objective activity – this is the error of empiricism because it ignores the fact that
material objects are condensations of subjective meaning.
We instantaneously assign meaning in the moment of perception; we unavoidably
and unconsciously ‘see’ meaning and not merely sense impressions. It is an
automatic exceptionally rapid logical organisation of consciousness. By assigning
meaning in the very act of seeing we make sense of the world. In fact, what we
think we see is a mental construct based upon our conditioning and experience.
There is no fundamental different between seeing objects and seeing facts. Even
though this seems very subjective, luckily we are conditioned to think and assign
meaning in much the same way as anyone else in a particular culture.
However, this automatic instantaneous process of seeing meaning has its
drawbacks in that it prevents us from perceiving the different dimensions of reality
and wholeness. Bortoft (1996) explains that we need to go ‘upstream’ of the very
act of seeing meaning if we want to obtain real knowledge about the world. This
is not easy from our dominating analytic mode of thinking, and it requires us to
enter the holistic-intuitive mode of consciousness.
Bortoft describes that one effective way of entering into the holistic mode is by
plunging into ‘looking’ – what he calls ‘active seeing’ – by redeploying our
attention into the very act of seeing (or sense perception). This automatically
draws us away from the verbo-intellectual analytical mind. He goes on to describe
that in the example of motion, by directing attention into sense perception (seeing)
we discover an aspect of motion in a completely different way to how we would
normally perceive it with the intellectual mind. We withdraw our attention from
35
thinking and the associated automatic creation of a mental abstraction.
Contemplative meditation has the same effect through investing attention in the
sensory process so that the mind withdraws from abstraction and language.
This is the key to Goethe’s science according to Bortoft – the de-automisation of
our automatic logical organisation of consciousness. What Goethe calls ‘exact
sensorial perception’ involves putting attention into seeing which takes us into the
phenomenon and out of the verbo-intellectual mind. I see this process as allowing
space for the phenomena to be, and being receptive to exact sensorial qualities.
Goethe termed this process a ‘delicate empiricism’ which allows the phenomena to
induce itself into the mind as an idea so that one has the intuitive perception of it
as a presence within oneself, not as an object outside ones being.
5.4
Goethean science – the process
The realisation that the phenomena we confront are always richer than the
abstractions we use to explain them is central to the Goethean approach (Holdrege,
2005). Goethe was convicted that the relationship of the human mind to the world
is fundamentally participatory for we ourselves are nature and her truth does not
exist as something independent and objective, but is revealed in the very act of
human cognition. Nature cannot therefore be studied ‘objectively’ as something
other. From within its own depths, he believed our imagination directly
communicates with the creative processes within nature and brings natures reality
into conscious expression (Tarnas, 1991). Goethe states: ‘we are the organs of
nature’s self-revelation’.
Whereas the prevailing paradigm of science advocates a steeping back and
distancing oneself from the phenomena under investigation to avoid any subjective
‘contamination’ of true knowledge, Goethe took an entirely opposite approach.
Rather, he invites us to ‘step into’ the phenomena, to get closer in a very
intentional and structured way, and in a graceful, delicate and respectful manner.
So rather than disconnecting from nature, we participate in it and allow it to reach
into our consciousness. Goethe’s scientific approach ultimately seeks to refine
and cultivate the scientist’s capacity for perception, whilst being cautious of the
dangers of personalising in a problematic way in its rigorous approach.
The Goethean process has three stages in which we immerse ourselves in the
details of the phenomenon (be it a dandelion, a badger or a landscape) and into the
context which gives rise to it – in a way we step into its living field which opens
up in the space we create. We meet the phenomena in a clear receptive way
through the process of delicate empiricism in which the observer becomes united
with the observed. One then moves past the level of empirical experience and
develops an insight into understanding and perceiving coherence and formative
36
processes of its essential being. This is Goethe’s inspirational, or ‘aha’ monument
– the moment of insight into the wholeness of the phenomenon. It is a profoundly
deeper way of seeing and, if carried out correctly, leaves little room for the
potential dangers of personal fantasy.
