DRAMATIS
PERSONNAE
an unnamed Cosmic History Seminar participant
a friend
Hilary Conroy, Professor of History (Far Eastern)*
Alexander Riasanovsky, Professor of History (Russian)
Fran Conroy, Fellow in East Asian-Studies, Princeton
Daniel Ben-Amos, Professor of Folklore
Christopher Largent, Lecturer in Philosophy and Religion, University
of Delaware
Benjamin Shen, Professor of Astronomy
Jeff Klein, Candidate in Physics and Archeology
Reginald Rajapakse, historian and writer from Sri Lanka
Robert Davies, Benjamin Franklin Professor and specialist in molecular
biology
Eric Chaisson, Assistant Professor of Astrophysics, Haverford College
David McDowell, Candidate in the History of Science
Denise Breton, philosopher and Director of the Institute for Science
and Religion
Richard Solomon, Professor of Psychology
Yuki Shimomura, Candidate in History
Yong-shik Shin, Candidate in History
Leah Karp, artist
Lowell Clucas, Assistant Professor of History (Byzantine)
David Cowhig, Orientalist
Peter Laki, musicologist
Judit Frigyesi, musicologist
Chieh C. Chang, Candidate in History
Linda Hayes, teacher of children
George Kline,, Professor of Philosophy, Bryn Mawr College
Dain Borges, Professor of History (Latin American)
Kenneth Kraft, Assistant Professor of Oriental Studies
Henry Hoenigswald, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics
Schuyler Cammann, Emeritus Professor of Oriental Studies
Morton Frank, physiologist
Mark Harvey, Professor of Music, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Robert Wentz, librarian
Karen Martin, Candidate in Veterinary Medicine
Jonathan Rhoads, physician and Professor of Medicine, Hospital of the
University of Pennsylvania
Jens Edelman
Deborah Kemen
Valentina Sinkevich, poet
Nick Virgilio, poet (haiku)
Joyce Haya, artist
Josef Gulka, Candidate in History and liturgical composer
and others
*Where
not otherwise indicated, professors and candidates are at the University
of Pennsylvania*
SETTING
A spring morning, 1988, under the statue of Benjamin Franklin at the
center of the University of Pennsylvania campus.
PART
ONE: Preliminaries*
* The beginning is loosely adapted from Plato's Symposium, translated
by Michael Joyce, in Hamilton, Edith, and Cairns, Huntington, Plato: The
Collected-Dialogues (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963) PP. 527-6.
Unnamed:
Oh, if that's what you want to know, it isn't long since I had the occasion
to tell the story. Only yesterday a young man accosted me in the halls:
Hey, stop! Can't you wait for me? I have something important to find out
from you.
So
I stopped and waited for him.
Thank
you, he said as he caught up. You're the very man I'm looking for. I want
to ask you about this symposium in the History Faculty Lounge, when Dr.
Conroy, Riasanovsky, Davies and the rest of them were there. What were
all these speeches they were making about "what is going on in the universe?"
I've heard something about it from a teaching assistant who'd been talking
to someone else. He said it all began when Conroy and Riasanovsky were
bemoaning the passage of time one day, wondering where their dreams when
they first came to Penn in the 1950s--
of addressing the really Big Questions -- had gone. But his information
was rather sketchy, and he said I'd better come to you. So you'll have
to tell me the full story. Is it true you were there yourself?
Well,
I said, whoever your informant was it sounds like he wasn't very clear
if you gathered that this was a one-time event, and a recent one at that.
That
was my impression, said he.
My friend, I corrected, this all began in 1983. These professors met
for five years, every two months on a Friday afternoon., always closing
the door almost tight on College Hall 221 for fear that unsympathetic scholastics
might get wind of what they were doing. The “speeches” you mention were
hardly one-after-another in a continuous session, but spread out over half-a-decade!
My
goodness, he said, that was different from what I expected. Five years!
-- And I had some of those professors in class during those years. They
seemed like quite conventional scholars; I wouldn't have guessed that they
were interested in forbidden things. You must tell me all about it.
Well,
I began telling him as we walked down toward the Schuylkill -- but it took
quite a while. Are you sure you want to hear this?
Friend:
By all means. Studying for my exams will have to wait.
Unnamed:
I will, then. But first, have you seen the opening call?
Friend:
No. What was that?
Unnamed:
The letter that Conroy and Riasanovsky sent out five years ago. Why, I
believe I have a copy in my briefcase.
(The
friend reads the letter above,)
The
letter attracted an interesting variety to the History Lounge November
4. One couldn’t tell from the participants that first meeting who would
be the main voices over the next five years. Some of the latter weren't
even there at the opening, and some of the former came only once. But everyone
on that auspicious afternoon had a special impact on the developing cosmic
conversation -- if only to pass the torch to somebody else.
Hilary
Conroy opened. "I want to welcome everyone,” he mumbled with his usual
bashful smile, “to this rather curious, unauthorized gathering.” He paused
as if to gather his thoughts for a moment and then turned suddenly to the
young man on his left: “Jeff, could you close the door?” he asked.
Satisfied
that no stray ears were listening, he continued: “The idea of this seminar
grew out of a concern shared by Alex Riasanovsky, myself and others that
the compartmentalized learning that constitutes business-as-usual at institutions
like Penn was leaving unanswered -- and even unposed -- the bigger questions
we had hoped to address in the perhaps-too-idealistic beginnings of our
careers. Alex once attempted to address some larger questions when he co-authored
this volume some years ago." (He gestured to a slightly tattered book entitled
Generalizations in Historical Writing in the middle of the seminar
table.) "But after that, he, and I myself, have been all too trapped by
the dictates of specialization, finding our work narrower and narrower,
though indeed our concerns -- especially as we have entered our sixties
-- have become more and more sweeping. What is really going on in the universe?
What story are we in? How can we have any legitimate framework for all
these little things we write when we don’t know that?"
He
paused again, as if momentarily taken aback by the scope of his own questions.
He knew why they were never raised in a serious academic manner: because
every professor’s expertise, no matter how covered with garlands, fell
short of qualifying him to address such matters. There were no "doctors"
of Cosmic History, only enlightened amateurs. ...But although I sensed
that these were the kinds of thoughts behind his perplexed visage, he gave
no other clues except to start passing out some blue examination notebooks.
“In view of the fact that our subject matter may be a bit unwieldy,” he
suggested, “I thought in other ways we might be careful to maintain some
decorum. Therefore I propose a slightly formal – one might call it Confucian
-- structure for our sessions, with prompt beginning and cut-off times
and careful notes in blue books. In any event, I hope we can avoid the
pitfall of becoming a mere ‘bull session’.”
It
was Daniel Ben-Amos who broke the silence which had ensued after Professor
Conroy, having laid this task upon us, simply sat down. “I want to pick
up on a word you used, Hilary, perhaps unknowingly, but I think most appropriately,"
he said, “and that is the word ‘curious’. You called this a ‘curious gathering,’
and I think it is exactly that. I am a student of the Middle Ages, as you
may know, and in the Middle Ages the quality ‘curiosity’ was considered
subversive. ‘Curious’ investigations were carefully distinguished from
‘studious’ ones. Curious scholars were barred from academia."
Having
riveted our attention by this entree, Ben-Amos then announced, baldly,
"I have come to this seminar out of curiosity. The letter of invitation
was totally different from anything I have ever received at Penn.
“However,”
he continued, “I was in a previous study group on 'the larger questions'
some years ago. It was deliberately inconclusive, and now rests in my mind
as a delightful memory. I want to leave it at that. I wish you well, but
I will not be a part of your seminar after today."
With
that, Ben-Amos sat back in his chair and, satisfied that he had said what
he had to, enjoyed listening to the others through the rest of the session.
