And for my Good Readers, here’s the new reviews and articles for this month. The ARJ2 ones are new additions to the top of A Reader’s Journal, Volume 2, Chronological List, and the ART ones to A Reader’s Treasury.
1.) ARJ2:
The Marriage of Sense and Thought — Imaginative Participation in Science by Stephen Edelglass, Georg Maier, Hans Gebert, and John Davy
Studying and working as a physicist I found myself learning things that no one I knew, outside
of other physicists, cared about. It seemed clear to me at the time that I was interested in things that
were scientific, and those other people were not interested in scientific things. I was like one of the
clothiers of the fictional King, and only the other clothiers and the King who paid for his new clothes
were interested in what I was learning about making and designing the King's new clothes. Meanwhile
my other friends were more interested in things like friendship and that I was sure couldn't be
described scientifically.
[page 1] When friends meet, they smile. They greet one another warmly and are
glad to have met again. These sentences describe a common event in a simple and
comprehensible way. But they are not "scientific." The warmth of a greeting
cannot be measured by a thermometer, nor is the accompanying "gladness"
observable. How then could friendship be described scientifically?
The authors of this book point out how certain metrics for a smile defining the size of the
opening of the oral aperture could be developed, but science, it seems, "can talk about human beings
only in a dehumanizing way." Yet, we can talk about two friends meeting and smiling and we know
that something other than simply the opening of the two oral apertures is going on. Our scientific
paradigm requires that we use an approach which works well only for objects that are dead. We have
a science which completely excludes the ability to describe living things, and it requires that we treat
human beings as non-living things! Rightly understood, physiologists and other medical practitioners
are usually materialists who study corpses scientifically, and their practice with living human beings,
when successful, is more like an art than a science.
You surely remember the fairy tale about a King who was going to get new clothes, a completely new Royal
outfit with everything from underwear to the Royal robe. The material to be used was pseudo-phenomenal cloth -- it was so rich and fine that only a King could afford it. The clothiers gave the
King a sophisticated barrage of descriptive words which culminated in the King's unknowingly
parading through his subjects completely nude. No one in the crowd of subjects lining the parade route
said anything, until one small voice was heard from the crowd, "The King has no clothes on!"
Materialistic science has been clothed in "pseudo-phenomenal" cloth for hundreds of years
now, and the authors of this fine book raise their small voice to cry aloud to all who are wondering
what is wrong with King Science, "The King is naked!" The clothiers of Science have built its Royal
garments of pseudo-phenomenal cloth, words which describe things and objects which no one can see,
no one has ever seen, and no one will ever see. Why? Because the objects they discuss, like the King's
New Clothes exist only in the words used to describe them. They are convenient fictions used to create
the illusion of objects where in fact there are none. Like the subjects stationed alongside the road of
the King's route, we inwardly have felt somehow cheated or deceived in our heart of hearts, but we
have held our silence. With the King and his courtiers proclaiming how fine his new clothes are to the
world, who would dare complain aloud that the King could have been deceived for all these years?
Edelglass, Maier, Gebert, and Davy are like the small boy in the fairy tale yelling to all that King
Science has no clothes on.
As a physicist, I cut my eye teeth on pseudo-phenomenal thought. In my Senior Project, I built
a field emission microscope and took images of atoms of tungsten on the tip of a very sharp needle I
had crafted. No one was going to tell me that atoms were not real. I had taken a photo of them, or so
I thought, deluded as I was by the pseudo-phenomenal cloth of the science I had been studying. Am
I saying that there are no atoms? No, what I am saying is that atoms are not things -- they are as
invisible as the King's new clothes. The photo I had taken and all anyone can take a photo of is the
effect that arrays of atoms make when beams of electrons are bounced off or extracted from them.
Atoms are non-things, electrons are non-things, but if we bombard the former with the latter, we can
produce photos which reveal some evidence of structure which, if we wish, we can point to and say,
these bumps here are atoms. But the bumps, rightly understood, are merely patterns created by one kind
of process (electrons) interacting with another kind of process (atoms).
If scientists can only talk sense to other scientists, we live in a split culture and each half speaks
nonsense to the other.
