The Reenchantment of the World (51 page)

 

 

31. The following discussion is based (partly) on R. D. Laing,
The
Divided Self
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965; orig. publ. 1959),
esp. pp. 140-41, 148, 151, 179, 198.

 

 

 

CHAPTER 5. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

 

 

1. The title of this chapter is taken from that of a book of the same
name published by Immanuel Kant in 1783, two years after the first
edition of his famous
Critique of Pure Reason
. I am not a Kantian and
this chapter is not an attempt at Kantian analysis. Nevertheless, my own
work does attempt to emulate Kant in the following ways, and hence I did
not feel I could do better than to use a Kantian title most appropriate
to my own goals:

 

 

(a) Kant made an attempt to state what he believed were the
central problems of philosophy during his own day, and to distill
principres that he hoped would be valid for all human knowledge.

 

 

(b) Kant realized that any future metaphysics must have a
prolegomena, that is, some sort of preface setting out what the
criteria of a new science might be.

 

 

(c) Kant was perhaps the first Western philosopher in the modern
period to recognize that the mind is not simply bombarded by
sense impressions, but actually plays a role in shaping what
it perceives.

 

 

2. Quoted in N. O. Brown,
Life Against Death
(Middletown, Conn.:
Wesleyan University Press, 1970; orig. publ. 1959), p. 315.

 

 

3. Michael Polanyi,
Personal Knowledge
, corrected ed. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1962); Owen Barfield,
Saving the
Appearances
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965).

 

 

4. Polanyi,
Personal Knowledge
, p. 294.

 

 

5. It should be added that in these illustrations it probably is possible
for an observer to see both images simultaneously if he or she is in a
meditative or "alpha" brain-wave state. Under normal conditions, however,
the brain selects one over the other.

 

 

6. See Polanyi,
Personal Knowledge
, pp. 69-131, 249-61, and passim; see
also pp. 49-65. The specific issue of language acquisition is discussed
by Daniel Yankelovich and William Barrett (drawing on Noam Chomsky)
in
Ego and Instinct
(New York: Vintage Books, 1971), pp. 388-92,
and by Susanne Langer in
Philosophy in a New Key
, 3d ed. (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 122-23, 122n.

 

 

7. From page 101 of
Personal Knowledge
by Michael Polanyi, copyright
© 1958, 1962; reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago Press.

 

 

8. Ibid., pp. 60-70, 88-90, 123, 162.

 

 

9. The following discussion is taken from Barfield,
Saving the
Appearances
, pp. 24-25, 32n, 40, 43, 81, and passim. What Barfield calls
"alpha-thinking" (see below) is not to be confused with the generation
of alpha brain waves in altered states of consciousness (above, note
5). Barfield's "alpha-thinking" is actually a type of "beta-thinking,"
in the jargon of recent brain research.

 

 

10. Retaining what has been called the "illusion of the first time"
is quite difficult once you become skilled at an activity. It is this
sense of wonder that adults most envy in very young children.

 

 

11. Peter Achinstein,
Concepts of Science
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1968), p. 164. The above example is only touched on in
this book. I had the good fortune to be a student of Professor Achinstein
during my graduate years, and have elaborated the example given in his
book into the much fuller version that he provided in the classroom.

 

 

Alan Watts's favorite example of confusing map with territory was sitting
down in a restaurant and eating the menu instead of the dinner, an act
that he saw as a metaphor for modern society in general.

 

 

12. The best one-volume discussion of the subject for the layman, and
it is not easy going, is
The Strange Story of the Quantum
, by Banesh
Hoffman, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1959). I have also
found Jeremy Bernstein's
Einstein
(London: Fontana, 1973), and Werner
Heisenberg's
Physics and Philosophy
(New York: Harper Torchbooks,
1962), helpful in understanding the subject.

