In Search of Divine Reality

Science as a Source of Inspiration

Lothar Schäfer

• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
• Year: 1997
• ISBN:
  9781610752022
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión

The message of modern physics is that physical reality has, at its frontiers, all the aspects of a transcendent order. At the foundation of things, elementary particles can exert instantaneous long-distance influences on each other, can be meaningfully said to have mind-like properties, and can exist in states which are, as Heisenberg wrote, "not quite real, but between the idea of a thing and a real thing." Thus, just as dead atoms form living organisms and stupid molecules form intelligent brains, metaphysical entities form physical reality. This remarkable book clearly explains the concepts of quantum physics in order to show how science and spirituality are not separate.

Part 1

In Search of the Transcendental Elements of Human Knowledge

The Non-Rational and Non-Empirical Elements in Rational/Empirical Knowledge

Chapter 1

THE COMPOSITE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE

The Conceptual Foundations of Science

Science is central. By science I do not mean technique, technology, the basis of our survival; rather, I mean our view of the world, our quest for understanding the nature of reality, the order of the universe.

In the history of the West the nature of reality has always been taken as a central challenge. What are things really like? What is the position of human beings in the universe? What in our knowledge is certain and what is illusion? Is the external world independent of perception? Is it made up of material things or non-material ideas? Do the qualities of things belong to them or are they creations of our senses? Does eternal truth reside in universal principles or in particular events? In immutable forms or in evolution? Or is there no knowable truth and are the laws of nature made up by the human mind?

Questions of this kind are a challenge because they have never allowed for final answers. Like an open flame to moths, this challenge has been the fate of Western minds: enlightenment to some, annihilation to others.

Questions of this kind are central because, throughout our history, the answers that people have given to them have typically affected their views regarding the order of human concerns, political, social, and private.

Socrates (470–399 B.C.), for example, was fascinated by the faculty of reason to determine the general features of things. In accordance with this and, most likely inspired by it, he stressed the authority of general principles in the standards of human conduct.

In contrast to this, the Skeptics denied both, the possibility of objective knowledge, and the authority of generally valid moral principles.

Kant (1724–1804) emphasized the importance of innate principles for our theoretical knowledge and for our moral conduct. He claimed that the laws of physics were made by the human mind in the same manner in which, he claimed, the human will did not conform to external principles but to categorical rules set by itself.

These examples demonstrate that, regardless of what our convictions are, our views of reality effectively shape our moral convictions and form a basis for making decisions in daily life. By contemplating reality, we learn about principles of human conduct. There can be no system of rules of human conduct (ethics) without a concomitant view of reality (ontology) or a theory of knowledge (epistemology). In the order of the universe, human order is revealed. “By gaining understanding of the world,” Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) said, “man comes to understand who he is.” That this should be so is perhaps a sign of deeper connections, of something in the background of physical reality that is akin to the human mind and communicates with it.

These connections between the descriptions of science and the prescriptions of ethics are somewhat hidden and frequently denied. It is typically claimed that the exploration of reality has nothing to do with human values. Science is supposed to be particularly incompetent in setting guidelines for human conduct, and to be indifferent to our hopes, fears, and general concerns.

Closer analysis will show that this view is not correct. For example, when our views of reality fundamentally affect our views of human conduct, one basic moral guideline immediately follows; namely, that it should be everybody’s responsibility to maintain an enlightened and realistic view of the world. Anything else can entail dogmatic and unrealistic expectations which will disrupt society as much as the activities of a common thief. Other virtues, such as modesty, tolerance, and commitment to truth are also easily connected with epistemology.

Naive realism is the generally accepted view of science. It is the contention that the authority of science is restricted to facts, to bits of knowledge established with incontestable certainty.

Establishing Facts

When people are asked to explain what they mean when they say they know something for a fact, they usually reply that they have something in mind, but can’t say it. This is so because common sense is dogmatic, careless, and uncritically takes many things for granted. When pressed to say more about the basis on which they accept a thing as a fact, or what procedure they apply to establish a fact, most people produce some fragments, like a wish list, of necessary conditions and operations.

Experience of a datum—of something given, such as a reliable record on the past or direct evidence for a present fact—is a necessary part of verifying any fact. A fact is something that has independent existence, outside of anyone’s mind, regardless of what anyone wishes, thinks, feels, or supports as a bias. That is, an existing fact can be observed at will, repeatedly, for the purpose of testing. Independence from individual observers is a necessary condition for objectivity.

Compatibility with reason is another essential aspect of the procedures that we use to establish facts. Verifications of facts must be reasonable. They will not be accepted if they make no sense. There are laws of thinking correctly, which are summarized in logic, the science of valid reasoning. If it does not conform to logic, it cannot be accepted as a verification of fact.

Factum, in Latin, means something that has been done, that is real, actual. “As a matter of fact” means “really.” There is a connotation with certainty, verity. There is a feeling that if something is known for a fact, it is known for sure, with certainty, and that a proposition can be made about reality in which nothing is taken for granted.

