Unthinkable Science and Thinkable Worlds

-23- Science, spirituality, and those lost between.

Science. Spirituality. These two words seem to be increasingly co-mingled. Allow me to admit right off the bat that all of the intuitions that I will express here have come to me during my very recent cave crawling escapades into some esoteric philosophy and alternative theorizing of our ancient past. Be that as it may, I can’t help but come to a dimly lit conclusion that we are in a period of retrogression - perhaps too strong a word - which will influence us for a time away from the highly disciplined world of the sciences. Among this change of scenery, we will furnish ourselves with other less abstract, and in many ways more coherent, experiential narratives; ways of talking and thinking about the world that are, shall I say, more universally accepted. We will spend less time being talked down to, and spend more time talking up our own subjective experiences.

If we look to history for a moment, we can see that there were periods of time when the earth and sky, and the enigmatic entities which possessed them, were riddles made for so-called mystics. They were children of God, prophets, messiahs, time travelers, or chosen ones. Regardless of whatever we choose to call these beings of the past, their goal, in a historical context, was typically to provide meaning for people where none might otherwise exist. It was through them, and through the stories written about them, that we came to receive many of the theories regarding our most cherished earthly mysteries. Just think, that for too long, people must have looked up at the night sky in awe of what they were seeing, until eventually, someone clever enough to notice patterns began preaching about how they could see further than anyone else had ever seen before; drawing conclusions and coming up with theories about what it all meant. Although now we may see these views as entirely primitive, we cannot deny that they were useful to the people of the time. To derive coherence from something so strange, I assume, would have felt like a major gift.

Likewise, there were further periods when the ordinary citizen believed that the Sun rotated about the Earth. That the entire cosmos was some godlike spectacle all for them; that they were being given messages from the heavens for their subjective interpretation. The ground beneath their feet was the main focal point for everything that existed “out there”. So-called scientists as well postulated, without much certainty, that the Sun and the planets were being carried along by some invisible spiritual force. This spiritual force, as it were, was an adequate enough description for something that could not yet be explained in any more abstract terms. These descriptions, however incoherent we find them today, were at one time all that could be rendered “thinkable” to the average person. By thinkable, I simply just refer to a thought form that can be held and envisioned, and thus be conceived in the imagination. It’s important to distinguish this from mere contradiction. Contradictory thoughts, while uncomfortable, can still be held together and thought of separately, thus they are thinkable.

To contrast this, something that is “unthinkable” would be, for example, a thought about what existed prior to the universe. If you’re like me, this thought is utterly baffling. If I try to hold it in my mind, I find blankness everywhere. No amount of imagination can get me started towards a conceivable idea.

This idea of thinkable is really at the crux of my particular intuition surrounding this topic because, in relative proportion to the amount of leverage that science has had over our understanding of the universe, the idea of what is thinkable has come under stressful demand. Over time, the gap between what is thinkable for the scientist has far outpaced the comprehensibility of most people not of a scientific background. This stressing of the lines between what is thinkable and what is not for the average person calls for some sort of representation. First of all, it is likely that both distinctions do not interpret this word to mean the same thing, but I think it’s imperative that it’s definition remain well-understood here. We are reaching a point where retrogression back to some sort of mean notion of thinkable might be very necessary; it may also be inevitable.

The range of what is thinkable for the scientist is far more all-encompassing than what might be true of the non-scientist. The scientist, while able to think in terms of high mathematical and physical abstraction, is also capable of thinking in terms that are experiential or, for lack of a better term, spiritual. However, they typically do not tend to this approach because of it’s “impermissibility”. It is “unbecoming” of the scientist to debase themselves to the notions of spiritual guidance, or anecdotal hypotheses. And so they very often refrain from any kind of speech which might even give off the slightest hint of these aromas. The take away here is that, to the scientist, the term thinkable might cordially be represented as: a thought which is acceptable to have given our current understanding of the universe. In other words, a thought would have to meet a certain threshold of objectivity for a scientist to give the conclusion that it is indeed thinkable.

