Contemplation in Science

Anthropologist Jeremy Narby’s book, Intelligence in Nature: An Inquiry into Knowledge, which I referred to two weeks ago, reminded me of the role of contemplation in the scientific quest.

I’ve written before about Einstein’s famous “thought experiments” by which he developed explanations for natural phenomena, comparing them to the imagination Saint Ignatius felt was needed in the contemplative life.

In a chapter entitled “Plants as Brains,” Narby reports the work of Anthony Trewavas, a biologist at the University of Edinburgh, which he summarizes:

Plants have intentions, make decisions, and compute complex aspects of their environment. … When attacked by herbivores, some plants signal for help, releasing chemicals that attract their assailants’ predators. … When a plant is damaged, its cells send one another electrical signals just like our own pain messages [p 83-4].

Trewavas prefers to use the word “compute” to “think” when applied to plants [p87] and disputes the long held scientific position that plants are passive because they do not move, explaining “it requires an equating of movement with intelligence. Movement is an expression of intelligence [p85]” speculating that “plant communication is likely to be as complex as within a brain [p93].”

I will leave all of that for scientists to hash out. What interests me as a contemplative wannabe is Trewavas’s process developing such thoughts, “I find it’s only by long periods of doing nothing but think that suddenly facts start coming into your mind [p90].”

Half of Narby’s book consists of detailed footnotes that undergirds or sometimes questions his text. I find these details occasionally hard to understand, as I am clearly not a scientist, but I can appreciate their gist. I’m not a footnote kind of guy, but I find these footnotes awesome and well worth the read. It’s there that I found these thoughts from W. I. B. Beveridge, written in 1950 under the title The Art of Scientific Investigation:

The most important prerequisite is prolonged contemplation of the problem and the data until the mind is saturated with it. … The mind must work consciously on the problem for days in order to get the subconscious mind working on it [p 206].

Diversions and distractions are to be avoided, but idle time can be useful and fertile. This made me think of Vincent van Gogh’s idle time after being dismissed from his pastoral position by church hierarchy dismayed at his lack of social distance from his parishioners. It was then van Gogh thought he might take up drawing and painting, hoping his paintings would have the same consoling effect the Christian faith once offered.

Beveridge continues:

Most people find intuitions are more likely to come during a period of apparent idleness and temporary abandonment of the problem following periods of intensive work. Light occupations requiring no mental effort, such as walking in the country, bathing, shaving, traveling to and from work, are said by some to be when intuitions most often appear… [p207].

That’s the way I work, by spending a little “idle” time that allows thoughts or feelings, patterns or analyses to “bubble up.” In college I read process philosopher Henri Bergson, who suggested that along with rational thought we needed intuitive thinking. Intuition may simply be the subconscious mind offering an insight or solution from its hidden depths.

To me, that’s the gift of contemplation in the spiritual life as well.

 

For Thanksgiving in the U.S. tomorrow, please see last week’s post: Thanksgivings

My friend and blog reader J. Barrie Shepherd is offering a holiday chapbook:

A Poetic Pandemic Christmas Pudding “a plump and spicy concoction of words, phrases and images to evoke the many flavors and aromas of the yuletide feast. P.S. Add brandy to ignite.

Proceeds go to food pantries in his area of Maine. $10 per copy plus $2 postage. Send check made out to J. Barrie Shepherd to 15 Piper Road – K325, Scarborough ME 04074. Copies will be signed and can be inscribed by request. Or order though his email: barrieshep@aol.com.

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Copyright © 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

What Is Truth?

“What is truth?” Pilate famously asked Jesus in Gospel writer John’s version of Jesus’ trial. Jesus had just informed the Roman governor of Judea, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

This exchange came to mind as three recent New York Times articles began percolating in my head.

“Believing What You Don’t Believe” by professors of behavioral science Jane L. Risen and A. David Nussbaum reports on an experiment in which participants were instructed to label one bowl of sugar “sucrose” and an identical bowl as “sodium cyanide (poison).” Despite the fact that the persons themselves chose which to label, they nonetheless resisted using sugar from the bowl labelled poisonous.

The authors then apply the contrast between fast and slow thinking. The volunteers’ instinct (fast thinking) was not to touch the bowl labelled as poison, and though their reason (slow thinking) might be used as a corrective to realize the labels were by their own arbitrary designation, “People can simultaneously recognize that, rationally, their superstitious belief is impossible, but persist in their belief and their behavior.” They may even try to rationalize their irrational, intuitive decisions.

The article concludes with an illustration of how setting in place a policy in advance can avoid the pitfall of following “a powerful but misguided intuition in a specific situation.”*

“How to Live a Lie” by philosophy professor William Irwin questions the “objective reality” of  God, free will, and morality.  He posits that many live by moral or religious or ethical “fictionalism,” voluntarily or involuntarily, and some may understand such fictionalism as “mythologically true,” while at the same time knowing that these constructs are “not literally true.”

All this touches my experience as I have grappled with the reality of God. I don’t want to make the mistake of allowing superstition to determine my beliefs or behavior while, at the same time, I believe myth speaks to the unknowable (or not yet known) in human experience.

The articles converge for me as I consider that setting in place “policies” (as in the first article) about God, morality, and free will can help civilization and us personally. 

The Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, “God is love,” equal rights, the separation of church and state, and belief in personal and corporate responsibility have contributed to our culture in positive ways, for example.

But is embracing such policies finding the truth, or rationalization, a kind of mind-game?

“The Light Beam Rider” by biographer Walter Isaacson celebrates the 100^th anniversary of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Einstein, he observes, was able to advance science by beginning with what he called “Gedankenexperimente,” “thought experiments,” or what we might colloquially call daydreaming or mind-games.   

The author gives pertinent examples, and then concludes, “That ability to visualize the unseen has always been the key to creative genius. As Einstein later put it, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’”

This week, helping with a spiritual formation course on Ignatian spirituality, I am learning that imagination plays a key role in its understanding of prayer.

Could all this mean that the imagination and thought experiments of mystics, theologians, and ethicists are “key to creative genius” and of more value than “certain”  knowledge about God?

Could that be why the teachings of spiritual founders like Jesus have captured our own spiritual imaginations?

*I just learned last week on the fascinating PBS series, The Brain with (neuroscientist) David Eagleman, that this is known as a “Ulysses’ contract.” Ulysses had himself tied to the mast so he couldn’t sail his ship onto the rocks when he heard the seductive sirens’ song.

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.