#99. Beyond the Impasse

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Originally published separately, all three parts slightly revised are included here.

PART ONE (posted on July 5, 2012)

This post started as an email to a friend about a conference held in the Washington DC area this year on the weekend after Easter. The email morphed, all by itself, into this post.

The conference was the annual Gerald May Symposium, sponsored by the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, a group dedicated to the support of contemplative living and leadership. This year's speaker was Cynthia Bourgeault, an Episcopal priest, author and contemplative hermit who lives on an island in Maine. Her conference title was "Contemplatives and Mystics as Prophets and Visionaries."

In one sense, "contemplative" is almost an old-fashioned word nowadays. It used to be used of monks and nuns who lived cloistered lives. But in our time it has come to mean any persons for whom some kind of spirituality is central to their lives and who-- unlike religious fundamentalists-- are concerned with environmental and social justice issues and open to the findings science and psychology. "Contemplative studies" has even become an academic field; it's just getting itself together as an area of serious scholarship. (You know it has in some sense "arrived" when academics want to get in on it!)

I was fortunate that a friend of many years attended Cynthia Bourgeault's conference and afterwards provided me with a lengthy report-- which he and I then followed up with many hours of discussion. So many significant insights emerged that it seems especially important to share some of them here. I had thought I was done with my blog efforts, but it was the power of those insights that caused my intended email note to morph into this one last post.

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Cynthia Bourgeault's starting point is the basic insight that in just about every way our political, economic and religious traditions are at an impasse. And for those of us who take religious or spirituality seriously-- at a deeper level than many conventional and conservative church-goers-- she offers four guides for dealing with that contemporary impasse: Thomas Merton, Raymond Panikkar, Bruno Barnhart and Constance Fitzgerald.

I've mentioned the first three of Cynthia's suggested guides a number of times in this blog, but Constance Fitzgerald was new to me. She is a Carmelite nun in a monastery in Baltimore. (For those unfamiliar with such things, Carmelites are part of the contemplative tradition of two very famous religious figures: the 16th century Spanish saints John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila.)

Like me, you may be thinking, "Can this array of monks, nuns and priests be of any help as we try to work our way out of the economic, environmental, political and religious impasse we find ourselves in?" It seems unlikely, to be sure.

But I found myself captivated by the energies coming out of the perspectives offered by Cynthia Bourgeault. And one of her main references-- to the work of a religious thinker she greatly values and who was totally unfamiliar to me, the French philosopher and Islamic scholar, Henri Corbin-- has led me to some extremely significant breakthroughs in my personal self-understanding as well with regard to the convergence of science and spirituality.

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The word "impasse" used to describe our present dead-end cultural and religious situation comes from the work of Carmelite Constance Fitzgerald. Two of her theological presentations, which I found fascinating and tremendously helpful, are available on the web.

At the symposium, Cynthia presented four keys needed to deal with the contemporary impasse: "Imaginal Vision," "Boldness," "Unified Cosmology" and "Contemplative Practice."

By "Contemplative Practice" Cynthia means having a practical, down-to-earth, daily discipline of some kind: something like what has come to be called "Centering Prayer" or one of the many other forms of meditation available in our day.

"Unified Cosmology" is her term for our need to take seriously the understanding that everything in the universe is connected with everything else. It's a basic insight of all the ancient spiritualities and is even clearer today from the perspectives of evolutionary science and ecology. I've quoted the Native American expression of it many time in these posts, "All things are our relatives." Mitakuye Oyasin!

By "Boldness" Cynthia means that, because many religious people are still stuck in the static and dualistic religious worldviews of the past, we need to have the courage to wholeheartedly embrace the evolutionary worldview-- to "jump," as Cynthia put it, "on to the train of evolution."

Her fourth key, "Imaginal Vision," is probably the most important but also the most difficult to understand easily. It's our need to move away from the highly restricted views of reductionist science so that we can see the biggest picture of reality available to us.

The word "imaginal" comes from the French philosopher, Islamic scholar and religious thinker I mentioned above, Henri Corbin. Late in life he called himself a "historian of religions." As far as I can tell, Corbin doesn't mention C. G. Jung's studies of the four functions of consciousness that I've referred to many times in these posts; I think he was so knowledgeable he probably just took them for granted. But it's clear enough that by "imaginal vision" Corbin means seeing the world not from a surface viewpoint but from that in-depth perspective which Jung calls the Intuition function. He goes all the way back to Persian Sufi mystics of the Middle Ages to help us understand just what he means by "imaginal vision."

I think Corbin greatly enriches the Jungian perspectives. And I find it especially fascinating that, just as we need evolutionary science in order to move out of religious dualism, so we need ancient religious wisdom in order to move out of reductionist science. That, too, is convergence, to be sure-- although, for me, it's a convergence in a quite unexpected way!

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This imaginal-intuitive way of perceiving the world was lost to the people of western culture sometime around the 1100s CE. Since that time, says Corbin, "Western philosophy and philosophical theology have lacked the means of making any sense of religion and art." With a return at that time to the rationality of Greek philosophy, imaginal consciousness was, as Corbin says, “abandoned to the poets.” The American scholar Thomas Cheetham phrases Corbin's point delightfully: "The Western world lost its angels."

With this loss of imaginal consciousness, not just poets but "all other artists," says Corbin, were "thereby marginalized and entirely misunderstood by everyone else." And it's that loss which is the source of our contemporary impasse.

Today, it is especially the "contemplatives and mystics" of Cynthia's conference title-- who, along with the "poets and other artists"-- have a major role in its recovery.

These "misunderstood" and "marginalized" individuals, who by their personality type are more open to Intuitive-Imaginality than many other persons, have the job of being "prophets and visionaries" for the rest of us as Western society tries to recover its natural capacity for Imaginal Vision.

