EWR Thought for the day
It's very hard to distinguish between the propositions "it's true because they said it" and "they said it because it's true".
This was prompted by my realization that I am simultaneously listening to John O' Donahue's Anam Cara and reading Sabine Hossenfelder's Existential Physics. The experience is, in some ways, the philosophical equivalent of driving with the brakes on.
It's not a new insight that spirituality and science look at the world differently. Devotees of Jesus and Buddha and other wisdom teachers will take what their avatars have said at face value, and take it into their hearts as nostrums about how to live their lives; about what to believe in and where to put their faith. Such seems to be the case with at least some of the fellow members of my weekly, Buddhist-oriented meditation group.
Scientists, in contrast, will refrain from absolutes and qualify their pronouncements because they are skeptical that they have reached the ultimate knowledge, and know that their "truths" can be upended by tomorrow's discoveries. My training as a psychologist emphasized this perspective, and it's one I value highly.
Both devotees and scientists are guided by a sense of mystery, but for the devotee the mystery is a wonder to behold and instills a deep degree of faith and trust in the person of their anointed savior. Scientists also marvel at the mystery of what it is they don't know, indeed, it seems to fuel their motivation for relentless exploration. Both are seeking truth, but it is a very different kind of truth, and their epistemologies are incompatible. Religious knowledge is subject to reinterpretation but not reinvention, the truths are eternal. Scientific knowledge is probabilistic and always subject to revision and reversal.
I find myself in a way stuck in the middle between these two epistemologies, not yielding fully to either and constantly vacillating between the two. If Jung is right, the task I am faced with at this stage of my life is to seek an integration of these two seemingly incompatible polarities. An integration that speaks to both heart and mind and respects their respective domains. I doubt I can prosper without either, so it seems a vital and challenging task.
Interesting predicament, pilgrim. I've often wondered how a guru sitting in a cave could download wisdom that science recognizes as current truth centuries later. And, if genius is a matter of holding two profound and profoundly different ideas at the same time, maybe you've reached that state. Or, perhaps, there's a next level up where all will be revealed? Brought to you from the towers of the Hyatt Regency on the SF Embarcadero. Mañana.
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