CHAPTER II
SCIENCE -- THE RED HERRING
Questions of aesthetics and how to build a social world around humanistic values are, by no means, new. The quest to love and create a social world in the light of that vision is perhaps as old as consciousness itself. Throughout the ages, people have testified to love as the crux of experience, and what is important in life. Yet, a practical theory of love has not been mapped into reality. Indeed, questions of the ''Good" have often been abandoned in favor of more "realistic" pursuits. At the same time, here we are entertaining the possibility of a humanistic sociology, and embracing Ruth Benedict's idea of synergy -- that there is such a thing as the ''Good" culture. Gregory Bateson (1979), in discussing similar questions, said
There has to be a reason why these questions have never been answered . . . . We might take that as our first clue to the answer -- the historical fact that so many . . . have tried and not succeeded. The answer must be somehow hidden. It must be so: That the very posing of these questions always gives off a false scent, leading the questioner off on a wild goose chase. A red herring (p. 234.)
I would suggest that the red herring is none other than science.
It will be remembered that at the time that science was succeeding with technological breakthroughs and was enjoying new-found credibility with the public, the romantic poets warned against the abuses of its vision. Romantic poets openly declared war on what they called, "Newton's sleep" (Roszak, 1969). Having conceived of Christ as the Imagination, William Blake maintained that Science was the Anti-Christ and that only "dark Satanic mills" could come from it (Bateson, 1979, p. 241). In all, the romantic poets saw Science as destroying all that was holy and magical in life: they saw it negating the humanistic vision.
This division between the religious view and the scientific view of man had not always been the case. The fact that early scientific issues were also church issues illustrates that they were both operated in the same theater. Often the theologian was also the scientist. Science had begun as a quest to find the laws of God: since God had designed the universe according to laws, the early scientist sought to find a law so obvious that the heretic would be forced to admit that God did exist (Bosworth, 1977).
Science would thus find God's rulebook and prove His existence. It was conceived of as a Golden Ladder Of Progress which would take us to knowledge and to God. This quest for God's rulebook might be seen as already providing the basis for a formidable "red herring."
Science was thus conceived of as a Tower of Babel which would lead to heaven. It was Spinoza (1951) who first realized that something quite different was happening. His conclusion was gradually whispered all over Europe: "God or Nature." It did not make any difference whether the word God was used in scientific theories or whether the word Nature was used.
The ancients had sought to find the fundamental building blocks of the universe what they termed "corpuscles." With the "finding" of atoms and the ordering of the physical world by atomic weight, it appeared that the fundamental building blocks had been found (Meyerson, 1930). However, Einstein's theory and its application in splitting the atom did more than just produce the nuclear age -- it destroyed the philosophical basis of science. The atom was supposedly the fundamental building block and, therefore, unsplitable. It became apparent that atoms were not really there: they had been constructed by the mind. The weight definition which was an agreement to operate towards the world in a certain manner had proved to have practical applications. It had been shown that we can analyze the world by comparing the weights of various items, but we are constructing those items -- not finding the truth. The agreement to accept the weight definition for physical science was an agreement to operate by a chosen metaphor. As Kenneth Burke (1945) summarized,
Those who have criticized the use of metaphor have for the most part not realized how little removed such description is from the ordinary intellectual method of analysis . . . . When we describe in abstract terms, we are not sticking to the facts at all, we are substituting something else for them just as much as if we were using out and out metaphor . . . . Indeed, are we not coming to see that the whole works of scientific research, even entire schools, are hardly more than the patient repetition, in all its ramifications, of a fertile metaphor (p. 126)
The Truth appeared not to be what we had thought. It suddenly began to look like we were not going to find an Absolute Truth. The Logical Positivists were mistaken: the Universe was not going to tell us how to act. It looked like Science was closer to art than had been suspected. Life could not be solved first on paper. Before we live -- before we act -- we cannot fully know the plot. Science will not free us from the responsibility of acting. The "change the world" conversation cannot be solved on paper. We cannot wait to find the truth before we get around to acting toward the good. If we wait, we will never be finished in time.
It is strange that at the same time that Science was being criticized for serious epistemological problems, it had become the predominant metaphor in society. In fact, currently, Science is Western culture. It is the judicial decision-making processes, the extension of science into rational rules and role descriptions which is bureaucracy, and the very method of running government and business alike.
Primitive world views are being erased from the face of the earth. The scientific world view has won out through technological magic. The technology of cameras, television, automobiles, and even "Coca-Cola" was no match for the primitive methods (Ogburn and Nimkoff, 1955; Carpenter, 1970; ,McLuhan, 1971. We live in a world of technological magic. The assumption is that surely the world view which gave us this magic must be superior.
Cultural diversity is being flattened into one scientific technological culture. Primitive world views remain only as curiosities. The rational-scientific banner has become the official version of reality.
It is at this point that a counterculture becomes imperative. It was Jung who first sought to recover the irrational component from primitive cultures (Jung, 1964). He saw the need to preserve the ancient understandings of man's drama. It was meaning and relatedness which the primitive world view expressed. It is alienation and separateness which the scientific world view emphasizes (Fromm, 1968).