Wading through Corbin's odd language isn't easy-- he likes to use Latin, Greek and Arabic words "for clarification"-- but I've found his work and Cynthia's overview of our present situation to be profound. Probably the most accurate way I can describe what the recovery of Imaginal Vision is all about for us today is that it is a bringing together of cosmic evolution and personal transformation at the most intimate levels.

When Western society adopted what Corbin calls "the kind of consciousness which ignores consciousness," we lost contact with our own energy-sources. We lost contact with the angels and spirits-- the energies of the universe, by whatever name-- by which we are empowered to become persons-- and, as Corbin emphasizes, thereby to become a theophany.

He not only stresses that each of us is a unique manifestation of the Mystery, but also that this cosmic-human-divine union-- which is an intuitive-imaginal perception of reality at its depths-- happens primarily by way of ritual. (You can see why Corbin speaks to me! I'll share my thoughts about that, later in this post.)

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Teilhard's noosphere has long become a fact of everyday life and internet resources abound on the web for those who want to tune in to these perspectives. Two of the resources listed below are in pdf form; I've included directions for the second step needed. They are well-worth the few extra seconds it takes to access them.

For Cynthia Bourgeault's own website, click here.

Videos of Cynthia's four talks at the Gerald May symposium are available on the Shalem Institute website: click here. Her three Saturday talks can be watched free, but for some reason, there's a fee for viewing the video of her Friday evening presentation. Unfortunately, I found the videos I looked at to be poorly filmed and difficult to watch.

The texts of two of Constance Fitzgerald's theological presentations are available on the web. For the first one, just click the title: "Impasse and Dark Night." For the second, click the title: "From Impasse to Prophetic Hope: Crisis of Memory," then look for that title in the list which appears. Both presentations are fascinating and tremendously helpful for understanding the impasse in which we-- church and world-- find ourselves at this moment in our history.

There's also a great deal of internet material available both by and about Henri Corbin. A long and very interesting discussion between two women connected with group peace work, Carol Frenier and Lois Sekerak Hogan, helps us to see how Intuitive-Imaginality connects with many contemporary concerns: "Engaging the Imaginal Realm: Doorway to Collective Wisdom." 

You can also tackle Corbin directly, if you want to give him a try. Two translations of his most basic essay, Imaginalis Mundus, are available. I found them both-- separately-- fascinating. Corbin's perspectives are so unfamiliar that these two translations of the one same work read almost like two different essays. For the earlier English translation, click here. For the later (and, with Corbin's permission, somewhat shortened) English version of "Mundus Imaginalis," click here.

I think the most helpful resource by far for a good overview of Corbin's insights is a talk given October, 2010, in Oxford, England, by the American scholar Thomas Cheetham. Cheetham teaches at the College of the Atlantic, a beautiful school just a short distance from downtown Bar Harbor, Maine. (I studied environmental chemistry there in the mid1990s!) His talk is an extremely thorough description of the four major themes of Corbin's work. For that talk, click here and then click on the talk's long title at the top right of the web site: "The Prophetic Tradition and The Battle for the Soul of World: An Introduction to the Spiritual Vision of Henri Corbin."

These are enough resources to keep anyone busy for a long time. And like everything else, the more we learn, the more we realize how just little we know. I keep asking myself, "Why didn't I hear about Henri Corbin thirty years ago?" You may be thinking that, too.

In any case, many of these resources about Imaginal Vision are wonderfully significant. If you have trouble choosing, I suggest you start with Cheetham's talk.

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PART TWO (added on 9 July)

Probably because I've been familiar with Merton and Panikkar for many years and have known of Bruno Barnhart's work for a decade or more, it's the insights of Henri Corbin which I've found most helpful at this stage in my life. "Helpful" is an understatement!

Corbin's work turns out to be extremely significant for me personally. The best way I can say it is that, "what Merton did for me when I was 10 years old, Corbin is doing for me when I'm 75 years old."

When I first read his definitive essay, Mundus Imaginalis-- and despite the many Arabic words and his references to medieval Persian sages whom I had never even known existed-- I found myself immersed in a context in which I felt quite at home. I knew from experience what Corbin was talking about. Although I have few words to describe it, it was a powerful affirmation of my life's most basic interests and concerns.

One of the most significant things for me is how Corbin connects imaginal vision with religious ritual. One quote, which makes little sense on first reading (so, please be patient with his wording below), sums up for me much of what he has to say about it.

"Symbol" is Corbin's name for what we see when we see imaginally. In distinguishing symbols from allegories and other fantasy images he says, "Every allegorical interpretation is harmless; the allegory is a sheathing, or, rather, a disguising, of something that is already known or knowable, ...while the appearance of an Image having the quality of a symbol is [in contrast] an ur-phenomenon, unconditional and irreducible, the appearance of something that cannot manifest itself otherwise to the world where we are."

In saying that symbols-- our in-depth experiences of reality which result from the imaginal vision-- are "ur-phenomena," Corbin means that something new appears when we perceive the world imaginally. Although his context is the study of Persian Sufi sages, he's talking about exactly the same thing contemporary science refers to as evolutionary emergence and Irenaeus of Lyons calls the novitatem.

Corbin's emphasis on the fact that the novitatem-- the ur-phenomenon which emerges from our imaginal vision-- is ontologically real appears to me to be a breakthrough for both science and for the religious traditions of the Western world. I think it may someday be recognized as the essence of our present Second Axial Period.

The first Axial Period started around 500 BCE when global humanity began on a wide scale to understand the nature of the human person and of personal transformation. The mindfulness techniques of Buddhism are probably the best known example of these personal transformation processes.

