Prospero's Books

It's called literature

From John Horgan's response to a letter in the May-June 2008 issue of Science and Spirit:

Many so-called emergent phenomena can be understood, at least partially, through conventional reductionist methods. Particle physics has yielded extraordinary insights into the origin, composition, and evolution of the entire cosmos. Molecular biology has illuminated once opaque mysteries such as conception, heredity, and speciation. But some emergent phenomena, notably that of the human mind, stubbornly resist reductionist analysis. Fortunately we do have a "different methodology" for understanding ourselves. It's called literature (6).

Book of the Year

The second annual Prospero's Books Book of the Year is Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life, by physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies.

A few sentences from the first pages of the book (especially when read alongside this blog's description, at the top left of each page) may suggest why it was chosen:

About 350 years ago, the greatest magician who ever lived finally stumbled on the key to the universe--a cosmic code that would open the floodgates of knowledge. This was Isaac Newton--mystic, theologian, and alchemist--and in spite of his mystical leanings, he did more than anyone to change the age of magic into the age of science . . . .

The word science is derived from the Latin scientia, simply meaning "knowledge." Originally it was just one of many arcane methods used to probe beyond the limitations of our senses in the hope of accessing an unseen reality. The particular brand of "magic" employed by the early scientists involved hitherto unfamiliar and specialized procedures, such as manipulating mathematical symbols on pieces of paper and coaxing matter to behave in strange ways. . . .

The ancients were right: beneath the surface complexity of nature lies a hidden subtext, written a subtle mathematical code. This cosmic code contains contains the secret rules on which the universe runs (4).

(The 2006 Book of the Year was The Museum of Lost Wonder.)

A myth before the myth

I'm reading Wallace Stevens's long poem "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction" with one of my grad students. Here's a passage that has stood out for me:

The clouds preceded us.

There was a muddy centre before we breathed.
There was a myth before the myth began,
Venerable and articulate and complete.

From this the poem springs: that we live in a place
That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves
And hard it is in spite of blazoned days.

We are the mimics. Clouds are pedagogues.

(Among the categories into which I've put this blog posting are Signs, Systems, and Spirit, but also Emergence. Those tags may help you see some of the things Stevens is saying to me.)

So big-boned that they crush us into inactivity

"Is your faith endo- or exoskeletal?"

So asks Kester Brewin, author of The Complex Christ, published in the United States as Signs of Emergence.

He explains:

Snails have exoskeletons. A protective shell within which to hide. Our early cities were simply exoskeletal defensive structures to protect communities against constant pillage and plunder, thus allowing culture and community to grow.

Mammals have developed endoskeletons. Non-protective, they instead allow huge improvements in a body's motion control. We can stand, run, hold, sew, build.

He then challenges us to think about our faith community:

Is it there as hard external shell to protect and shield us from the plundering of 'the world'? Or is it an internal strength, allowing new forms of motion control, allowing a gathered people to join and stand and build?

The question is pertinent for all of our networks. Are they protective covers that help us feel connected, but prevent real engagement, and are they in fact in danger of being so big-boned that they crush us into inactivity?

Skyhooks and cranes

In a review of David Dennett's Consciousness Explained, Chet Raymo employs two brilliant metaphors for two ways of looking at purpose in the universe:

The big question is how we got here. Was our existence foreordained, drawn up as by a skyhook from the dreary world of matter into the realm of angels? Or are we the unforeseen accumulation of blind, chance mutations selected by interaction with the environment, matter lifting itself into ever greater domains of complexity, eventually into consciousness, as if by those cranes used by builders of skyscrapers that ratchet upward as the buildings rise?

After a thoughtful look at both world views, Raymo concludes:

This humble reader is not convinced that we yet know enough about life or mind to commit ourselves solely to cranes or skyhooks. No one who is remotely knowledgeable about science doubts that life and consciousness evolved over billions of years; what is still at issue is how complexity and consciousness arise. Is natural selection enough to drive evolution toward ever more sophisticated systems? Or is there a natural tendency toward complexity and consciousness built into creation from the very beginning, a lawful natural skyhook of sorts that might be accessible to scientific description?  In my mind, the issue is undecided.

