Science and Advaita - 3

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Organic sciences

 

But is it right to assume that a subjective reflection is just personal? As we reflect into our minds, is there nothing to be found but personal perceptions, thoughts and feelings that differ from one person to another? Or is there anything in mind that is found shared in common -- beneath the differing appearances that keep replacing one another, in the course of our changing mental states?

These questions are themselves inherently reflective. They have to be asked reflectively, through an investigation which turns back from the outward surface of appearance to an inward depth of mind. That is a very old investigation -- from which a variety of different sciences have long been developed, in many cultures and traditions.

Those sciences are not just mechanical. They do not restrict their consideration to a structured world whose objects act upon each other, like the parts of a machine. Some sciences proceed from the mechanical to the organic. They include in their consideration our organic faculties of sense and mind -- thus leading to a deeper perspective and a broader field of study. The perspective is thus deepened, by a reflective examination of our sensual and mental activities. And the field of consideration is thereby expanded, to an organic nature which includes all actions in both world and personality.

That nature is not just a structured world, made up outside our minds. No outside world can show itself to us. In order to describe how this world appears, we need an additional consideration of its perception and conception in our minds. The idea of a structured world is thus inevitably partial and inadequate. It cannot fully account for our experience.

For a fuller accounting, we have to include our sensual and mental activities in the idea of nature. We have to think of nature as a complete realm of all changing activity, including all objective interaction in the outside world and all living process of perceiving or conceiving personality. Thus including sense and mind, nature is self-manifesting. It shows itself to everyone, through a succession of appearances that it produces in every person's mind.

In this idea of nature, a careful distinction is made, between doing and knowing:

 

 

 

On the one hand, a doing is a changing act, producing some perceived or thought or felt result in the appearances that nature shows.

 

But on the other hand, as nature's appearances get changed, they must be illuminated by a knowing that stays present through their coming and their going.

 

Where nature is conceived mechanically, as an external world, we take it for granted that our observing and interpreting amounts to a knowledge of this world. But, if that assumption is examined further, it turns out to be confused. All our observations and interpretations are just changing acts, in a process that attempts to observe and to interpret better.These changing acts belong to the realm of nature. So do our sensual and our mental processes. They each evolve through a succession of perceiving and conceiving states. As any such succession is observed, it must be known by a consciousness that carries on, beneath all change of states which may evolve for the better or the worse.

 

 

By reflecting to that underlying consciousness, nature's functioning may be conceived organically, as expressing living purposes and meanings and values through the process of experience in our lives. The energy of that expression is subjective, in its origin. It does not act from any kind of object, but only from that consciousness which is the knowing subject of each person's experience.

 

 

In this organic description, the energy of nature is essentially alive. It rises up from underlying consciousness, which it expresses objectively. That consciousness is utterly detached and unaffected, remaining always uninvolved in any changing acts. Its knowing is an actionless illumination, beneath the living energy of nature's ordered functioning.

That living energy is what makes nature natural. It is not driven artificially, by any force exerted from outside. Its action is spontaneous, arising of its own accord, as it is found inspired by the presence of that consciousness which knows it from within. From there, all nature manifests its changing appearances that show up in the world and in our personalities.

To understand this organic approach, it may help a little to compare it with quantum mechanics. An organic approach is essentially systemic. What it describes are systems of activity, instead of interacting objects that make up a material world. The same is true in quantum mechanics, whose quanta are described as incremental steps through which the energy and momentum of a dynamic system may be raised or lowered.

But quantum mechanics is not biological. Its dynamic systems are mechanically described and observed, through calculated numbers and material instruments that are mechanically specified. In this quantum approach, the observations are found to be compromised, by logically incoherent and confusing gaps of discontinuity and uncertainty. The difficulties that result are managed by some complicated calculations of probability, in what may be predicted to occur.

By contrast, an organic approach is essentially biological. Its systems of activity are biologically observed and described, through living faculties that are inspired to express an underlying consciousness. In this organic approach, our observing and describing faculties are microcosmic systems of a living energy that is found everywhere, throughout the macrocosmic universe.

Our microcosmic personalities are thus conceived to share a living environment, in which they are macrocosmically contained. And an organic science is conceived to work through a living evolution of our microcosmic faculties, as they co-ordinate together in the macrocosm of their shared environment.

In order to improve our observations and descriptions, we need to harmonize our personalities, so as to achieve a better co-ordination in their correspondence with the world. Here, personality and world are each conceived as organic systems, which must develop mutually. This is the basic method of organic sciences, which are applied through their cultivation of our living faculties.

Such an organic approach has long been used in many ancient disciplines: like those of agriculture, farming, commerce, management, administration, warfare, medicine, ritual, astrology and alchemy. Moreover, these old disciplines have long been described as 'sciences'. But in describing them as such, it needs to be clarified what's meant by the word 'science'.

In recent times, this word has developed a specially restricted use, to consider the mechanical sciences in particular. Considered thus, a scientific theory must be tested and applied mechanically, through predictions and prescriptions that must be observed and implemented by mechanical instruments. Such a restricted consideration does not include the old organic disciplines. In order to describe them as 'sciences', we have to fall back upon an older and a more essential conception of what is meant by the word 'science'.

That old conception is clearly shown by the Latin word 'scientia', which simply means 'knowledge'. And it is even more clearly shown in Sanskrit, where a science is described as a 'vidya' or a 'shastra'. The Sanskrit 'vidya' is derived from the verb 'vid', which simply means to 'know'. And the Sanskrit 'shastra' is derived from the verb 'shas', which implies a correction of mistakes.

As shown by these Latin and Sanskrit words, a 'science' is a correcting discipline, which uses reason to ask for truer knowledge. That is how the word 'science' has long been used and is still commonly used today, to describe a variety of disciplines that include both objective observation of an outside world and subjective reflection into deeper knowing.

Where science is considered thus, to include a reflective enquiry, this inclusion opens up a radically biological perspective. That perspective has been skilfully avoided, in some recent conceptions that have extended our mechanical sciences into biology and medicine.

In particular, biologists have usefully described the distribution of living species through evolutionary theories of natural selection. And medical science has extensively developed its mechanical and chemical descriptions of our living bodies, along with a corresponding ability to intervene mechanically and chemically in our bodily functioning.

As mechanics has thus been extended into biology, our mechanical descriptions and technologies have been applied to living bodies, at smaller and smaller scales of size. As the scales go down to the level of complex molecules, we have developed a molecular biology, which has been very useful in accounting for the genetic inheritance and the intricate chemistry of our structured bodies and their complex functioning.

But these bodily descriptions are not radically biological. They are explicitly rooted in a mechanical conception of objective structure. Accordingly, they treat biology as an extension of mechanics, through emerging levels of complexity. The complexity builds up internally, within the structure of those bodies that we take to be alive. And it builds up externally, as interacting bodies form larger structures in the environment.

In this complexity of structure, just how we take some bodies as alive is left implicit. It's left implicit that our recognition of life is essentially reflective. To recognize a body as alive, it cannot be enough that the body is found complex. A body is found living only when its behaviour is understood reflectively, as expressing some sense of purpose or meaning or value that is shared in common by the observer and the observed.

Such a reflective understanding is implicit in medicine and health care, as doctors and nurses treat their patients. And it is likewise implicit in a biologist's examination of living creatures or their environments. Thus, in modern medicine and biology, there is a somewhat prevaricating compromise. As things stand at present, these disciplines are explicitly mechanical, at their conceptual foundations. But in their actual practice and investigation, they are implicitly organic.In older sciences, the organic approach was more radical and thus less compromised, as will be described in the next posting.Ananda