In the second Axial Period-- of which we're at the beginnings right now-- we're coming to understand something of the evolution of the universe and of human development within that larger context of cosmic transformation. It's what the New Cosmology is all about.

Corbin's special contribution is that he links cosmic transfiguration and personal transformation with divine incarnation. It's a version of Panikkar's cosmos-theos-anthropos perspective which I've mentioned often in these posts. If the spiritual traditions of Asia tend to focus on personal transformation, the focus of Western religion at its best has been the unity of the cosmic, human and divine. But what's especially clear today, thanks to the new scientific cosmology, is that we understand it not as a static unity but as a process of dynamic emergence.

What Corbin specifically helps us to see is that how we participate in that process-- the means by which we take part in it-- is by using our long-neglected human capacity for imaginal vision.

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One aspect of Corbin's perspective which makes his ideas especially valuable in the current cultural-religious impasse is that he can talk about Imaginal Vision in the language of the ancient Near East, the very source and root of the spiritual worldview which eventually evolved into the religious traditions of Western culture.

And this lets us see-- for the first time for me-- not just a possible coming together of Islam with the rest of the West, but also how it might even be that the inclusion of Islam will be what finally holds the whole of the Western spiritual traditions together.

I want to offer a few brief examples of Corbin's insights with regard to the recovery of Imaginal Vision. He notes that this recovery "presupposes a scale of being with many more degrees than ours." It's odd philosophical language, but he's saying that we need to see reality in terms of levels of emergence. He says explicitly, "We need a new cosmology."

Corbin wrote those words in the 1960s. They're an early version of what has come to be called the "New Story of the Universe" and, more recently, "Big History"-- precisely that evolutionary perspective spelled out for us originally by Teilhard de Chardin and enhanced by the work of Thomas Berry.

I offer two other brief-- but definitely not trivial-- examples of Corbin's insights. One is that in describing the experience of the medieval Persian sages, Corbin notes that "the ultimate thought of Shi'ism" is not a "social or political fantasy" but "the experience of an eschatology, because it is an expectation which is, as such, a real Presence here and now."

The other is that in expanding on this distinction between fantasy images and the reality of the world which we see via our Imaginal Vision, Corbin emphasizes that what he calls "the resurrection body" is "certainly not an imaginary body."

His words are awkward, but they are examples of the fact that those aspects of our Western world's religious tradition which seem least meaningful for many today-- precisely those aspects such as eschaton and resurrection-- have a coherency in the perspectives of Corbin's mundus imaginalis that is impossible in the mundus rationalis of reductionist science.

So, while Cynthia Bourgeault's emphasis on the need for Imaginal Vision in moving beyond the present religious impasse sounds no doubt strange at first, it looks like she is very much on the right track. I think the idea of eschatology as "experienced expectation," for example, may in itself be sufficient for Christian theology-- understood as Panikkar does in the broader sense of Christophany or theophany-- to persist as a life-giving perspective even as the relevance of our conventional religious institutions seem to be fading away quickly.

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Of special interest to me is Corbin's emphasis on the basics of religious experience. He not only links cosmic transfiguration on one side and divine incarnation on the other with our personal transformation, he specifically sees this happening by way of symbol and ritual.

"Ritual," for Corbin, is simply a name for what we do when we use our Imaginal Vision to see the ordinary things of life at a deeper than surface level. And "symbols" are whatever it is that we're focusing on when we look below the surface at their deeper reality.

We need to make a tremendous effort to understand Corbin's words, because the overwhelmingly dominant cultural biases of both religious dualism and scientific reductionism make it almost impossible for us to understand, without great effort, what Corbin is saying. I especially appreciate his perspectives here, because I have spent much of my life trying to figure out ways of talking about ritual and symbol clearly.

I hope later to say a bit more about that. The focus of my thoughts just now is another aspect of Corbin's understanding: that looking at reality imaginally is-- amazingly!-- how we become persons. In more familiar language, he's saying that the evolutionary and developmental process by which we become who-and-what we are-- the "individuation process"-- is empowered by our in-depth perception of images of reality's significance.

And he takes it one more step. He says clearly and strongly-- unequivocally-- that this process by which we grow as human beings is what spirituality is all about. Our personal growth and development is "the central principle," he says, "in all spiritual disciplines."

It's important to note that this view-- that the recovery of Imaginal Vision gives us a cosmological perspective for our growth and development-- is obviously well beyond the limitations of dualistic religions as well as of reductionist science. Which is why we need Cynthia's "contemplatives and mystics" to become "prophets and visionaries" for us.

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In his talk at Oxford, the American scholar Thomas Cheetham observed that Corbin "denies the Incarnation." I think it would be more accurate, however, to say that Corbin expands it. Corbin simply equates human individuation with divine incarnation, not limiting it to any single tradition, group or individual. For him, as with many contemporary religious thinkers, incarnation is an all-inclusive process.

But Corbin also stresses that it's also an intimately personal process. He says that each small step in our personal growth and development is a theophany-- a divine revelation. And he spells it out explicitly: "It is in prayer that the creative imagination most perfectly accomplishes its role in human life." Prayer, he says, "is the highest form, the supreme act of the Creative Imagination."

In describing the novitatem which comes to exist as theophany by this joining in prayer of consciousness and the empowering unconscious, Corbin's wording is a bit awkward, but it's well-worth looking at. He says that we can understand that "By virtue of the sharing of roles, the divine Compassion is the Prayer of God, aspiring to issue forth from his unknownness, whereas the Prayer of Man accomplishes this theophany because [it is] in it and through it that the 'Form of God' becomes visible to the heart."

