Category Archives: Science

The MWS Podcast 108: Roderick Tweedy on the God of the Left Hemisphere

Brain, Podcast, ,

We are joined today by the author and book editor Roderick Tweedy who’s here to talk to us about his book ‘The God of the Left Hemisphere. The book explores the remarkable connections between the activities and functions of the human brain that writer William Blake termed ‘Urizen’ and the powerful complex of rationalising and ordering processes which modern neuroscience identifies as ‘left hemisphere’ brain activity. Blake’s prescient insight into the nature and origins of this arguably dominant force within the brain allows him to radically reinterpret the psychological basis of the entity commonly referred to as ‘God’.


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Archetypes for science

Jung, Middle Way Philosophy, Science, ,

To talk of an archetype is just to talk of a basic, universal psychological function that we can either project or take responsibility for as part of ourselves. Religion, art, and myth are of course rife with archetypes, but there’s no reason to assume they stop there. Archetypes can be found in every field of human experience. So why not science?

I’ve been thinking recently a bit more about what scientific archetypes might be like. Since scientists and other supporters of science are people, we can expect the same four basic archetypal functions in them as in anyone else, but they are likely to take a rather different outward form, because scientific culture makes such a point of avoiding ‘subjective’ stories (unless they are the object of scientific investigation themselves). So scientific archetypes are likely to avoid traditional forms, but (since they are based on the human mental constitution) nevertheless emerge.projection-of-truth

If scientists don’t acknowledge their own stories, that creates a new danger of projection, where the stories are simply played out in the ‘objective world’ without recognition that they are a result of the biases and assumptions of the scientist. The fact that much scientific ‘rationality’ depends on procedures to eliminate bias that are followed at a group level, rather than just individual thinking, increases that danger. So I thought it might be helpful to try to identify some scientific archetypes to look out for. This can also provide another way of distinguishing science from scientism. Scientific method itself is entirely compatible with acknowledging the biases represented by these archetypes, but scientism is equivalent to projecting these archetypes outwards without acknowledgement (particularly the final one).

So I’m going to base my suggestions for scientific archetypes on the four basic archetypes I’ve described elsewhere: for example in my 2014 talk, and book Middle Way Philosophy 3. These are the hero, the shadow, anima/animus, and the God archetype (which Jung also called the self).

The hero is the archetype of the ego, representing our idealisation of what we can achieve in the form we identify with at the moment. I recently discussed the hero in another blog. We identify with the heroes in stories because they are striving for goals in the face of difficulties just as we are, and we feel their triumph as they achieve them. So, who is the hero in science? Well, the scientist of course. Maybe it’s Galileo whom we identify with as a martyr for the cause, or Einstein as the genius who overcomes the doubters. The scientific hero may slay the dragons of ignorance, or perhaps of pseudoscience, religion or irrationality, to win the fabled Nobel prize and carry it home in triumph. The scientific hero is projected when you really think that someone else is like that and you really believe in their goals 100%, or perhaps that you yourself are such a hero. Such an archetype can be integrated when you recognise that figures like Einstein can be inspiring, but they’re also complex, and that the desire to slay those particular dragons is based on limited assumptions that may need further examination.

The shadow is the archetype of evil, based on what we reject. The Shadow is often identified with Satan or other evil figures, but can be projected onto someone we hate, who then gets a whole host of shadowy attributes given too them. For example, the boss frustrates you in your current project, so you fantasise that he is nasty in every respect, not realising that he actually goes home and has a wonderful relationship with his children. The shadow for science has already been mentioned as the target for the hero: probably pseudoscience, religion, a rival theory, or whatever is understood as standing in the way of science. For example, you may have identified one way in which you think homeopathy is mistaken, but you then project that evil ignorance onto every other aspect of homeopathy. That means that when examining it you will be heavily subject to confirmation bias that makes you interpret positive or neutral information negatively. To integrate that archetype and avoid projection, you would need to recognise that although some specific beliefs held by those you reject may be unhelpful, you can separate the overall shadow from the figure you reject, who will be much more complex and multifaceted.

