Posted by:
Reed Smith
(
)
Date: May 14, 2020 03:57PM
Hi Bob and Marin:
It was nice to hear from you and listen to this exchange. It has been a long time since our lives crossed for a brief period of time years ago, and I was glad to know that you are both doing well, all things considered. Please say hello to the rest of the family for both L and I.
As I listened to this exchange, my general impression was that Marion was more open to imaginative, metaphysical ideas, while Bob was attempting to reign such ideas in in the name of science. Although I agree with Bob that we need to be careful about such unscientific metaphysical influences--religious or otherwise--I would suggest we also need to be careful about embracing a rigid materialist science worldview in the face of a reality that is obviously much broader than our evolutionary heritage allows us access.
Since Stuart Kauffman was mentioned positively, I will add a quote from his book, "Re-inventing the Sacred:"
"Science itself is more limited by the un-prestatable, unpredictable creativity in the universe than we have realized, and, in any case, science is not the only path to knowledge and understanding. . . . [S]cience cannot explain the intricate, context-dependent, creative, situated aspects of much of human action and invention, or the historicity that embraces and partially defines us. These, however, are just the domains of the humanities, from art and literature to history and law. Truth abides here, too." (Page 7-8)
Also, in response to the podcast, it might be well to remember the words of neuroscientist and Nobel Laurette, Roger Sperry, which are relevant today, and which, I suspect, would be endorsed (perhaps reluctantly) by Kaufmann:
"I must take issue with that whole general materialist-reductionist conception of human nature and mind that seems to emerge from the currently prevailing objective analytic approach in the brain-behavior sciences. When we are led to favor the implications of modern materialism in opposition to older, more idealistic values in these and related matters. I suspect that science may have sold society and itself a somewhat questionable bill of goods." Roger W. Sperry, "Mind, Brain, and Humanist Values."
Finally, if we remember that Kaufmann's approach to "the sacred" centers around the concept of "emergence," and that this concept is itself not currently well-grounded in physics or biology, and to that extent is also "metaphysical," we should appreciate the fact that metaphysics as associated with "the sacred" are alive and well within science itself. Perhaps that should give us pause when challenging the sacred in a religious context as being "unscientific."
Again, my best wishes to both of you. I suppose we never quite finish our program of recovery from Mormonism, or our search for answers in life--which is probably a good thing, as painful as it sometimes is.