He is saying that the divine mystery shows itself uniquely to, and in, and via each human being. And that the new creations which come to be by our imaginal perception of reality are specific theophanies appropriate to our own personalities. "Deep calls out to deep."

Corbin notes that the form of God that appears "is not of course God 'in His essence'-- the Deus absconditus – but rather is the form which he reveals uniquely to each soul." The Great Mystery calls out to the mystery which we are in such a way that, by our response to it, we actualize it in accordance with our own personality.

In that same Oxford talk, Cheetham pointed out that "The individual nature of these [unique] theophanies is a constant theme in Corbin’s work." Cheetham also mentioned another of Corbin's related and very significant ideas: that each time we have a theophany experience we have attained the fullness and completion of which we are capable at that moment.

Corbin says it in philosophical language: "Phenomenology becomes ontology." Cheethan's wording is clearer: each time we have such an experience "we are changed utterly, ontologically: in our very being." He concludes that it is here-- in this experience of transformation, this more and more complete and full becoming of who-and-what we are which is also cosmic, human and divine transfiguration-- that we find the healing of that great schism that has split the West.

It's clear enough, I think, how Cynthia's four keys, as strange at first as they may seem, fit together. They are precisely what's needed if we are to move beyond our present cultural impasse.

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PART THREE (added on 14 July)

The inclusion of Imaginal Vision as one of the four keys which Cynthia Bourgeault says are needed in our present Impasse provides us with a wonderful overview of the contemporary convergence of science and religion. As I see it, the evolutionary perspective, the neurological understanding of human consciousness as the matter of the cosmos come to self-awareness, and the deepest spiritual traditions of the western world all converge in these perspectives of the Imaginalis Mundus.

The essence of this convergent picture is the fact that in becoming a person-- in being gathered, as Teilhard says, "from all time and the four corners of space"-- we are also, thereby, part of the evolution of the cosmos and participants in divine incarnation-- all three, at once.

And-- most amazingly for me-- all this happens by way of ritual. Henri Corbin's perspectives are a powerful affirmation of my life. In this Part Three I'll share some thoughts about how and why I find his ideas so meaningful.

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For a start, I understand far better now why-- despite my life-long interest in religious ritual and willingness to share my understanding of it with others-- I have found talking about it so difficult. While I seem to have been born with a skill for aiding persons who want to do ritual to do it well, expressing it conceptually has been just about impossible.

Corbin helps a lot. He makes clear first that "symbols" are simply the world we live in looked at with our imaginal awareness, and secondly that ritual is simply the act of intentionally doing that looking.

But, as he says, ours is a culture which, a thousand years ago, adopted a form of consciousness which ignores this needed imaginal consciousness.

We still do ritual, of course; it is as necessary for us as food and water. But there is simply no way to conceptually understand it-- no way to understand just what ritual is and how it works-- in our impoverished cultural context.

Another aspect of that cultural impoverishment which Corbin helps makes clear is that seeing imaginally via ritual changes our personal reality. Via ritual, we become ontologically new, and that resulting newness is thereby, as Corbin stresses, a theophany.

But none of these words-- "theophany," "novitatem," "symbol," "ritual"-- makes much sense in a culture as intuitively and imaginally impoverished as is ours.

Although I have a fairly decent background in philosophical and theological language-- broader than many, at least-- I've found trying to talk about these things-- even to persons who are intensely interested in them-- to be a difficult task.

Corbin makes clear that the only way to make any sense of them is to recover our awareness of imaginal consciousness-- to add (in Jungian terms) the missing fourth to the mandala of our four-fold mind, and to give our attention (in Native American imagery) to the shamanic Black Bear at the west on the Medicine Wheel.

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I also understand better, thanks to Corbin, the reason why such things as mandala images, personal development, ritual and cosmic evolution matter so much to me personally.

When I first read that Corbin said Western culture has "abandoned imaginal vision to the poets," it reminded me of how often I've said to myself "I wish I were a poet." That's not because I want to write poetry but because I would like to have the skill with words that poets and other artists have, to explain well just what rituals are and how they work.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a poet or artist, but do I share with such creative people their basic personality type. Corbin says we have been "marginalized." I've known for decades that I have a strong intuitive-introvert orientation-- that's INTJ, for those who know the Myers-Briggs terminology-- and that that is, clearly, the source of my interest in ritual. I just didn't appreciate what a culturally-rejected group I was in!

My interest in science also helped me to understand this aspect of my personality. The word I found which best describes my personality orientation comes from cultural anthropology; I think of it as a paleolithic term: "shamanic." I remember how good I felt when I first heard Thomas Berry talk of the need for shamanic persons in our day. And Corbin's emphasis on personal transformation via ritual greatly enhances my self-understanding precisely within the broad evolutionary context of the New Cosmology.

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Corbin also helps me to understand my strong interest in and need to help others understand the new evolutionary cosmology. This is a bit more complicated than the two previous thoughts I've shared. It has to do with Corbin's description of just what goes on in personal growth and development, especially the fact that it's a creative process. He says, "the exploration of the imaginal realm requires participation between the human and divine and is at once discovery and creation."

The two words which powerfully grab my attention here are "exploration" and "discovery." I've thought of myself as an "explorer" for many years; and now, as it turns out, I hear Corbin saying that the transformation process includes explanation as well as exploration.

He uses an ancient Arabic term, ta'wil, along with the Latin and Greek terms exegesis and hermeneutics, to talk about what's involved in transformation via imaginal seeing.

In academic circles, "hermeneutics" and "exegesis" refer to the principles used to interpret-- to understand and explain-- sacred texts, symbols and images. The important point here for me is that explaining-- to myself and to others-- is itself an essential aspect of the transformation process. So I understand better now why I have such a strong teacher instinct. Corbin also helps me to understand why I lack, in contrast, much of a competitive drive.