The anima/animus is the archetype of the attractive other, which most commonly takes a form sexually opposite to the one you identify with. Falling in love is a common indicator of a projection of the anima or animus: usually with a person, but it could also happen, say, with a place, a subject, a book, or an animal. You believe it to be wonderful precisely because it has qualities you lack yourself, and as a result you fail to see that you could develop more of those qualities in yourself rather than seeking them elsewhere. A scientific anima/animus could be an attraction for something perceived as non-scientific, perhaps even irrational. Thus scientists can be observed not only falling in love with non-scientists of the opposite sex, but also going in for escapist fantasy, or even adopting a religious or new-agey view precisely because it doesn’t fit their normal requirement of scientific rationality. The projection of the archetype depends on that blindness to the incompatibility of the two worlds, because you don’t want to have to make the effort of being rational all the time. To integrate that archetype, though, you’d have to admit the incompatibility and find an overarching understanding that could contain both your scientific self and your fantasising self. In the process you might loosen your assumptions about what ‘rationality’ is and how humans can make use of it.

The God archetype is the big one, that I find those with a scientific worldview are least likely to acknowledge, obsessed as they are likely to be with the ‘existence’ or otherwise of God. The God archetype is a foretaste of a state of integration, also variously called the self, or the wise old man or woman. If you project the God archetype, you believe that there is a God (or a person) beyond yourself who has the energy, wisdom, positivity and awareness that you’d normally attribute to an integrated person – but, in the case of God, to an infinite degree. You might also project that archetype onto a guru, a Buddha, a wizard, a healer, a teacher etc, or even onto yourself if you start to believe that you are perfectly integrated. If you integrate that archetype, though, you recognise that it is your own integration your dealing with, that integration is always a work in progress, and that the people you may be projecting it onto are imperfect.

I have already written a blog that touches on the God archetype in science when I wrote about idealised figures of truth. Truth is one of two major concepts that I think scientists are likely to project the God archetype onto, the other being Nature. Compared to the imaginative richness of  religious representations of God, of course, scientific concepts of truth or nature are likely to be rather dry and abstract, and not often given an imaginative form such as a personification. Nevertheless, it seems clear that some scientists routinely project an absolute truth or nature, either by believing that their theories are ‘true’ and that they know ‘laws of nature’, or that, even if they haven’t achieved it yet, truth and nature are achievable and scientific theory is capable of describing them. Thus they project a quality that depends on their actions, attitudes and procedures (objectivity) onto the universe itself.

Just as with God, there is no harm at all in having truth or nature as archetypes representing your goals. As such they can be highly meaningful. However, if you assume that the object of your efforts really exists out there, you make a similar basic mistake to those who believe in a supernatural God or a perfect lover. To integrate such projections, we need to separate out the archetypal symbol and recognise it as such, but refrain from projecting it onto the people or things in the world around us, or even the world as a whole.

Of course, it’s not just scientists who may be subject to the scientific versions of unintegrated archetypes. They may increasingly just be products of the scientific worldview as it is also adopted by others. As a group, scientists are also probably more likely to detect these kinds of projections than most other people. So I don’t want to be read as having a special go at scientists, only as pointing out that they are subject to exactly the same processes as everyone else, and it would be rather surprising if they were exempt. Reflecting on the presence of these archetypes might also help to discourage the more naïve versions of scientism in which the scientifically-influenced make metaphysical assumptions that they believe are justified by scientific results.

Picture: composite of projector with ‘Truth’ sculpture by Lefebre

Heroic Agnosticism

Jung, Middle Way Philosophy, Myth, Religion, Science, , ,

There seems to be a basic misapprehension, shared by traditional religion and Romantic narrative alike, that the absolutists are the heroes. Heroes stick up for what they believe in, regardless of what fate throws at them. They continue with the quest – across the oceans, deserts, and arctic wastes – they slay the monsters, and in the end they get their reward. Or, even if the hero does not get all he desires, his beliefs are at least upheld, even if he has to die for them, for the martyr too is a hero. It’s stirring stuff, constantly reinforced for us by Hollywood, by heroic literature, even by religion.