Perhaps, we do not see the significance of Ruth Benedict's idea of synergy and the choice between cultural arrangements because we see only one culture. The scientific imperative has obscured choices between cultures -- between the "good" culture and the unsatisfying. Culture limits and structures the options which can occur to us. We see no possibility except the scientific realism.
At the same time that science is being popularized as it colonizes culture, it is in trouble philosophically. Ancient philosophers had a debate over whether the first step should be to "find the truth" or to "make the good." The search for truth emerged victorious and the 2,000 year journey to science was launched. But now, even the physicists -- our most reified version of science -- do not know what is going on (Needleman, 1979; Hampden-Turner, 1970). Perhaps, it was not possible to depart from the difficulty of the "making the good" argument so easily.
On the path of our search for the truth, it has been shown that all knowledge is personal knowledge" (Polanyi, 1958); that major scientific "truths" were serendipitous discoveries (Butterfield, 1957); and that all major scientific discoveries occurred because somebody (either consciously or unconsciously) violated established methods and truths (Feyerbend, 1970). The truth appears not to be what we had thought it was at all.
The conclusion is slowly being reached that science is subject to the same dynamics as other human systems. The great success of the physical sciences occurred when the decision was made to ignore the fact that science is a human act. The physical scientist decided to ignore questions of human consciousness: to pretend that they weren't looking, that they were just seeing. The human act of looking became unavailable for inspection (Bosworth, 1977). This is precisely where the physical sciences separated from philosophy and made their great progress.
Later, we have the development of something called the ''social sciences." This is a slippery maneuver, at best. The assumption is made that there are "mature" and "immature" sciences. Social science is supposed to follow the lead of the physical sciences. Science weeds out those who would be scientists. Not only does the world view of science make it difficult for people who do not share club views of reality to obtain membership, but graduate schools and professional associations are maintained to eliminate those who do not follow club policy.
A personal anecdote might further illustrate the gate-keeping function of the scientific club. A friend of mine who was a graduate student in chemistry informed his advisor, while he was doing research on phosphates, that he thought that phosphates were mental constructs and that they did not really exist. His advisor replied, "If you cannot believe in phosphates, what can you believe in?" My friend was violating a domain assumption for club membership.
Science is a Method of Agreement
Science is a group of people who agree on a certain version of the world and agree to act in a certain manner towards it. It is almost a contractual arrangement. Kuhn (1964) showed that the scientific method is a way of agreement and settling arguments. It is not a matter of ''truth", but of popularity and one side winning an argument. Paradigm shifts have not been made because one argument is necessarily better, but because one side has succeeded in obtaining the necessary power to enforce its agreement. Kuhn noted that the slow, orderly progress depicted in science textbooks was a myth: each generation rewrote its history much as a political party might.
It is true that professional associations do not usually ban or censor members, but they do reduce certain views (and people) to irrelevance. If masters' theses, Ph.D. dissertations, and professional journals are any proof, it is a contractual agreement.
Scientific
Laws are Legislated
Scientific laws are not found, they are subject to a process of legislation just like any other law (Bosworth, 1977). They rely on the methods of argument and politics for endorsement. As Kuhn (1964) showed, often the change takes place by the old guard dying off, and with it the opposition to a new paradigm and laws.
Science
is Involved in Actively Shaping/Making The Universe
Science is not finding the truth, but is shaping to an image. The idea that scientific methods can be neutral is becoming increasingly suspect. The Heisenberg (1977) principle of indeterminacy, in physics, says that some particles in space cannot be seen without shining a light upon them. The act of shining a light on them then forever changes their velocity and direction. The act of seeing thus changes what we see, and we will never be able to know the truth (of what happened before we shined the light). The process of looking cannot be ignored. This is the conclusion which bothered Galileo centuries earlier. Galileo said that all matter has two types of properties: primary properties and secondary properties. However, the primary properties are really not "properties" at all. The secondary properties tell us what we see, but the primary properties tell us where to look in the first place. They are the arbitrary descriptions, definitions, and focuses without which we see nothing. Galileo realized that by telling us where to look, the physical sciences were not finding the truth, but making the world. Not only must the amateur looking through his telescope know where to look in the first place, he must know what to expect to see.
This is all very similar to the recent work of Piaget (195x) in psychology. In discussing the role of seeing and vision in the child's conception of reality, Piaget noted that a child must learn what is in an environment in order to see it. Children must learn where and on what to focus: this is why we wave objects in front of them. Parent; show them the environment. Cultural anthropology abounds with examples of how parents in different cultures have delineated the environment in different ways and socialized their children to see different realities (Benedict, 1934; Hoebel, 1949). Culture is a description which we learn to see. Goffman's (1974) frame analysis in sociology, made a similar point in saying that how we frame something determines what we see. Goffman's phenomenological approach also parallels Bateson's (1979) argument that a question frames the answer to it, and we must ask on what "surface" the answer to a particular question might be mapped. Science is not able to avoid the human component and attain objective truths. Our decisions on how and where to look, no matter how "objectively" we design our method of looking, will influence -- and to a large extent determine -- what we see. The question that science must now be asked is whether it has extracted virtually all that can be obtained or whether new methods can be incorporated for some new purpose other than the traditional scientific quest for truth, or whether we need to turn to new approaches.