Since Darwin's time, competition has been understood to be central to the process of natural selection. More recently, however, cooperation has come to be understood as equally necessary for the survival and reproduction of a species. I think that for me, with my strong teacher instincts and lack of competitive drives, explanation is my personal form of cooperation.

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I have one more idea I want to add with regard to my self-understanding. When Corbin says that personal transformation via imaginal vision is the central principle in all spiritual disciplines, he adds an extremely important point. It only works, he says, "in the measure to which it furnishes the means of going beyond all conformisms, all servitudes to the letter, all opinions ready-made."

It's funny language, certainly, but it clarifies well the fact that those of us who are included among the poets and other artists-- explorers, shamans, mystics and contemplatives-- feel "marginalized and not understood by everyone else." When it comes to the cosmic drive for personal transformation, rigidity and conformity don't stand a chance!

Personally, I never understood why it was always so important for me at an early age to think for myself, not to follow the letter of the law, not to go along with the crowd just to get along. I remember that whenever I heard someone say something like "What will the neighbors think?" I always said to myself, "Whatever does that matter?" I didn't know, then, that I was a marginal person!

And I can see now, much more clearly than I did previously, what does matter. What matters is the very opposite of "all conformisms, servitudes, and ready-made opinions." A good name for it might be "intentional marginality." Clearly, it's what each of us is being called to in our day. Cynthia's four keys are precisely what's needed for our society to move beyond the impasse. My encounter with Henri Corbin has indeed been a major breakthrough for me!

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A final point. I thought back in March, with the publication of post #98 about the work of Terrence Deacon and the unfinished business of science, that my efforts to share thoughts about the convergence of science and religion via this blog were done. But-- thanks to Cynthia Bourgeault and the Shalem Institute symposium-- Henri Corbin came along less than a month later.

Terrence Deacon and Henri Corbin are looking at things from just about as different directions as possible-- cutting edge anthropology and neuroscience on one side, metaphysics and medieval Persian-Sufi mysticism on the other-- but to me Corbin seems to be saying something very similar to what Deacon is telling us. Just as Deacon says that we've left ourselves out of our scientific worldview, Corbin observes that we've left our own personal consciousness out of our religious worldview.

They're both talking about aspects of the real world which are denied by the "facts-and-logic" perspectives of Western culture's patriarchal rationality. And they're both calling our attention to precisely that aspect of our unawareness which has resulted in the present impasse.

Deacon uses the term "ententionality" to describe those aspects of our lives-- such as purpose, value, function, meaning and personal experience-- which were neglected by science because they can't be found in physical or material objects. He says what all such "ententional phenomena" have in common is an end or goal, and notes that they are obviously real because they so strongly influence us.

I think Corbin's term "imaginality" may have a role in the present religious and cultural impasse similar to that which Deacon's term "ententionality" has in expanding contemporary scientific insights.

Just as Deacon says that the unfinished business of science is to look at the processes by which the physical matter of the world becomes living and conscious, so Corbin is telling us that spirituality also has an unfinished business: to look at the processes by which conscious matter at the level of the human person becomes a reflectively self-aware theophany.

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When he was interviewed by Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow in February 2012 (to listen to the interview, click here), Deacon said he thought it would probably take a few decades for his concepts to catch on; that's the way new ideas work in science. (I'd like to think it won't take that long!) In any case, Corbin died back in 1978. His ideas have already been around for several decades. Corbin's ideas are due!

With events like the Shalem Institute's conference and Cynthia Bourgeault's calling our attention to Corbin's Imaginalis Mundus as one of the four keys needed for moving beyond the present impasse, this may very well be the time that contemplatives and mystics-- as well as all the other marginalized artists, poets, shamans, explorers and teachers-- are called to become prophets and visionaries so that Western society can finally make its move beyond the impasse.

My long-time friend whose attendance at Cynthia's symposium sparked this final post mentioned that people he talked to had come from great distances to hear her. It seems we are in fact entering a very hopeful time. That feels good!

sam@macspeno.com

If you would like to respond in any way, please feel free to send me a note.

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My thanks to all who encouraged me over the last five and a half years to persist with this blog adventure. Thanks to you who are reading these words right now. And special thanks to Anne for her many, many hours of proof-reading! -Sam **************************************

#98. The Unfinished Business of Science

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This three-part post is an introduction to a book I think represents a major breakthrough in the 500-year history of science and its relationship with religion.

When I began my blog more than five years ago, the main concern I had was to help those interested to see that when we write off religious perspectives we miss out on the value of religious experience as part of humanity's effort to understand and be part of the world.

I see myself addressing people like myself: anyone who wants to understand human beings as participants in the world's evolution. We don't want to shut ourselves off from either ancient wisdom or modern efforts at understanding. My concern was to show that the two world views-- of religion and science-- were ultimately about the same thing: ourselves and our existence in the real world of space, time, matter and energy.

The way I see it, the difference between the ancient and modern perspectives is that they are coming from very different directions-- from radically different ways of perceiving reality-- but that they meet precisely in an understanding of human persons. That's why I use the term "convergence" in the blog's title.

It's also why I didn't begin the blog with posts about the new evolutionary cosmology. I focused instead on the research being done-- as much as I knew of it at that time-- on the human brain and nervous system in the context of anthropology.

Several of my earliest posts were about the work the Biogenetic Structuralists described in their 1990 text, Brain, Symbol & Experience (New Science Library). (I first discovered that research because of my interest in liturgy and ritual: the second of their earlier publications is The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Structural Analysis (Columbia U. Press, 1979).)