Surprised
with the withdrawal but pleased with the Medieval definitions, Hilary Conroy
turned to somewhat “safer” ground
for the next opening comment -- his own son. In particular, he asked
his son, a young scholar of Confucian among other kinds of philosophy,
to comment on the “Confucius reference” the senior Conroy himself had made
a moment before. “What is this 'propriety' Confucius is always talking
about? Does it have anything to do with the larger questions of the universe?”
Fran,
or “Rusty,” Conroy had suspected this was coming, so he had an answer ready.
“As my father knows,” he began, “through most of my twenties I was a radical
political activist -- even a Marxist. But having kids of my own -- twin
daughters born two years ago -- and turning thirty-five have brought back
to center stage for me the Confucian, as well as other religious, studies
I began years ago when I was pre-occupied with the “big questions.” In
particular, I recently came across a book Confucius: The Secular as
Sacred by Herbert Fingarette which seems very important to me. It sketches
a new -- or really, I should say renewed, because it is in its essence
very old -- course toward the sacred, eternal and cosmic, a course neither
toward inwardness, nor explorations of outer space, but toward "tuning"
the relationships of human beings."
“Yes,
making them musical!” burst in Chris Largent, silent until now but who
had also been reading Fingarette. "This is how
it ties in with our seminar: if we take ceremony seriously, we can
make it musical."
“Right,
by attempting to ‘hear the Voice’ we can become coequals of Heaven and
Earth here in our discussions and restore the cosmic harmony, sort of ‘repair’
the universe," the younger Conroy burst back.
All
this enthusiasm for Confucius was too much for astronomer Ben Shen, who
had attended high school in Shanghai and been subjected to a “Confucian”
education many years before -- rejecting most of it in favor of Western
science for any cosmic answers. "Let me caution you concerning Confucianism,"
he broke in, proceeding to explain his background. "I found that Confucianism
seemed to have two overall purposes, one fairly good and the other not
so good. The positive one was the use of harmonious, ritualized relationships
to overcome the tendency toward conflict in human events. The negative
one was the use of propriety, li, to keep rulers in power.
“As
for my astronomical investigations," he continued, "”hose yield less grandiose,
but in some ways also not very satisfying, results. There are so many limitations
in investigating cosmic matters. The universe seems to go back billions
of years, and the problem is that the farther we go back, the more complicated
the math involved becomes and the less our certainty. In inviting me to
this seminar, Hilary, you speculated about the possibility of some 'mission
control' center in space. A scientific search for such a center is extremely
problematic, at best.
”And I should finish my remarks with some more perhaps discouraging
news for your seminar," Ben concluded. “Unfortunately, for personal reasons
I, too, must join Professor Ben-Amos in saying that this must be my last
session for quite some time. Although I am interested in what you have
initiated, I must restrict my schedule to less speculative activities for
the next few years. However, I can recommend to you a scientific colleague
-- a very distinguished one. He is one of those ‘Benjamin Franklin’ scholars
who are freed from all specific responsibilities to become roaming intellects
around this campus -- biologist Robert Davies. Davies would be most suitable
for your discussions. His studies in astrobiology -- the origins of life
in the universe, and the possibility of life in other galaxies -- would
be important for you to hear, and, I might add, his stress on scientific
methodology might temper some of this grand talk about becoming
‘co-equals’
of Heaven and Earth, and all that."
We
were momentarily speechless, unsure how to take this second simultaneous
encouragement and withdrawal. Would others follow? Were the constraints
in a university too strong, that ‘curious’ pursuits in the end couldn’t
muster a quorum?
It
was then that a younger scientist took the floor, bolstering our hopes
that a "speculative" seminar was something "hard" scientists would have
time for, not leaving this whole venture to in-talk among religious, philosophical
and historical types. This was Jeff Klein, with physics credentials. He
praised the choice of Robert Davies, but offered some preliminary insight
himself on the ways in which "soft types" and "hard types" might discourse
with each other.
“The
scientific method," he said, "in its strictest sense has been of questionable
use outside the physical sciences and even has severe limitations within
physical science for the sort of cosmic inquiry we are making. I suggest
we need to begin by talking about methodology. I recommend a method less
reductionist than that of the sciences today -- cosmic history demands
a more holistic approach. This might open the door to some common ground
between philosophic and scientific types. After all, the principle of indeterminacy
or chance, recently found to be at the core of matter, has re-opened the
question of free will and determinism, probably tipping the balance in
favor of free-will."
Everyone
nodded in approval. Yet, when we pressed Jeff, he could not define such
a method himself. All we could agree on
was that our scope must remain large. No one could see exactly where
to go next.
After
a time of back-and-forth -- Reginald Rajapakse suggested that we put our
search in the light of the traditional Buddhist
question, "What is the source of our suffering?"; Chris Largent proposed
that we be Neoplatonists starting from universals rather than Aristotleans
starting from small specifics -- co-convenor Alex Riasanovsky made a closing
plea to end our first session:
“Whatever
method we use,” he said, “may I make a humble suggestion: that the common
denominator of our seminar be the language of historians, which I would
describe as a language relatively free of technical jargon of the sort
that can make opaque for us each other’s disciplines. Can we regularly
discipline ourselves by translating our technical languages into a language
comprehensible to all, thereby giving the dialogue we are beginning the
greatest chance for success?" Riasanovsky pleaded in his characteristic
warm, dramatic delivery.
As several murmured assent and chairs began to be pushed back in preparation
for leaving, Hilary Conroy made an “assignment” for next time: that everyone
should come armed with “either a question or a preliminary theory."
PART
TWO: The Early Meetings
Perhaps
the direction the seminar took was inevitable. Since the century’s most
impressive contributions (and disasters) have been wrought by the sciences,
it seems so, in retrospect. But no one really intended to drift into the
controversy over science that dominated the seminar for an entire year.
December’s
session started, however, with the historians. The plea for jargon-free
language was fresh in everyone’s mind, but few were prepared for the child-like
simplicity of the opening theories with which Professors Conroy and Riasanovsky
began. We would quickly get in over our heads in scientific complexities,
but for the moment an elementary wisdom held the floor, reminiscent of
pre-Socratics:
“I
suggest a kind of‘playground’ theory
of history," Conroy commenced. “I originally wrote down this theory in
1957.” He paused to clear his throat -- or was it a chuckle?
“We
are all like children on a playground. There are assignments to learn.
Where the assignments come from we do not know, but we assume there is
a control center somewhere: on another planet, perhaps. In the physical
sciences we learn to work with things just as children learn to assemble
blocks or tinkertoys. In the social sciences there are two lessons: war
and race, that is learning to stop fighting and how to put aside our differences.
In the humanities, the objective may be simply defined as ‘discovering
the joy of living,’ though this is a very subtle proposition. In the ‘mental
sciences,’ such as philosophy, religion, and psychology, we attempt to
discover the method of instruction…A Japanese thinker Fakazawa Yukichi
put forward a similar theory: ‘ujimushi,’ or the bugs and worms theory.
“‘UjImushi’ is slang for ‘kids.’ The world is kid's game, but it is our
duty to pretend they are serious."
Conroy
ended with a lament, admitting that he had in recent years partially lost
faith in his theory. “There appears to be no control center out there --not
even any second graders! And there has been disappointingly little progress,
even backsliding, on war and race.”
Alex
Riasanovsky further confounded the gathering with an equally simple theory,
yet more pessimistic (?): “Man has turned
against his own environment. We are ruining the Earth. Meanwhile, our
children learn split-second reactions and how to slaughter aliens in video
games. Maybe we are destined to make the Earth untenable, and then emerge
out of the Chrysallis and fly off somewhere else.
“If
this is true,” he added with a broad smile, “then as Lenin, for other reasons,
once put it: the worse the better!”
Some
of us were amazed by the completely non-technical way in which these senior
professors approached the "big questions" at the culmination of their careers.