Eddington said it quite nicely:
We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! it is our own (Matson, 1964, p. 125).
Our premises become our conclusions. Our domain assumptions (Gouldner, 1970) become our structure. Where we start is here we end up.
Even Descartes (1912), who recommended a method of doubt, could not avoid such circularity. He began by thinking and doubting and he concluded with ''I think, therefore I am.'' He started believing in the truth but chose the method of doubting all things and forcing the truth to reveal itself. Several times during his discourse, when he had worked his way into a philosophical corner, the "Angel of Truth" showed up to direct him on his way. If Descartes had not a priori subscribed to the theory of truth, we might expect him to be suspicious of the "Angel of Truth." His circular method of doubting proves only that he is doubting.
If where we start is where we end up and determines what we shall see on the journey, then where we start is of paramount importance. Once reified, perspectives tend to become self-perpetuating and very difficult to disengage. Perspectives can easily degenerate into name calling where it is felt that simply because we have labeled a phenomenon, we have understood it. Even if refutations to a theory are found, this does not disprove the theory. The exceptions are noted, cast as ''anomalies", and the theory then proceeds much as it did before. An example of an anomaly would be the "black hole" of physics. Black holes are defined as points in space where the "normal laws of physics are suspended." The points are then labeled as black holes and the normal mode of physics once again proceeds just as if black holes had never been discovered. It is only when the number of anomalies is too great, and a new theory is formed which incorporates more of them, that the reigning theory is displaced. In modern physics, some of the anomalies of Newtonian physics can be explained by Einsteinian physics, but some of the things which must be treated as anomalies under the Einsteinian system were explainable through the Newtonian system (Hampden-Turner, 1970). We have not generated d new "truth,'' we have merely incorporated a new metaphor for organizing our information.
We do not switch perspectives for strictly logical reasons or replace the old with the new because it is closer to the truth. We develop a new perspective because the area it synthesizes is deemed to be more important -- i.e., valuable. One simply chooses to look in a different way because one is more interested in the focus that this view affords. We switch paradigms because of values, not because of reason (Kuhn, 1964).
Love and magic cannot be treated as anomalies to science, but require an entirely different method than traditional scholarship and analysis. They defy the normal categorization of thought and discipline boundaries. To understand them, we require an approach which is more ecological. If we are to explore the humanistic concerns, we must not start with the methods and values of science, but with our humanistic values themselves. They demand a different manner of movement. In thought, it appears that there is no difference between ends and means: that how we star is where we will end up. If we are to study love and magic, we must allow our understanding of them to dictate our method of exploration.
The
Scientific World View
I would contend that the very premises of the scientific method become the scientific world view. The reason humanistic concerns, and love and magic, have not been studied is that they do not fit the scientific world view. If we are going to understand why this is so, we must understand the scientific world view. To do this, it is necessary to study the method of science.
Maslow (1966), in the Psychology of Science said that the one overwhelming finding of experiments in behavioral science was that subjects resent being experimented upon: that they felt that something crucial was being lost. If we were going to be truly empirical, then we must have taken such humanistic findings into account.
That the methods of scientific experimentation do not lend themselves to humanistic efforts should be made obvious from a list of scientific methods:
1. Objectivity and Detachment
2. Doubt, Null Hypothesis, Testing
3. Prediction and Control
4. Experiment, Artificial Settings
5. Value Free
Objectivity and Detachment
With objectivity and detachment, the purpose is to not contaminate our "data." A distinction is made between the knower and the known along the lines of a mind-body split. The objective scientist is not allowed to "take the role of the other" (Mead, 1934) or experience "sympathetic introspection" (Cooley, 1902). People are reduced to objects for our inquiry. The observer must refrain from being a part of the process being studied.
Objectivity would have us pretend that we are not doing the looking: it thus avoids problems of human consciousness. It demands an alienation between the ''In-Here" and the "Out-There": between the self and the object of study.
Objective consciousness is alienated life promoted to its most honorific status as scientific method. Under its auspices, e subordinate nature of our command only by estranging ourselves from more and more of what we experience . . . (Roszak, 1969, p. 232).
. . . whatever its epistemological status . . . objectivity as a state of being fills the very air we breathe in a scientific culture . . . the mentality of the ideal scientist becomes the very soul of the society (Roszak, 1969, p. 216).
Roszak (1969) continued:
when we challenge the finality of objective consciousness as basis for culture, what is at issue is the size of man's life. We must insist that a culture which negates or subordinates or degrades visionary experience commits the sin of diminishing our existence. Which is precisely what happens when we insist that reality is limited to what objective consciousness can turn into the stuff of science . . . (p. 234).