Who could question such a narrative? Nobody should underestimate the difficulties. But one of Jung’s visions in the Red Book confronts us with their full pain.

I was with a youth in high mountains. It was before daybreak, the Eastern sky was already light. Then Siegfried’s horn resounded over the mountains with a jubilant sound. We knew that our mortal enemy was coming. We were armed and lurked beside a narrow rocky path to murder him. Then we saw him coming high across the mountains on a chariot made of the bones of the dead. He drove boldly and magnificently over the steep rocks and arrived at the narrow path where we waited in hiding. As he came round the turn ahead of us, we fired at the same time and he fell slain. thereupon I turned to flee, and a terrible rain swept down. But after this, I went through a torment unto death and I felt certain that I must kill myself, if I could not solve the riddle of the murder of the hero. (p.161)Siegfrieds_deathJung is slaying, not a literal hero, but the archetype of the hero within himself. The belief that the hero will always succeed against the conditions, and that his desires and beliefs are intrinsically right according to some assumed cosmic law, is one that we may implicitly indulge every time we get caught up in the hero story. Not only do we absolutise the hero himself, but we may also identify ourselves with him. But if we are to recognise the limitations of this reassuring fantasy, we have to be able to recognise that the hero may be wrong in his assumptions. To recognise this may feel extremely painful, and the death of the hero symbolises this pain. The myths provide us with this death story as well as with the achievements of the hero, giving us the resources of meaning to be able to recognise it, but we may still have to go through that shock of dis-identification.

Jung identifies the death of the hero with the archetypal role of Christ, whose crucifixion plays a similar role: showing us that our absolutised idea of a human God must die so as to lead us on to an engagement with God that is no longer based solely on human projection. Jung puts it this way:

I must say that the God could not come into being before the hero had been slain. The hero as we understand him has become an enemy of the God, since the hero is perfection. The Gods envy the perfection of man, because perfection has no need of the Gods. But since no-one is perfect, we need the Gods. The Gods love perfection because it is the total way of life. But the Gods are not with him who wishes to be perfect, because he is an imitation of perfection. (p.171)

‘The Gods’ here are symbolic of our own wider recognition – of the limitations of our current egoistic view of ourselves and of our greater potential as more integrated beings. We do not attain perfection merely by imitating, because the model we imitate may have worked in the conditions it was produced but is unlikely to work in the very different conditions of our own lives. Only integrated creativity will do, and that requires us to let go of our identification with all heroic models of imitation.

Strangely enough, though, there seems to be an even greater heroism involved in this process. What could be more heroic, itself, than killing the hero? But if we reduce this to another model of imitation, an absolute set of beliefs about how the world is and how we should act in it, then we will find this new heroism just as limiting in the end, and find ourselves in a cycle of endlessly killing new heroes. The killing of the hero needs to be accompanied by the further development of integration in experience so that we come to rely positively on that rather than on absolute beliefs about the hero. Our heroism needs to become agnostic, but such heroism can be seen, not as abandoning heroism, but as finding a deeper and more adequate form of it.

I have often been puzzled by the way that agnosticism is frequently portrayed in popular discourse, as the very opposite of heroic. As Richard Dawkins describes agnostics (quoting a preacher with approval): “Namby-pamby, weak-tea, weedy, pallid fence-sitters” (The God Delusion, p.69). The assumption here seems to be that agnostics dare not attempt the heroism of belief, whereas I want to suggest that on the contrary, agnostics are even more heroic than the heroes caught up in their righteous assumptions. The dogmatic hero carries on against adversity in the certain feeling that God or the universe is on his side. The agnostic hero, on the other hand, has to manage without such delusory certainties, managing only with hope and embodied confidence. Nothing can be taken as determined about her success in the goals she takes up, and even those goals themselves have to be taken as provisional ones. The greatest hero ventures into the lands of uncertainty, and rather than just slaying the monsters, has the courage to question her own monstrous projections.