Is this what Nietzsche meant by life's stages: the camel, the lion, and
the child at play? Indeed, it seemed like the older scholars do become
more like children. Or was it that historians in particular think
like that, always looking for a story and not just a conceptual theory?
Anyway,
several of as quickly rescued the situation with some big words. "But Professors,
you are both assuming a priori that teleological categories are
appropriate to investigating what is going on in the universe. This is
a very big jump, and one that goes against the whole history of development
of science since the Enlightenment," said someone.
Others
agreed that, with due respect to the co-convenors, we had to get the latest
scientific approach to cosmic history out on the table before anyone
would be comfortable taking up the narrative or poetic. "Who knows, maybe
we'll have to retreat to the metaphoric stuff later,” another remarked,
shaking his head. All eyes turned toward the scientists.
Robert
Davies and Eric Chaisson were well prepared. They had been slightly miffed
by the drift of the conversation so far
--
fascinated and amused, I suspect -- because they had assumed all along
that "cosmic history" was to be defined in terms of“cosmology.”
Anyway,
this is the direction it now took. Someone asked Davies, "So what are the
exciting things happening in your field?" The question triggered a mini-lecture
on biological and cosmological evolution.
“Is
the universe open or closed?” Davies began. “Is there enough missing mass?
Will there be a big crunch? followed by another big bang?" Then, "Are diamonds
forever?" he added with a twinkle. We could see he was trying to translate
complex concepts rapidly into jargon-free street talk, and urged him on.
“The hydrogen nucleus is virtually primordial," he continued. "It was there
mainly within the first second of the universe. The rest of our atoms were
evolved in stars and exploded out in stellar winds, ring nebulae, double
star nova events, and supernova explosions," he rattled off, to our delight.
“The
sun is approximately five billion years old. The Earth, 4.6 X 109.
Life, 3.8 billion years, plus or minus 0.2, and it has evolved to as --
intelligent observers. We expect that there may be life in millions of
places around our galaxy and billions of millions in the universe. The
number of technologically competent civilizations existing depends especially
on what happens when a species discovers how to manipulate atomic energy."
“Interstellar
colonizing could be a major activity," he added. And finally, "We have
found no evidence of purpose beyond our own.”
We
had been hungry for this kind of authoritative explanation. In fact, some
of as suspected that where we needed to go from here was mainly to get
more precise answers from our two astro-scientists; after all, these were
the hard facts about what was really going on. But then how would the philosophers,
artists and the rest originally included in the invitation have more to
do than just sit at the feet of the cosmologists? Was up-to-date cosmic
history really cosmology, nothing more? But before we would tackle such
larger definitional questions, we plunged into cosmology and its methods.
In fact, the "science issue" would consume our energies for an entire year,
until in early 1985 "the rest" of cosmic history would grab back, the stage.
Joining the fray over the next seven meetings would be historian of science
David McDowell, Byzantine historian (and specialist on the roots of science)
Lowell Clucas, psychologist Richard Solomon, Oriental historians Yong-shik
Shin, Yuki Shimomura and David Cowhig, philosopher Denise Breton, and artist
Leah Karp. At the center of the discussion would regularly be Davies, Chaisson
or Klein, along with Chris Largent, who proved to be the philosopher best
equipped to take on the scientists on their own grounds.
But
before this could proceed, there was another interruption from the non-scientific
side.
"Can
you pardon me a moment.," bellowed Prof. Riasanovsky, at once forcibly
and humbly in his own inimitable style. "I have a poem to recite."
“A
poem?” we said. “But what can a poem add to this? What kind of poem?"
"Hush,
listen! Let an old professor have his say," Alex pronounced with a wave
of his hand. And he began:
Black
holes –
They
say
Are
the voracious
Gloti
Of
the universe
Swallowing
all:
Matter,
energy, light,
Even
darkness
Rendering
laws
Meaningless
...
Done
feasting
They
rest,
Quiescent,
digesting
Then,
suddenly
They
belch back
With
a Big Bang!
Are life, hope, wisdom
Art
But
the result
Of
Cosmic Indigestion?
Forgive me,
Physicist,
If
I still prefer
The
ancient
Seven-day
Hypothesis
Physical analysis
Keeps
changing
The
Cosmos
Metaphor
Gives
it
Stability.
Dr.
Riasanovsky had spellbound us. His resonant voice and passionate arm waving
one moment, then soft, insistent whispers the next, evoked something in
as that we did not understand. And the biting words: what was this onslaught
on our scientific investigations? Some ancient muse returned to??--
"Be
that as it may," someone finally said after a possessed pause.
Smiles
broke out and a burst of murmuring.
"Please,
return to your scientific investigations," Alex said graciously. And the
first of what would become regular interruptions of our rational progress
by the muse of poetry ended. Little did we know that this disturbance would
also be a precursor to a rival theory challenging the scientific route
to finding what is going on in the universe and proposing a different language
to the scientist’s impressive mathematics as the cosmic language -- that
is the one best suited for the most universal discourse.
Chris
Largent picked up the thread. “I have long thought,” he began, that science
and religion (or science and philosophy) are complementary. And the turn
of the seminar toward science – Alex’s delightful poem not withstanding
-- gives me a chance to engage the rest of you on this issue." He proceeded
to argue for what he called a “Platonic or Neoplatonic" concept of science.
He said, "I mean by that a science informed by certain fundamental presuppositions,
that then in turn inform empirical research." To some puzzled looks, he
quickly added: "You see, what I am opposing here is what you might call
‘anti-metaphysical empiricism.’ I propose we be Platonists and not Aristotleans,
if you will."
Largent's
remarks led to a flurry of conversation about terms: the very definition
of science, of course, but also slippery ones like “Platonic,” “Neoplatonic,”
“empirical,” “law,” and a host of others. They also led to some confusion
about what he meant by ideas "informing" empirical research.
“Are
you talking about the importance of ethical values in the sciences -- long
neglected, but recently coming to the fore?” queried Eric Chaisson.
“In
part, but I have something broader in mind. Maybe –”
Lowell
Clucas, the Byzantine historian, spoke up for the first time. "I can respect
working hypotheses," he commented, "but see little to gain from transcendent
ideas. A Platonic concept of the sciences I find hard to accept. Isn’t
what we mean by science something more inductive? And here I have to disagree
with you about Plato and Aristotle, Chris. Wouldn’t you accept that Aristotle,
like his teacher, considered reasoning to be superior to empirical observation?
For the real birth of an unadulterated school of empiricism, I would go
to the medical school at Cos -- you know, the Aegean island where Hippocrates
and his disciples produced their famous body of writings between the 5th
and 1st centuries B.C.?"
Some
of as didn't know Lowell, and we were impressed -- as we would be increasingly
-- by his thorough command of historical detail.
“I
accept your correction," Chris responded, visibly pleased to have found
a good dialogue partner. "The empirical tradition probably stems from Cos
more than from Aristotle. But I think you and Eric still are misunderstanding
what I mean to say about ideas and empirical research. I don't mean transcendent
ideas. I mean ideas that inform hypotheses. I would argue that scientists
always let informing ideas govern their empirical research. For
goodness sake, they begin with unproven assumptions about order, lawfulness,
and constancy, don't-they, just to be able to conduct their research at
all!"
Now Chris had the scientists comprehending and agreeing. "Yes," Chaisson
said, "and even if there is disorder, scientists will try to chart it,
laying some kind of order over it."
"Oh, but my position is even stronger," Largent came back. "Disorder
means simply observation in a limited context, specifically, a one-dimensional,
closed system. With a multi-dimensional approach -- one that assumes informing
ideas --”
"Wait,"
interrupted Hilary Conroy. "Could you draw some of this on the board?"
He handed Chris a piece of chalk.