Objectivity would alienate us from the very concerns which a humanistic sociology would wish to study. "The essence of magic," noted Roszak (1969, p. 245), "lies in the sense that man and not-man stand on communicable terms with one another. The relationship is not that of in-Here impassively observing Out-there . . . ." Love is an active entering into another person, moving past boundaries of In-Here and Out-There (Fromm, 1956). It appears problematical to know love from an objective standpoint. Humanistic pursuits all emphasize involvement. It seems impossible to attain understanding of them from a method of objectivity and detachment. It is the caring for the not-I that is the very basis for the humanistic ethic. Doubt, Null Hypothesis, Testing , Humanistic enterprises might well follow Coleridge's method of the "willing suspension of disbelief." The emphasis might be placed upon trust rather than making things ''prove" their existence. It is very possible that some things only exist if one is willing to participate and entertain their existence. By accepting at the outset a method of null hypothesis and doubt, we exclude such phenomena from study.
Love and magic, as well as other humanistic visions, may well be such phenomena. Doubt and testing causes us to treat the magician as a charlatan and the lover as a con artist. Repeated testing may drive love and magic from our view. Because "they" won't adhere to our standards of testing, the scientist is apt to conclude that they don't exist. Love gets relegated to the realm of reciprocity and fair exchange, and magic gets routinized as hypnosis or mood.
The "Reality" of the scientific world view treats as real only such phenomena as can be presented publicly for inspection. The ''knowledge'' gained from intimate spaces is not subject to the scrutiny of such testing and is thus suspect or totally disregarded.
The experiment of the laboratory is the ideal model for scientific truth. Synchronicity, for example, by its very nature is not tailored to artificial, mock settings. Contriving conditions for its occurrence greatly reduces it as a phenomenon. Life cannot be adequately operationalized by role-playing. lf we want to get to the core of meaning, then an artificial setting is not the place.
The stance of the scientist is that of skeptic. Humanistic values emphasize an involvement, a trust-commitment. The scientific method of doubt is the anti-thesis of the humanistic ethic of love. The scientific world view produces the rational man who seeks to have reality prove itself. The humanistic vision produces the artist who creates and participates in a vision which he/she feels is real.
Prediction and Control
The scientific view assumes a mechanistic universe which can be reduced to cause and effect phenomena. The emphasis is upon power: obtaining predictable relationships which can then be controlled. Phenomena which "cannot be foreseen or reproduced at will . . . are essentially beyond the control of science" (Meyerson, 1930 p. 28). Science demands manipulable knowledge. It seeks reduction of the world into variables which can then be controlled. It follows Bacon in conceiving of knowledge as power,
The emphasis upon power is quite different from a humanistic epistemology. Humanism would treat life more as a miraculous occurrence than as a machine which is reducible to cause and effect parts. It is not power, but knowledge which is central to the humanistic perspective. It is only the "black magician" who would force knowledge into power (Roszak, 1969, p. 261). The humanistic conception resembles more the intimacy of love (Fromm, 1956).
If knowledge is but manipulatable information for power, then we have replaced understanding with explanation. Explanatory theories, the crux of science, require only that we map one variable to another for purposes of control; not that we appreciate the interrelationship. The effort of explanatory theory is to "explain away" the variance in a system: the analysis of variance would reduce all variance to identity (Meyerson, 1930). The unacknowledged assumption is that variance is deviance, and must be accounted for: reduced to identity.
The cause and effect model of the mechanistic metaphor stands in flagrant contrast to the humanistic view of the world and its beauty. The implications of such a metaphor for ecology and for human beings in general (Merchant, 1980) call into question how far we can push the mechanical metaphor and still retain both the person and the planet (Roszak, 1979). The humanistic consciousness desires a different kind of relationship with life. Love may be the choice to forego power for higher motivations. A method which premises prediction and control violates the very spirit of an exploration into humanism.
The cause and effect metaphor also has another consequence: in order to manipulate a subject, we must first have that subject in a manipulatable environment, i.e., under our control (Carpenter, 1970). This poses severe problems for freedom as well as for our conception of a fuller vision of humanity (Mills, 1959).
With the mechanistic model, it is presumed that the universe is "made" according to laws and science will find those laws. The status of laws in physics is under great debate (Polanyi, 1958; Kuhn, 1964). It has been noted earlier that scientific laws are not discovered, but are legislated. For the human "sciences," the question might be asked: if laws of human behavior were "discovered'' would they still work after they were made public or would people learn to "work the system?" Or if these laws were kept secret and available only for government use, would they not be the basis for the classified expertise which Mills (1959) and Gouldner (1970) feared? And, if they did not work, would there not be a tendency to enforce them?
The mechanistic metaphor, thus, poses severe problems for freedom and is political in nature. Humanists would seek a different model of knowledge.
Value Free
Science claims value neutrality. It has been argued previously that such neutrality is impossible: that the very act of framing a question and a method of inquiry is a value stance. What is critical here, though, is the fact that the Scientific world view would desire the pretense of ethical neutrality.
The implication is that values are somehow illegitimate; that they ill taint the work of building a secular science. Humanism underscores the point that values are the very basis of meaning and that if we must shape our work, we should do so in directions we intend -- not y unspoken and unconscious assumptions from unexamined metaphors. Humanism seeks a sacred enactment of values held to be the most important for living, not a secular alienation from all systems of meaning.
The essence of a humanistic epistemology is that over the ages, people have testified that there are better ways to live. These testimonials over experience must then be regarded as knowledge claims and examined as strategies. Benedict's (1970) idea of synergy reintroduced the idea of the "good" to the behavioral disciplines. It implied that there were choices over systems of meaning and that our choice of cultural arrangements had directional consequences.
