The Demon-Haunted World_ Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan [130]
Science is different from many another human enterprise - not, of course, in its practitioners’ being influenced by the culture they grew up in, nor in sometimes being right and sometimes wrong (which are common to every human activity), but in its passion for framing testable hypotheses, in its search for definitive experiments that confirm or deny ideas, in the vigour of its substantive debate, and in its willingness to abandon ideas that have been found wanting. If we were not aware of our own limitations, though, if we were not seeking further data, if we were unwilling to perform controlled experiments, if we did not respect the evidence, we would have very little leverage in our quest for the truth. Through opportunism and timidity we might then be buffeted by every ideological breeze, with nothing of lasting value to hang on to.
15
Newton’s Sleep
May God keep us from single vision and Newton’s sleep.
William Blake,
from a poem included in a letter to Thomas Butts (1802)
[I]gnorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
Charles Darwin, Introduction, The Descent of Man (1871)
By ‘Newton’s sleep’, the poet, painter and revolutionary William Blake seems to have meant a tunnel vision in the perspective of Newton’s physics, as well as Newton’s own (incomplete) disengagement from mysticism. Blake thought the idea of atoms and particles of light amusing, and Newton’s influence on our species ‘satanic’. A common critique of science is that it is too narrow. Because of our well-demonstrated fallibilities, it rules out of court, beyond serious discourse, a wide range of uplifting images, playful notions, earnest mysticism and stupefying wonders. Without physical evidence, science does not admit spirits, souls, angels, devils or dharma bodies of the Buddha. Or alien visitors.
The American psychologist Charles Tart, who believes the evidence for extrasensory perception is convincing, writes:
An important factor in the current popularity of ‘New Age’ ideas is a reaction against the dehumanizing, despiritualizing effects otscientism, the philosophical belief (masquerading as objective science and held with the emotional tenacity of born-again fundamentalism) that we are nothing but material beings. To unthinkingly embrace anything and everything labeled ‘spiritual’ or ‘psychic’ or ‘New Age’ is, of course, foolish, for many of these ideas are factually wrong, however noble or inspiring they are. On the other hand, this New Age interest is a legitimate recognition of some of the realities of human nature: People have always had and continue to have experiences that seem to be ‘psychic’ or ‘spiritual’.
But why should ‘psychic’ experiences challenge the idea that we are made of matter and nothing but? There is very little doubt that, in the everyday world, matter (and energy) exist. The evidence is all around us. In contrast, as I’ve mentioned earlier, the evidence for something non-material called ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ is very much in doubt. Of course each of us has a rich internal life. Considering the stupendous complexity of matter, though, how could we possibly prove that our internal life is not wholly due to matter? Granted, there is much about human consciousness that we do not fully understand and cannot yet explain in terms of neurobiology. Humans have limitations, and no one knows this better than scientists. But a multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry. At least some of the mysteries of today will be comprehensively solved by our descendants. The fact that we cannot now produce a detailed understanding