[page 2] In this book we propose to examine science itself and, by tracing the
origins of this strange dichotomy, to show a way in which the split can be
overcome.
The scientist can only speaks of objects and see the universe as full of objects. This focus on
objects leads to what scientists call their "objective view" of reality. But how can a view be real if it
eliminates all of the goodness of life and living -- if it takes the two smiles between friends and
replaces them with a measurement of the widening of their oral apertures? Scientists have not been
bashful about the necessity for such objective measures, at least until recently. Anything not objective
would have been called superstitious projections of human beings.
[page 6] It is widely considered a major triumph of science to have transcended
these superstitions by recognizing them for what they are: projections of our inner
life out into the "real" universe. Hence, for real knowledge to be attainable, the
"outer world" had to be purged of this inner life.
Scientists, by eliminating human projections, have eliminated themselves from the world they
seek to describe. They have become detached observers of the world, which certainly can be proven
to have detached observers in it, but which they exclude in their descriptions. They "see the world as
a machine, which they haunt like ghosts." (Page 6) In the mind of scientists, human beings have
become the ghost in the machine, passively recording what they observe and calling it science. But
knowledge is never created by machines, but by the humans who create the machines. Knowledge is
never the product of objects, but only of beings. But if the knowledge human beings create is only of
objects, and not beings, are we not thinking of a world in which no human beings exist?
[page 10] If we systematically think of a world in which human beings don't exist,
we should not be surprised to find ourselves creating a world in which they can't
exist.
Such a world was created cinematically in the 2001 movie A. I. which allows us to see a grim
world of robots who have eliminated the humans who created them. This is the ultimate end of a world
of materialism in which everything can be reduced to matter: humans are superfluous, and only matter
matters.
We put blinders on horses to eliminate their views of shadows in their peripheral vision which
would otherwise make them skittish. Scientist have had their blinders on for so long, they dismiss
claims that what was once observable by humans in their peripheral vision doesn't exist because they
ignore the existence of the very blinders they have donned.
[page 13, 14] This dismissal is supported by more than a habit of mind; the beings
that apparently peopled the medieval and earlier universes are not to be seen in
the world around us. Unobservable today, such beings must have been "imagined"
and not "real."
Children are born without such blinders. They can enjoy their very real playmates who are
invisible to adults. Parents will likely call their children's invisible friends "imaginary playmates."
With the advent of modern physics, especially quantum mechanical effects, scientists are faced with
realities which cannot be seen without special instruments, but the same parents who would ridicule
their children for calling their imaginary playmates real, will call an object that is only known through
the agency of their complex instruments, a "real" object! Anything that requires such expense to view
must be real, must it not?
[page 14] Specially designed instruments are required. Nevertheless, we still
habitually employ words and concepts drawn from sense experiences, even when
speaking about the invisible and intangible realms now under investigation. In
high-energy physics, where the materialistic paradigm is most obviously out-of-date, this is quite striking. The words we hear, "particles," "particle accelerators,"
"targets," and so on, seem to imply that the objects described would be both
visible and tangible if they were not so small. Yet on reflection, scientists realize
there is no meaningful way the realms they are exploring can be described as
either visible or tangible.
Other than children, scientists tend to ridicule religion for its superstitious and supernatural
beliefs, concepts, and doctrines. Once again we find the process psychologists call "projection" at
work. We project when we ridicule others who are doing blatantly and openly what we ourselves are
doing covertly, out of our own awareness.
The key to understanding the problem lies in the concept of pseudo-phenomenal thought. A
atom pictured as a nucleus with whirling electrons around it does not exist except in our thoughts. It
is a useful fiction for describing the atomic structure, but the description is not a reality, it is only a map
of some unknown processes going on out there outside of our mind in the phenomenal and unknown
world of the atom. It ceases to be a useful picture of the atom when we confront evidence which
contradicts the picture, a paradox, in other words. The existence of a paradox tells us that there is some
aspect of reality which our map, model, or whole paradigm of science is not equipped to handle or
explain. An atom as we have been taught to picture in our high school textbooks is a pseudo-phenomenal thought. It is a crutch that helps us learn to walk and it must be discarded if we wish to
run.
