It arose from me recommending to one particularly philosophical and scientifically inquisitive student from the class I taught in the summer of 2019 that she read the classic book "The Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Capra, which she promptly did, and then wrote me several questions on it.
My response got kind of detailed and discursive, and I post an edited version of a version I posted to the whole class, thus the short intro. Comments, thoughts, reactions very welcome!
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Dear All- After reading some part of the Tao of Physics, [Student S.] asked me some questions recently generally about how more mystical vs. scientific worldviews relate and it set me off to answer at some length on this issue, as it comes up quite often in our daily discourse with people of differing backgrounds. Thought this might be of interest to a few others, so here’s a (slightly edited) version of how I responded:
---- Dear Student S: these are very *long* discussion topics that don’t easily admit quick answers — they’re the type of q that humans have wondered about for millenia. I guess i will say in brief: i have found in my life that everyone seeks some kind of answer to why the Universe is here and what causes all the order in it. The large majority of people ascribe some kind of mystical/religious aspects to the answers to these questions, often invoking a God or gods of some form (which goes back many thousands of years to when humans were just beginning to evolve enough to consider these q’s, but far before there was a scientific awareness or understanding of any part of our place in the Cosmos), whereas the other ‘end’ of possible worldviews is that the Universe is totally and entirely material, fullstop, and nothing beyond atoms (and force exchange carriers, neutrinos, dark matter and dark energy of course!) is needed to explain all we see.
Generally, I find that the less scientifically trained people are, the more they start mixing in some amount of the mystical/religious into their worldview, which helps them make sense of the Universe, but you will find very few scientists needing to rely on anything outside of the material to give meaning to the Universe (or their lives). Most of them find enough beauty and wonder and profundity in the Universe simply as it *is*, in all its intricate and grand manifestations, from the chemical, to the biological, to the cosmological, without invoking anything beyond the ‘material’.
*Though* you do on occasion find some scientists that *are* religious, in usually a less literal sense than much of the population, as they have had to square their understanding of the world scientifically with religious doctrines otherwise out there that they have been taught.
E.g. there is simply no room in *any* scientific worldview for the idea of Creation happening 6000 yrs ago, as a certain segments of strict Christians espouse. (Unless you want to say that some God made the Universe 6k yrs ago but with all the pieces of evidence to look like it was created 13.8 Gyr ago in the hot dense phase of the Big Bang — but then, the whole exercise is rather empty, since if i can’t tell those two Universes apart, what’s the point?)
So — I *am* careful never to denigrate or mock any particular worldview, religious or otherwise, because for one, they can be deeply held social or personal views that really give peoples’ life meaning, and to attack this in a derisive way is really to set up an ‘us vs. them’ dichotomy that doesn’t need to happen, and never leads to much good in the world. (In fact, it’s the cause of so much of the strife that’s out there, ultimately.)
Further — every religion of the world — from Buddhism, to Judaism, to Christianity, through to Sikhism, Hinduism, Islam and even animistic or ancestor-worship traditions — has arisen out of some group of people struggling to figure out humanity’s place on the Earth, and in the Universe. How we came to be, how to live with one another and within the ecosystems and among the flora and fauna of the Earth in sustainable, humane, and ethical ways. They all come up with different details, but the essentials are always the same: we are to treat others by the Golden Rule, and with kindness, and humanity. These are ultimately what matter in a given short human life. So I have much respect for every tradition, and in fact, find each of them fascinating in their own right as ways that humans have constructed complex worldviews to deal with ethical, environmental, and social issues over the ages.
There’s very much more that could be written about all this, but anyway — hopefully it starts to address what you were asking!
It’s a quick summary of my way of looking at the world anyway, and everyone has to figure out their own way as their path wends and winds through the world…
How do *you* think about these q’s?
