Religion and Science, Faith and Knowledge: Mending the Great Divide

NOTES TOWARD A NOVUM ORGANUM FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM

CONFERENCE ON THE SYNTHESIS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION BUDAPEST, HUNGARY, 22 NOVEMBER, 1996

Abstract: When, in the post-modern era especially, science (and knowledge) become critically self-conscious, they discover their own foundations in faith and even religion. On the other hand, when religion (and faith) are refined by critical self-consciousness (and for this we have to recover some pre-modern reflections of Vedic culture), they reach their culmination in genuine scientific knowledge of transcendence. By this double application of critical self-consciousness, the wound in the human spirit caused by the artificial separation of science from religion, or knowledge from faith, has the hope of being healed at last.

We are meeting here to reflect upon “the synthesis of science and religion.” I agree that there is a need to join or harmonize the two, for I view the cleft that separates what we now call “science” from what we now call “religion” as a deep wound in the human spirit--a wound that may prove mortal. It requires healing.

I am using “science” in the narrow sense of the word to denote those enterprises dedicated principally to predicting and controlling material nature. Nature has to be understood to be mastered, and science--in its “pure,” or “hard” or “exact” form--has become most fruitful when it is able to represent nature in terms of numbers. In other words, exact science is founded upon a quite powerful act of abstraction. It abstracts from our experience in terms of quantity, and seeks to deal with the world only in so far as its contents can be weighed, measured, counted, or timed--that is to say: expressed in numbers.

The success of the exact sciences in manipulating nature to produce “technological advancement”--a series of novel, increasingly potent techniques to remake our environment--has given science enormous prestige and power. “Technological advancement” has become synonymous with “human progress.” What the hard sciences provide has become the paradigm of knowledge, and any field of study aspiring to establish itself firmly--gaining influence, prestige, support from business and government, and so on--models itself as much as possible on the exact sciences.

At present, however, the prestige of science has begun to sink. More and more the latest ingenious advances in technology are dedicated to managing problems created by previous ingenious advances. According to professional estimations I have seen, in North America as much as forty percent of all diseases are “iatrogenetic,” that is, caused by physicians. (Hence, the popularity of “alternative healing modalities.”)

The steady flood of press reports of discoveries in science--couched invariably in the form: “we used to think x, but now we know y”--more often than not merely tell you that a prior overly-confident assurance of “now we know” is being nullified, to be replaced with an equally nullifiable piece of over-confidence. The form of such announcements could be more honestly and humbly: “we used to know ___, but now we think ___.” “Progress” starts to look like a code word for veiled admissions of past errors.

Now, an apologist for science, conceding a degree of truth in such criticisms, may respond by distinguishing between “science” and “scientism.” “Science” he may claim, denotes the pure, objective enterprise of the scientist qua scientist, the researcher disinterestedly pursuing truth in accord with professional norms. “Scientism,” on the other hand, is the ideology of some members of the scientific community. As scientists, they may be impeccable, but as humans with normal frailties, they may--in their extra-scientific capacity--be influenced by the desire for power, position, prestige, or wealth. Hence, they might publicly inflate their claims to knowledge, urge government and business to invest in dubious technology, or interfere imprudently with the complex course of nature. Their confidence and ambition may far exceed their knowledge. Scientists can admit to such misbehavior, and yet absolve science as such of blame.

Some truth, of course, must be acknowledged in this defense. Every institution may be granted both its ideals and an allowance for the human failure always to uphold them. At the same time, the contention that there is a clean and neat demarcation between “science” and “scientism” strikes one as extremely--even dangerously-- naive. Science is, after all, a human enterprise; as such, it is formed and conditioned by the social, historical, and economic matrixes that surround it. Indeed, one could argue that the claim that there is a pure, socially and historically unconditioned science. a transcendent science, is itself the central myth of the scientific ideology.

A little reflection on the origins of modern science shows at least that there would have been no “science” as we know it without “scientism.” The urge to lord it over creation, to become the master of the world--it was that same impulse, suddenly sprung to new life, which, in one manifestation, empowered sixteenth century Europe to dispatch fleets and armies to subjugate the “new world,” and, in another manifestation, quicken the embryonic seed of modern science. To state the case provocatively: Science is imperialism and colonialism directed toward the world or nature as such, as a whole and in each and every part. In this century, the West has begun dismantling the physical and mental structures of colonialism and imperialism in order to free both subjugators and subjugated. This process, I suggest, needs to be continued onto the deepest level, carried from our relation with nations to our relation with nature and being.