 

 

When I state that the scientific establishment pretends that quantum
mechanics does not exist, I mean this in the philosophical rather
than the literal sense. Quantum mechanics is certainly recognized as
a legitimate area of research, and a recent article in
Scientific
American
by Bernard d'Espagnat ("The Quantum Theory and Reality," 241
[November 1979], 158-81), does not mince words as to how epistemologically
radical the subject truly is. But virtually all scientists proceed with
their work as though they were detached observers, and the traditional
subject/object dichotomy is embedded in the curricula and textbooks of
all high school and college science teaching.

 

 

Some of the most advanced work using quantum mechanics to create a new
scientific metaphysics is being done by David Finkelstein of Yeshiva
University. See, for example, his articles on the "Space-Time Code" in
Physical Review
184 (25 August 1969), 1261-70; and
Physical Review
D 5
(15 January 1972), 320-28, (15 June 1972), 2922-31, and 9 (15 April 1974),
2219-31. Finkelstein also has an interesting, paper on "Matter, Space and
Logic" in
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science
5 (1969), 199-215.

 

 

13. See Northrup's introduction in
Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy
,
pp. 6-10. The quotations from Heisenberg below are taken from this book,
pp. 29, 41, 58. See also pp. 81, 130, 144.

 

 

According to Norwood Russell Hanson; if one were to argue that the
uncertainty relations do not mean the electrons actually lack a simultaneous
position and momentum, one would be essentially arguing that electrons
are in precisely defined states but that we cannot define them because of
crude techniques of investigation. This valiant attempt to save classical
notions of reality will not work. As Hanson points out, this position
"seeks what no physical theory can hope for -- a knowledge of nature that
transcends what our best hypotheses and experiments suggest." The close
connection between epistemology and ontology becomes obvious here. If
we cannot know an object in the classical Cartesian sense, how can we
argue that it conforms to classical notions of reality? Arguing that it
must conform to the usual subject/object relations turns the Cartesian
paradigm into a faith, not a science; which is what it always was anyway.

 

 

See N.R. Hanson, "Quantum Mechanics, Philosophical Implications of," in
Paul Edwards, ed.,
The Encylopedia of Philosophy
(New York: Macmillan,
1967), 7:44.

 

 

14. This attempt to find the ultimate material entity is still, foolishly,
going on. Of the two hundred or so nuclear particles now recognized as
existing, 90 percent of these have been discovered in the postwar era,
suggesting that reality is more a function of the national budget than
anything else. Since 1964, atomic physicists have posited the existence of
"quarks" (a word taken from
Finnegans Wake
) to explain these particles,
but their number has multiplied to the point that we may soon have a
quark to explain each particle. Nor is this the end: to explain quarks,
"hidden variables" have now been suggested. In fact, there is no end
to this process. As Geoffrey Chew has pointed out, we detect particles
because they interact with the observer, but in order to do so they must
have some internal structure. This means that we can in principle never
get to some object that has no internal structure, for a truly elementary
particle could not be subject to any forces that would allow us to detect
its existence (if we find it by its weight, for example, then it must
contain something within it producing a gravitational field). On the
Cartesian model we shall be chasing "hidden variables" to the end of
time. The disarray in modern physics became embarrassingly clear at the
1978 meeting of the American Physical Society in San Francisco, at which
an appeal was made for a new Einstein to sort things out. The cul-de-sac
of Cartesianism came out in a remark made by one Berkeley physicist,
that although no one knew what the proliferation of particles meant,
at least we could measure them with great precision (!). On a more
intelligent level, Werner Heisenberg called for an end to the concept of
the elementary particle in 1975. William Irwin Thompson's remark that
an "elementary particle is what happens when you build an accelerator"
is not without relevance here.

 

 

See Fritjof Capra,
The Tao of Physics
(Berkeley: Shambhala, 1975),
pp. 273-74; "Scientist's Call for Another Einstein,"
San Francisco
Chronicle
, 24 January 1978; "Monitor,"
New Scientist
, 24 July 1975,
p. 196; and William Irwin Thompson, ~Notes on an Emerging Planet," in
Michael Katz et al., eds.,
Earth's Answer
(New York: Harper & Row,
1977), p. 210.