However, I would like to point out that this isn’t what the term is defined as. As mentioned previously, by thinkable, I mean thoughts which can be held in the mind and imagined in some such way so as to conceive something of coherent imagination. Thoughts may be contradictory and still be thinkable. Likewise, they may shatter all manner of beliefs and yet still they can be held and pondered. So the scientist, while uncomfortable with the idea of God, or of the soul, or of consciousness as fundamental, is still up for the task of thinking about them. I should hope they are not losing this capability, otherwise we are in even worse shape then I imagined we might be.

But let’s take the same approach in analyzing the not-person-of-science; spiritual beings included. What might they conceive of the word thinkable? In my assertion, an individual who does not possess a heavy dose of scientific background might define the term thinkable in its more truer form. By this, I mean to say that, what is thinkable and what is not bears a very stark and real conundrum to them. Thinkable, are first off all those forms which, to the scientist, are supposedly unthinkable, but yet are very much thinkable to just about everyone. I am referring of course to such common notions as God, or karmic wisdom, or astrology, for example. These are thinkable ideas, which, scientists and non-scientists alike, share. The general group belief and understanding about these ideas is irrelevant to the case. What matters right now is that both sides are on equal grounds in regard of their capacity to render those ideas thinkable. But let’s take this a step further, because it’s essential that we look as well to what is unthinkable to the non-scientist.

I feel it best to illustrate this with an analogy. Sally and Joe represent each side of the coin respectively, scientist and non-scientist. Sally is able to carry in her mind such concepts as quantum electrodynamics, string theory, and superpositions. These are thinkable designations to her. Joe, on the other hand, in attempting to grapple with these concepts, is at a complete loss in his efforts to conceive of them in his mind. They are literally unthinkable.

Let’s get one thing perfectly clear. Joe isn’t dumb. But what he also isn’t, is a scientific thinker. He’s a marketing manager at a downtown publishing house. In his spare time he read’s mystery novels and takes his son to hockey practice on Saturday mornings. He’s a lay person when it comes to science. He has no use for string theory and quantum gravity. His gravitational attraction is instead to his family and to the people he manages.

What I hope to get across is the mismatch we’ve allowed to cultivate for quite some time. I’m not necessarily here to pass judgement, nor to make any bold philosophical claims of rightness or wrongness, I’m merely pointing out an intuitive assumption. That is, that we have arrived at a time when many people seem to lack any real conviction in their belief of science generally, and are thus eager to find something else to believe in with clear sincerity. But the key to that something is what we can all define as thinkable. In other words, something science can be seldom relied upon to provide because of its overall inaccessibility.

Let’s think for a moment what the ask is for someone who is not a scientifically minded individual, of which there are plenty. First, they have been raised in a system which at all times has taught them that science is the true power enabling us to understand the universe. Rightfully so perhaps, but that sort of teaching introduces a learned reliance on a medium that does not easily provide the answers that make the most sense to the most amount of people. Human beings are anything but perfect, and part of that imperfection is in the propensity to seek comfort over truth. In other words, if the actual truth doesn’t make coherent sense to them, or if it doesn’t sound good, or if it disagrees with their biases, they will often disregard it completely. “Trust the science” has become somewhat of a meme at this point, an ironic turn of phrase meant to relay some sort of ideological stance. Why is this? Is it partially because people have come to the conclusion that blind obedience is meaningless when they don’t understand what any of what they’re being told means?

Looking for objective evidence in nature is obviously essential for human progress, but that isn’t part of my inquiry here. The objectivity we reach via the scientific method cannot be refuted. However, the case I wish to make for why a growing number of people are having trouble “trusting the science” is, in my view, because science itself increasingly calls for blind obedience to its growing amount of unthinkable abstractions. You cannot rely on people on the outside of scientific doctrine, who are decades removed from any formal education of the sort we’re asking, to be able to contend with such things. They’re more liable to accept what is comfortably true, rather than what is actually true. And when I say comfortable, I am also making a reference to what is thinkable.