Granted that from the beginning science and scientism have been inseparable, then we in the West should now accept as our greatest responsibility and challenge the mission to bring about the liberation of science from the bondage of scientism. We may need to do this not only to secure the genuine progress of humanity, but even its very survival.

Is such a transfigured science possible? What would it be like?

It would differ in profound ways, I am sure, from science as we know it today. Indeed, it would contain as part of its essential make-up features that we now recognize as belonging to the realm of “the religious” or “the sacred.” At the same time, those very elements would not be regarded as the province of “faith.” “dogma,” or “special revelation,” but rather of scientific knowledge.

We may be able to discern some general features of a liberated science if we can understand clearly what it is not. Let me try to approach the problem of “unredeemed” science at its root and reflect further upon the “original sin” of science--if I may speak in such terms--the sin which has held science in thrall to scientism. That original sin, as I have already hinted, is the desire to become the lord of all we survey, to posses, enjoy, and control the resources of creation. It is, in other words, the desire to become God.

But what if nature should already be under the control of God--or the gods, for that matter? Then science--I mean, of course, fallen science--would not be possible. Hence, science makes itself possible by its first act of hubris. It declares by fiat that the world is that sort of world which can be mastered by science. It must be, for example, “rational.” That is to say, nature’s course must be conducted by regular, autonomous “laws” and not by the vagaries or whims of some higher conscious being. “Rational” in this case turns out to mean that nature is capable of being grasped and controlled by us. No higher being stands in our way.

Thus, the murder or banishment of God makes its first appearance in the harmless guise of a methodological principle, just as in affairs of state a monstrous tyranny many take hold in the innocent guise of some harmless bit of legislation. By means of the methodological principle, men could still consider themselves pious, God-fearing men and at the same time begin to look at the world in a new, enlightening, eye-opening way: As if it were a separate and autonomous region, as if there were no God to interfere in its course. As if we could seize control of it.

As a result, nature--the phenomenal world--became a different place for us. Max Weber called this process the “disenchantment [Entzauberung] of the world.” The same process can be more thoroughly understood if we think of it as the loss or disappearance of the subject, the act which makes the objectification of nature possible.

By “subject” I mean any being which undergoes experiences, which has significance for itself. Some kinds of entities in this world--like a table or a stick of chalk-- appear to be entirely objects and in no way subjects. They are dead, lifeless, inert. They are experienced by others, but do not undergo experiences themselves. They have significance for others, but none for themselves. The mode of being characteristic of a subject, the power it has for undergoing experiences, is “consciousness.” The denotation of “consciousness” in this sense is not limited to developed self-consciousness, as of humans. It is simply a subject’s being there as a subject.

It is well known that in the realm of human interactions, the attitude of domination and control over others, the disposition to use another as an instrument for one’s own enjoyment, causes the predominator to lose sight of the other as a subject. The predominator treats the other merely as a thing, an object: He “objectifies” the other. Sometimes we hear the words “depersonalize” and “dehumanize” to characterize the same event. Because of the tendency inherent in the enjoying disposition to deny the other’s subjecthood, regulating the exercise of that disposition becomes a major concern of ethics and morality. When the disposition becomes pathologically unrestrained--as in a Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot--it typically broadcasts its inherent nature by reducing entire peoples into landscapes of corpses. rendering life into death on a scale of mass production.

It is easy for us to recognize in human society the moral impact of the loss of the subject, and perhaps we can imagine something of what humanity could be like were there a “restoration of the subject.” All our “crimes against humanity”--private and public, small and large, individual and collective--would cease.

I suggest, however, that we cannot accomplish the restoration of the subject within that portion of nature we call humanity unless we do so in all of nature. Nowadays, “crimes against nature” have taken their place next to “crimes against humanity;” “species-cide” and “eco-cide” join “genocide” in our list of modern atrocities.

At any rate, the restoration of the subject--with respect to humanity as well as to nature--will only assume its proper place when it becomes an endeavor of science. Unfortunately, science has gone in the opposite direction. In order to “progress”--that is, to secure the impression of increasing mental and physical domination over nature--the elimination of the subject has proceeded automatically, as if preordained.

Consider, for instance, some of the consequences of Newton’s discoveries. Newtonian mechanics, based on measurement and mathematical operations, was taken as bringing the deep and pervasive structures of nature to light. Nature was revealed as a vast, orderly, well-regulated machine, working tirelessly according to rational laws. It was much like a giant clock, with all the parts meshing smoothly and seamlessly together.