5.5
The stages
There is a rigour to the Goethean phenomenological method which guides the
scientist along a journey to becoming deeply aware and receptive to an authentic
knowledge of nature. Although the method is reduced to three stages, in reality
they flow into one another and there is a back-and-forth motion as a kind of
conversation. Many Goethean scientists have elucidated, adapted or refined
Goethe’s method, for example Margaret Colquhoun, Craig Holdrege and Henri
Bortoft. The following explanation of the methodology is based upon the work of
these Goethean scientists with a focus on the practical and achievable.
1: The empirical phenomenon (exact sensorial perception)
Goethe also called this stage ‘exact sensorial perception’ and it entails careful
empiricism, observing in great detail (be it a plant, a rock, a landscape, and river
catchment etc), and absorbing what we see as accurately as possible. But
importantly, we take great care to suspend judgement or analysis or explanation
with the verbo-intellectual mind (as we would do in traditional science). The
phenomenon or landscape gradually becomes more familiar, it begins to separate
out and we start to see what belongs together – the livingly interwoven fabric of
connection and relationship. We also start to recognise certain patterns and
groupings as it begins to organise itself. Goethe himself described this process of
gaining knowledge in a most eloquent way:
‘When in the exercise of his powers of observation man undertakes to
confront the world of nature, he will at first experience a tremendous
compulsion to bring what he finds there under his control. Before long,
however, these objects will thrust themselves upon him with such force that
he, in turn, must feel the obligation to acknowledge their power and pay
homage to their effects. When this mutual interaction becomes evident he
will make a discovery which, in a double sense, is limitless; among the
objects he will find many different forms of existence and modes of change,
a variety of relationships livingly interwoven; in himself, on the other
hand, a potential for infinite growth through constant adaptation of his
sensibilities and judgement to new ways of acquiring knowledge and
responding to action’ Goethe (1807)
The practice of active seeing (described by Bortoft), or the use of drawing and art,
helps to deepen this process through shifting our thinking into a holistic-intuitive
37
mode. During this stage, we describe our experience of detailed ‘facts’ that occur
to us through our all of our ‘ordinary senses’ – such as sight, smell, sound so that
we fully engage with the phenomenon or landscape. It is an attempt to see what is
present with as little personal judgement and evaluation as possible. As Goethe
says, the compulsion to draw upon our rational analytical mind through our
theories and feelings must be held back in order to let the facts speak for
themselves.
2: The scientific phenomenon (exact sensorial imagination)
Goethe called this phase exact sensorial imagination which involves an intuitive
and imaginative, fluid and alive kind of thinking which connects all the parts of
the living whole in a way in which we recreate inwardly their development in
relation to one another.
Exact sensorial imagination is therefore an intensification of our experience of the
phenomenon when we might retreat from observation and build a precise inner
picture in imagination of what we have seen. We attempt to envisage the
phenomenon as it changes in time, no-longer seeing it in an objective frozen
present but as a something with a rich history – a realm of continuous flow,
movement, transition and evolution. Using our familiarity with the empirical facts
of Stage 1, we build imaginative dynamic pictures by living within the stream of
time. This involves not only envisaging the physical phenomena but also its
existence as a dynamic changing form in response to a changing context. We enter
and ‘run-through’ the phenomenon or landscape in imagination to get a sense of
the coherent unfolding of life and form. The process redirects our attention from
the object or phenomenon, to the source and is a ‘letting go’ of sense perception.
Bortoft explains that, when combined with active seeing in stage one, the process
has the effect of giving thinking more of a quality of perception, and sensory
perception more the quality of thinking. The purpose is to develop the organ of
perception which can deepen our contact with the phenomenon. We begin to see
what belongs together and what does not, we begin to perceive unity
Whilst stage 1 is somewhat more akin through its focus on the empiricism we use
in orthodox science (though in a much deeper and aware manner), stage 2 marks a
radical departure and can be somewhat difficult to grasp in the mind of a scientist
– although artists may find it quite natural because we are moving deeply into the
holistic mode of consciousness. Holdrege (2005) sees the process of exact
sensorial imagination to be the antithesis of theory building in traditional science.
Both are inwardly very active but the Goethean process keeps us close to the
phenomenon and we close the gaps that are given through discrete observation.
38
3.