[page 70] Until the advent of the atomic model of matter, scientists had developed
mathematical ideas in an almost instinctive interplay between observation and
thought. This was not true of the next model, which "explained" the differences
between solids, liquids, and gases in terms of the motion of atoms carrying energy,
otherwise called heat. Atoms were regarded as imperceptibly small versions of
ordinary solid particles following the usual laws of mechanics. For classical
physicists and chemists, they were the entities that really underlay the phenomenal
world and were discovered in the same way fields had been discovered:
mathematically in imagination.
Aren't these mathematical fictions useful for discovering things? Yes. But at some point we
must recognize their limitations and discard the very tools which led us to our present location where
the tools are no longer useful.
In summary, Sense and Thought are two paths to reality, but they must both be taken in
conjunction with each other if we are ever to live successfully and prosper on a robust and healthy Earth
as true human beings.
http://www.doyletics.com/arj/sensthou.htm
2.) ARJ2 GUEST ESSAY:
Karl Popper and Owen Barfield and the Embattled Ideal of an ‘Open Society’ by Don Cruse
In this Guest Essay, Don Cruse follows up on his work, Evolution and the New Gnosis, which he wrote with Robert Zimmer in 2002 on the unconscious spiritual roots of Darwinian evolution. In this essay he calls for an open debate on the materialistic interpretations of evolution.
[From Essay] ‘Change’ is here the appropriate metaphor. Science must change to overcome Darwinism, and with it materialism, and religion must change to overcome dogma. And surely an ‘open’ renewal of the great scholastic debate, in science, religion and philosophy, bringing all of the resources of the modern mind to bear upon it, will provide the key to both of these much needed developments, and in a manner that would have gratified both Karl Popper and Owen Barfield.
This is not a debate of creationism versus evolution, but a debate on the very philosophical foundations of evolution itself, what it means to evolve. Machines do not create themselves and they cannot evolve, and human beings are not machines and we did not evolve in a purposeless manner through random changes in our human character and structure.
Science has become like religion was in the Middle Ages, when open debate was banned on fear of excommunication or being burning at the stake. The weapon of choice for keeping debate closed is for scientists to pretend no problem exists, and Cruse has made it his goal to make it unpleasant for scientists maintain their closed-minded stance to an open discussion of the issues of the epistemological basis of Darwinian Evolution.
http://www.doyletics.com/arj/popperob.htm
3.) ARJ2:
Anthroposophy and Inner Life; 9 Lec, Dornach, Jan-Feb, 1924, GA#234 by Rudolf Steiner
In this series of lectures, Rudolf Steiner starts back at the beginning and explains anthroposophy to
his audience and via transcription to us. On Page 68, he says, "I have referred to these things before, but it
is my present intention to give a resume of what has been developed within our society in the course of
twenty-one years" On Page 82, he relates that, to his spiritual way of perceiving, "the past is continually
present; the present moment is, at the same time, a real eternity." Steiner suggests, in effect, that we can
learn to see eternity in the present moment. If the past is continually present, then the earlier forms of
consciousness are available to us right now. We needed to lose those instinctive forms in order to develop
our intellect, and now it's time to move once more from the physical to the spiritual
[page 82] What I am explaining to you was once the content of instinctive forms of
consciousness. If we really understand ancient records we find a consciousness of this
fourfold composition of man and his connection with the cosmos. But this knowledge
has been lost to man for many centuries; otherwise he could not have developed the
intellect he has today. But we have now reached the point in human evolution when
we must again advance from the physical to the spiritual.
In the Editor's Preface, Owen Barfield sees this book as a book of travel rather than the guide book
that Theosophy provides.
[page 9] It is no longer simply the objective facts and events, but the way in which the
soul tentatively begins to experience these, which the lecturer makes such earnest
efforts to convey. We have exchanged a guide book for a book of travel. The one who
has been there re-creates his experience for the benefit of those who have not, trying
with every device at his disposal to reveal what it actually felt like.
Barfield tells us that Steiner strived to bring esoteric or hidden knowledge into the light of day and
make it into public knowledge available to everyone. His goal was to communicate this esoteric
knowledge in an exoteric way to each one of us alive today, some eighty years after these lectures.
