Beyond Reason

Bleak Futuristic Landscpape: Wither Exploitation?

Faith and the irrational

I am not a Luddite; nor do I advocate a return to the Stone Age. Neither am I a member of the Flat Earth Society.  Yet I wonder, how consumerism and comfort surpassed wisdom as the focus of civilization? And how has the word faith become an obscenity? All I am saying is that, given the scope for paradox in modern physics, there must be room in modern thinking for something as illogical as faith. The world we live in does not conform to logic, however much we may argue to the contrary. Logic after all is the idea that we might reduce perceivable phenomena to words or numbers. But sometimes the numbers just don’t add up; the words don’t do justice. We are left to believe, to have faith.

The Negativity of Intelligence

After all, the function of intelligence is to analyse, to criticize. I arrive at truth by negativity. Aristotle, the great master of classification helps us to understand this negative function.  We classify: we say this is an animal, but it’s not a dog or a cat. It has no fur. It doesn’t walk, it flies. It’s a bird. We know a bird is not a cat, an apple is not a banana. We put things in categories. The best way to understand a problem is to examine all the possible cause of the problem and eliminate the impossible causes. Thus, we arrive at solutions through negativity: “Not this, not that.” The mystics of India apply this meditation to the self. Who am I? Not this, not that.  I am not the table or the chair. I am not my nose or my eye? What am I? The problem is that since the intelligence arrives at solutions through negativity, it’s function is essential doubtful.

When I finally arrive at the idea that I am a spiritual entity, my intelligence has the tendency to apply negativity to this finding. Spirit is illogical, since it partakes of eternity and eternity defies time, a central concept in physics. Never mind that nobody can define exactly what “time” is. God is illogical, since it is a concept that cannot be “proven.” Never mind that in our daily lives we operate without “proof.” If I stand on a bus corner and wait there is no “proof” that the bus will come. I take it on faith. One might argue that my faith in the bus is based on evidence and my faith in God is not. But the arrival of the bus is based on factors beyond my control. If there’s traffic, I might wait for hours. My faith is based on flimsy evidence. My faith in God, is, it seems to me self-evident. I require no proof. I have faith that if I put one foot in front of the other I will move forward. I have no way of explaining how to walk or the difference between static and dynamic equilibrium. Walking is self-evident to me. In trying to justify the existence of God I run into the same kinds of paradoxes that confront physicists when they try to explain gravity waves or the space-time continuum. And yet I am not convinced that paradox is impossible or that the world is entirely logical.

Logical and Illogical Thinking

Philosophy itself has the capacity for both logical and illogical thinking. It must in order to arrive at conclusions. Sometimes we find that only by positing something illogical is it possible to reach a deeper truth. Einstein imagined sitting on a beam of light and dreamed the theory of relativity. Mystic revelation transcends dogma. Where someone like Hawking is brilliant is precisely when he dreams of something impossible like black holes that allow no light to escape. But when the scientists try to encode their worldview as a kind of religion they fall into the same black hole of dogma that has dogged religionists since the time of Galileo. Real science, like true philosophy, escapes dogma to seek out a more perfect vision.

Vision and Imagination

If science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick or Stanislaw Lem were characterized by vision and imagination, modern popular science writers are often little better than hacks. Their writing and teaching is a reaction against the dogma of religionists in ages gone by, but fails to answer the challenge of faith, of true mystic vision.

Science Fiction Writer Philip K. Dick after mystical epiphany

Popular Science Writers

Popular science writers are so busy extolling the positivism of Comte that they fail to see the consequences of his failed world view. As boosters for scientism they avoid mentioning the pitfalls of materialistic exploitation that have accompanied modern scientific discovery. Instead they try to seduce us with their Star Wars fantasies of time travel, warp speed, and parallel universes, even while eschewing as fantasy faith in God or the eternal soul. This betrays a shallow understanding of not only of the consequences of their materialistic views but of epistemology.

With their facile understanding of positivism, it’s hard to believe the present day advocates of atheism and popular science like Dawkins and Hawking would pass even a freshman philosophy class. They have made their assumptions and abide by them without questioning the authority of the 19^th Century minds like Comte, Darwin, Kant, and Nietzsche who formulated them. They may be charismatic representatives of popular science, fascinating debaters and witty speakers, but they are hardly trained in philosophy, or even introspective enough to think through the basic problems that mystified Hegel, Ortega y Gasset, and Henri Bergson.

The Taboos of Science

Those who popularize the imperialism of physics are represented by personalities like Dawkins or Hawking. They offer us cheaper laptops, flying self-guided Google cars, and trips to outer space at warp speed, even while the polar ice-caps melt, the oceans rise, coral reefs die. Animal species face mass extinction, air is unbreathable, the earth is fracked. In Flint, Michigan people can set fire to the water they drink. Thanks to the paradigm of pollution set into place by Comte and ratified by our charming and charistmatic scientific priesthood. But the high priests of science lack the philosophical basis to ask meaningful questions. This doesn’t mean that scientists are fools or that we should become Luddites who At present, the questions of the great minds of academe are strictly limited by the paradigm that dominates their fields, that of “practical and useful truths.”

And so a great mind like Hawking believes that the cosmos has no purpose, that it is not a “useful question.” In his case, philosophy is indeed dead; lacking a deep philosophy for himself, he wants it to be dead for everyone else. And sadly, many believe him. Few philosophers challenge the imperialism of science and physics. Those who dare are silenced.