Much has happened in the areas of science and religion in the last three decades and, indeed, even in the five years since I began the blog.

Recently, the work of a highly creative new contributor to these science and religion issues has appeared. He, too, has a background in anthropology and neurological studies. Terrence Deacon is chair of Biological Anthropology and Neuroscience at the University of California (Berkeley).

I mentioned Deacon back in post #50 (The End of Patriarchy) in connection with his earlier (1998) book, also published by Norton, The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. His research is described as "a combination of human evolutionary biology and neuroscience in the investigation of the evolution of the processes underlying animal and human communication."

I heard Professor Deacon speak in October at the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Anthropology and Archeology, just before the publication of his new book, Incomplete Nature (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011).

With its subtitle, How Mind Emerged From Matter, his book addresses head-on-- and as far as I know for the first in the 500-year history of modern science-- humanity's two greatest problems with regard to our scientific understanding of the world: scientific reductionism and philosophical dualism. Most Americans have fallen victim to one or the other of these views, and it's important to be clear about their meanings.

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Reductionism is a mechanistic view of reality; it sees all life and mind as nothing more than the workings of the material parts of machines. It reduces biological and human life to the barest minimum of inanimate matter, facts and logic. In this view there is no meaning or value to our existence.

Although few live their everyday lives as if this was an accurate understanding of the world, reductionism is a widespread theoretic view. And, unfortunately for our culture, it is commonly understood to be the scientific understanding of reality-- which it is not.

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Dualism, of course, is the opposite of reductionism. It's a philosophical and religious perspective, which insists that life and consciousness are not only more than mere matter, but also that the "more" has been inserted into matter by a source external to the world.

As Deacon notes, dualism is a highly attractive viewpoint. "There is indeed a difference," he says, "between mind and matter." But he also notes that our need now is to understand the difference in scientific terms, and not-- as reductionism does-- explain it away.

This is the great issue of our time, says Deacon. He calls it "the unfinished business of science." Despite the success of humanity's scientific endeavor in the last 500 years, "Our best science," he says, "excludes us." We ourselves are left out of our own understanding of reality.

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The big question, of course, is: Why has our best science excluded us?

Deacon's answer-- the central idea of his book-- is that science has not given the attention needed to the energy processes which physical matter undergoes.

If you are asking, "What have energy processes to do with the human mind and heart?", that is the right question!

As Deacon says, neither the reductionist perspective (that we are machines) nor the dualistic perspective (that human consciousness comes from outside the physical universe) is acceptable from a strictly scientific viewpoint.

He acknowledges that science has neglected to bring together an understanding of life and mind with physical matter. He says science has been deficient precisely because it's been so successful in improving the human condition. But in its success, he adds, it has ignored what is most important to us-- our own self-understanding.

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I'm sure long-time readers of the blog will know what Deacon says is the needed perspective which science has neglected. I've mentioned it many times, because institutional religion has neglected it too. It's our need to move out of the static viewpoint of the ancient world and move into a much more dynamic understanding of the universe.

Deacon's most basic thought is that if we are to understand ourselves and the world from a scientific perspective we need to stop thinking only in terms of physical things and material objects and to look, instead, at the dynamic processes by which the universe operates.

Buddhists have been saying this for centuries.

Deacon emphasizes that, in looking at the processes rather than static objects, we are remaining grounded in the material-physical world. We do not want to become either reductionists or dualists, he says; what we do want is to understand reality from a point of view which includes those dynamic energy processes.

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Long-time readers will remember that I've said numerous times in these posts, "There's more to religion than it seems." And now, thanks to Deacon's insights, we can say the same thing about science. Just as there's more to religion than is commonly understood even by many religious people, so there's more to science than is commonly assumed even by many science-literate persons.

In both cases, the key to understanding that "more" is to move away from the ancient world's preference for seeing reality in terms of permanently stable and static objects.

This change in perspective-- from stasis to dynamis-- is the Great Turning happening in our time. It is the Immense Transition in human consciousness which global humanity is currently experiencing. And it is the central focus of Deacon's book.

His book is far from easy reading, but I've found it highly satisfying and have been urged by friends and blog readers to share my understanding of it. So that's what I'm doing in this post. Without their inspiration and encouragement, I wouldn't have the courage to try it.

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The "unfinished business of science" is its need to look at the processes by which the physical world becomes living and conscious. At first hearing, this may sound a bit simplistic. But listen to what Deacon has to say....

He stresses that in everyday life we act all the time as if we have goals for what we do; we also presume that for our purposes, some things are better than others, and that we can use things as tools for specific tasks. Purpose, value and function are the common names for what he's talking about here.

His point is that while in ordinary life we take for granted things like purpose, value and function, science has tended to ignore them. The scientific enterprise has been so successful in practical terms in the last few centuries that it has simply denied reality to these aspects of life which are important to us.

It's obvious that having a purpose is something real, even though it can't be found in physical or material objects. It's real because it influences our actions; purpose makes a difference in the world. But these things which matters most to us-- such as purpose, value and function-- have yet to be understood in scientific terms.

In our day, the central question for science, then, says Deacon, is how we can understand the reality of these aspects of our lives which mean so much to us-- even though they are not physical or material things-- and how we can understand them without moving outside of the realm of the natural sciences.

That's the challenge. To not just look at physical objects but at the energy dynamics which physical matter undergoes. "Look at the energy processes," says Deacon.

For most of us, it's not an obvious problem. We know that there are many aspects of our experience which, while not being embodied in physical objects, are real because they make a difference to us.

In addition to purpose, value and function, other aspects of our lives neglected by science are information (as in "how-to" directions), meaning (as in "the meaning of symbols") and even personal experience itself. Deacon has coined the term "ententional phenomena" to include all of them and notes that what they have in common is an end or goal (telos, in Greek).