We
though that Chris might be taken aback by this sudden demand that he chart
such a complex matter, but he rose immediately to the occasion and produced
a splendid little drawing illustrating his point. It was the first of several
diagrams; he became the symposium chart-maker!
“With
a multi-dimensional approach,” he picked up, "scientists see order as the
governing reality, disorder as some special case. I am thinking of Plato,
Eudoxus of Cnidus and Archytus of Tarentum, Galileo, Kepler and Leibniz
-- even Planck and Einstein," he added.
Physicist
Jeff Klein, who had earlier suggested that all disciplines might be elaborate
metaphors for a higher reality
(breaking with the scientists' perhaps more characteristic posture
that their own disciplines have an epistemologically privileged position
-- especially over poetry!), supported the scheme that his philosophical
colleague was now proposing. "Yes, you should pursue this, Chris," he encouraged.
"Could some form of this diagram be appended to the minutes?"
The
recorder, whose pencil had been flying all day, nodded.
"The
higher reality you are talking about, Jeff," urged Largent, “must be ideational;
this would make order a higher-level reality than any specific observation
of either order or disorder in any discipline. But seeing order -- an idea
-- as a governing reality provides a link between science and philosophy
or religion," Chris went on excitedly. "Leibniz represented this perfectly.
His work in science and religion, even law and politics, grew from and
was unified by -- his philosophical position. To the extent that the sciences
take his approach, they have common ground with philosophy, religion and
other disciplines. This is the kind of Platonic, Neoplatonic basis I am
talking about; it breaks down the compartmentalization of disciplines,
allowing them to talk to and support each other -- not only in specific
ways, but also on the larger issues of meaning and purpose, the issues
Hilary Conroy and Alex Riasanovsky originally raised."
Eric
Chaisson and Bob Davies took issue with the universe necessarily having
meaning and order. "Why, you are forgetting that there are even laws of
irregularity," they argued.
Psychologist
Richard Solomon added that historically philosophy really has had very
little to do with the development of science.
But
meanwhile, Jeff Klein, David McDowell and Reginald Rajapakse had become
engaged in an increasingly load side conversation. They seemed to have
become locked in a debate about entropy, time and reversibility.
“If
things are ordered, shouldn't they be time-reversible?" McDowell was insisting.
“Yes,
it is now discussed widely in the literature, Rajapakse added. "The reversibility
of time. This is certainly a challenge to the notion of order. Entropy
and its opposite -- everything flowing back together -- are interchangeable."
“But
Jeff Klein cautioned, "You must read the recent work of Ilya Prigogine
on time; he challenges reversibility, allowing order to get a foot back
in the door."
About
this time Alex Riasanovsky chimed in with a second poem. “I am working
on a whole set on time,” he explained. "I call this one 'Shivorot na vyvorot'
-- in English, 'topsy-turvy':
Day would last
Forever
Were
it not
For
night
Youth,
For
age
Life,
For
death
Light,
For
darkness ...
or
Can
it all
Be
run
In
reverse
Seen
Vice versa?
“Or,
perhaps you will prefer this one," he continued, "called ‘Entropy’ -- and
his mood became much more somber:
There
is a seepage
In
our universe
Of
time past
The
curse
Of
time spent
Of
time lost
While most
Of
time that remains
Although
it feigns
To
be free,
Is
tuned to some nonhuman melody
And
is, at best,
Far
too compressed
To
be possessed
For
long
The surge of time is too strong…
Its
rhythm and rhyme
Are
all wrong
For
time
To
remain
In
man’s domain
And
to belong
To
men
Too
long
Our metronome
Was
wound
Round, round,
And
round
For
pacing sound
Made
in some stranger’s home
Too
tightly wound
Then
set to beat
The
tempo
Of
another creature’s
Leaping
feet.
Alex's
poems were beginning to play games with our heads, derail our pursuit of
clear and distinct ideas. Yet we recovered this time, and Lowell Clucas
quietly brought up again his assertion that science means empiricism, with
origins in medicine rather than in any idealist Platonic or Pythagorean
sources. But Lowell had a qualifier -- perhaps in deference to Riasanovsky’s
irrationality: "Non-rational, or irrational, elements," Lowell said, "do
have a strong influence on the development of science -- and the
development of society," he added. "The Greek tradition of medical science
was quite empirical, but it was largely lost in medieval times. Science
had to await a political conflict between Church and state to re-start
the scientific method. And, interestingly, my research indicates that the
intensely logical training that scholars had to undergo in Aquinas’s time
to engage in those rational ‘proofs’ about God became invaluable in sparring
the development of rational method in Western science -- although this
was far from the church fathers' intention."
"I
notice that you say Western science," injected Orientalist David Cowhig.
"You are leaving the door open, then, for other conceptions of science?
For example, another extreme is Chinese medicine -- founded on the idea
of illness being caused by a disorder in the ‘harmony' of things."
"In
the cosmic moral order," clarified Reginald Rajapakse. "Or at once, physical
and moral order."
Fran Conroy interjected that in the West an influential historicized
version of the "cosmic moral order" was Hegel's. "Hegel even used the word
‘science’ in a holistic way, to mean placing individual things into their
context as ‘moments' within an all-embracing, developing rational order.
Under this scheme, the empirical scientific method would be only
one moment of the whole dialectic of consciousness, the development of
Geist."
"Yes,
this is exactly the view -- Hegel's -- that I am most opposed to in my
conception of science and society, which I hold develop irrationally,"
Lowell Clucas retorted. "I don’t see evidence in my study of history for
a moral order or an unfolding of divine rationality as Hegel does. My view
is more akin to Hume’s."
This
gave an opening for David McDowell to, bring up the anthropic principle,
on which he had been preparing a detailed bibliography for some weeks.
"Have you heard of it?” he asked us.
Some of us had, but most could not explain it, so we asked him to do
so.
"The
anthropic principle’s proponents contend that since the time of Copernicus
there has existed a kind of exaggerated subservience to the notion that
man is not central to the cosmos. However, the latest developments in physics
-- the probability that the human race will eventually disappear through
heat death, for example -- have stimulated some scientists to look again
for a kind of design or teleology. For example, a new book by Tippler and
Barrow in England argues that the universe is the way it is because we
are here. The coincidences of the 'thirty-four constants' -- numerical
relationships, which, if they were not exactly as they are, would have
made human life impossible -- are too great to have been a matter of chance.
Therefore the universe must have been designed to lead to us! -- at least
the ‘strong’ anthropic theorists hold that the ingredient of forethought
is a necessary assumption. The universe 'knew' there would be observers!"
Bob
Davies had stepped out of the room when McDowell spoke but when he returned
we asked him excitedly if it were true what McDowell was saying, that real
scientists were seriously taking up the anthropic principle. Davies chuckled.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you," he said, "but I put much of my energy these
days into refuting this stuff. You mean like Fred Hoyle’s book The Intelligent
Universe, and his theory of 'convergence to God.' Frankly, I know of
nobody significant who supports Hoyle's work. But I’m glad that you are
taking it up," he quickly added to David. "The anthropic principle does
not seem to be acquiring many adherents yet, and I am not impressed by
the evidence, yet it can make for lively debate."
We
discussed it for a while longer, and then Davies went on to report on his
latest scientific research into “cosmozoa and panspermia” -- the existence
of living organisms on other planets and the spontaneous transfer of seeds
from planet to planet. "We live in a remarkable time just now on Earth,"
he explained to us with authority. "Most scientists with competence in
the field seem to believe that it is very unlikely that Earth-like planets
and Earth life are so unusual that our type of carbon-based life or something
very similar does not occur somewhere in orbit around the over 1020
stars in the
observable universe. Many countries on Earth are supporting searches
for extraterrestrial life, intelligence and advanced technology. This search
could be successful at any time and thus replace speculation and hypothesis
with hard evidence. I hope I live to know the answer."
