Our striving for knowledge by studying the very large and very small seems wayward, if what we are trying to do is explain how things work at our human scale. This was Einstein’s genius insight.
When we try to find the nature of physical behavior, we look to various forces and fields, which are only phenomenal to the extent that they theoretically relate to physical manifestations. Yet in the case of consciousness, we refuse to do that, and instead look to physical phenomena, their physical interactions, and various hypothetical causal relations such as superveniency, for our answers. Why do we do that? Why do we try to rely on non-human scale phenomena to explain that of our human scale? Why don’t we just accept that reality is sentient? It doesn’t have to mean it is intentional — just coherent, even when creative. It’s a hell of a lot easier to explain order that way, then trying to assert that random chaos develops into order.
I wrote this last night to a friend who I am helping with a play featuring Wittgenstein, Gödel, and Turing in an afterlife meeting:
…science asserts that it is rational destruction that rules, i.e., increasing entropy.
But I hold to reality being responsive — as if reality abhors chaos, thus favors and maintains a coherent order, much as it has other tendencies, like inertia and finding equilibrium — rather than being purposive. Thus, more like a mother lovingly following the adventures of her children, helping throughout their play. And in my philosophy, it is self-less loving responsiveness, just like a true mother would respond. (Self-less, not selfless, i.e., not putting one’s desires/needs above others, but not ignoring them either — balance instead.
Coherent order is what we see in every transitory moment, from one to the next, and is counter to the general view that the universe must tend towards disorder.”
Thus our common human experience is the inverse of that which Science proposes, using its knowledge of non-human-scaled phenomena.
Quantum Entanglement is an interesting phenomenon for which there is no proven scientific explanation, which leaves us at a double loss as to how it might be useful. But it has been applied to the problem of explaining how thermodynamic states evolve towards thermal equilibrium between human-scale objects, like cups of hot coffee in a room.
By applying micro-scale phenomenon to human-scale problems, have we done anything useful — especially when we cannot explain the micro-scale phenomenon? Or have we just written a fictional story that we can just believe, rather than searching for a factual explanation. One of the problems with quantum computing, for example, is the fickle nature (i.e. creativity) of entanglement — sometimes entangled particles respond correctly, sometimes not, so researchers use a kind of democratic system of multiply-entangled particles where the majority state rules.
It’s all very interesting and even exciting, and it feels like we are getting to the heart of reality. But the perennial critique of the constructive way of doing science is that it always stays at the surface of things — at every level it digs down to — and never goes within.
This “not going within” is exactly the split between science and spirituality at the human-level.