The pure phenomenon- seeing the whole
We then arrive at a place where the archetypal phenomenon may reveal itself to
perception when only the essential conditions of appearance are present. This
phase is also called ‘being at one with’ in which we commune with wholeness of
the phenomenon. It is a place of seeing unifying relations through our attuned
intuition. Here, Goethe describes the process that leads to seeing beyond, but is
fully rooted in, empirical observation (from Holdrege, op cit):
‘If I look at the created object, unique in its creation, and follow this
process back as far as I can, I will find a series of steps. Since these are
not actually seen together before me, I must visualise them in my memory
so that they can form a certain ideal whole.
At first I will tend to think in terms of steps, but nature leaves no gaps,
and thus, in the end, I will have to see this progression of uninterrupted
activity as a whole. I can do so by dissolving the particular without
destroying the impression ….
If we imagine the outcome of these attempts, we will see that empirical
observation finally ceases, inner beholding of what develops begins, and,
at last, the idea can be bought to expression’ Goethe (1795)
5.6
Consensus in the Goethean method
Harding (2006) explains that this approach is best undertaken communally so that
it becomes possible to discriminate between real knowledge common to all, from
idiosyncratic fantasy of the individual. The importance of following Goethe’s
structured procedure in a disciplined way is therefore stressed. Working within a
community of practice, or as a team, is also important. Some components of the
method can only be undertaken individually in the first instance, but the outcomes
must be shared with the community and consensus reached. The Goethean
method is also not a ‘one-off’ activity and there never is a purely epiphanic end
point – the end of the process is always the beginning of a new cycle which may
take a different course and provide an understanding of the same phenomena from
a different viewpoint of a coherent whole.
39
Chapter 6: Applying Goethe’s Science to a Hydrogeological
Study
The essence of Goethean science can really only be fully appreciated and
understood through direct experience. Having prepared the ground in Chapter 5, I
now wish to explore the practical application of the Goethean method using an
example project in my field of hydrogeology.
As a hydrogeologist, I am typically involved in regional catchment-scale
assessments of groundwater resources with the objective of assisting in the
sustainable management of the water resource by government regulatory
authorities. The principal visible and reported activity tends to be a quantification
process involving the development and calibration of a sophisticated non-linear
numerical computer model of the aquifer system and its connected freshwater
ecosystems (such as lakes, rivers and wetlands). The models are used to look at
various system ‘stress’ scenarios through varying climatic (rainfall) conditions,
river levels and abstraction from wells. Since I cannot see what is happening
underground, the models are critically based upon a conceptualisation process
which entails gathering, assimilating and interpreting information from which a
plausible three-dimensional concept of the groundwater flow system is imagined.
In addition, I am also required to formulate an understanding of the dynamic and
evolving nature of the groundwater system over a range of time scales. The
success of a project, particularly the subsequent numerical analysis, is ultimately
dependent upon the conceptualisation. This is a highly creative, individual or
collective process which draws upon intuition, experience and imagination –
although never explicitly so. Although the conceptual model is documented, little
consideration is given to the process through which it is developed. Indeed there
is no interest in the process merely that the results look reasonable and plausible
and are consistent with available data, hydrogeological principals, and preconceived geological narratives.
Goethe’s method seems to be well-suited to assisting in the process of conceptual
model development since it heavily reliant upon a submergence in empirical data,
followed by an imaginal and intuitive process from which an understanding of the
greater whole is hopefully attained. The outcomes of the Goethean approach
could then be used as a transparent foundation for the subsequent numerical
analysis of the system – and could potentially guide the nature and appropriateness
of quantification methodologies and their interpretation.
40
6.1
The Riddle
The ‘riddle’ is the beginning of any investigation – we are drawn to something or
somewhere we want to know better. Or in this case, I am required to know
something better for a particular purpose.
A provincial environmental protection agency in New Zealand (known as the
Greater Wellington Regional Council) is charged with a mandate to sustainably
manage the regions’ freshwater resources. I have been commissioned to help them
achieve this task for a large river catchment on the southern tip of New Zealand’s
North Island known as the Wairarapa Valley. The valley’s plains are heavily used
for agriculture, primarily dairy farming, which is reliant on irrigation during the
particularly dry summer season. The valley is traversed by a number of large
rivers which rise high up in the surrounding mountains. A very large shallow lake
occupies a large part of the lower catchment with peripheral ecologically valuable
wetlands. It is fair to say that the natural environment and water quality in the
valley have been substantially modified and degraded by agricultural activities.
