Just when we think we have a handle on how the world works, some New Ager comes along with a strange coupling of mysticism and science. Many such couplings (entanglements?) have attracted the attention of “followers.” The “new” thinking takes effect among a passionate few and then spreads as by osmosis through a culture, reshaping it forever, future generations not even realizing they are, at least in part, also followers. Sometimes I ask myself, “Am I a New Ager or a New Age cult follower without my knowing? Do I have so little knowledge that I am easy prey for any seemingly new metaphor of life? Do my writings reflect any New Age beliefs?” You might ask yourself the same questions.
Let me hop onto the train of arguments made by Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan in their book Doubt and Certainty. * One of the questions they pose centers on Einstein’s “relativity.” If you read Einstein’s book Relativity, you find that he stresses the importance of “invariants” in his work on special relativity. Rothman and Sudarshan ask whether or not the intellectual history of the twentieth century might have been vastly different if Albert had labeled his work the Special Theory of Invariants. Do you understand why they might ask that? Think for a moment before reading on…
I’ll pose an answer, but let me put it in the context of two other tracks of thought and one event. First the event. In January, 2019, Indian scientists protested speakers at a convention organized by the Indian Science Congress Association. ** Some of the convention’s speakers claimed that Einstein and Newton blundered, that ancient India was the site of discoveries in the physical and biological sciences long before the development of modern science, and that proof that ancient people had invented aircraft, test-tube babies, and stem-cell research could be found in the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. A retired professor and general secretary of the non-profit Breakthrough Science Society, Dhruba Mukhopadhyay told Reuters, “This is very harmful for the growth of scientific temper because these ideas are being propagated through the Science Congress which gives it respectability.”
Now the context of two tracks of thought other than Relativity. What might have happened to the intellectual history of the twentieth century had Darwin not injected the principles of survival of the fittest and natural selection into Western Culture? And what would have happened if the train tracks of thought leading to the present moment hadn’t included a line for the Orient Express? “Huh? This is getting complicateder and complicateder, Donald. Pare it down.”
Given a boost by nineteenth-century influences like Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalism, English Romanticism, and the cultural opening of the East to the machinations of western “intellects,” Eastern Mysticism began to merge with Western Thought like rail lines thrown together by some “switch monkey.” Three intellectual influences came together to form a single-track, taking different train cars—Relativity, Evolution, and Mysticism—to New Age Thinking that has now become a part twenty-first century culture, including current-day politics.
Let’s begin again with the Theory of Invariants: Rothman and Sudarshan say that because Einstein and his followers used the term relativity, the products of science have been cast as “social artifacts.” (277). Again, think. What if invariance, and not relativity, had been the key term of the twentieth century? Would you have the same worldview? Would your language reflect a different psychology? The same applies to evolution and mysticism, whose development includes situation ethics, social Darwinism—even lethal eugenics—Progressive Politics, and Zen. In the common mind, all is relative, all progressive, and all as easily mystical and as verifiable as “scientific products” are under Karl Popper’s falsification principle. In fact, since social and intellectual relativism dominates, all is verifiable just by virtue of one’s saying so. Truth lies in the individual mind, a principle that is most likely believed by many tripping into “higher” orders of awareness under the influence of Timothy Leary’s cult of LSD and other hallucinogens. Of course, as we all know, such awareness is beyond articulation and objective, or “scientific,” repetition. But we can’t deny that a sizable portion of Western populations have perspectives—however varied—derived from a culture of drugs and corrupted or usurped definitions of Relativity, Darwinism, and Mysticism. If anything has become “invariant,” it is relativism.
We can’t discount Darwin’s influence in the making of the modern mind. Here’s what Rothman and Sudarshan say:
“…in the waning half of the nineteenth century, the concept of social Darwinism is having enormous impact on all aspects of society. ‘Survival of the Fittest’ becomes not just an evolutionary principle but a battle cry. On the right, robber barons cite Darwin as a justification for economic exploitation of the lower classes and to buttress their opposition to child-labor laws. On the left, Karl Marx wishes to dedicate volume one of Das Kapital to Darwin…[and] George Bernard Shaw advocates his brand of socialism with the help of ‘creative evolutionism.’” (267)
Is there any wonder why we find ourselves in the state were in? We don’t need verifiable proof for anything. If you believe it, it’s true. Witness the numerous informal statements in social media and in man-on-the-street interviews of everyday citizens, youthful protestors, special interest groups, and political pundits. There’s a difference between the rise of individualism that can be traced back to eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the individualism of today. Thomas Jefferson, an advocate for the worth of the individual (“We hold these truths to be self-evident”) had portraits of John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton on his office walls when he was Secretary of State. That was in pre-Darwinian, pre-Einsteinian, and pre-New Age times. Locke was an empiricist; Bacon, and experimentalist; Newton, both.