Leibniz raised disturbing objections to Newtonian mechanics--arguments Newton could not effectively counter nor physics satisfactorily deal with until the advent of relativity theory. Leibniz’s objections ought at least to have made people reflect that how ever serviceable Newtonian mechanics might be, it was dubious as a key to fundamental truths of nature. Such reservations, as we know, were swept aside. People had become captivated by the image of the clockwork universe, of a marvelously structured, precisely regulated universe, rational and uniform in each of its parts and in the relations of the parts to the whole. One could cherish a boundless optimism that by extending the methods of Newtonian mechanics, one could eventually compel all of nature--including human nature--to submit to rational investigation and control.

In this paradigm of clockwork nature, the position of the subject becomes very precarious--for the subject really does not belong at all.

We see this most clearly with reference to the supreme subject, God. The Newtonian clockwork paradigm drove God into exile from the world (a prelude, as it turned out, to his eventual assassination).

Human subjects become anomalies as well, disconnected and alienated. If they are not little bits of clockwork, they are, as Gilbert Ryle famously put it, “just little bits of not-clockwork.” They are “ghosts in the machine,” ready for a final scientific exorcism.

The complete elimination of the subject remains a major unfinished task for scientific thought. Although the deterministic clockwork paradigm has been consigned to museums, science adheres unshakably to the conviction that the world can be reduced completely to numbers.

The story science tell goes something like this: The world is composed of nothing but structures of matter, completely expressible in terms of numbers. In the beginning these structures are fundamental and simple, but as time passes they increase in complexity. Particles form atoms; atoms, molecules. Molecules become larger and more complex. Life appears. Chemical evolution becomes biological evolution, and as simpler forms give rise to more complex ones, primitive humans eventually make their appearance; human life increases in complexity, and so civilization arises.

This story contains an irreparable flaw. Increasingly complex structures of matter should produce only more of the same. How, out of a process of increasingly complex structures of matter does something arise that is not a structure of matter but rather the experience of structure of matter? Structures of matter should give rise to only more of the same thing, but on this account something emerges which belongs to a different ontological category altogether. The experiencing subject is altogether anomalous.

One way to resolve this problem is to pursue with ruthless thoroughness the elimination of the subject. This has been taken up with great dedication by the engineers of “artificial intelligence.” Appropriating some ideas from the Anglo-American school of philosophical behaviorism, these engineers argue that if a computer program can behaviorally reproduce the responses and interactions of an intelligent subject, such that a human would be unable to tell the difference between a suitably programmed computer and a person, then the computer is intelligent.

In other words, such an achievement will have demonstrated that something entirely an object, something completely representable by strings of 1’s and 0’s--namely, a programmed computer--is a subject. Thus, there are only objects. In this way, science will deliver the coup de grace to subjects.

A philosopher of the behaviorist school was once heard to remark: “Feelings? There are no feelings. Not really. Dispositions, perhaps--but not feelings.” What was his life like for himself? Or even, say, for his wife or children? Did he really have no feeling? Had he perhaps succeeded in eliminating himself as a subject?

Unfortunately, scientific endeavors to eliminate the subject in the realm of theory have succeeded all too well in fostering within modern society the elimination of the subject in practice. This is manifest within the subject by a progressive reduction in consciousness; a loss of the ability to feel; a coarsening of sensibility coupled with an increased demand for sheer sensation, artificially boosted; and so on. A defining feature of the modern world is its proficiency at turning human beings into machines. The project is continuing at full speed.

On the other side, some developments give hope that science may have begun a critical self-appraisal which, if successfully carried through, will bring it to reconsider and reevaluate its origin and its past, rectify its initial determination of faith. This would enable science to recognize the subject and recover it for science. The influential and controversial work of Thomas Kuhn, the American philosopher of science--launched with the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962--can be considered to show, in effect, that “scientific objectivity” is in actuality a particular style of subjectivity, that is, a way of being a subject in the world. By analyzing revolutions in science as “paradigm shifts” within discourse-communities, Kuhn is able to bring to light the functions of the a priori, non-rational commitments and determinations that are the conditions for the production of knowledge. The work of Kuhn had the effect of incorporating the insights of the Continental tradition of philosophical hermeneutics into the mainstream of Anglo-American philosophy. From there, it is beginning to endow the hard sciences with a critical epistemological self-awareness. If that becomes incorporated into the self-understanding of science, it would endow the enterprise itself with the functional analogue to humility.

Endowed with such humility, science can begin a recovery of its own being as subject. This will enable it to undertake a critical reassessment of its past and its origin, and thus it will be led to reconsider its dedication to the elimination of the subject.

A critically self-aware science would be able to recognize that the elimination of the subject, as the originating fiat of science, cannot itself be considered a rational act, for it is the act which determines the very principle of rationality. If science cannot discover the subject anywhere within its domain, it is because the domain of science has been set at the outset as that which excludes the subject. And perhaps for the very purpose--albeit implicit and unacknowledged--of excluding the subject.

