Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Take it all apart



Can anything really be understood in isolation from the rest of the universe?
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The culture of science that emerged 400 years ago says, "Yes."
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We explore reality by dis-organizing it:
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Isolating pieces
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Eliminating variables
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Shielding outside influences.
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Thus the entomologist brings dead "specimens" back to the lab;
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The geologist brings back samples;
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The physiologist dissects cadavers
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And the chemist seeks purified substances purged of the chaotic contamination of the world.
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Such methods have their uses.
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Indeed they have created a world far different, at least superficially, from what we knew 400 years ago.
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They are, however, incapable of apprehending anything that exists only in relationship
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Anything that, when you disassemble the whole and isolate the parts, is no longer there.
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What are those things that exist only in relationship,
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That are properties of wholes and not of parts?
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Here are a few examples:
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Consciousness
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Spirit
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Sacredness
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Life
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Beauty
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Selfhood
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Divinity
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Love
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Truth
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Emotion
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Purpose
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Transcendence
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Will
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In short, all that makes us human.
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Yet when you take the human apart, none of them are there.
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The Masters of the Scientific Revolution conclude, therefore, that they don't "really" exist.
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They cannot countenance the possibility that these properties,
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In Mumford's words, "are not accidental by-products of mass, energy, and motion, but are aboriginal components of the same system."
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Simply put stand back and see that it is an elephant
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Do not insist on feeling it's leg and trying to figure out what it is as reductionist science tries to do
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Simply put our current paradigm looks at the parts and tries to figure out what the whole is like
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The new paradigm looks at the whole and then considers the parts
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No surprise that current technology is not providing answers to our most serious problems
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It cannot

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