Modern science likes to imply that the entire universe is completely definable, and that the only limits we face are merely temporary ones based on our current level of understanding. If you agree with this, I think it’s imperative to understand what then happens to someone like Joe as he transitions out of school and into the “real” world of marketing and family duties. He suddenly has no time to study science, and thus loses all comprehension of the subjects related to it, and thus in no time, falls completely behind the curve of knowledge in the various fields. By the time his son is then in sixth grade physics class, he realizes that his level of comprehension is below even his own son, and that the ideas and laws which supposedly govern reality are so foreign to him that he chooses instead not to even contend with them out of fear that they will be unthinkable notions. He feels he isn’t smart enough to understand such things, but he also feels that it’s unbecoming of a man of an educational background who was taught the scientific method in school to believe in anything but the latest scientific truths. So he chooses to play along. But in so doing, what he’s actually choosing without realizing it is a system of blind beliefs. He “trusts the science”. But his lack of real conviction, brought on by his lack of understanding, combined further with his blind obedience, leaves him easily susceptible to severe mistrust. If something were to arise in his lived experience which appears to contradict what he had accepted from “trusting the science”, then the inevitable result is that his beliefs will be easily shattered by that supposed contradiction. In other words, his belief in science is built on straw, it has been rendered so completely thin, resting upon nothing concrete, as there is nothing in his mind granting leverage to those beliefs because they are entirely based on a blind following; he doesn’t understand what he believes. This means that he may as well believe in nothing, for he has nothing thinkable for which to believe in. At the first moment of contact with discomfort at the hands of so-called “scientific experts”, his entire worldview is liable to an utter collapse, at which point all previous trust is easily supplanted for dis-trust.

I don’t think the above analogy is an uncommon one, which is why there appears to be a growing amount of speculation placed upon science. This represents a brewing mentality among society generally, and I wouldn’t hesitate to place some blame specifically at the feet of scientific doctrine, because it is on many accounts believed to be irreproachable and calls for strict adherence to its rules and laws. But on that basis, one such predictable outcome, and an inherent limit to that endeavor, would be to arrive at a point where most of society can no longer relate whatsoever to the findings and inquires which science poses. In other words, people have no interest, and thus no clue and no ability to understand what they’ve been led into believing through the educational systems we’ve produced. All of that growing distrust must lead somewhere. Not all of it turns into violence, most of it starts out as tiny little embers of doubt, which slowly over time seep into the mainstream thought.

Thus far, I think it would be very easy to confuse what I have said with the belief that we should give up on our pursuits within the sciences. I am not saying this. I mentioned that my intuition was simply that we are heading for some type of retrogression, and that it may even be necessary in some ways, because too much of our society has been left behind. I don’t want to make any direct connection here to our mental health crisis, but there is a shared common knowledge of one as it relates to society today. Many have speculated that the crisis is owed in large part to the lack of meaning people generally feel in everything they do and believe. In that way, perhaps their faith feels misplaced so some degree.

That word “faith” is worth bearing in mind as well for a moment, because it needs to be said that, to the non-scientific lay person, faith can be placed in any manner of things quite profound. In previous eras, faith would have typically gone towards the teachings of the spiritual traditions. They were thinkable, coherent, and served as the basis of our moral landscape. It was a common practice to inculcate oneself in these traditions. Religions were highly respected, and well-acknowledged even among intellectuals. People of very high standing did not refrain from speaking about Gods and souls and stellar apparitions. I think this is because, aside from the obvious lack of knowledge at the time, they still contained a degree of humility in the face of that unknown element that pervades so much of reality. Forever, people have grappled with the limits inherent in our understanding of the universe; the removal of that supposed limit has been strictly a modern phenomenon. Under the guidance of scientific rationale, everything observable and relatable carries with it the essence of being knowable. Where we once remained humble, has turned to hubris.