[page 12] Is this an esoteric or an exoteric work? Certainly it will be more readily
appreciated by readers who have worked through other approaches to be found in the
books and lecture-cycles and perhaps especially in the Leading Thoughts. Yet it is the
whole aim and character of Spiritual Science, as Rudolf Steiner developed it, to
endeavor to be esoteric in an exoteric way. For that was what he believed the crisis of
the twentieth century demands. And I doubt if he ever struggled harder to combine
the two qualities than in these nine lectures given at the end of his life. Thus, although
he was addressing members of the Anthroposophical Society, I believe that he had his
gaze fixed on Western man in general, and I hope that an increasing number of those
who are as yet unacquainted with any of his teaching may find in this book (and it can
only be done by intensive application) a convincing proof of the immense fund of
wisdom, insight and knowledge from which these teachings spring.
Steiner spells out the two puzzles which confront us as human beings in the present time:
[page 22] Thus, from two directions, searching questions confront man today. One of
these questions arises when he becomes aware that:
Nature exists, but man can only approach her by letting her destroy him;
the other when he sees:
The human soul exists, but Nature can only approach this human soul by
becoming mere semblance.
Steiner subsequently provides ample answers for these questions through his exoteric science of
esoteric knowledge, anthroposophy. He provides answering to the longing and questioning human heart
who, though it loves Nature, cannot find its true home inside Nature. Steiner speaks openly and
exoterically of knowledge which had been centuries earlier shared only privately and esoterically.
The famous script called Desiderata has this wonderful phrase in it which seems resonate with
everyone who hears it, even though few understand it, up until now.
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees & the stars; you have a right to be
here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it
should.
Perhaps this next passage of Steiner's lecture will illuminate us as to the reason for the deep feeling
the passage arises in us.
[page 94] We now stand in the universe and say to ourselves, as we consider, first of
all, this experience with our etheric body: truly, we are not only here for ourselves;
the universe has its own intentions in regard to us. It has put us here that its own
content may pass through us and be received again in the form into which we can
transmute it. As human beings we are not here for our own ends alone; in respect to
our etheric body, for example, we are here for the universe. The universe needs us
because, through us, it 'fulfils' itself -- fills itself again and again with its own content.
There is an interchange, not of substance but of thoughts between the universe and
man. The universe gives its cosmic thoughts to our etheric body and receives then
back again in a humanized condition. We are not here for ourselves alone; we are
here for the sake of the universe.
In the movie of about twenty years ago titled, "Ghost", we witness as two evil protagonists die on
screen and out of the shadows come dark spirit beings who drag the away them screaming as if their very
existence were threatened by the dark things. We will each come face to face with such spirits after death
if we have in some way hindered the evolution of humankind.
[page 129] On entering the world of spiritual beings, however, we do not merely meet
the ideal judgment that we are of little worth in respect of any fault or disgraceful
deed we have committed; we feel the gaze of these beings resting upon us as if it would
annihilate our very being. In respect of all we have done that is valuable, the gaze of
these beings falls upon us as if we first attained thereby our full reality as psycho-spiritual beings. Our reality depends upon our value. Should we have hindered the
evolution that was intended in the spiritual world, it is as if darkness were robbing us
of our very existence. If we have done something in accordance with the evolution of
the spiritual world, and its effects continue, it is as if light were calling us to fresh
spiritual life. We experience all I have described and enter the realm of spirit beings.
This enhances our consciousness in the spiritual world and keeps us awake. Through
all the demands made upon us there, we realize that we have won something in the
universe in regard to our own reality.
These lectures present in only 130 pages a deep look into the major points of Steiner's spiritual
science, and even though it may be a reprise for some, there will be nuggets of mind-boggling concepts
and details or rephrasing for all who read these lectures. The nuggets will be spiritual food to be ingested
and digested over the coming years as one works oneself on the way to the light of the spiritual world.
The only question for you to answer is this "Shall I read the review or go for the whole book?" For
the review, get started now by clicking the link below. For the book, at the bottom of the review itself there is an order form from
SteinerBooks to purchase a copy for yourself. In either case, some good reading awaits your pleasure and
enlightenment
http://www.doyletics.com/arj/aainnerl.htm