The classified expertise claim of the scientific world view does not eliminate the need for choices and values, but it does limit the number of people involved in the decision-making process. It must be asked if any human being can be trusted with the type of knowledge that science aspires to: even if it were attainable, would it not be too great a temptation? We must structure our knowledge-finding process to the types of knowledge we wish to attain.
To study human processes, we cannot afford to neglect values. If we seek a humanistic sociology, we must formulate methods of movement and exploration which address the values we wish to promote. This requires leaving the scientific culture with all its subtle nuances and seeking methods which are congruent with our subject matter. We must return to the ancient problem of the Good and seek to build toward our values.
A Humanistic Epistemology
Fromm (1968) made the critical distinction between "living" human beings and "dead" ones: between life-enhancing social processes and life-strangling processes. The vale which he embraced was productiveness of the human capacity (1947): the growth and the unfolding of the individual through love (1956) -- all that contributes to the unfolding of life (1968). Fromm maintained that there are two ways of knowing. The first is the autopsy table of science with its method of dissection and analysis.
In children we often see this path to knowledge quite overtly. The child takes something apart, breaks it up in order to know it; or it takes an animal apart; cruelly tears off the wings of a butterfly in order to know it, to force its secret. The cruelty itself is motivated by something deeper: the wish to know the secret of things and of life (Fromm, 1956, p. 25).
This is the normal scientific mode of analysis: we take something apart to know its secret. We dissect the whole and then seek according to our mechanistic model to put it back together. Our cruelty is masked by the fact that we are using laboratory animals, but our method is clear: we must render things dead to know their secret. Even in biology, we know more of cadavers than we know of living bodies. Science by its method does not allow for change, or growth. It prefers the immobile: the fixed moment in time: the dead.
That the reader may be shocked by the extremity of such an argument and this portrayal of science does not mute its logical consequences. Even the experiments in the Nazi concentration camps can be seen as an extension of the power to know (Griffin, 1981) -- to reduce life and find its pulse and soul.
"The other path to knowing 'the secret,"' said Fromm (1956, p. 25), "is love.'' "Love is . . . knowledge . . . under the condition of the preservation of . . . integrity" (Fromm, 1947, p. 116). It is an entering into. It is an active participation and understanding. This is similar to Cooley's idea of "sympathetic introspection" and has links with Weber's verstheen approach (Matson, 1964). The philosopher Bergson (1949, p. 21) said, "there are two profoundly different ways of knowing a thing. The first implies that we move round the object; the second, that we enter into it." The first, Bergson called analysis; the second he called intuition. Intuition is a "kind of intellectual sympathy.'' It is an attempt to grasp the whole. Bergson maintained that it is only by intuition that we grasp the whole; it is never understandable only by the elements of analysis. This leap of faith is necessary for our understanding. Hocking (1959) in Types of Philosophy concurred: " . . our experience of love and beauty have a decisive word to say. we speak of them as 'feelings'; what if they are also knowings? I suggest that they are such . . . they are. . . not only emotions, but moments of metaphysical insight (P. 09xx). This method of intuition is very similar to Fromm's "knowing something under conditions of its integrity" which he called love. Analysis does not seem to fit our understanding of love.
As the poet Wordsworth said,
Sweet is the lore that Nature brings; -Our meddling instinct Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things we murder to dissect
The artist and the poet seek a different form of understanding which preserves and respects life and growth. The intuitive role of the artist and the analytical role of the scientist have been often recognized, but the artist is usually subjugated in the scientific purpose and economic "reality." Intuition is "credited" as the source of ideas/hypotheses, but must then be translated into knowledge by the process of science and its methods. As Roszak (1969) argued,
One cliched argument suggests that the work of the scientist begins with the poet's sense of wonder (a dubious hypothesis at best) but then goes beyond it armed with spectroscope and light meter. The argument misses the key point: the poet's experience is defined precisely by the fact that the poet does not go beyond it . . . . Or are we to believe it was by failure of intelligence that Wordsworth never graduated into the status of weatherman (p. 253)?
C. P. Snow spoke of two cultures, one scientific and one humanistic, but "scarcely grasped the terrible pathos that divides these two cultures" (Roszak, 1969, p. 232). "We cannot rely on science for methods of running the world and criteria for reality without becoming a scientific culture and subverting the humanistic vision." It is Roszak (1969) who concluded:
We must be prepared to entertain the astonishing claim men like Blake lay before us: that here are eyes which see the world not as d commonplace sight or as scientific scrutiny sees it, but see it transformed, made lustrous beyond measure, and in seeing the world so, see it as it really is (p. 240). Italics Mine]
"The legitimate use of images is to express the truth, not to possess it," wrote Watts (1951, p. 26). ". . . you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. You cannot grasp it just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run" (Watts, 1951, p. 24).
We find that Blake was right: The Scientific culture is in danger of torturing the insight out of life; it is the ''Anti-Christ" of the imagination and fundamentally antagonistic to the humanistic vision. Science would take the beauty and grandeur out of life and reduce us to a lesser version of humanity -- the "cheerful robot" of Mills (1959, p. 175). Science means the submission of awe and wonder, of imagination and reverence for life to a secondary status.
