The following is an excerpt from The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein. I found it so compelling that I felt inspired to share it.
Here is a central assumption of the Scientific Method that may seem so obvious as to be beyond dispute: if two people perform an identical experiment, they will get the same results. This requires…
- (1) Determinism: that the same initial conditions will result in the same final conditions.
- (2) Objectivity: that the experimenter can be separated out from the experiment. These two assumptions are intertwined. If we include the experimenter as part of the “initial conditions”, then they are never really identical—not even if the experimenter is the same person performing it at a different point in space and time.
At bottom, the Scientific Method assumes that there is an objective universe “out there” that we can query experimentally, thus ascertaining the truth or falsity of our theories.
Without this assumption, indeed, the whole concept of a “fact” becomes elusive, perhaps even incoherent. (Significantly, the root of the word is the Latin factio, a making or a doing, hinting perhaps at a former ambiguity between existence and perception, being and doing; what is, and what is made. Perhaps facts, like artifacts and manufactures, are made by us.)
The universe “out there” is in principle unconnected to one or another observer; hence the replicability of scientific experiment. If you and I query the universe with an identical experiment, we arrive at an identical result.
So blinded our we by our ontology that we see this not as an assumption, but a logical necessity. We can hardly imagine a cogent system of thought that doesn’t embody objectivity. Neither can we imagine a system of thought that dispenses with determinism, which encodes the modern notion of causality. These we see as basic principles of logic, not the conditional cultural assumptions that they are.
The unfortunate fact that the whole of 20th century physics invalidates precisely these principles of objectivity and determinism has not yet sunk into our intuitions.
The classical Newtonian world-view has been obsolete for a hundred years, but we have still not absorbed the revolutionary implications of the quantum mechanics that replaced it. Amazingly, eighty years after its mathematical formalization, quantum mechanics defies interpretation.
Today some five or six major interpretations of quantum theory, along with countless variations, boast adherents not just among amateur philosophers and new-age seekers but among mainstream academic physicists, many of whom eschew interpretation altogether and use the mathematics of the theory in apparent disregard of its ontological significance.
Either they cannot agree on the interpretation of the theory or they have given up even trying, because no interpretation is compatible with our fundamental cultural assumptions about the nature of reality.
That excerpt in mind-blowing, in that it identifies fundamental biases in the modern western worldview.
Yet when you actually contemplate it, it’s obvious and self-evident.
Note: This does not mean we need to throw away the scientific method. It just shows the limitation of it, and that it must be used within the context of a wider view of reality.
The essential nature of the universe is flux, constant change. So how can the same exact thing really be duplicated twice?
It reminds me of the Heraclitus quote, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
As Eisenstein beautifully illustrated, the scientific methodology completely ignores the discoveries of quantum mechanics, which is also what mystics have been saying for millennia… That consciousness, or perception, plays a fundamental role in reality.
Here’s a quote from the pioneering physicist David Bohm: “There is a universal flux that cannot be defined explicitly but which can be known only implicitly, as indicated by the explicitly definable forms and shapes, some stable and some unstable, that can be abstracted from the universal flux. In this flow, mind and matter are not separate substances. Rather, they are different aspects of our whole and unbroken movement.”
There is no objective reality. Reality is inherently subjective, a dynamic interplay of mind and matter. The closest thing to an objective reality is a collective agreement on reality. Still, that’s just an agreement, a blend of multiple subjective realities into a consensus.
So what does this all mean?
It points back to the wisdom that mystics have shared throughout the ages in different ways:
- The Universe, and everything within it, is ever-changing.
- Consciousness plays a fundamental role in reality.
- Reality is quantum and dynamic, not linear and mechanical.
- There is no truly objective reality. It’s all subjective perception.
- Ultimate reality, or truth, is beyond form or description. As Lao Tzu said, “The Tao that can be told is not the Eternal Tao”
Reality is interesting, right?
In-joy your experience.
Sending you Infinite Love.
~ Stephen Parato