It is upsetting to find people like Richard Dawkins failing to recognise the heroism of agnosticism, when that very heroism is so central to science. The scientist always has to proceed in conditions of uncertainty, unless she constructs deluded assumptions of naturalistic ‘truth’ where none are available to us. The use of scientific method is distinguished for its heroic agnosticism. But this heroic agnosticism can also be a distinguishing feature of the very ‘religion’ that Dawkins so despises. The mystics, too, proceed on the basis of a faith that grows from their experience of what they call God, and have to slay their own heroic certainties in order to plunge into the cloud of unknowing. Religious believers and scientists alike may have to slay their own heroes on order to go on to a deeper recognition of human potential.

Picture: The death of Siegfried (public domain)

From Medieval to Modern Medicine: A Journey of (Not So Straightforward) Progress.

Health, Health and well-being, History, Science, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

During a recent(ish) podcast, in which Peter Goble and I discussed issues surrounding the experience and management of pain, I suggested that the distinctions between mind and body – which have existed in modern medicine – are beginning to be broken down; that scientific medicine was embracing holistic ideas and practices with more than mere lip service. This, in part, has been in response to the apparent rise of ‘holistic’ or ‘complementary’ therapies (I say ‘apparent rise’ because I think that therapies offering alternatives to the mainstream have been popular in one form or another for a very long time). Despite harbouring some doubts about such theories, usually regarding their underlying theories or their general efficacy, I have long thought that the tendency to treat the ‘whole person’ rather than focus solely on specific diseases is a good one. If we take lung cancer, as one obvious example, then it’s right to say that it’s a disease that can be identified in one area of the body and treated locally. If it’s found early enough it can even be surgically removed and the patient can be ‘cured’.  All of this can be achieved without much thought for the individual involved, but it shouldn’t be. There are many reasons why a holistic approach should accompany (or rather form part of) the medical approach. A person’s lifestyle or environment can be manipulated to aid recovery, or even help reduce the risk of getting lung cancer in the first place, and the person’s emotional needs should also be considered. Getting lung cancer is not just a physical event; there will likely be considerable emotional effects too – which, like physical symptoms will be different for each individual.

Such things are increasingly being contemplated and acted upon by the medical community, which is interesting when one considers that the humoral model had been doing this for centuries, before being rejected roughly 200 years ago, by the scientific model.  From the 10th to the 19th century CE the established medical orthodoxy was based, almost entirely, on the ancient ideas of thinkers such as Hippocrates, Aristotle and Aelius Galen.  This system was based on the belief that the human body consisted of four fluids (or humours): Yellow Bile, Pure Blood, Black Bile and Phlegm.  Each humour had unique properties and were related to such factors such as Aristotle’s four elements andThe_four_elements,_four_qualities,_four_humours,_four_season_Wellcome_V0048018 the four seasons of the year.  So, the properties of Yellow Bile were considered to be ‘hot and dry’ meaning that it was related to the ‘element’ fire and the summer season.  Phlegm, on the other hand, was ‘wet and cold’ and thus associated with ‘water’ and ‘winter’.  Each person had an optimum ratio of these four humours, which was specific to them; personality, emotion and physical condition were all determined by this ratio (or complexion).  One’s health was the product of one’s complexion; if the ratio of humours became deranged then ill health would follow.  Factors such as environment, food or the position of celestial bodies could all alter the amount of each humour.