It was Blake who wrote: To see eternity in a grain of sand To hold infinity in your hand
This is hardly the scientific method. Blake and the romantic poets saw science destroying religion: the mystical view of human nature. And ultimately, unless we are willing to believe in a Procrustean bed where our legs are stretched if we are too short and our head cut off if we are too tall, science renders s into something less than fully human. It means death.
We are a long way from the original scientific Tower of Babel which would take us to God. Science has gotten all of life on its table, but at a terrible cost.
Knowledge is power, wrote Francis Bacon. Science has followed Bacon in concluding that power is manipulatable knowledge. Humanism would recommend a different epistemology. As Omar Khayyam said: "To each must come the time to decide between truth and wisdom." It is wisdom for living which humanistic efforts seek, not information for manipulation (Merchant, 1980).
It is not the focus of this paper to develop a new epistemology: only to argue that such an epistemology exists, and to suggest its outline. The actual articulation of such an epistemology may well be the critical philosophical issue of our times. The general outline of this humanistic epistemology can be found developing throughout the culture.
The scientific assumptions for knowledge revolve around the idea of territorializing the unknown. This is the frontier version of the explorer searching enchanted lands and bringing back riches for the king's table. Nature is gradually tamed and her resources made available for the building blocks of society. The wild becomes charted, homesteaded, and gradually made ''civilized." It is the idea of Manifest Destiny which would march us across the frontier sure of our purpose -- and its path to knowledge.
If
we were to illustrate this epistemology, we would have an endless series
of lines as the boundaries of knowledge gradually were stretched and
the area of the unknown became colored in by the known.
This is also the strategy of Freud's famous dictum for psychology: "where id was, let ego be." The unconscious becomes conscious; the unknown, becomes known. It is both the tactic of our science and the history of Western culture. It is our ground-rule assumption to the irrational and mystery. The limits of such an epistemology have been amply challenged in the twentieth century. Jung (1964) noted that the rational, "masculine" elements of culture have been over-emphasized and the irrational "feminine" aspects now need to be recovered and developed before we can further progress as a culture. The recovery and articulation of primitive ., --mythology is an important task which holds continued relevance for the psyche if we are going to build a culture which is in tune with the needs of the person. Jungian psychology allows the irrational free space to play between the lines of thought. Ernest Becker, working out of the rational Western tradition, evolved two themes -- the denial of death (1973) and cultures as hero systems (1962) -- which present limits -- propositions to such rationality. Hero systems are methods of denying and transcending death while questing for a solution to life's problem of meaning. Given our human frailty, our hero systems remain imperfect --admitting to something less than a total map of reality. Fromm (1956), among other humanists, suggested an alternative epistemology which strives not to grasp life and analyze it in strict Aristotelian terms, but to allow it to flow and know it through love. The ecology movement has presented us with an accumulated wisdom that perhaps the mechanistic metaphor of our science has run its course, and that we cannot press the metaphor farther without endangering the very existence of life (Merchant, 1980; Commoner, 1971; Roszak, 1979). The eminent domain/manifest destiny of the scientific-technological imperative appear daunted by an ecological perspective which emphasizes balance as opposed to final solutions or methods toward progress. The sanity of mining and abstracting all of the world's resources is being reviewed in balance against the natural beauty and our conception of what is contained in a "better" world. From the ecology movement may emerge a new epistemology which redefines the whole relationship between man and environment, between the knower and the known.
Merchant (1980) documented how our whole conception of nature and of women (and the intuitive) stems from the scientific revolution and its metaphors on nature and mechanism. Griffin (1978) showed how the metaphors which we have used to obtain control and certainty over nature are the same metaphors which we have used to tame and still our very conception of human nature.
The way that we have explored and territorialized the earth; mined its resources and laid bare its timer; carved its mountains and built blocks for houses according to our geometrical designs -- this is the same way that we have approached and shaped knowledge under our scientific world view. The frontier is gradually colonized, known, and made tame. The scientific scrutiny misses the fact that e may be missing the opportunity to know beauty as we push the boundaries of our civilization to their limits.
It is said that Francis Bacon, as attorney general of England, modeled his scientific method much after a witch-hunt (Merchant, 1980). The method of truth was the method of the Inquisition. Nature must be forced to reveal her secrets. Bacon says that science should ''hound nature in her wandering" and "make no scruple of entering and penetrating into these holes and corners when the inquisition of truth is the whole object" (Merchant, 1980, p. 165). Morality and values must take a secondary place to the pursuit of truth. Such an approach shows no concern for the subject under study, but only seeks to extract the truth by whatever means necessary and then use such "knowledge" for manipulation and power. Even if the witch is to die in the process or end up seriously deformed this is of no consequence. Such a metaphor can only leave us with a terrible latent cost when we apply it to nature. It takes on even more graphic proportions when human nature is placed upon the rack to be studied by the methods of such an epistemological inquisition.