We
all did too. What the scientists were doing seemed to be the cutting edge,
indeed.
Friend:
Listen, can you condense some of this scientific part? I am eager to know
how history, poetry or music got back the floor at all, and we haven't
got all night.
Unnamed:
I’m not sure, friend, but you’re right. I will telescope some of this science
discussion and try to move on to what followed. Well history made a preliminary
attempt to get back into things right in the middle of this. I should tell
you about the debate between Jeff Klein and the Conroys.
Friend:
Yes, do.
Unnamed:
Hilary Conroy proposed that history, given the proper statement of its
methods, might be considered a science. After all, it looked for patterns
and order, developed a kind of empirical method, and constantly checked
its research against its theories. Fran Conroy argued that experimental
mysticism, too, could develop a theory and practice deserving of the title
“science.”
Jeff
Klein disagreed. "A crucial element of scientific method is falsifiability,"
he said, “and theories about history and religion cannot be falsified.
They simply stand until replaced by something more popular or compelling."
He explained that scientific hypotheses, by contrast, can be proven false
by observation. They make predictions about the future that can be checked.
With
this, the final stage of the science controversy opened. How does science
derive its methods of observation, explanation, and interpretation? To
mediate the debate, Chris Largent proposed the development of understanding
-- in both sciences and the humanities -- to be a process of: (1) presupposition,
(2) paradigm formation, (3) experimentation, and (4) interpretation, leading
back to a reconsideration of presuppositions to begin the process again.
Chris put a diagram on the board; it was later, with a few changes suggested
by Davies, reproduced in the minutes. This diagram was a kind of milestone:
a more or less agreed upon model for unifying disciplines that could be
adapted to many areas,
But
it was Jeff Klein's discussion with artist Leah Karp that summarized the
unresolved opposing positions in the science debate. Leah introduced the
analogy of a "cookie cutter," or dough sieve, through which all truth passes
to be organized for understanding. Each person or group may have a sieve,
or cookie cutter, through which otherwise amorphous truth passes to be
ordered and thus made comprehensible. "How many cookie cutters do scientists
have?" she asked Jeff.
"Probably
only two," he replied, "the reductionist and the more holistic systems
approach."
Klein
explained that from the standpoint of the reductionist, explanation and
description are the same. What can be reduced to a few described facts
can also be explained by those facts. For the holist, a broader informing
context gives meaning to the facts in much the same way a language gives
meaning to words. All other issues relating to interpretation and methodology
grow from these two positions, or “cookie cutters.”
PART THREE: The Middle Meetings
Unnamed:
For me, friend, as well as for the life of the seminar, a real dividing
point came on January 18, 1985. I think others would agree that we had
been getting bogged down in our last discussions leading up to that. Although
we had been pressing hard on the science question, less and less of any
substance had been coming out.
Funny,
but it had been the same way in my personal life, if you don't mind a bit
of a divergence.
Friend:
Oh no, what do you mean?
Unnamed:
Well, everything seemed so difficult. Kierkegaard might have called it
"the despair of finitude for the lack of infinitude," or one of those other
ingenious terminologies he uses in Sickness Unto Death. My wife's
poor health, her pain seemed insurmountable, and the daily work routine
for both of us was deadening: “I don't want to live like this,” she sobbed
to me that Thursday night the seventeenth. It hadn't helped that I had
messed up the wood stove on the coldest day of the winter, and the living
room had been full of smoke when she had arrived home after a ninety-minute
trek from work.
But
unexpectedly, Friday morning dawned brilliantly blue and hopeful. The ride
taking the kids to school on the dreaded balding tires of the old Ford
wagon proved easier than expected. At home I went through a fit of cleaning,
wood carrying, and snow sweeping: almost as a ritual, like the Buddhist
“cleaning the place of worship when you are expecting a divinity.” Through
it all I was incredibly energized., as I was at the classes I taught that
morning.
Well,
into the car I leaped and over the Betsy Ross Bridge to the Cosmic History
Seminar. Arriving at 2:27, three minutes before starting, I found no one
else there -- save Professor Conroy, looking rather uneasy despite his
indominatable hopefulness. Was it all falling apart?
I
sat down in the empty room. 2:30 passed. But then at 2:31, enter Robert
Davies. A half a minute later, three others. Then several more.
Still,
although things appeared brighter, there was no indication that this session
would amount to anything. Largent, for one, was absent; he had been a mainstay.
Then when Hilary Conroy began laboriously trying to pull two new people
--musicologists, we were told -- into the discussion (as if musicology
had anything to do with Cosmic History), I felt the bottom falling out.
Where were we wandering now? Was this a disciplined, purposeful quest,
or random happenings?
But
friend, I tell you, the rest of that day was amazing. It was as if there
is some Power in the universe, or at least a hidden Principle, that rewards
long preparation, finger exercises, persistence, plowing ahead when there
seems to be no light. As in Plato's Republic: the long, laborious
discussions in the part marked “Dialectic,” leading up, and up, and up,
until -- suddenly, about when everybody is ready to give up, the light
of the Good itself, breaks through. Maybe just a little bit, but it breaks
through. And suddenly everything is changed. Insights come tumbling down
to people, and you feel like the thoughts you are expressing are something
received – gifts! You can't even claim them as your own; they are only
transmitted through you. Well, that is the way it was, for me as well as
others, for the rest of the day. That was the way one of the arts -- music
--
broke through to challenge the hegemony science had held over our seminar.
Friend:
Funny that it was music: it also sounds like that was the day your dialogue
really became musical, in the sense that you said Chris Largent
spoke of on the very first day.
Unnamed:
True, true. But let me tell you about Peter Laki and Judit Frigyesi’s speeches
-- or rather, impromptu remarks, as we caught them by surprise.
“What
do you think are the cosmic implications of music?” Hilary Conroy asked
Peter Laki. "For example, is there any universal relationship between music
and states of mind?"
Thinking out loud, Peter began: "Minor keys do seem to be regularly
associated with emotions of sadness," he said. "And compositions like "Moonlight
Sonata" and "Claire de Lane" seem always to be considered calming. Yet
musical statements made in one culture can be unintelligible in another.
On the other hand, music seems to have been treated in roughly the same
two ways in all cultures: either ‘artistically’ emphasizing its power to
influence emotions or put persons in touch with something transcendent,
or 'scientifically,' emphasizing its structure -- which can be taken to
correspond in some way to the structure of reality."
Hilary
Conroy broke in. "Psychologist Robert Solomon a few sessions ago did recommend
that we pay more attention in our cosmic search to mind, and mental states:
emotions, and the like. But Bob Davies has repeatedly warned as not to
seek much cosmic truth in states of mind; joy, sadness, fear and rage,
he says, can be easily produced by simply activating electrodes attached
to certain parts of the brain. This might cast doubt on whether the states
we go into when listening to music have any real independent status."
“Yes”, Davies said with a smile. "In one experiment a rat preferred
to sit and continue pushing a button that activated the electrode connected
to the brain’s ‘happiness center’ rather than eat, drink or have sex --
to the point of starving to death!"
But
undaunted, Peter Laki continued. "Let's consider the problem from another
angle," he suggested. "How about the case
of child prodigies like Mozart. They seem to have acquired their amazing
musical abilities through a direct connection -- a right brain connection
to music. For Mozart, as with other prodigies, written explanation of what
they were doing when they composed music came later than their ability
to compose it." He paused. "But as to whether this means there is some
kind of pipeline from ‘the music of the spheres’ to a part of our mind,
and therefore some universal quality of music -- a cosmic language? --
I don’t know. It could be that this, too, is cultural."
Judit
Frigyesi now joined him. "Musical theorists in the past have asked whether
music might not be imitating nature: the sounds of storms, birds, and the
like. Rousseau, in fact, thought that music should. However, the mainstream
beginning with the Baroque musicians has generally held that music expresses
feelings and states of mind but does not imitate nature."