Diseases were not thought to be specific entities in of themselves.  Every incidence of disease was specific to the person who was suffering, and thus treatments were tailor made to address the specific conditions that were responsible.  If a set of symptoms were thought be caused by a surplus of Yellow Bile, then any treatment would have the opposite properties of cold and wet.  Such treatments could include a prescription to change the properties of ones environment or diet, as well as for medical concoctions and surgery.  By considering psychology, physicality, lifestyle and environment as deeply interrelated factors, thereby focusing on the whole patient as an individual, humoral medicine was truly holistic.  It was impressively versatile too; from Christianity, through the emergence of human dissection, to the enlightenment, challenges to the ancient system came from many sources.  Often, such challenges would be integrated into the existing theory.  God became the primary cause of disease, causing it and allowing it to spread as a punishment for sin, and new treatments based on chemical experimentation were added to the long list of remedies and concoctions.  What did not change, and what was not readily challenged within the mainstream, were the core ideas of the classical scholars.  It was widely believed that the work of those such as Galen could not be bettered, only expanded upon (although this too was a matter of debate).  Even when human dissection showed that anatomy differed from what Galen proposed (Galen only dissected animals) it was frequently assumed that the anatomist, not Galen, had made a mistake.  Some scholars would even alter their descriptions to fit the Galenic sources.  Mainstream medicine spent over 1000 years being based on a, largely, unchallenged appeal to authority.  Those who dared practise outside of its dogmatic sphere could find themselves the unfortunate victims of persecution.

A combination of factors (theoretical, technological, political & social), occurring up to and throughout the late 18th to the mid 19th century, eventually led to the decline of this long lived classical theory.  The emergence of increasingly scientific medical theories led to a general shift in focus from the patient – as an individual to be treated as a whole – to a specific part of the body or an external, disease causing, entity.  As such the patient, in many cases, came to be viewed as an incidental part of the disease process.  That’s not to say there was a clearly defined shift from the ways of the old to those of the new; there rarely is.  Nor was there a move from a wholly holistic practice to one where such considerations were completely absent.  Nevertheless, the medical community was becoming increasingly specialised and all to often the human being was becoming lost in the detail.

I’m not going to argue that this process shouldn’t have happened.   The tendency to specialise and focus on diseases as distinct entities and specific parts of the body has given us incalculable benefits.  If faced with the prospect of a Tuberculosis outbreak, I’ll take the scientific explanation and subsequent course of action over that of a humoral practitioner any day.  Similarly, if I ever need complex cardiac surgery and I’m given the option of a surgeon that is warm, kind and empathetic with an above average mortality rate or a sociopath with a rude, unpleasant bedside manner, who has a very low mortality rate, I’ll take the latter every time.  Of course, it would be much better if I could have a surgeon who combines the best of both.  This might be a bit idealised, and it would be unrealistic to expect every practitioner to experience and radiate the same levels of empathy, just as one could not expect every surgeon to have the same technical skills, but that does not mean it shouldn’t be aimed for.  A surgeon would probably not think much of the notion that they should always endeavour to become as technically skilled as they possibly can be, but the suggestion that the same principle should apply to bedside manner might not always be met with enthusiasm.  I think that it’s an oversimplification to claim that patient’s are viewed merely as objects rather than individuals but there is some truth to this, as demonstrated by this very funny video (which is only funny because there is more than a whiff of truth, and familiarity for anybody that works in an operating department).  I’ve even fallen into such language myself:

‘Are we doing the abscess next’?

Although I’m glad to say, that in my experience, I’ve always (rightly) been pulled up on such utterances by a colleague:

‘We are not “doing an abscess”, we are treating a person who has an abscess’.

I think that there have been many improvements – from wider environmental and lifestyle concerns to the understanding that our physical or psychological conditions cannot always (if at all) be considered in isolation from each other.  Pain management services (in Britain, at least) are a good example where services are being integrated, but there is still a long way to go.  The provision for the psychological well being of those staying in hospital, for example, is often inadequate (a situation potentially made worse if you also happen to suffer from a mental illness) – of course a positive emotional experience will not fix that broken hip, but it may well assist in your recovery and help prevent you form developing a new founded, and avoidable, phobia of hospitals.  There are obviously financial and logistical factors at play here, which can be hard to overcome – but this is not an excuse for the wider needs of patients to be neglected.