I can’t blame the youth of today for wallowing in the mire of subjectivism. Every intellectual benchmark has been corrupted by popularization. Who has read Darwin? Who has read Einstein? Who can explain Zen koans? (By the way, what is the sound of one hand clapping?)
Meaning is whatever one means meaning is. The age of the logical argument is long gone.
In practice, just about every—if not every—perspective becomes its opposite. Those who proclaim the worth of the individual do so only for their own self-perceived worth. The modern individual is a mystic who searches for meaning in ways not possible to share. The modern definition of anything depends on the definer. All has risen through a social evolutionary trend under the misused term relativity. All might have been different had Einstein given us the Special Theory of Invariance, Darwin had given us the Theory of Random Mutation, and Eastern Mysticism had remained separate from physics.
In the New Age, we adopt various mixtures of Relativity, Darwinism, and Mysticism. Unfortunately, we can’t really share exactly what we mean, and in many instances, can’t even articulate what we mean even to ourselves. We do, however, share some common and very vague generalities about all three intellectual influences. But under the merger of those three misunderstood influences, emotion reigns over worldview. Like and dislike, love and hatred, and attraction and revulsion govern daily life.
You might have reasonable arguments for your positions on the topics du jour, topics involving social, ethical, and political problems. Chances are you aren’t going to find an opponent willing to address the logic of your arguments. The question that you might ask yourself is whether or not you are capable of framing and articulating a position while responding without emotion to opposing positions.
Until we can cast off the corrupted versions of Relativity, Darwinism, and Mysticism, everyone will very much be “one hand clapping.”
*Rothman, Tony and George Sudarshan. Doubt and Certainty. Reading, Mass. Helix Books (Perseus Books), 1998.
**Science News. Indian scientists protest congress speakers discrediting works of Newton, Einstein. January 7, 2019. Online at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-science-idUSKCN1P11XT Accessed January 31, 2019.
Let me hop onto the train of arguments made by Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan in their book Doubt and Certainty. * One of the questions they pose centers on Einstein’s “relativity.” If you read Einstein’s book Relativity, you find that he stresses the importance of “invariants” in his work on special relativity. Rothman and Sudarshan ask whether or not the intellectual history of the twentieth century might have been vastly different if Albert had labeled his work the Special Theory of Invariants. Do you understand why they might ask that? Think for a moment before reading on…
I’ll pose an answer, but let me put it in the context of two other tracks of thought and one event. First the event. In January, 2019, Indian scientists protested speakers at a convention organized by the Indian Science Congress Association. ** Some of the convention’s speakers claimed that Einstein and Newton blundered, that ancient India was the site of discoveries in the physical and biological sciences long before the development of modern science, and that proof that ancient people had invented aircraft, test-tube babies, and stem-cell research could be found in the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. A retired professor and general secretary of the non-profit Breakthrough Science Society, Dhruba Mukhopadhyay told Reuters, “This is very harmful for the growth of scientific temper because these ideas are being propagated through the Science Congress which gives it respectability.”
Now the context of two tracks of thought other than Relativity. What might have happened to the intellectual history of the twentieth century had Darwin not injected the principles of survival of the fittest and natural selection into Western Culture? And what would have happened if the train tracks of thought leading to the present moment hadn’t included a line for the Orient Express? “Huh? This is getting complicateder and complicateder, Donald. Pare it down.”
Given a boost by nineteenth-century influences like Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalism, English Romanticism, and the cultural opening of the East to the machinations of western “intellects,” Eastern Mysticism began to merge with Western Thought like rail lines thrown together by some “switch monkey.” Three intellectual influences came together to form a single-track, taking different train cars—Relativity, Evolution, and Mysticism—to New Age Thinking that has now become a part twenty-first century culture, including current-day politics.