If scientists were more humble, they would admit that the task has probably been misrepresented. This is where I have to state another opinion which is that I don’t agree that everything can be knowable, just like I don’t think everything can be thinkable. I have this assumption because thinking is always in relation to. All thoughts are related to things previously observed, or experienced, or perceived. This is why we can’t think in terms of nothing. We can’t conceive of nothing existing, which is why we can’t conceive of a moment prior to everything existing. So it follows that, to my mind, concepts such as the Big Bang are largely incoherent, which means that I would have to take it on faith, which means that I don’t see how believing in that is any different than believing in say, a divine creation.

This concept of the unknowable is really where we come to ultimately find some common ground among the scientific and not. Regardless of our accompanied beliefs, these two avenues are dealing with the same absolute conundrum, that is that knowledge of any kind of absolute genesis of anything we can observe in the known universe, contradicts our capacities to think in terms that are thinkable. It represents a nothingness that cannot be conceived, but science doesn’t usually hold that view, instead often asserting that no boundaries exist preventing us from coming to a conclusive understanding of every aspect of the universe, from its birth to its death. And it’s this level of hubris that I think is forcing the retrogression upon our society.

The following quote I borrow from Herbert Spencer, who is somewhat of an outcast in scientific spaces. Probably because of quotes such as this: “By continually seeking to know and being continually thrown back with a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowing, we may keep alive the consciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom and our highest duty to regard that through which all things exist Unknowable.” That’s just it. There’s something I find deeply calming about this quote. Our highest wisdom is to know that we can’t know everything. Does that not ease your tensions? I surmise that it should. It makes me feel... human.

That is my case, that science is becoming more and more unthinkably abstract. And this endless abstraction is resulting in less and less people who are capable of rendering such abstractions thinkable. This inability to think about the ideas which they are told they ought to believe amounts to a sort of blind belief in nothing, because they do not understand what they say they believe in. Truth is not the issue; thinkability is the issue, and many people are not of the mindset to render the abstract scientific topics thinkable, and so spirituality begins to fill the void left behind by the inevitable collapse of one’s blind belief in science.

I said I wasn’t here to pass judgement, but hopefully in a positive way I could suggest that we, as a society, could perhaps benefit from embracing a more spiritual leaning. It may help give us a clearer perspective.

There’s something further to be said about the role that spirituality played in the past, that it always represented a kind of marked landing zone for scientific exploration. The claims of the mystics were the exact things that later scientific minds did their best to refute with real objectivity and investigative analysis. This is of course why we respect so deeply the early works of Aristotle, Copernicus, and Galileo, to name a few. They served us refutations to the very thinkable ideas held by religions and spiritual philosophers. Somewhere along the way however, the balance of power shifted irreversibly. Does science still occupy this same role today? In other words, does anyone believe that science serves as a sort of counter-weight to spirituality? Or is it perhaps more accurate to say that we have allowed science to obliterate spirituality?

For as much as science has continued to prove out the existence of our objective world, there remains a very subjective reality in which certain inclinations of thought are utterly unthinkable. These often include the abstractions that scientists themselves lay at the feet of society generally. But it also speaks towards the nature of the known universe itself, in that there must be a limit of possible coherence available to us all. Within those limits, we find a certain humility. Therefore, it is necessarily left to the unique subject of conscious experience to derive their own coherence in any form in which they choose. However, upon closer inspection, we find that those forms which regard the unthinkable aspects of existence are perpetually built on faith; a faith made necessary because it renders a picture in a form we thus find thinkable.

Regardless of the direction, there can be no approach which is absolute. With that in mind, scientific exploration might only be at its maximum effectiveness if properly balanced with the right amount of spiritual theorizing. Likewise, what we think of as spirituality must also be infused with an acceptance of the fact that science endlessly deepens the chasms within which we permit ourselves to explore further. This too must be it’s greatest wisdom. In acknowledging this, we can begin to see how these two polarities are attracted in ways that appear natural and rhythmic.

It is my assertion that we will come to fathom the necessary interconnectedness of these two domains, of science and spirituality alike. What could, during the occurring time period, feel like a retrogression, may be regarded with hindsight as an important milestone for human progress.