Modern medicine has many advantages over humoral medicine.  It is demonstrably more effective at preventing and treating disease and it is not based upon such dogmatic appeals to authority.  Clearly, there is dogma and there are appeals to authority, but due to the requirements for evidence and expectations for innovation, such dogmas are short lived – perhaps lasting a generation or so, but falling far short of the 1000 years that Medieval medical orthodoxy managed to exist.  However, the shift away from the old ideas probably went to far and our focus became too narrow, meaning, in some respects, we have spent the last 200 or so years rediscovering some of the valuable ideas which had become obscured.  The Middle Way Philosophy is unapologetically inspired by many, sometimes apparently incompatible, sources; a ‘magpie’s nest of influences’ made up from those aspects of other ideas which, after critical analysis, have been deemed useful.  Good science and, by extension, good medicine also does this, but all too often there is hesitation, often borne from suspicion of ideas that do not fit neatly into the current orthodoxy.  There are plenty of ‘alternative/ complementary’ therapies that are widely popular and don’t hold up to scientific scrutiny.  To dismiss them all, in their entirety, because of this may be a mistake.  Yes, such and such therapy might not treat what it says it treats, in the way that it claims, but that doesn’t mean there is no value to be found.  If a GP prescribes a contraceptive pill, it will almost certainly work (if used correctly).  As far as I know there is not a Homeopathic equivalent to the contraceptive pill, but the extended consultation that one is likely to receive from a Homeopath could provide many other benefits that GP could not hope to achieve in a 5-10 minute consultation.  We shouldn’t be uncritically open to all ideas that come our way, or to the ones that are currently in vogue, but neither should we dismiss them out of hand (even if one aspect has already proven unhelpful).  This is not easy to do and we will continue to take wrong turns, just as we have in the past.  However, in general, I believe that we will continue to move in something like the right direction, albeit in a haphazard, uneven and uncertain fashion.  I also believe that the five principles of the Middle Way, and the wider philosophy that emerges from them, are well placed to help us avoid many of the hindrances of the past.

Picture: The four elements, four qualities, four humours, four season. From Wellcome Library, London (CC BY 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons

 

Is dogma adaptive?

History, Middle Way Philosophy, Science, , ,

Why do human beings so often get stuck in fixed beliefs that are no longer adequate to the situation? Why do we have metaphysics at all? This is a question I have been considering for a while, not in expectation of ultimate answers, but particularly thinking in terms of the model offered by evolutionary adaptation. Whilst I don’t think evolutionary theory can explain everything, and there are disputable variations within it, it does seem to provide a good explanation of some key conditions. In evolutionary terms, then, human dogma must have some sort of adaptive value. Yet central to my thesis in Middle Way Philosophy is the idea that metaphysics and dogmatism are maladaptive – not in purely evolutionary terms, but certainly in terms that should have some sort of relationship to evolutionary theory. How can I account for this tension?Evolution_1

I have been stimulated in thinking about this recently by reading The Embodied Mind by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. First published in 1991, but I suspect since then largely ignored by a scientific and philosophical world whose models it seriously challenges, this extremely interesting book is one of the few I have come across that explicitly uses the Middle Way in a way that is directly applied to modern scientific and philosophical debates. It does so in relation to both cognitive science and biology, which it juxtaposes with some direct bits of traditional Buddhist material about conditionality. Though the Buddhist bits are treated in an uncritical way somewhat at variance with the extremely thoughtful use of scientific models, the result is nevertheless well worth a read. However, I’m not focused here on fully reviewing this book, more with pulling out a few useful elements.

