Science. Sublime.
“The sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious”. So says Albert Einstein, as quoted by Richard Dawkins, who goes on to say “In this sense I too am religious”. One of many humdingers from A.E. and I am with Dawkins, on this at least. This feeling of sublimity is what inspires both my sense of spirituality and also my approach to science: my humble efforts to complete a thesis in visual neuroscience.
However Dawkins goes on to add an immediate caveat- “In this sense I too am religious, with the reservation that ‘can not grasp’ does not have to mean ‘forever ungraspable’”. And therein lies the rub. Richard Dawkins is doing more than just critique religion (admirable)- he is also affirming a rationalist and positivist view of all things of the universe (questionable). Despite this position of Dawkins, science can be carried out without a rigid commitment to positivism or totalitarian rationalism, and that leads to a considerably different picture of things.
Positivism boils down crudely to the conviction that everything in the universe has a logical structure that can be explained. Although a somewhat outdated philosophical idea, this remains an unquestioned assumption common to most researchers and academics working within the sciences. It is true, at every turn, nature has proven to be able to be explained by science in terms of logical rational processes. So it is reasonable to think that everything that exists in this universe can be explained and intellectually understood in its entirety, indeed, like parts in a machine.
However, in my experience, that which invokes wonderment is not simply a current lack of information about how the universe works. What invokes an intuition of the sublime is the tangential touch of something that can be tasted by consciousness, yet which remains tantalizingly outside the periphery of my thinking processes. But what could that ‘something’ be? Isn’t it impossible that anything in nature could remain ‘forever ungraspable’ as Richard Dawkins would seem to suggest?
Human consciousness is certainly part of nature. So it is also reasonable that scientists and philosophers should have sought to characterize consciousness as able to be explained, as intellectually ‘graspable’, just like everything else. However, my experience of my own existence, through spiritual practice and through the ordinariness of life suggests otherwise. I suspect that my own consciousness exists between the concrete and the ephemeral, never fully attaining to either, but always consisting essentially of both. Perhaps our own consciousness is that very ‘something’ where Dawkins’ arid rationalism breaks apart?
Did the intuition of the sublime arise from something that Einstein perceived outside of himself in the universe? or from something within his own felt existence? Are these really even separable? Consciousness is all we’ve ever had, all we’ve ever known. It’s not just who we are, it’s what this universe is, to us. Despite the bravado of some members of the scientific and philosophic community, consciousness currently resides utterly outside of our understanding. Will it remain ‘forever ungraspable’? Who can say. Ultimately for me though, engaging in the scientific study of consciousness is not just about seeking to eradicate our lack of understanding of consciousness. It is about bridging the unbridgeable gulf, and seeking to understand how the logical concrete processes in (our own) nature can hold within them a mystery.
*Photo: Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore having a wee chat.