The native forests on the plains have been almost entirely stripped over the last
120 years, but they remain intact on the surrounding mountains – in the source
areas for the rivers.
Since the intensively exploited gravel aquifers are connected to the surface water
environment (rivers, lakes and wetlands), the Agency wishes to ensure that
groundwater abstractions do not adversely affect any freshwater ecosystem,
particularly during the summer months when rivers are very low. My task is
undertake a scientific hydrogeological evaluation of the valley involving field
investigations and researching existing information to build a conceptualisation of
the groundwater system and its connected surface water environments. I am then
required to construct a computer model based on the conceptualisation to help
ascertain the sustainable abstraction rates for the region. The results will be used to
underpin a resource management policy for the licensing of water use.
To set the scene, the project area is located within the mountainous terrain of the
southern north island, being a flat valley some 110km long and about 15km wide.
The valley is infilled with fluvio-glacial gravels, sands and silts which have been
spread over the plains by large braided rivers (see photo below), and more
prolifically by large sediment fans at the moutain front during glacial periods
when there was considerably more erosion and runoff. Like much of New
Zealand, this is a highly active seismic area and the valley is the product of plate
margin (subduction zone) tectonism whereby the general compressional forces are
creating a kind of rift basin between mountain ranges (technically the valley is a
‘forearc’ basin and part of the subduction zone accretionary wedge). Major active
41
faults bound the valley and large earthquakes are thought to occur about every
500 years - the last one was in 1855 and was of magnitude 8.2. The basin has
been infilled by vast quantities of gravel, sand and silt by braided rivers and glacial
sediment fans accreting at the mountain front. These deposits extend offshore
into the depths of the Cook Strait. The valley is also criss-crossed by a number of
smaller active faults which dislocate and fold the sediments, influence the flow of
groundwater and control the surface drainage pattern. Rivers regularly and
abruptly change course due to tectonic movement of the land surface.
The following images provide the reader with a sense of the physical being of this
landscape.
42
Situated on the boundary between the Pacific and Australian Plates, New Zealand is a land poised above
immense geological stresses in the earths crust as attested by frequent earthquakes. The subduction zone,
marked by and oceanic trench, is clearly visible.
Images of a fluvio-glacial outwash plain on the South Island – the Wairarapa Valley would have looked much
like this before it was intensively developed for agriculture (above). Transportation of vast volumes of
sediment eroded from the mountains and the highly dynamic, fluid, saturated, unstable and impermanent
qualities of the land are evident. A Wairarapa river (below).
43
Typical view of the Wairarapa Plains – evoking a qualities of space, dryness, expansion and instability.
Some geological interpretations used to build the numerical model based upon empirical data and the
conceptualisation.
44
6.2
The process: immersion, incubation and inspiration
The following process adheres to the Goethean methodology described in Chapter
5, except that I have used a different terminology for the stages to reflect more
closely my experience of the procedure.
Stage 1: Immersion – ‘Into the phenomenon’
This empirical phase is familiar territory to me as a hydrogeologist, although my
‘normal’ process has a quite different, more detached quality than Goethe’s
delicate empiricism. Another important distinction from my normal mode of
research is the need to let go of pre-conceived ideas and theories and to come to
this land with fresh eyes and an open mind. But clearly some initial information is
required, such as the regional tectonic and geological setting which will help to
contextualise observations without necessarily trying to explain them or fit them
into any preconceived models.
This stage would therefore be my physical encounter with the landscape and I
would attempt to approach the landscape from a clear objective standpoint. I
describe my experience of detailed ‘facts’ that occur through my ‘ordinary senses’
– such as sight, smell, sound so that I fully engage with the landscape. It is an
attempt to see what is present with as little personal judgement and evaluation as
possible. This stage would be largely accomplished using mapping techniques,
sketches, notes and photographs. Much time is therefore spent absorbing and
gathering information and facts – both in the field and through examination of
related sources information, getting a feel for an area and the ‘lie of the land’, and
spending often long periods of long time synthesising and taking in information.
If I was working as part of a group, we may wish to focus upon a particular subarea, or aspect (i.e. ecology, geology, agriculture) of the land, then divide the place
into overlapping sub-areas so that each is seen from many different angles. The
choice of area may be through a person being drawn to a particular place, having a
specialist knowledge or arbitrarily. At the end of the stage we would share our
findings and find consensus– piecing together the physical facts. A map would be
created collectively, possibly with different overlays.