 

 

15. H. Forwald,
Mind, Matter and Gravitation
(New York: Parapsychology
Foundation, 1969). Forwald, a retired engineer and inventor, performed
these experiments over a period of two decades.

 

 

16. For example, Capra,
The Tao of Physics
; Lawrence LeShan,
The
Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1975;
orig. publ. 1966); Gary Zukav,
The Dancing Wu Li Masters
(New York:
William Morrow, 1979).

 

 

17. E. H. Walker, "Consciousness in the Quantum Theory of Measurement,"
Journal for the Study of Consciousness
5 (1972), Part 1, no. 1, p. 46;
Part 2, no. 2, p. 257; "The Nature of Consciousness,"
Mathematical
Biosciences
7 (1970), 175.

 

 

18. Yankelovich and Barrett,
Ego and Instinct
, p. 203.

 

 

19. Gregory Bateson,
Steps to an Ecology of Mind
(London: Paladin, 1973;
New York: Ballantine, 1972), p. 436 British edition, p. 461 American
edition. The two modalities of human awareness are called "tonal" and
"nagual" in some anthropological literature, and an excellent explication
of their relationship may be found in the second half of Carlos Castaneda,
Tales of Power
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974). As in the case
of Bateson's work, Casteneda's provides a brilliant model of holistic
knowing. Unlike Bateson's work, it stops at the point that the model
is delineated.

 

 

20. This recognition reflects perfectly the internal osmosis that goes
on in holistic consciousness between the conscious and unconscious mind
(nucleus and cell). In such consciousness the barrier between the two
modalities disintegrates; they interpenetrate and become more like each
other. This process is accompanied by an external alteration in which
Self and Other are not seen as so sharply distinguished.

 

 

21. Hanson,
Quantum Mechanics
, p. 46.

 

 

22. Gregory Bateson, "Style, Grace and Information in Primitive Art,"
in
Steps to an Ecology of Mind
, p. 109n British edition, and p. 136n
American editon.

 

 

23. Quoted in Arthur Koestler,
The Roots of Coincidence
(New York:
Random House, 1972), p. 55.

 

 

24. Peter Koestenbaum,
Managing Anxiety
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1974), pp. 11-13.

 

 

25. Brown,
Life Against Death
, pp. 94-5, 2734. Both Freud and Reich
made this point as well, at least by way of analogy. Cf. Wilhelm
Reich,
The Function of the Orgasm
, trans. Vincent R. Carfagno
(New York: Pocket Books, 1975; orig. German ed. 1942), pp. 33, 283.

 

 

26. Barfield,
Saving the Appearances
, pp. 136, 144, 160.

 

 

27. All terms that make this distinction between inner and outer, thus
perpetuating mind/body, subject/object dualism, should be put in inverted
commas. In this category I would include phrases such as "phenomena,"
"data," "the given," and so on. We need a new vocabulary that reinforces
the ecological sense of reality.

 

 

28. At the risk of belaboring a point, I am not suggesting, as Berkeley
did, that events would not exist were we absent, but only that the nature
of what is going on is in some way dependent upon our participation in
the events. What occurs in our absence would thus be irrelevant.

 

 

As for modern cosmology, the latest word, from the Lick Observatory of the
University of California, is that the universe is actually collapsing. Or
rather, it will apparently expand for another twenty billion years,
and then collapse for the next thirty billion after that. Once again,
the whole thing seems to resonate with the sociology of knowledge. As
Europe began to expand its geographic and economic horizons, the
universe went from completely closed to infinitely open. Now that the
futures of science, technology, linear progress, and industrial society
have all become rather questionable, the cosmos has curiously begun to
contract! See "New Evidence Backs A Collapsing Universe,"
San Francisco
Chronicle
, 30 June 1978.

 

 

29. Polanyi,
Personal Knowledge
, pp. 288-94. An elaboration of
the circularity of modern science can also be found in Max Marwick,
"Is science a form of witchcraft?"