The language of the historical scientist is only slightly removed from its actual historical impact. Its metaphors have tended to become our common-sense assumptions for our methods and our epistemology (Merchant, 1980). We must carve back the great wilderness. We must territorialize the unknown. We must cage and domesticate the wild beast. We must mine the earth. We must explore uncharted lands and bring back riches for the king's table. We must cut back the frontier and erect civilization upon the wilderness.
Order has prevailed in this twentieth century. The frontier has been pushed back and civilization erected so "completely" that the ecologist and the humanist now must question the wisdom of the scientific technological imperative which brought us this world view and this world. e appear no closer to capturing the truth. We are left to wonder if we should await the next scientific-technological breakthrough patiently or whether it is now time to question its very assumptions and limits. Is the epistemology of science bringing us closer to "knowing,' or are we in danger of limiting, deforming, and ultimately destroying the very life which we would study?
It must be recognized that the core assumption of a scientific epistemology revolves around the idea of Power. "Knowledge is power''; ''human knowledge and power meet as one" (Merchant, 1980, p. 247). Knowledge becomes explanatory theories which can be used for prediction and control. Power becomes the key element.
"Bacon transformed the magical tradition by calling upon the need to dominate nature not for the sole benefit of the individual magician but for the good of the entire human race" (Merchant, 1980, p. 169). This is in direct contradiction to the earlier folklore of the Western tradition which held that the truth could not be captured -- and to place the life force upon the rack and seek to torture its secrets from it was not only foolhardy, but imminently dangerous and always self-destructive.
Two examples of such folklore might suffice for illustration here. The first is the legend of the Holy Grail and the ''Rhine Gold." 'Whoever may after endless quests eventually find the Grail and the Rhine Gold must immediately ask two questions ('"What is the purpose of the Grail?" and "Who does it serve?") or forever perish. The power of the Grail can only be attained without perishing by asking those essential questions of life and value; the power can only be dealt with by understanding questions of knowledge and the implications of such power The Grail is not captured; it is part of d larger quest. This is not the value-free power and knowledge of science, but the power born from the understanding of the knowledge and meaning of a deeper secret. this is the knowledge to which the magician alludes. While science offers a secular technique for power, the epistemology of the magician maintains a sacred version of knowledge which involves the whole self.
The second folklore example of an alternative epistemology is the first great novel to emerge from the American frontier: Moby Dick. Although Ahab seemed in some ways to have a humanistic consciousness (he stared into Starbuck's eye and said that "there is nothing finer than to look into a human eye"; that this was as far as infinity went), he could not give up the quest for his power -- he could not let go of his other desire (science?) to "know" what is greater than he, to have his power know no bounds, and capture and conquer that force. His vengeance was not upon the past but upon not knowing thoroughly; of having vast power and finding an exception to it. When Starbuck tried to dissuade him from his path, Ahab noted that "we have been having this conversation before the oceans rolled and we will be having it after they cease": that eventually man must seize the veil and grasp its secrets. In the end, Ahab's inability to live without this final information led him to his destruction. Again, the theme: power only goes so far, it must be tempered with knowledge.
Both the Holy Grail legend and Melville's (198}) Moby Dick suggest a different epistemology from the scientific ''knowledge is power" rendition. he creative power which is the center of the life force is treated as irreducible -- uncapturable.
The irreducibleness of the life force is dealt with scientifically through the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and his distinction between noumenon and phenomenon. Noumena are the metaphysical underpinnings which cannot be known by the "sense." Phenomena are the real of appearances. -Science is thus the study of phenomena and not metaphysical intuitions. The world of science is thereafter "rescued" from philosophical criticisms and can advance without further protest. However, what such a "rescue operation" does is equate the world with phenomena. Noumena become virtually 'unknowable'' and the world is built around the appearances that are phenomena. Soon, the analysis of phenomena is treated as ''approximating' the world of noumena (Homans, 1977) and we abuse our method to the point of claiming the whole world as phenomena and forgetting the world of noumena except as a first-principle concession for the beginning of our analysis.
KantÕs distinction between noumena and phenomena was to have saved western thought from the crisis spawned by the philosophy of David Hume. While Hume is normally interpreted as meaning the death of thought, he actually had provided the basis for a humanistic epistemology and the very beginning of a relevant dialog. Hume's idea of the "secret springs" is the basis of this humanistic epistemology. The life force cannot be grasped and placed upon the table of analysis. It cannot be known through our methods of science. Instead, we must accept the ''secretness" of the core. We must find methods of moving "around" it given the nature of its being secret. Epistemology is, then, not a straight-line journey to truth and the shading in of unknown areas until we achieve total knowledge, but a journey of wisdom where we achieve more and more understanding without ever exhausting and reducing the core. (See Figure 2 on the following page.)
The phrase 'the secret springs" can be translated as several other conceptions without losing its meaning: the life force, the spring of creativity, the "muse'', the creative power which generates the evolutionary time bomb, and so forth . . . . It is comparable, of course, to Kant's noumena but makes an opposite contention. The "secret springs" may be the Rhine Gold or the Holy Grail or the illusive white whale . . . . The secret springs are magic.
