The Intellectual History of Planet Earth

1600 words, 8 minute read

As humans, we seem to have an insatiable desire to ‘understand’ the world we live in; there’s little evidence that other species share our theoretical curiosity. As far as we know, Orangutangs and Oysters are more interested in the how of living than they are in the how come.

We, on the other hand, have been puzzling out the phenomenon of Being at least since the earliest cave paintings and epic poems. Amazingly, the results of 50 odd millennia can be neatly divided into just two theoretical buckets:

Bucket #1: “There is nothing to understand. Things are just as they are.” What is is, period. We are extremely sophisticated Orangutangs and Oysters. Our ‘job’ is just to catalogue what is. There is no need to posit noumena in order to understand phenomena. There are only phenomena!

‘That it is’ explains itself: It is is as far as it goes. What you See is What you Get (WYSIWYG). What you see is all there is to see, it’s what’s there! In the language of Parmenides I, Aletheia = Doxa;Heidegger, Dasein = Wassein.

Growing up in the 1950s, I am familiar with this model. “Why? Because I say so!” Surprisingly, thinking along these lines is what we call Science. The authority of the parent has been replaced by that of the academy; in place of rewards and punishments, we have empirical data and the Scientific Method.

Science is an incredibly powerful tool, unmatched in our planet’s intellectual history. Sure beats the Oracle at Delphi! But it has two significant limitations: It concerns itself only with what can be repeated and measured. Whatever is unique (one off) or imperceptible must fall outside the scope of Science.

We love Science; it’s easy! (Never thought I’d write that sentence.) But Physics is a ‘gut’ compared to Metaphysics. Being able to repeat an experiment over and over and witness the results (albeit with technologically enhanced eyes) is a true luxury. No wonder we can send folks to the Moon!

The scientific paradigm is the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (i.e. no ‘interpretation’ at all): Once you’ve catalogued and sorted all the data, there is nothing more to be done. The data points and their superficial patterns are what is, all there is, or at any rate, all that can be known or expressed.

Those of us gifted with the sense of sight have special access to a narrow range of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. Other sighted animals have similar access but often over slightly different ranges. The full EM spectrum spans 20 orders of magnitude; all in, the animal kingdom has access to less than one such order.

And yet we go through life thinking that ‘seeing is believing’, i.e. that what you see is what there is…and all there is.

According to an old Hasidic tale, a Rabbi was on his way home from Schule when we saw a widow on her hand and knees under a street lamp. Not wishing to be an unsympathetic character in someone’s Good Samaritan story, the Rabbi offers to assist:

“How can I help?”

“I only have one penny in all the world and I’ve lost it.”

“Is this where you lost it?”

“No, I lost it over there.”

“Then why are you looking here?”

“Because the light is better.”

We live in a Universe that spans about 60 orders of magnitude (from the Planck length to the event horizon). The EM spectrum spans 20 of those orders; our unaided visual experience of the world is limited to less than one such order…but we trust it!

Of course, IRL we have technology that translates a much wider range of data from the spectrum into visible effects; but it’s still well short of the whole. Still, those of us who ‘trust science’ and only science, are like the widow in this tale. We are looking for answers where they are easiest to find (the realm of the empirical and the repeatable) whether or not this is where they are to be found.

To confirm our bias we’ve evolved a language, logic, and mathematics that reinforce the scientific paradigm.

At the extreme, we accept only propositions that can be verified (actually, falsified) by the Scientific Method.

According to the high priest of Analytic Philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, we cannot speak meaningfully outside the limits imposed by the scientific method and “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Later in his career, Wittgenstein softened his position slightly, calling non-scientific communication important nonsense.

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Bucket #2: “The world we see is at most the tip of the world that is.” Like Alice , we are left to ponder whether all of Lookingglass World is similar to what Alice can see in the mirror.  More likely, it’s a random sample (fractal), a shadow (Plato), a projection (hologram) or a graphical representation (map) of what is.

We cannot just accept phenomena at face value; we need to build an algorithm that allows us to reason from what’s observable to the deep structure that underpins it. With this approach, we do not have the blessing (or curse) of excluding data that falls outside a particular universe of discourse. 

We must consider the unique, the subjective, the complex, the fleeting. If we feel it, we must account for it. As I said (above), this is both a curse and a blessing – a curse that we have to account for so many more data points, a blessing that we have so much more data from which to tease out and verify our noumenal model.

And here, at the very outset of our journey, we run into ‘transportation problems’. We are in the first mile of a cross continent drive when the damn engine light comes on. We need some sort of medium to enshrine and communicate our discoveries, but English, like the kids in my backseat, is already acting up.

Bucket #1 was so easy! Almost everyone can agree to call it Science. But what to call Bucket #2? Mythology? Religion? Theology? Philosophy? Art? Absolutely, all of the above…and more! But each of these words comes with its own unique load of off-putting baggage. English doesn’t have a single word perfectly suited to our purpose. What words it does have, share other, sometimes less savory, denotations. But we will make do:

Mythology consists of supra-natural narratives that attempt to express the deep structure of Being in images that we can relate to and in patterns that we can comprehend. The mythos of a society consists of the things it takes for granted, its undefined terms: the seasonal cycles in Egypt (Nile), the movements of celestial objects (stars), the Patriots in the Superbowl. The Scientific Method (Bucket #1) was the dominant myth in the 20^th century North Atlantic community.

Religion celebrates what mythology discloses. Our modern universities are temples to the gods of science. Theology and Philosophy dig more deeply into the theoretical underpinnings of our mythological narratives and religious rituals. Finally, Art is how we encode and share what we discover.

As much as the rigors of the Scientific Method constrict its universe of discourse, Art blows through virtually every symbolic constraint. Every artist paints a picture, sometimes with images (painting, sculpture), or words (literature), or sounds (music). The function of Art (per Heidegger) is to reveal and convey to others something truly new about being-in-the-world.

Therefore, Science is Art as well as Myth; it has revealed certain aspects of our world in mind boggling detail. But I believe there’s more. There are important aspects of reality that lie outside the universe of scientific discourse and if someone (Wittgenstein) wants to call them ‘nonsense’, I’m ok with that. 

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“Bucket, bucket, who’s got the bucket?” This was a lovely presentation (above) but it’s all nonsense, ‘important’ or otherwise. Lean in close now, I need to keep my voice down for this: “There is no Bucket #1.” Shh, don’t let on you know. Keep on keepin’ on.

Scientific Method depends for its validity on the assumption of repeatability. Euclid virtually invented the concept. Every planar triangle has angles totaling 180 degrees. Everything is repeatable an unlimited number of times.

But Euclid’s world does not exist. IRL there are no perfect triangles, and no two shapes are congruent. The material (Marx) is the death of the ideal (Hegel). Everything is novel, everything is one off, everything is in Bucket #2.

That said, novelty can be massive or minimal in any given event. Some events adhere more closely to the details of their inherited Actual Worlds than others; some are more creative or adventurous. But there is always an infinitesimal element (differance per Derrida) that distinguishes any single event from all other events.

Science proceeds by systematically minimizing the degree of novelty in each event and then by disregarding the inevitable residual. It works; it got us to the Moon (above). But is it enough to let us unearth the noumenal structure of Being itself. I doubt it. For that we need Mythology, Art, and dare I say it, Religion: “The grove needs an altar.” (Pound)