In this specific example for the Wairarapa Valley such a group experience has not
been possible, but through my familiarity with the area I am able to undertake this
process from memory. However, the key here is to let go of my models and
theories in which I have been deeply submerged. This is my abridged account for
stage 1:
45
My first activity is to get a sense for the land and its physical nature. The
long and relatively narrow valley plains are increasingly arid to the east
and encircled by blush-clad rugged mountains on the western side and by
dry rounded hills on the other. The plains are an island of intensively
cultivated and productive land surrounded by wilderness and have a sense
of isolation. Large rivers meander across the plains carrying a mobile bed
load of gravel and sand. The energy of the rivers drops immediately they
leave their upland mountain catchments and they become sluggish and
meandering, often appearing to be searching for a course. The land forms
reflect that they are sculpted by water, distributed and spread out across
the plains. The drainage system seems to focus upon the dry eastern side of
the valley – all the rivers head to this side then flow south to the coast and
Lake Wairarapa as a single entity. The lake itself is a focus for surface
water drainage for the entire valley which overspills via a short river into
the sea. Flow in the rivers increases as they flow south as copious
quantities of shallow groundwater discharges into them. Springs also
frequently emerge in low-lying areas, again evidence for the discharge of
groundwater to the surface. The rivers mostly have no shade and are today
constrained artificially by stop banks so that they can no-longer distribute
their sediment loads efficiently.
This is by no means a comprehensive description and I cold fill a whole thesis
with empirical details for this area! The process would go on to source physical
information on the valley in terms of geology, soils, water usage, climate patterns,
river flow information, ecological data, topographic data, water level monitoring
etc. The aim is for a team to collect as much information on physical phenomena
as possible. Findings are also shared with team members and discussed during this
stage which I believe to be a very valuable activity and very much within the
Goethean framework and ethos.
From personal experience, the collective process of sharing ideas and reaching
consensus is probably the most rewarding aspect of any project and probably the
most important. When team members share an enthusiasm and passion for their
work, and also have a mutual respect and are not out to push an agenda or their
own egos, the flow of ideas and creativity is a very inspiring, rewarding, creative
and productive process. This in fact happened on this project amongst a group of
four geologists, myself included. There was a perceptible shift in quality of energy
and an unfolding, everyone was making a contribution and there was a careful
listening – for the said and the unsaid. Several days were spent both in the field,
often getting high up in the hills to get an overview of the land, and in workshops
literally bouncing ideas around until a consensus was achieved (quite often in the
pub!). The quality of the process was a truly joyful one of mutual respect,
collective experience, intuition and creativity.
46
Stage 2: Incubation - Conceptualisation
Normally in orthodox science, once we have completed the empirical phase we
launch into theory building, putting things together in an abstract way so that they
begin to make sense. This is a non-structured, iterative process of moving
between observations or facts, and ideas or models. At the same time we are also,
in a non-explicit way, drawing on experience, intuition and imagination – we most
certainly could not do science without engaging at this level. This process I
believe is common to many who practice science – particularly the natural
sciences. We just figure it out as we go along, it is not taught but it is something
we grow to value and intuitively trust.
Goethe’s ‘exact sensorial imagination’, or incubation phase as I call it, has the
same purpose of processing empirical information but not to build an abstract
model. Rather, this phase provides space for the intensification of our experience
of the phenomenon (the geological and hydrological landscape). We retreat from
observation and inwardly process, or ‘incubate’ a reconstruction of our
observations – of the landscape as not being fixed in the moment, but seen as a
dynamic evolving form; we are glimpsing it in a single moment on its geological
journey from the past and heading into its future. We enter and ‘run-through’ the
phenomenon or landscape in imagination to get a sense of the coherent unfolding
of life and form. My experiences:
Incubation for me requires a ‘stepping back’ or a distancing from the
information. I experience it as relaxing into the phenomena, a stillness
and a careful intentional listening, playing with concepts and a letting go
of pre-conceived narratives or models. Ideas frequently emerge out of the
nowhere, and at unexpected times. For me this is a subliminal process
which cannot be forced. It often happens soon after waking when I
experience a particular clarity of mind – imagining the dynamic
development of the landscape and flow of water through the aquifers. I
sense this to be a form of communication, or dialogue, between my own
psyche and something larger and alive.