Let’s begin again with the Theory of Invariants: Rothman and Sudarshan say that because Einstein and his followers used the term relativity, the products of science have been cast as “social artifacts.” (277). Again, think. What if invariance, and not relativity, had been the key term of the twentieth century? Would you have the same worldview? Would your language reflect a different psychology? The same applies to evolution and mysticism, whose development includes situation ethics, social Darwinism—even lethal eugenics—Progressive Politics, and Zen. In the common mind, all is relative, all progressive, and all as easily mystical and as verifiable as “scientific products” are under Karl Popper’s falsification principle. In fact, since social and intellectual relativism dominates, all is verifiable just by virtue of one’s saying so. Truth lies in the individual mind, a principle that is most likely believed by many tripping into “higher” orders of awareness under the influence of Timothy Leary’s cult of LSD and other hallucinogens. Of course, as we all know, such awareness is beyond articulation and objective, or “scientific,” repetition. But we can’t deny that a sizable portion of Western populations have perspectives—however varied—derived from a culture of drugs and corrupted or usurped definitions of Relativity, Darwinism, and Mysticism. If anything has become “invariant,” it is relativism.
We can’t discount Darwin’s influence in the making of the modern mind. Here’s what Rothman and Sudarshan say:
“…in the waning half of the nineteenth century, the concept of social Darwinism is having enormous impact on all aspects of society. ‘Survival of the Fittest’ becomes not just an evolutionary principle but a battle cry. On the right, robber barons cite Darwin as a justification for economic exploitation of the lower classes and to buttress their opposition to child-labor laws. On the left, Karl Marx wishes to dedicate volume one of Das Kapital to Darwin…[and] George Bernard Shaw advocates his brand of socialism with the help of ‘creative evolutionism.’” (267)
Is there any wonder why we find ourselves in the state were in? We don’t need verifiable proof for anything. If you believe it, it’s true. Witness the numerous informal statements in social media and in man-on-the-street interviews of everyday citizens, youthful protestors, special interest groups, and political pundits. There’s a difference between the rise of individualism that can be traced back to eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the individualism of today. Thomas Jefferson, an advocate for the worth of the individual (“We hold these truths to be self-evident”) had portraits of John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton on his office walls when he was Secretary of State. That was in pre-Darwinian, pre-Einsteinian, and pre-New Age times. Locke was an empiricist; Bacon, and experimentalist; Newton, both.
I can’t blame the youth of today for wallowing in the mire of subjectivism. Every intellectual benchmark has been corrupted by popularization. Who has read Darwin? Who has read Einstein? Who can explain Zen koans? (By the way, what is the sound of one hand clapping?)
Meaning is whatever one means meaning is. The age of the logical argument is long gone.
In practice, just about every—if not every—perspective becomes its opposite. Those who proclaim the worth of the individual do so only for their own self-perceived worth. The modern individual is a mystic who searches for meaning in ways not possible to share. The modern definition of anything depends on the definer. All has risen through a social evolutionary trend under the misused term relativity. All might have been different had Einstein given us the Special Theory of Invariance, Darwin had given us the Theory of Random Mutation, and Eastern Mysticism had remained separate from physics.
In the New Age, we adopt various mixtures of Relativity, Darwinism, and Mysticism. Unfortunately, we can’t really share exactly what we mean, and in many instances, can’t even articulate what we mean even to ourselves. We do, however, share some common and very vague generalities about all three intellectual influences. But under the merger of those three misunderstood influences, emotion reigns over worldview. Like and dislike, love and hatred, and attraction and revulsion govern daily life.
You might have reasonable arguments for your positions on the topics du jour, topics involving social, ethical, and political problems. Chances are you aren’t going to find an opponent willing to address the logic of your arguments. The question that you might ask yourself is whether or not you are capable of framing and articulating a position while responding without emotion to opposing positions.
Until we can cast off the corrupted versions of Relativity, Darwinism, and Mysticism, everyone will very much be “one hand clapping.”
*Rothman, Tony and George Sudarshan. Doubt and Certainty. Reading, Mass. Helix Books (Perseus Books), 1998.
**Science News. Indian scientists protest congress speakers discrediting works of Newton, Einstein. January 7, 2019. Online at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-science-idUSKCN1P11XT Accessed January 31, 2019.
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