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Few would argue with the idea that these aspects of life and mind are real; we experience daily their power to cause things to happen. But the important point Deacon wants us to keep in mind is that these "ententional phenomena" are not embodied in physical things or static material objects. They emerge from the dynamic processes which generate them.

Science is about explaining things, but if the scientific enterprise writes off aspects of human experience such as these ententional phenomena, that makes us nothing but machines-- which is exactly what the reductionist view says. It makes us robots-- automatons like the golems of Medieval stories or the zombies of contemporary science fiction films. There's human-like behavior but, as Deacon puts it, "nobody's home."

And if we were in fact robots, he says, "There would be no caring, no cared for, no kindness, no sharing of beauty and discovery and sorrow; no value to our pains and pleasures." Indeed, for each of us, there would be no "me" at all. Reductionist materialism, says Deacon, "is impotent to explain the mystery of ourselves."

If, on the other hand, we accept the dualistic view that life and mind are real because of an intervention from outside the physical universe, that makes us aliens in our own world. And of course many people do experience this kind of painful alienation today.

Taking into account dynamic processes and what emerges from them will, says Deacon, "make it easier to increase our sense of belonging in the universe." His hope is that we will eventually have a scientific perspective "which includes us and our own incomplete nature as legitimate forms of knotting in the fabric of the universe."

It becomes clearer every day that if we are ever to deal with our multiple global crises-- environmental and political, economic and educational-- this sense of "belonging in the universe" is probably humanity's single greatest need in our time.

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There's one more idea I want to include in this introductory part of my post on Deacon's Incomplete Nature. He says that in order to move beyond the impasse of rationalist reductionism and religious dualism, we need something in science like what zero is in math.

Zero was once banned, shunned and feared, but it eventually revolutionized math and made modern science possible. In our day, ententional phenomena-- things like purpose, function, value and meaning-- are similar.

Just as zero, in the Middle Ages, was not considered real because it stood for nothing, so today in science things like function, value and purpose are ignored because they are not present in physical objects. Deacon observes that contemporary science is centuries behind its understanding of the more tangible realties in its understanding of things we take for granted in everyday life such as meaning and purpose. And in doing so, science is denying those things that are most important to us.

This denial of the reality of the "ententional phenomena" has divided the natural sciences from the human sciences, and has divided all of science from the humanities, says Deacon. It has, he says, alienated scientific knowledge from human experience.

And that denial makes science appear to be the enemy of human values. It also accounts for the understandable rebirth of religious fundamentalism with its deep distrust of a non-religious determination of human values.

Clearly, it is time to get on with the unfinished business of science!

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PART TWO (added February 20, 2012). In the second part of this post I share my understanding of what Deacon has to say about how the workings of those dynamic energy processes allow life and mind to emerge from cosmic matter.

First, a bit of science history. Since prehistoric times the human mind and heart has always been fascinated when it encounters order in the world; the recurring patterns in the night sky, the cycles of the seasons, and the six-pointed shapes of snowflakes are good examples.

Deacon notes that in the past when people encountered nature's often awe-inspiring patterns, the existence of those patterns was usually explained by what he calls "the influence of absential influences." He means magic or supernatural powers-- what today we usually refer to "divine intervention."

But in science, says Deacon, these "absential accounts" came into question beginning around the year 1850. Since that time, "divine design" has no longer been accepted as a scientific explanation for anything, and the modern mechanistic view which resulted reached a zenith in the mid-20th century with ideas about self-organizing processes.

If the concept of "self-organization" is new to you, you might like to check out two of my recent posts: #96 (Science's Best: Cosmic Energy), which includes a description of self-organizing processes, and #97 (Five Years of Posts), which includes a link to an especially interesting example of self-organization: the hexagonal cloud formation at the North Pole of Saturn.

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Deacon says that while "self-organization" really isn't an accurate term (since there is no "self" involved in the formation of these natural patterns), it's in such common use now that he, too, uses it. Much more important is his note that, while the "self-organizing" concepts work well in our understanding of the formation of patterns in nature, they do not account for the origins of such processes.

He says it had become apparent by the 1980s that even the best evolutionary perspectives do not provide an adequate explanation of the origins of life and mind. And that "is the great question for 21st-century science."

So while there's no question that life and mind are real (since they produce real physical results) and while we know that they haven't always been around (since there was a time on our planet when there was no human life-- or any life at all), what we want to be clear about now is how life and mind emerged during the Earth's long evolutionary development.

"We need to construct an understanding of emergence based on the dynamic cosmic processes," says Deacon. "We" here means scientists, of course, but it also includes you and me and all who care about humanity's scientific enterprise.

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It may be surprising that the idea of the emergence of life is so new in science. It doesn't date back to the time of Galileo or Newton, or even Darwin. As a scientific concept, says Deacon, emergence began to take on meaning only in the last years of the 20th century. Just a few decades ago!

Nothing radically new happened, says Deacon, in the evolution of the universe when galaxies, stars and atoms first appeared, but something quite obviously new occurred when life first appeared on our planet. He stresses that while the basic laws of physics and chemistry didn't change, "there was a profound reorganization of matter and energy."

He also notes that our understanding of emerging new structures could not have happened without the invention of computers. High speed computers can run hundreds of thousands of iterations (repetitions of a program) in a relatively short time, and this allows the pathways of physical, chemical, biological and even social changes to be studied.