“Aren't
there some forms of music that are universal?” interjected Bob Davies.
"Oh, I don't know: wails, perhaps."
Judit
replied, "It is interesting that you should mention wails. In my current
research I am finding that this is exactly the case. I have been studying
wails from New Guinea and have found them almost interchangeable with wails
from my native Hungary -- a completely unrelated culture. The music of
lamentation must be seen as a candidate for universality!"
Hilary Conroy interrupted all this to raise what he called "the Platonic
question," taking on the role of the absent Chris Largent. "These little
points about this music and that music are all very interesting," he said
with a touch of playfulness. "But what is the purpose of music in general?
Who can speak to that?"
I
really expected no one to rise to that challenge, but just as someone was
starting to suggest we change the subject, Jeff Klein cut him off. "Wait,
I will make a try," he offered. "I suddenly had a thought about all this.
You know, music's relation to the world in an overall sense is remarkably
like mathematics'. Music, on the one hand, is a coherent and reasonable
structure unto itself. It has an inherent order. Once you begin to play
around with it, you begin to appreciate it -- and there is for some people
an overwhelming desire to continue. Math is somewhat the same: a coherent
and reasonable structure unto itself. Some people get hooked on fiddling
with it. Yet what has become strikingly apparent in regard to math is that
the interest does not end there. Although we seem to derive mathematical
truths completely independently from the physical world, math often turns
out later to work so well in the physical world! So we have the phenomenon
of the physicist discovering a branch of math to describe what he observes
in nature, and then consulting the mathematician and finding that that
form of math has already been discovered years before by mathematicians
who had no idea it had any relevance to nature. For example, Newton recreated
calculus in this manner, and Heisenberg the matrix."
A
general chorus went up: "But how is this related to music?"
"I'm just getting to that," Jeff replied excitedly. "The musician, in
some cases at least, might follow a similar process,
He, or she, might write music following only the inner demands of the
notes, the inner structure of the music. I mean without
any feeling involved. Then the piece is played. There are listeners.
Suddenly it takes on a significance greater than its
internal structure. The listeners find in it…” He paused, fishing for
the right words.
"Find
in it truths about life, find it applicable to the whole human drama, mirroring
emotions, states of mind, and all,” interjected Fran Conroy. "Music is
like another complete world, beside the natural world, or even more, beside
the
human world -- and this second world, amazingly, applies to
the first, capturing even the most subtle nuances in it!"
"Exactly,"
Klein agreed. "That is what is exciting. And there is also a biological
analogy that now comes to me. This concerns 'convergent' as opposed to
‘divergent’ evolution. Living things develop in accordance with the acquisition
of features that prove helpful in aiding them to find food, defend themselves,
reproduce, and so forth. This is the basic principle of evolution. Now,
interestingly, if you look sometimes at two species that appear very similar
to each other, you will find that the two actually had almost entirely
separate evolutions; only their remotest ancestors are related at all,
and in the meantime they have evolved from being very different to closely
similar: convergent evolution! For instance, the
"Do you think religion and science might also be converging in this
way?" asked David McDowell.
eye: it has evolved independently about forty different times! -- amazing
since the eye is such a complex structure."
"Possibly,"
Jeff replied.
"I
like what you are saying," beamed Judit Frigyesi. "Never have I thought
about the similarities between music and mathematics in this way before.
It helps me begin to see where music might fit in to cosmic history, I
think I will continue to come.
"Stravinsky,
by the way -- it just came to me -- once said that the type of sadness
that is stimulated by certain kinds of music is unlike all other kinds
of sadness. In fact, it cannot be stimulated by any other type of activity.
I wonder where this fits in?"
"There
ought to be experimental ways you could test that," Bob Davies offered.
And
we ran out of time. As we packed up on that auspicious January day, Yong-shik
Chin, the Confucianesque Korean who had remained largely silent to that
point, turned to me and said: "Today I first begin to figure out what cosmic
history means."
Later
that spring, there were two more attempts to come up with a cosmic language.
Robert Davies proposed mathematics, and had a specific case. "A mathematician,
Hans Freudenthal, has developed a language called lingua cosmica – lincos,
for short – with which we could communicate with intelligent extra-terrestrials,”
he said. "This is a language that you could teach with a radio signal,
bouncing it across space. It is really quite an intellectual tour de force!
Why this language can even handle Einstein's special theory of relativity!
I have a file on it a foot thick -- probably the most complete file in
existence, since the inventor himself is now very old."
But it wasn’t a mathematical language that would capture centerstage
that spring. It was “poetic” -- Alex Riasanovsky's bid for the “natural
human language,” “biologically based,” “rhythmic,” “between verbal and
non-verbal” to be elevated in our sights to its true potential.
"We
need a language that subsumes the special languages of physics, anthropology,
mathematics, each native literature," he pleaded in a Good Friday lecture,
"This language -- call it 'cosmic' -- would have to include English, the
language with the largest vocabulary. Also, Russian, which comes second.
And like it or not, ‘cosmic’ must also include German: for one has to argue
with a German on just about anything!
"But
we can't stop here. What if cosmic history were to lead us to talk about
snow? Then we would need to subsume Eskimo, for the Eskimo language has
hundreds of words for different varieties
of snow.
"And
for politeness? We would need the most polite of all languages: Japanese.
"To
say nothing of the various technical languages -- physics, chemistry, systems
analysis and the rest -- these, too would have to be subsumed.
"Now
what language can do this? I plead that it is poetic, the language of our
earliest literature. We live in a sea of rhythm; poetic is rhythmic. It
is flexible ... easily incorporates other languages ... provides maximal
ideological freedom.
“It
does not have to pursue truth, reach any conclusion; it is just
possible that the universe has neither. It can be inconsistent:
both Republican and Democrat. The earliest cosmogonies-were expressed
in “poetic.” Are they not more enduring, more evocative than many of the
later? The world, they said, would end in fire. Uncannily correct? Life
... begins in clay. Are these matters not still the subject of scientific
investigation, not ‘falsified’?"
Bob
Davies broke in with a scientific sidebar. "Are you aware, Alex, that one
of the most recent scientific hypotheses concerning the origin of life
is that it may have emerged from crystal defects in clay molecules? If
this were true, it would turn out that instead of God using clay to shape
man in his own image, clay made God in man's image! Follow my thinking:
if clay gradually evolved, then transferred information to organic molecules
that evolved to man, and men invented God, then clay made God!”
We
roared in good natured laughter, and then Alex introduced his "four poem
sets -- Ivesian sets," he called them, "to honor
the most Cosmic American composer, Charles Ives, who composed in musical
sets such that one part could be taken out of one and inserted in another
without disturbing the whole."
Then
the poems began to tumble out, in the most animated of renditions. Like
"Anarchist Music":
No!
Ultimate
truth
Is
not
For
the poet
It ends
The
freedom
Of
questing
The
sky
Has
been punctured enough
With
terminal wisdoms
And
final equations
Blaspheming the earth
With the horror
Of final solutions
And
this one, Linda Hayes' favorite, a teacher of children in nearby Camden
who had come to join us for the first time this April afternoon, called
"Is Youth Wasted on the Young?":
Mean
Time
Has
been
Truly
named
It
starts off slowly
(More
or less)
But
then accelerates
Speeds
on
Speeds
by
And leaves us
Breathless
In the end…
He
even read some poems that he has written in Russian. Which reminds me,
the next presentation, that September, was by another Russian specialist,
George Kline, the philosopher from Bryn Mawr. That began a deeper, more
reflective year -- in one way, a year of sorrow. Lowell Clucas, one of
our most valued members, died in the middle of it.
Friend:
Oh, my dear. How did it happen?