Science would be able to recognize the practical ills fostered by the elimination of the subject and to accept responsibility for them--the alienation of people from each other and from the world; the mechanization of human life; the devastations we have visited upon our own and other species; the repeated abuse and violation of nature; and so on. Science would be able to recognize that simply more of the same old science will simply create more of the same problems. Hence science would recognize the need for its own redemption and restoration.

Since the elimination of the subject was the originating act of fallen science, science can rectify itself through a similar sort of primal act or determination of the will, and thus readmit the subject.

It may be objected that such an act is an act of faith. If so, I submit that the exclusion of the subject was equally an act of faith. In either case, the act of faith cannot be avoided. It simply must be done correctly.

Moreover, there is something quite simple and straightforward in favor of admitting the subject. Prima facie, the existence of the subject is self-evident, on the Cartesian principle that consciousness cannot, after all, doubt its own existence. We have to grant the subject its own existence as fact, for it is the condition by which there are any facts at all. The denial of the subject, on the other hand, requires ceaseless complicated effort, and the poor, harried subject has the persistent habit of popping up again after it is declared dead and buried.

I propose that science restore the subject with the same sort of fiat that engendered its removal. Science should posit the subject in principle as a fundamental, irreducible ontological entity. I use the expression “posit in principle” to indicate that the subject is initially acknowledged as a theoretical entity, the target of a program of research that is expected to yield experiential confirmation.

The world, then, would be recognized to consist of two categories of fundamental entities: on the one hand, structures of matter, expressible in terms of numbers, and, on the other, a multitude of subjects, entities that experience structures of matter. The discoveries of material science will be conserved, integrated, and developed within the new science, and research into both categories will be pursued side by side.

The positing in principle of a unique, supreme (or universal) subject--God--would also be required for a full restoration of the subject. One way to understand this is to consider that part of the world which is object. Although it is object, it may still be united to a subject as something belonging uniquely to it. For subjects in the world are embodied, and the body of the subject is that part of the objective world which the subject most immediately and directly influences. Thus, a part of the world may be entirely an object and yet belong to a subject. Now to recognize and respect a subject entails recognizing and respecting the subject’s body. Since God is the unique subject who directly and immediately influences the entire world, the entire world of subjects and objects must be regarded as the body of God. In the supreme subject, the realm of subjects and the realm of objects are unified, and the world, viewed as a complete whole, is, in a sense, a single subject.

I approach the end of my allotted time and have still to touch upon a final, outstanding issue: The methods of fallen science can deal with the world only as object. What methods can science have to address itself to the world as subject?

It is my conviction that in ancient times the science of the subject had been quite well-developed. In the texts of the Vedas of India that dealt with this science, the subject was known as the atman or “self”, and the supreme subject as the paramatman, “superself.” There was systematic cultivation of direct perception of the self and superself. As in present-day scientific communities, a group of adepts or masters, accomplished both in the theoretical knowledge and practical application of their vocation, explored their subject and guided the student up a path of progressively higher levels of mastery. It seems clear that branches of this same science were propagated in the West--exemplified most prominently, of course, in the person of Plato.

Eventually that science became lost. As people gradually underwent an atrophy of the faculty to experience the self, “God” and the “soul” became inaccessible to knowledge. Now being alienated from ourselves, we “know” ourselves only as material objects in a material world.

However, the capacity to know the actual self remains as an undeveloped potentiality, and there is hope now that the achievements of the past constitute a legacy we may actually inherit, provided we are willing to become qualified to receive it.

The first lesson we need to learn from the great masters of the science of the self is this: To engage in that science, we must become situated in the proper existential condition. As it is put in the Bhagavad-gita: Knowledge depends upon goodness (sattva.) The existence of the practitioner must be purified of effects of passion (rajas) and ignorance (tamas). Lust, avarice, pride, gluttony, anger, indolence, inebriation--it is a familiar, if quaint, list of items. Science must recognize them as impediments to knowledge, and the researcher must be committed to making his or her own life spotlessly clean. If the scientist is successful in this, then everything else required to advance will be automatically revealed.

Although I have been hard--maybe too hard--on modern science, I wish to conclude by paying tribute to it. I clearly recognize within modern science a strong, pure strain--the signs include: a desire for knowledge for its own sake, a genuine reverence for nature, a selfless dedication to a greater cause. It is because of this strain of purity or goodness that I believe the old science can, and will, be redeemed. And those who are able will recognize that the new science has come not to abolish the old, but to fulfill it.