The scientist as mystic

The novelist David Foster Wallace is quoted as saying, in everyday life, "there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships."  Most of the things we worship, he continues, eat us alive.

He means our ego, our power, our possessions or beauty or intellect; if we put these at the center of our lives, we feel ultimately unsatisfied. We are not the center of the universe, after all, if we look at the Big Picture. People have often thought over the centuries that the natural world belonged to us; we are now beginning to see that we belong to it.

This insight is part of a revealing excerpt from Alan Lightman's book about the scientist as mystic: "Searching for Stars on the Island in Maine."
I am indebted to Maria Popova's recent Brain Pickings newsletter for the excerpt.

The supposed wall of separation between science and religion or spirituality has long been crumbling as more and more scientists embrace mystery and the infinite and actually say, as Lightman does, that "the infinite is not just a lot more of the finite."  He would agree with Carl Sagan, who long ago stated, "The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both."

Lightman, without espousing religion and while remaining an experimental scientist, goes further by saying that nature "tempts us to believe in the supernatural," that we have a natural human longing for absolutes in a world of relative, changeable things.  For this MIT scientist, humanist and writer, the link between science and religion is embedded deep in human nature itself.

In a world of impermanence and imperfection, Lightman, while remaining committed to his work in natural science, also sees the power of the unchangeable, the eternal, the sacred.  He sees these Absolutes--immortality, the soul, even God--as enduring concepts that can anchor and guide us through our temporary lives. He writes lyrically of his transcendent experience one night on the ocean.

Lightman is one of many thinkers who can be at home in both worlds: that of reason and experimentation and that of the unprovable, but nevertheless real, realm of the spirit. I think of the Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who is remembered today more as a mystic than as a paleontologist. And reading his dense (translated) prose is a challenge in a way that reading Lightman is not.

The Invisible as Real

As a boy, my favorite, most chilling movie was "The Invisible Man," and, when I was even younger, I loved invisible ink and, of course, pretending to be invisible by hiding, disguising myself, or simply closing my eyes, as if my self or person would magically disappear.

The relation between magic and science is part of the fascinating new book, INVISIBLE, by Philip Ball, a British science writer, who uses literature, myth, philosophy, and other fields to illuminate his study.  As in his book on the building of Chartres cathedral, Universe of Stone, Ball writes beautifully for the lay reader.

The idea that power resides in the unseen world is basic to all religions, and the world of magic becomes the inspiration of science: they are not opposites, Ball indicates. It is good to learn here that science cannot destroy the invisible, which is real, which is the enduring reality we all strive for.  In this way, the invisible is like silence, not the absence of sound but a presence in its own right.

As Kathryn Schulz sums Ball's insights in The New Yorker:  "In a universe that is vast and mostly matterless, in which the invisible exceeds the visible by a staggering margin, the extraordinary fact about us is that we number among the things that can be seen."

So much for B. F. Skinner's claim that the goal of science is the destruction of mystery. Mystery is all around us and in us, and examining the invisible opens up questions about the invisible as presence. Clearly, what is unseen is not just de-materialized or disguised.

The invisible may keep itself hidden but it makes itself felt, Schulz says. This is literally how the universe works: "An invisible mass alters the orbit of a comet; dark energy affects the acceleration of a supernova; the earth's magnetic field tugs on birds, butterflies, sea turtles, and the compasses of mariners."  The entire visible world, that is, even all that cannot be put under a microscope or other visual device, is made possible by the invisible.

"Our planet, our solar system, our galaxy, our universe: all of it, all of us, are pushed, pulled, spun, shifted, set in motion and held together by what we cannot see." (Schulz)

Wow!  Just think of all "big things" we cannot see: germs, viruses, molecules, gravity, the earth's interior, the depths of the ocean. It is humbling to learn that scientists can only see a fragment of the universe--and nothing of its purpose and meaning. Hence we have philosophy and religion to show us the wonder of our world and ourselves.

As I learned in my introductory philosophy course, our ideas, feelings, personalities, souls, and selves--most of the things that really matter--are beyond our seeing but nonetheless real, as abstractions are real. Despite the efforts of science to dispel the invisible, it is, like God, all around us and in us and beyond all knowing.

The topic of the invisible leads from magic to science and then, it seems to me, to mysticism: an immersion in the mystery of things beyond the realm of science.