PART
FOUR: Mourning
Unnamed:
Well, the fall began, ironically enough, with a discussion of immortality.
Lowell wasn’t much for that stuff, at least as far as we could tell from
his “Humean” approach, but he was there and following every word that September
day when Kline spoke.
The
general topic was "Russian Prometheanism." Kline had some researched it
thoroughly. Toward the end of the century, some Russians became engrossed
in the idea of subduing nature through science. Names like Fyodorov, Mechnikov,
and Tsiolkovsky were associated with such projects as rejuvenation of the
aged, resurrection of the dead, climate control, the conquering of gravity,
and interplanetary colonization. Did you know that the grandfather of the
original Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was Fyodorov, one of these Prometheans?
It makes one wonder whether the roots of the Soviet space program might
be more in religio-cosmic quest rather than military power.
Anyway,
it couldn't change Lowell's situation nothing could, it seems. When we
saw him last, it was when he gave his regrets for the November meeting.
He was already too weak, obviously struggling with an overwhelming disease.
In
January, after hearing the sad news from his wife Sarah, we talked about
plagues through history, from the Black Death to AIDS. What can they mean,
we asked. What sense can such widespread, undeserved suffering make if
we are to hold that the universe is purposeful? We asked some of our experts
in religions if they had any answers.
Kenneth
Kraft had joined us, a scholar of Buddhism. "According to Tibetan Buddhist
teaching," he told us, "Lowell is right now in a forty-nine day period
between death and rebirth. If the Tibetans are right, our thoughts and
words about Lowell right now could have an effect upon his soul, which
direction he takes heading for the next life."
"Soul?"
said Robert Davies sadly. "I’m afraid theories about a ‘soul’ that gets
reincarnated just do not square with the facts of molecular biology." But
he seemed open to suggestion.
“I'm afraid the only kind of reincarnation I can support as a scientist
is in the sense that my behavior has been affected by my father’s, and
so on,” said Bob Davies. "Also, I’ll grant that a person’s atoms are still
around. But the individual consciousness? It probably only survives in
the personal and professional contributions a person makes while alive.
In Lowell’s case, these are not inconsiderable ...”
Kraft offered that the Buddhists didn't seem to be talking about molecules.
"They mean survival of energy forces. I think they’re trying to answer
the question, what becomes of all the moral forces of a person after the
body dies?"
Ken
Kraft said, "But you know, Bob, empirical evidence just may not be the
appropriate test for all things. In fact, it seems to apply to only a small
spectrum of life experience."
Chris
Largent joined in. "Mind and physical form depend on the interaction of
individual and collective world views, in
turn governed by the structure of the ultimately real," he argued.
"Since many elements of collective world views derive
from ancient religions and philosophical systems all of which took
immortality seriously -- and since the ultimately real
cannot be characterized as limited, the greater likelihood, I
think, is that consciousness is not snuffed out by physical death."
And
so our debate, more urgent than usual, roared on. But the fact remained
that to us, Lowell was gone -- vanished.
PART
FIVE: The Later Meetings
Others
came. In the spring Schyuler Camman, venerable researcher of Inner Asia,
spoke to as about cosmic symbols in art, continuing our search for a cosmic
language. "I have investigated hundreds of symbols," he explained, " from
the designs in Persian rugs to the holes in the roofs of Mongolian tents.
Last summer, when I was asking an ordinary Mongolian woman about the-latter,
she replied -- surprised that I wouldn’t know -- that such a hole was "the
sky door." Cammam said that by translating and interpreting the meaning
of many such symbols he finds whole theories of the construction of the
universe.
Fran
Conroy suggested a phrase that captures the universal traditional posture
toward the universe: Henry Vaughn’s phrase,
"Prayer is the world in tune." "The sky door," he explained, is but
one manifestation of a sensitivity toward cosmic-human intercourse, or
prayer."
Physiologist
Morton Frank applied the "world in tune" notion to German physiology before
Karl Ludwig. "Ludwig founded the first modern physiology laboratory in
Leipzig in 1869," Frank explained, "the first lab in which each organ was
studied separately using an anaesthetized animal." He added, "This has
many parallels to how modern physicians look at health – today’s theoretical
structure constructed on the basis of separate organs and functions makes
it particularly difficult for medical students to see the patient as a
living, whole organism. In Germany before Ludwig there was such a tradition
of holistic medicine, at the time of Goethe and Hegel…”
Paul
Robinson, a specialist in the new Penn department of Appropriate Technologies
for Development applied the "world in tune" notion to his work. "Fitting
technology within the cultural and ecological context of a developing country,
as Schumaker suggests in Small Is Beautiful is a kind of 'Buddhist
economics,"' he proposed.
Buddhism
specialist Kenneth Kraft remarked, "In the Buddhist view, it is often after
a time so dark that the world appears to
be approaching ultimate destruction that Bodhisattvas, light-beings,
begin to emerge out of the Earth to guide people."
David
McDowell proposed that the anthropic principle might connect this search
for a “world in tune” with the work of scientists. (Robert Davies, the
scientist who had earlier objected to the principle as unsubstantiated,
was absent, so McDowell had clear sailing to unfold it some more.) "The
coincidences of the thirty-four universal constants --
these are numerical relationships which, if they were not exactly as
they are, would have made human life impossible -- are too great to have
been a matter of chance," McDowell argued for the anthropicists. "Doesn't
this imply a Pattern? Isn't it possible that since Copernicus’s time we
have been giving a kind of exaggerated subservience to the notion that
man is not central to the cosmos? Might it not even imply forethought
-- that the universe ‘knew’ there would be observers? At least, this is
how the advocates of the principle would argue," McDowell concluded.
Beginning
our fourth year in the fall of 1986, we recalled the opening 1etter from
Conroy and Riasanovsky: a “holy experiment,” or just some “random happenings”
-- even worse, a “cruel game,” with “humans and animals as pawns”? We found
ourselves still struggling around these fundamental questions, but resolved
to push on to a conclusion, if possible, in the next year. Our attack became
two-pronged: continued probing of the arts, especially poetry and music,
as promising cosmic languages to mirror the universal "Telos," Pattern,
or lack of it; and a yet deeper look into suffering, the thorn in the side
of "Telos" that kept on troubling us.
A musician-minister, M.I.T. professor Mark Harvey, fascinated us with
convergences between musical trends and human civilization's changing conceptions
of the universe. He played the discordant, un-systematized sounds of Schoenberg,
Stravinsky, and Ives, at the start of the century, and we heard in
them the developments in physics concerning the discovery that randomness
and chance have been playing more of a role than humankind previously thought.
“These
compositions were like Dada in music," Harvey explained, "a challenge to
order."
"Was
there any social message?" McDowell queried.
"This
was an age of anxiety, when things were coming loose," Harvey offered.
"Might
one say that the whole framework of the nineteenth century was hope, progress,
liberalism, Spencerian evolution –was breaking down?" said McDowell.
"These
pieces were chaotic," Davies broke in. "They were noise of no significance
to me."
"Why
in the world would one spoil Mozart with this stuff?" Hilary Conroy added.
"I
find Ives big, and Stravinsky -- gorgeous!" Riasanovsky counter-posed.
"I see this music as chaotic-appearing and structure-examining," Jeff
Klein chimed in. "Aren't there three fundamental tenets in twentieth-century
philosophy: dissatisfaction with old explanations, questioning if they
were unique, and examining each branch of knowledge's underlying structures?
The music prophesizes these.” He added, “But is there any prophetic music
now for the twenty-first century?"
Harvey’s
suggestion that it might be the shaman-like, post-modern music of composers
like Lori Anderson -- to which we then listened brought skepticism.
"Don’t
I hear sensuality, sexuality in her music?" Bob Wentz pointed out. "Isn't
that the rhythm of orgasm we hear so much in popular music these days --
not because it is cosmic, but because it sells?"