For the Wairarapa Valley case study, the question I ask is: how has this
place come to be what it is today? What are the formative geological and
hydrological processes? What is its essential nature? I consult the
literature to understand the dynamical geological context, depositional and
structural history for the area, its hydrogeological flow characteristics,
and its human history of radical landscape modification. I then build
imaginative pictures by living in the stream of time and slowly the whole
place starts to come alive in its becoming. Through this process I start to
get a sense of how it responds to change – through natural and human
47
causes, and develop a sense for what might be right for this place and what
might not be.
Running through this process in my mind, the following insights emerge:
-
this is a land poised above immense geological stresses in the earths
crust which has formed by compression and stretching, and which
experiences frequent upheavals followed by long periods of calm.
There is underlying tension and anticipation. It is therefore a land of
dynamic underlying force, unpredictability and change.
-
the valley plains have formed by a continual process of erosion in the
uplifting mountains and transport by water onto the plains which are
energetically lower and where the sediment is spread and deposited –
smoothing and flattening the landscape. Erosion and deposition are
cyclical features of the land attuned to warm and cold (glacial)
episodes.
-
it is a landscape dominated by the flow of water and the flow of
sediment in a continual state of flux and readjustment. The landscape
is highly dynamic, fluid, saturated, unstable and impermanent.
-
there is a continual flow to the land of sediment and water. From the
mountains, through the body of the valley and eventually into the sea,
transporting nutrients into the oceans.
-
as the western mountains have risen and sediment has accumulated at
their base, there is a strong and immanent flow of water within the
rivers and underground over to the eastern side of the valley where it
merges into a single river.
-
Lake Wairarapa is the focal point of the valley upon which all rivers
converge. It is a centre of subsidence, accumulation and repose.
-
the coastal area is becoming detached from the rest of the valley as it
rises upwards under the influence of tectonic forces. Ancient sea beds
have risen above the valley floor.
-
mans activities have removed over 90% of the native forest cover in the
space of a century and have deeply wounded this valley; the rivers,
lakes and wetland have been seriously degraded.
48
Stage 3: Inspiration
Now, I allow space for the landscape to express its essential nature and spirit
through myself. Paradoxically it is said to be the least subjective of the stages. In
reality stages 2 and 3 roll into each other.
Through perceiving its gestures, I am invited by Goethe to express my intangible,
deep feeling for this landscape in a way in which I would not normally. What I
express for the Wairarapa Valley below I believe is something of its essential
nature which I have perceived through the previous two stages. It is of a wholly
different dimension to that provided by the orthodox scientific method. I must add
that I have found this to be a somewhat uncomfortable activity as it pushes me so
far out of my ‘scientific cocoon’. And, I might add, inspirational as well!
- The Wairarapa landscape expresses a ‘gestalt’ of extreme
unpredictability, change, violent upheaval and impermanence. Yet
paradoxically, it is also a nurturing and generous place, a place which
heals itself rapidly to geological disturbance, and a place which is highly
vulnerable and sensitive to man’s activities. It is a place which has
evolved to exist on the edge and to adapt and readjust to geological change
very quickly.
- The most powerful impression of this landscape is that it is a place of
water first and foremost. The flow of sediment and water through the
valley is the core of its essential being. A being of flowing, sculpting,
filling and healing. At the same time it is also a flow of energy and life.
- The valley is highly vulnerable to radical interference in the flow of water
and sediment.
- The highly energetic and vital waters of the mountain ranges slow down,
spread out and slowly percolate down the valley. There is a strong sense
of release or escape – that groundwater is constantly attempting to release
itself upwards into the rivers and springs and into the lake.
- Mans activities have severely disrupted the flow of both water and
sediment through forest clearance, channel modification and confinement,
and water abstractions. As a result, the valley is profoundly impoverished.
There is space for man to live in harmony with this place, through sensitive
land and water use – present water use, river management and land use is
excessive and unsustainable. It is killing the spirit of this place.