Carlos Castenada's attribution to Don Juan of the "tonal" and the "nagual" serves to further illuminate the idea of the secret springs and of the distinction between noumena and phenomena. The tonal is everything "which can be placed upon the table." The nagual is everything else. The tonal is, then, properly, phenomena -- the world of appearances, what can be named, and the process of talking (philosophizing) about what is named, in short -- analysis. The nagual is noumena. Don Juan adds that it is where ''power hovers.'' This is quite the same, then, as the "secret springs."
The authenticness of Castenada's work is irrelevant. I personally might contend that the first two books are historical, the third Castenada's dissertation, the fourth Garfinkel's disguised lecture notes (and the fifth masculine-intuitive karma, with the sixth being only pure insanity).
The question of knowledge is one of value. Having experienced power, what is left now is wisdom, beauty, and happiness: following the path of the heart where one can relax. If the secret springs can be experienced and witnessed, then they can also be testified to. It is indeed the testimony of people across their lives which might be worthy of being called knowledge claims. And throughout the ages, we have had people testifying that there are "better' ways to live. We have had people talking about and testifying to an experience which they termed love and held to be the core of meaning: talking of a magic as an experience which transforms their vision. While this experience is not dissectible on the analytic table, it can be experienced, it can be testified to, and we can return to visit such an experience. It is this experience to which the humanist would wish to talk and testify.
Life is not explainable. Explanatory theories do not fit the experience. It is irreducible. Life is closer to a miracle. We can know it only through intuition -- a leap of vision. As Bergson (1949) argued, even the duration and experience of our own lives is only known by intuition. This is the only way that we ''senseÓ the whole: by the leap of intuition. Kantian theory leaves intuition as the troubled source of first principles. Hume's idea of "secret springs" provides the perfect canopy for encompassing a different view!
We might desire still another metaphor to illustrate the humanistic conception of knowledge. We can compare love and magic to unicorns. hey flee from our grasp. But beckon to be allowed free play in our lives. Such a metaphor may seem like sheer fantasy. But it is far from fantasy.
In the Last Unicorn, Beagle (1968) wove a tale which in many ways is the "sequel" to the ''Don Juan" books and the bottom line on magic. The would-be magician follows the unicorn seeking to know her magic and mystery. But unicorns have become rare in a world of science. We see few wonders. Beauty no longer mystifies us as much now that things are explainable. Yet, love and the magical still appear in our lives much as unicorns. We cannot capture them. We cannot own them. We can only now them and come to follow them. Love and magic cannot be harnessed. They can only be followed. One does not chain magic to their efforts, but one can take steps to follow. Science reduces the world to neutrality. Love and magic are steps we make to willingly follow something that we value. Humanistic epistemology begins with values, with choice. It is the step to following this illusive unicorn of love and magic. One recognizes fully well that s/he' will not own or capture it. But one delights in coming to know it and learn its secrets.
Knowledge, then, becomes wisdom -- knowing life; having walked the paths of power, Knowledge becomes d discussion of value; what is better, and how do we take the wisdom that we have learned from the ''secret" and construct from it?
The experience of such wisdom most have called love. A humanistic epistemology would, I believe, contain this assumption: that knowledge is love. Love is the ability to move past power -- to share it: to take the risk of allowing someone else enough respect to let them be and grow. It is moving past individual ego-stakes, collapsing the walls of self and other, and taking the time to know another self, environment, and others. It is declassifying power -- no longer keeping it as an obsession for personal victory. Love is the ability to know someone else. It is the step to knowledge.
The truth of which we have always spoken is an experience to which we wish to testify. It is the experience which we have called love and magic. The wisdom that we seek is that we know knowledge (love) -- having come through power we move back down to play, to share, and to know.
We can only now the center with our heart. e can only know the secret springs through love. The reducible truth of science will forever be beyond our grasp. But we can talk and testify, and experience what we know: the light that is within us. this is the humanistic epistemology.
The center may be a "secret," but this does ,not mean the death of philosophy (and talking), nor does it mean the death of movement or life. It means recognizing our condition. We know little of final truths: what we can claim is by nature existential. We are living. We are dying. We stand on the earth. Our imagination reaches to the stars.
The secret springs do not prevent us from moving. They merely recommend a different method and purpose for talking and philosophizing.
As Watts (1951, p. 23) said, "the common error . . . is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then suck it for comfort rather than follow it." We must leave behind the desired easy road maps of science. We are left with questions of values: what matters? -- this is the quest of our knowledge.
. . . the only way we shall ever recapture the sort of knowledge Lao-tzu referred to in his dictum 'those who know do not speak,' is by subordinating the question 'how shall we know?' to the more existentially vital question 'how shall we live' (Roszak, 1969, p. 233)?
To ask this question is to insist that the primary purpose of human existence is not to devise ways of piling up ever greater heaps of knowledge, but to discover ways to live from day to day that integrate the whole of our nature by way of yielding nobility of conduct, honest fellowship, and joy . . . . Were we prepared to accept the beauty of the fully illuminated personality as our standard of truth -- or of ultimate meaningfulness -- then we should be done with the idiocy of making fractional evaluations of men and ourselves (Roszak, 1969, P. 237).
As Whitehead noted, "the function of reason is to promote the art of living." Hume concurred years earlier: "Be a philosopher, but above all, be a man." Our philosophical maps will not replace living, n |