Ways that we can all win

President Bill Clinton, in the December 2000 issue of Wired:

Martin Luther King said the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. [It's] sort of a reverse social Darwinism: The more complex societies get and the more complex the networks of interdependence within and beyond community and national borders get, the more people are forced in their own interests to find non-zero-sum solutions. That is, win-win solutions instead of win-lose solutions.... Because we find as our interdependence increases that, on the whole, we do better when other people do better as well - so we have to find ways that we can all win, we have to accommodate each other. And, on balance, that's a humanizing and elevating development.

(Thanks to Pop Occulture and Wikipedia for the link.)

In times of change . . . .

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” — Eric Hoffer

(Thanks to Donna Woodka at Changing Places for the quote.)

Whence beautiful complexity?

At Gallery of Computation is a gallery of art works, by Jared Tarbell, that are uniquely generated by computer programs as you watch. They are stunning examples of a new level of artistic creation in which the artist does not create just one instance of beauty but instead creates a generative program that can produce infinite instances of beauty.

The fact that the each piece of artwork emerges from very simple rules makes the artist not less significant but more significant: not every set of simple rules produces something interesting, not to mention beautiful. If we glory in the infinitely complex beauty of Tarbell's work, how much more should we glory in the infinitely complex beauty of our universe, from subatomic particles, to us, to galaxies.

Whether we posit a creator behind that beautiful complexity (Freemasons refer to "the Great Architect of the Universe"), posit (with Tillich) a "ground of being" from which complex beauty can arise, or posit our universe as one particularly interesting instance among an infinite number of existing universes, the fact of our existence and the existence of beauty around us is surely worthy of adoration and gratitude.

(To see Tarbell's works, go to the Gallery of Computation. As words appear in the white space, try moving your cursor among them, clicking on them if you wish. Or click on "Thumbnail Gallery" to see a visual index. When you see a work you like, click on it. When you arrive at its page, you'll see a large static image of just one manifestation of the work. But don't stop there. Click on "Small," "Medium," or "Large" below the image and watch a unique art object evolve. Experiment with the sizes to learn which work best on your computer.)

(Thanks to Seed magazine for the lead.)

With exclamation points but no question marks

"A religious body or faith community that speaks only with exclamation points but no question marks misses the complexity of creation and the beauty of evolution."

--Rabbi Jonathan Kendall, Temple Beit HaYam, Stuart, Florida

(Thanks to Evolving Thoughts for the link.)

The God Delusion 2

Despite my negative take on Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion in my last post, I'm grateful that the book's simplistic theology has prodded me toward defining my own. Here are some working notes:

1. I am in awe of the cosmos, first that it exists at all (that there's "something" rather than "nothing") and then that life and consciousness have evolved within it.
2. My response to that awe is (appropriately, I think) gratitude.
3. To whom or what am I grateful? To the great unnameable mystery that lies not only beyond space and time, but also beyond existence itself. The traditional word for that mystery is "God." Among the best definitions I've found for "God" is Paul Tillich's "the ground of being." (Unfortunately Tillich doesn't appear in Dawkins's extensive bibliography and index.)
4. The only way I know to express gratitude to God is by addressing God in the only way I know, the way I address the most complex, loving things I know: other people. So I consciously anthropomorphize God, not to limit God, but to concede my own absolute inability to know God as God is.
5. I experience God not only as the mystery beyond the existence of the cosmos, but also as the mystery beneath my own existence, my own consciousness. The traditional language for this experience is that God is both transcendent and immanent. I feel God's transcendence in nature, especially in nature's systems. I feel God's immanence in art and ritual (signs and stories), in other people, and in the depths of my own meditation and prayer.

If you're on a spiritual quest, you may want to read The God Delusion. The experience may help you define your own theology.