49
6.3
Discussion: the Goethean process as the container
The immersion and incubation phases of the Goethean study are aligned with the
empirical and conceptualisation processes which would normally form part of a
hydrogeological investigation (or indeed most scientific studies). The Goethean
stages have a very different quality however which allows access to a deeper and
richer level of understanding – they create a space for connections and
relationships to be expressed. I would venture as far to say that it potentially
allows us to glimpse the authentic wholeness of the phenomenon. Although I have
presented a rather ‘artificial’ example here by using an area with which I am
already very familiar and for which I have completed a ‘traditional’ scientific
analysis, I am convinced that the Goethean method is highly valuable and could
become a finely honed method of perception with experience. I am interested in
further developing my skills in the method and exploring the consensus process
within a community of practice. From my experience, albeit in the rationalanalytical realm of consciousness, I am in no doubt that the insights that I have
experienced during the Goethean study are real and credible.
The final stage of the Goethean process, inspiration, revealed some quite startling
insights mostly because of the intimacy I felt in meeting the landscape. This also
bought up some trepidation merely because I was not used to opening myself up to
a holistic mode of consciousness within a scientific study. Indeed, I was surprised
to get to this point, knowing that it is just the beginning not the end. I felt as if I
were in communication, and had been allowed to glimpse some real qualities of
the phenomenon to which we are normally blind. By seeing these qualities and
experiencing such participation, I am guided to a totally different space, to one of
respect and responsibility, and also to one of feeling very honoured to be a
participant in this process. Also it has taken me to a place of sensing a mutual
vulnerability, and a sense of sadness or loss with respect to the particular example
that I have presented. But why should I be surprised at this outcome at all? After
all, we are nature in communion with ourselves.
I can envisage that the Goethean process would be a highly useful and essential
component for a geological (or hydrogeological) analysis of an area. It provides a
solid, ethical and transparent foundation upon which we could subsequently carry
out quantitative science (such as computer modelling) although not in the sense of
‘on top of’ or ‘in addition to’. The Goethean process should rather be the
container which informs and guides further scientific quantification using standard
methodologies. It should also guide the outcomes and recommendations of any
study.
50
Chapter 7: Concluding Thoughts
A new mindset
As a culture, we have arrived at a place where we realise that the reality of nature
is not separate and self-contained. Rather, we are nature and the relationship of
our minds to the world is fundamentally participatory. Nature’s truth cannot exist
as something independent and objective, for she reaches into our consciousness
and her reality is revealed in the very act of human cognition. This realisation
opens up a critical question of where our quest for knowledge and understanding
actually come from? From the very source of nature herself, bringing into
existence her own reality through the human mind? Part of me thinks this could
be pure anthropocentric indulgence, but the other part intuitively senses an
underlying truth. But if this is the case, our ultimate responsibility must be
towards the greater whole of which we are a part.
The point is that the human mind cannot examine nature purely ‘objectively’ as we
are currently conditioned to do through our analytical mindset. But rather than
being a mistake or a human folly, the powerful contraction of human vision
experienced by the modern reductionist mind through science over the past
400years could actually be part of natures own unfolding (Tarnas, 1991). Could it
be that the dualistic Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm is actually a subset of a mature
participatory holistic epistemology?
Nature can be revealed in different ways by different kinds of science – none of
which have claim to being fundamental and exclusive. Thus nature can be
quantity, causal mechanism, or wholeness. The science of wholeness and the
science of quantity are therefore both valid – but nature is revealed differently in
each of them. But once we can recognise the historical and epistemological nature
of orthodox science, we can then detach from it and we are left with the freedom
to explore other possibilities (Bortoft, 1996).
So, how does a cultural world-view or mindset change? And how does science
progress from one paradigm to another? Tarnas (ibid) suggests that a new
paradigm emerges as superior when it resonates with the current archetypal state
of the evolving collective psyche (much like Jung’s collective unconscious). The
pursuit of knowledge always takes place within a dominant paradigm, originally
seen as liberating, revolutionary and enlightening. But then it inevitably comes to
be experienced as limiting, constricting, full of contradiction and leading to crisis.
What is happening according to Tarnas is that the collective archetypal path is
evolving or unfolding so that the current paradigm becomes obsolete. The
occurrence of paradigm shifts is therefore a collective archetypal process – not a
rational/logical or sociological one.