We
dropped music for the time being, with a promise from Alex Riasanovsky
that sometime in 1988 we would return to consider chords of a different
kind: Russian Orthodox liturgical music, sang by an eight-member choir
directed by his student Josef Gulka in honor of the 1000th anniversary
of Christianity in Russia.
For
now, we turned to suffering -- specifically the suffering of animals, which
had become a cause celebre recently at the University of Pennsylvania due
to experimentation on head injuries in the veterinary school. Karen Martin,
a Candidate there, opened: "I look at humans as having special responsibility
for those domesticated animals we changed so much that they cannot return
to their natural environment. But I object to the university student newspaper’s
charge that we in the vet school ‘kill animals on weekends and heal them
during the week.' My view is that our whole society kills animals so that
we can do and have what we want to do and have.”
A
lengthy and impassioned discussion ensued, touching on the medical uses
of animals, vegetarianism, population problems (human and animal), the
rising number of extinctions, and the importance of intent.
Yong-shik Shin gave an Eastern view: "Buddha avoided eating, so as not
to harm animals or even plants. He half starved. Some of Mencius’s students
tried not to eat meat. They tried eating grasses. Mencius thought this
was foolish. In the Orient perhaps the best solution has been a ritual
ceremony. I tell the animal, ‘I'm sorry. I will kill you.’ Then I do it."
Robert
Davies said, "In the War, the Russians near Moscow pushed the Germans back
at a certain time and uncovered some cylinders of gas, I was working in
England and was given the gas to test it. I was supposed to use little
kittens. I apologized to every one."
Denise
Breton pointed to the consciousness of the act of killing -- whether full,
and with ill-intent or not? -- as central
to whether or not taking animal lives violated the cosmic design.
Jens
Edelmann, who identified himself as a creationist, argued that humans were
put in the middle of the animal kingdom with certain responsibilities.
Robert
Davies noted that, even without the assumption of a Creator, there was
a built-in principle in nature that taught not just "struggle for survival,
but also cooperation and symbiosis." He noted, "If we destroy the rain
forest, ostensibly to better the survival chances of our own species, we
will end up discovering within 200 years that we are very desperate."
Chris
Largent queried, "How far back would we have to go in terms of the living
standards we expect, including the medical and scientific knowledge we
depend on, in order to be reasonable about this issue of cruelty to animals?”
Morton
Frank said we could not receive modern medicine, if we are to be consistent
about opposing experiments with animals.
Bob
Wentz said, "We would have to become like Jehovah's Witnesses and refute
any knowledge that comes from naturalistic investigations."
Robert
Davies asked, "If you decide all life is sacred, what do you do about the
two surviving strains of small pox?"
At
this we all agreed "the line" between sensitivity to "the world in tune"
and craziness had far been past, but exactly where to draw that line remained
an enigma. Sows being raised for slaughter in pens too small for them to
even turn around as they are now -- was clearly discordant, especially
since pigs, as Davies pointed out, are more intelligent than either dogs
or horses. But where, between pigs and small pox bacteria, could we…??
When
scientific answers failed, we had in the past regularly been graced by
the poetic responses of Alexander Riasanovsky. This time Riasanovsky brought
another poet to our seminar, who filled the same need. Haiku-ist Nick Virgilio
reflected on suffering both animal and human:
The
sack of kittens
Sinking in the icy creek
Increases the cold
Then:
At
the open grave
Mingling with the priest’s prayer
Honking of wild geese
And
finally:
Another
autumn
Still silent in its closet
My father’s violin
He was Joined by Russian émigré poetess Valentina Sinkevich,
whose "interface poetry" -- joining two great cultural traditions, Russian
and American -- hinted a direction for coming closer to a cosmic language
we might call "poetic." Though few Russian-speakers were present, she read
first in Russian, then in English, explaining: "I work with the music
of poetry. Imagery can be rich, but the music is indispensable. In the
Russian you will be able to hear the music even without understanding the
words." One poem she had translated
into English especially for this seminar. It was a "Lament for a Poet"
who had recently died:
No.
I do not agree: a loss is a loss…
You
say death is a birth...
Dark
before birth, dark after death...
Rocking
shadow...
Toward
the end of Sinkevich’s readings, Robert Davies noted p1ayfully that whereas
in the cosmic language of “poetic”
translations are necessary at the interfaces, in the cosmic language of
organic chemistry the same symbols are globally recognizable.
Riasanovsky
retorted that the "chemistry" of the 15th century was largely poetry, and
whereas chemistry was supposed to have improved when the modern discipline
shut off the poetic element, he wasn't so sure,
As a seminar, we were still divided into those who took “why is there
suffering" to mean "what function does suffering play in the natural order"
and those who looked beyond this to some kind of telos. Thus, on the one
hand, Robert Davies' reaction to Conroy's questions was that (individual
physical) suffering is "for survival. People who don’t suffer pain when
they should very soon die. Such people stay in a fire that is burning them."
But, on the other hand, Reginald Rajapakse, Yong-shik Shin and Fran Conroy
put forward the hypothesis -- tremulously -- that suffering may have a
purpose in the broader scheme of things. Rajapakse showed how the encounter
of various types of suffering can drive one beyond "belief in the existence
of self" to a higher form of consciousness, according to Buddhist teaching.
Shin argued for the possible benefits of asceticism. Fran Conroy suggested
that as much as we may want to reject and deplore a world in which there
is undeserved suffering, much of what we admire in people has to do with
how they act in the face of suffering: qualities such as compassion, benevolence,
humanity.
But this poetic interlude was only to be a prelude to a second, yet
deeper philosophical and scientific foray into suffering. Hilary Conroy
started up again, with obviously longstanding, and, as he put it “irritating”
questions: “Why, if this universe is a school, need we be distracted from
the main lessons with so much suffering -- from colds to plagues? Do the
cosmic forces enjoy torture? Have they ever felt it themselves?"
However,
David McDowell, responding to Rajapakse, noted that "while the ‘I’ may
be considered insubstantial in Buddhism, personal identity is the enduring
thing in Christianity." Robert Davies, responding to Shin, was skeptical
about the value of asceticism. And eminent physician Jonathan Rhoads, who
had seen many decades of changes in medical practices noted that when anesthesiology
was just beginning there was a controversy over whether women may have
been “meant” to bear children in pain -- a kind of enforced asceticism.
He doubted it.
The
greatest resistance of all came to Fran Conroy's suggestion that, as musicologist
Judit Frigyesi rephrased it, "Suffering may build character." And the resistance
was most pronounced if this were interpreted in a group sense. "Although
pain is important to life, monstrous collective pains like plagues, black
deaths and the like ... do they make people better in any way? I don't
think so,” said Davies. Moreover, Hilary Conroy dared barely ask about
one obvious concrete application: could a plague like AIDS be seen as in
any way "punishment" for certain kinds of behavior. There was little "stomach"
among the group for such Old Testament-like interpretations of things.
In
the end -- and we are really now getting to the end, my friend, for I have
brought you almost up-to-date on these ongoing discussions (perhaps now
you should begin attending, to carry them on to a new generation)
– this problem of suffering has continued to baffle the seminar. No easy
teleology that includes undeserved suffering is possible for a group that
has seen one of its own members die tragically. Yet the alternative seems
equally unsatisfactory. As the five years of the seminar have passed, many
of us find ourselves spending more and more time with friends who are dying,
and we know that our turn, too, cannot be postponed indefinitely. Even
as we talk, there is that "seepage" that Alex Riasanovsky talked about,
the cosmic clock that is "tune to some nonhuman melody."
Perhaps
the clue lies in what Chris Largent last presented to as.
Friend:
Oh, what was that?
Unnamed: He gave a talk on "cosmic humor." He thinks maybe we're supposed to laugh!