One of the sections I found interesting in this book is concerned with the whole question of what adaptivity consists in. An unreflective approach to adaptivity by a scientific cognitivist is likely to make two major assumptions, both of which are questionable:

  • That ‘adaptation’ by either an individual organism or a species occurs against an environmental background that is understood in isolation from the organism’s adaptation
  • That ‘adaptation’ should be understood in terms of optimal fitness. The optimally fit organism will survive better than the less fit one.

Both of these assumptions involve the idea that scientific theory just represents a state of affairs ‘out there’, rather than fully taking into account the complex and indeterminate relationship between models, actions and feedback as an organism not only responds to the world it encounters, but also shapes that world. The scientific observer similarly shapes the world of theory in the process of creating the theory. Adaptation, then, cannot just consist in fitting into an environment well, but also changing mental models of that environment and the environment itself. This adaptation also cannot just be a matter of finding one possible optimally ‘fit’ solution. There a lots of possible solutions, and evolutionary pressures may well operate much more negatively just by weeding out the grossly unfit, leaving both the highly adapted and the mediocre to reproduce and flourish. Genetic variation is often apparently random and results in changes that are evolutionarily neutral, or the side effects of complex interplays of genes may result in helpful adaptations being accompanied by maladaptations.

Varela, Thompson and Rosch give a good analogy for this. Imagine that a man goes to buy a suit. If we think only in terms of optimal fitness, he will just go to a bespoke tailor and get the ideal suit that completely fits him, in the ideal style that fits the social conditions. However, anyone who has ever bought a suit will know that it’s more complex than this. Bespoke suits are very expensive, so we are more likely to go to a department store and buy a ready-made cheaper suit in more or less our size, that more or less suits us. The suit that the man buys (given that he is not rich enough to buy a bespoke suit) will be sub-optimal, one of a number of possible solutions in a situation of complex economic, social and corporeal conditions. He could have bought any of a number of possible suits, and he ended up with one that was OK. The authors suggest that evolutionary adaptation is much more like this than like bespoke tailoring.

So, to return to the question I started with: how might dogma be adaptive? I would suggest, because it was, and still is, one of a number of suboptimal solutions that more or less fitted an environment. The kind of environment that it sub-optimally fits is one dominated by group consciousness. A group of hunters in pursuit of deer, or even a group of footballers on a team, do not want too much innovation: above all they want loyalty and reliability. So this kind of situation creates pressures towards fixed models of our environment, because this model will reliably correspond with that of our fellows. Metaphysics is born – first in predominantly religious and political forms that help to maintain the power of leaders, then later in negative forms such as scientism, that help to maintain group loyalty even in a group that is theoretically devoted to rigorous investigation.

However, at the same time, there is another kind of sub-optimal adaptation in human history. Original thinkers who are prepared to create different models may also sometimes have their day. They may, for example, recognise an impending climatic catastrophe or the likely loss of a food source and prompt their society to make effective preparations for it. Later on, they may be Aristotles or Galileos or Einsteins, offering a new model that differs greatly from what preceded them. These people also benefit their societies, so societies that at least tolerate them, and sometimes listen to them, are more likely to be successful in the long run.

So far in human history, though, I would hypothesise, it is the first kind of sub-optimal adaptation that has had the upper hand. The faster the environment changes, though, and the more we contribute to changing it through innovation, the harder it becomes for the metaphysical world view to be effective. There have been times in the past – such as the Buddha’s India or Ancient Greece – where individuals have been able to come to the fore and challenge group-consciousness, and where the balance and integration between brain hemispheres (as tracked by Iain McGilchrist) improved. We may also be in such a position now, where it is flexible individual thinking capable of defying metaphysical assumptions that is most needed so that we can address rapidly changing conditions. Flexible, integrated thinking does not result in ideal solutions, but it does improve what we have, and may be crucial to our survival.

This is a repost, originally posted on the Middle Way Philosophy blog on  ⋅ 2 Comments on the original post.

Picture: Evolution 1 by Latvian (Wikimedia Commons) CCSA.