As it turns out, all propositions about reality and all techniques of establishing facts take a lot for granted, and the means of observation and reason that we employ in deriving facts are not as clearly and distinctly factual as the feeling of certainty that they evoke.

For example, as to the desired rationality of established facts, the concept presupposes that the logic of the universe must in some ways conform to the logic of the human mind. Why that should be so is by no means self-evident.

Furthermore, as to the alleged objectivity of a fact, it is a complication that stating a truth is a satisfying act, with a feeling quite different from the sensation that we have in telling a lie. Moreover, discovering an unexpected fact is an exciting experience. Thus, the subject is emotionally involved in the process, and expressions of facts often are not purely rational and objective, but biased by emotions.

In addition, experience of reality and its memory are complicated processes. What exactly happens during an observation? What kind of contributions are made to the data by the system that records, stores, recalls, and communicates the memory content? In what way are the data biased by the censorship of the nervous system, which allows some of the sensory signals to proceed to consciousness while others are denied as insignificant? No fact established by an intelligent mind exists by itself. It is always a truth derived, attached to equipment, the result of a process, an interaction between an intelligence and an external phenomenon.

A digital computer, for example, receives numbers from its sensors and A/D (analog to digital) converters and stores them in memory. Analog signals are continuous, like a temperature, a frequency, a voltage. They can obtain any value by changing in arbitrarily small increments. In order for such an observable thing to be stored in memory, the measured results must be altered by A/D converters to discontinuous numerical values, or digits. A temperature, or a pressure, or intensity of radiation, to a digital computer all are one: numbers. Thus, when asked what the world consists of, a computer will answer “numbers.” In the same way humans are led by their sensors to conclude that the world consists of objects hard and soft, hot and cold, heavy and light, dry and wet.

In this way experimental data in science are not like what has been defined here as facts. They are not truly given, but are a curious mixture of contributions from the external object, the detector, and the observing mind. In this sense, various traditions of Western philosophy agree: We do not experience things, but only our interactions with things. Whereas objective observation must be independent of the state, character, and nature of the observer, no observation can be so.

As we shall see in part II of this book, at the elementary level of matter, at the very foundations of observable reality, further complications arise. When dealing with microscopic systems, the means by which we observe—that is, the quantum or indivisible unit of energy—has properties of the same magnitude as the electron or atom with which it communicates. Thus, observation unavoidably affects what it observes. More complicated yet, in the world of the quantum phenomena many basic characteristics of things, dynamic variables such as position or momentum, are now believed by many not to exist if they are not observed; that is, they are created by observation.

The Theorem of the Threefold Basis of Knowledge

We say of facts that they are truths. It is interesting that the English term true has the same root as the German word treu, meaning loyal and faithful. In a way, establishing facts has to do with faith. There is something there you have to believe in. One is reminded of Saint Anselm (1033–1109), who explained his faith by saying, “I believe to understand,” and of Pascal (1623–1662), who said, “The heart has many reasons that reason does not understand.”

Faith is essential to the process of deriving facts, because a number of principles of inference are involved which are non-rational and non-empirical in the sense that they themselves cannot be derived from reasoning nor established by observation. Whereas the processes used in deriving facts must be rational and empirical, the principles used in these processes are not. Among them we find the assumptions of object permanence, induction, and causality.

I. The principle of the continued existence and identity of things is a basic assumption that we automatically apply in our observations of physical reality. Without assuming that all ordinary things have a continued existence and identity, coherent observations of the external world are not possible. However, uninterrupted observation of anything is impossible, for practical reasons in general and, as shown in part II, in particular because it violates Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. In essence, object permanence is unobservable.

II. The principle of induction is an important principle of science. In logic induction is the procedure of moving from the particular to the general, of making inferences of a general nature on the basis of particular arguments. In science it is the process of formulating general laws on the basis of particular observations, assigning attributes which have consistently been found conjoined with a few events of a class to all events of that class. Induction in science is contingent upon the proposition that the future resembles the past, an assumption which cannot be derived by any process of reasoning nor verified by experience.

III. The principle of causality is applied when the relation between two events is assumed to be one of cause and effect. If causality is a principle of nature, nothing happens without a cause. The principle is important in understanding physical reality, because meaningful observations of the external world are possible only because a signal causes a response, the response in turn may be another signal causing another response, and so on. There is a causal chain from perceiving to sorting, storing, and recalling a stimulus.

Yet, already in the eighteenth century Hume (1711–1776) argued that we have no experience of any causal event. We always observe temporal conjunction, but infer necessary connection. Thus, causality is not a principle of nature but a habit of the human mind. It is part of a system program of the mind whose origins have not been revealed to us.

According to Hume, elements of knowledge consist of impressions; the origin of impressions is in sensation and reflection. Ideas are copies of impressions. Ideas without impression are meaningless.

Principles for which we have no impressions include the certainty of matters of fact (the contrary is always possible); the certainty of the continued identity of things (only if causality holds); the validity of induction (the future need not resemble the past); caus...