51
I believe that we as a culture are at a critical juncture, on the verge of a paradigm
shift. We are witness to massive breakdowns in ecological, cultural, economic,
scientific, religious, moral and political structures indicating that our current
mindsets or epistemological paradigms may no-longer be relevant or adequate. A
new cultural and scientific gestalt is incubating in the collective psyche of the west
– one which is pregnant with a belief in a participatory mode of thinking and
being. Concepts such as the ‘ecological self’ described by Arne Næss, the
participatory science of Goethe, the ‘appearance’ of new empirical evidence
through such fields of quantum physics and biology, and the rise of holism in
science are reflections of a shift in the collective psyche.
We are therefore left with tremendous hope for the future since we can be certain
that the collective psyche has entered into a critical state of transformation –
towards a mindset in which we regard ourselves as participants in the community
of life and the dynamic whole that we call Earth.
‘Science evolves in interesting and unexpected ways – like everything else in
nature’ (Goodwin 2007).
52
References
Abram, D. 1991. The mechanical and the organic: On the impact of metaphor in
science. From Scientists on Gaia, edited by Stephen Schneider and Penelope
Boston; M.I.T. Press, 1991.
Abram, D. 2007. Earth in Eclipse: an Essay on the Philosophy of Science and
Ethics. in Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy, edited by Suzanne L.
Cataldi, William S. Hamrick, SUNY Press, 2007
Bortoft, H. 1996. The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way of Science.
Lindisfarme Press and Floris Books.
Bortoft, H. 2011. Goethe and the bimodal brain. Journal of holistic science, vol 1,
issue 3, July 2011.
Bouratinos, E. 2011. Contextual wholeness. Journal of holistic science, vol 1,
issue 3, pp 6-11. July 2011.
Capra, F. 1996. The Web of Life. Flamingo Press.
Ebert, J. D. 1999 in: Twilight of the clockwork God - Conversations on science
and spirituality at the end of an age. Ed. Ebert, J. D. Council Oak Books, Tulsa.
Grinell, F. 2009. Everyday Practice of Science – where intuition and passion meet
objectivity and logic. Oxford University Press
Gould, S. J. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Harding, S. 2006. Animate Earth: Science, Intuition and Gaia. Green Books
Hoffman, N. 2007. Goethe’s Science of Living Form: the Artistic Stages. Adonis
Press.
Holdrege, C. 2005. Doing Goethean Science. Janus Head, 8(1), 27-52. Triuvium
Publications, NY.
Kaplan, A. 2002. Development Practioners and Social Process – Artists of the
Invisible. Pluto Press, London.
Kuhn, T. 1962. The structure of scientific revolutions
Merton, R. K. 1942. The normative structure of science. Reprinted in: The
Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Ed. Merton, R.K.
and Storer, N.W. University of Chicago Press, 1973, pp 267-278.)
Midgely, M. 1992. Science as Salvation: A modern myth and its meaning.
Routledge NY.
Midgely, M. 2003. The Myths We Live By. Routledge Press.
53
Naess, A. 1986. Self-realisation: An ecological approach to being in the world.
In: Sessions, G. (Ed) 1995: Deep ecology for the 21st century. Shamhala, London.
Naydler, J. 1996. Goethe on Science: An anthology of Goethe’s Scientific
Writings. Floris Books.
Peat, D. 1999. Foreword in: Twilight of the clockwork God - Conversations on
science and spirituality at the end of an age. Ed. Ebert, J. D. Council Oak Books,
Tulsa.
Raab, T. and Frodeman, R. 2002. What is it like to be a geologist? A
phenomenology of geology and its epistemological implications. Philosophy and
Geography, 5:1, 69-81. Routledge.
Sagan, C. 1993. Why we need to understand science. Mercury 22, 52-55
Sir Arthur Eddington. 1929. The Nature of the Physical World. New York:
McMillan, p. 282
Tarnas, R. 1991. The passion of the western mind – understanding the ideas that
have shaped our world view. Pimlico Books.
Wertheim, M. 1997. Pythagoras’ Trousers – God, Physics and the Gender Wars.
Fourth Estate.
Zajonc, A. 2003. Investigating the space of the invisible: A conversation with
Professor Arthur Zajonc, interviewed by Otto Scharmer.
http://www.presencing.com/dol/interviews/Zajonc-2003.shtml
54