In post #96 (Science's Best: Cosmic Energy) I included an example of the difference the development of high-speed computers has made in allowing us a far deeper look at the dynamic processes of the cosmos than earlier generations could ever have imagined. The example is a recent computer simulation of the formation of a spiral galaxy; it was completed in "only" eight months by a super-computer system in Switzerland. That may sound like a lot but, as I said in post #96, on a personal computer the same simulation would take 570 years. Click here to see a three minute video of that eight-month long simulation.

Deacon notes that the concept of emergence is now used not just in computation and the physical sciences but also in economics, social studies and business applications. To a great extent, then, we owe the practical details of the fundamental cultural transition of our time-- the shift from stasis to dynamis in our cosmology-- to computer technology. It's an essential tool for dealing with the unfinished business of science.

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Please be patient with what follows. It is my understanding of Deacon's ideas about "the profound reorganization of matter and energy" which occurred when life emerged. This is the heart of his work, but it's far more complicated than I can present easily. My hope is that what I have to say will offer you a good appreciation of Deacon's ground-breaking ideas, and that it may encourage you to tackle his book.

His most basic idea with regard to the origins of life and mind is that there are three different levels of energy processes involved. His names for the three levels are homeo-dynamics, morpho-dynamics and teleo-dynamics. (Those terms aren't usually written with hyphens, but my teacher-instincts tell me that the use of hyphens will be helpful for those who are encountering these terms for the first time.)

These three names are used to describe different kinds of changes in the natural world.

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The term "homeo-dynamics" refers to changes which happen by themselves. They happen "naturally," as we say, and they always produce randomly distributed results. Autumn leaves falling from a tree, for example, don't fall into any pattern, they just spread out on the ground wherever they fall or a breeze may take them. Any time we spill something-- a glass of milk, a box of thumbtacks-- the scattering of the components of the container demonstrates the random ("spread out") results of homeo-dynamic processes.

The main idea here is that in homeo-dynamics, the bits and pieces of matter-- the atoms and molecules or whatever-- move spontaneously from a higher energy state to a lower energy state. In terms of orderliness, the change is from more orderly to more random conditions. We know this process from frequent personal experience: life is messy and things fall apart easily. In physics, it's called the "Second Law of Thermodynamics."

It's not really a law, however, so much as a way of describing the relentless and inevitable increase toward messiness and random disorder in the world. The basic point to understand here is that life and mind work against this general tendency of physical things.

In all life processes and mental activities, the movement is away from randomness. These are the processes which Deacon wants us to look at and understand.

While material things generally tend to become more disordered, the tendency does not exclude movement towards more orderly states. And this is the whole issue: How can a group of things-- a collection of molecules, for example-- become more orderly?

In answering that question, Deacon's main idea is that the more orderly processes show themselves only under two conditions: when energy is being supplied and when other, lower-level and less-orderly processes are prevented from happening. He refers to these limitations as "constraints."

His main idea, again: When energy is being added to a system of molecules, constraint on the lower level processes makes the higher level processes possible.

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The concept of constraint isn't easy to understand at first hearing. We usually think of life as something "more" than mere matter, but Deacon is saying that, in a sense, it's something less. He offers a good analogy which I'll describe below. For the analogy to be clear, however, we need some basic facts about the unique characteristics of all life-forms.

Living things operate "for the sake of" their own persistence. They have a goal: to keep themselves going. They repair themselves, when necessary, and even reproduce themselves. This kind of self-regulation for the sake of self-preservation is much more than a machine-like workings of parts. It's because of this purpose or end (telos) that Deacon refers to living organisms as "teleo" processes.

The question, then, is how we might understand a collection of chemicals that in fact can regulate, repair and replicate itself. No machine can do anything like that.

Deacon says that scientific reductionists ignore these dynamic teleo-processes. They "ignore the fact that living things are alive." An example of the fact that they also don't pay much attention to morph-processes can be found in the introduction to the
Astronomy Picture of the Day's explanation of Saturn's north pole hexagon, featured on January 22, 2012. It begins by saying only that "It is unclear how an unusual hexagonal cloud system that surrounds Saturn's north pole was created [and] keeps its shape."

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Morpho processes lie in between homeo and teleo processes, so if we are to appreciate the uniqueness of the energy-dynamics of the cosmos which generate life and mind, it's important that we not be "unclear" about morpho-dynamics.

All changes other than the homeo-dynamic kind require an impetus-- a push or energy input-- to get them started and to continue. We need to heat water, for example, to get it to boil, and it will only continue to boil as long as heat is continually supplied from the outside.

All non-homeo-processes require a constant input of energy. When water is heated, the water molecules are raised to a higher energy level than they had previously, but if the heat source is removed, the molecules will move down "naturally" to a lower energy state.

So far, I haven't told you anything you don't know. Here's the new part:

When a collection of water molecules that is being heated reaches a certain energy level, shapes or columns of molecules begin to form. What's happening is that the energy can drop down a bit to a lower level, but not necessarily to the lowest natural level. This is the origin of "self-organizing" morpho processes. "Morph" just means "shape."

In heated water, the morphs-shapes are referred to as Benard's cells or convection cells. The six-pointed pattern of snowflakes and the hexagonal formation at Saturn's North Pole are good examples of the shapes resulting from of these morph-producing processes.

The difference between the shape-producing processes of morpho-dynamics and the randomness-producing processes of homeo-dynamics is that energy needs to continuously be supplied so that the shape can be at least temporarily stable. In the case of that North Pole hexagon on Saturn, its energy-- which is continually dissipating into Saturn's atmosphere-- is constantly being renewed by energy from the sun.

Even though it's a distraction from the main ideas, I think it's worth noting here that this same kind of morpho-dynamic process accounts for biological shapes, too. Everything from the spiral tendrils of a morning glory vine and the double helix pattern of sunflower seeds to the patterns on the wing of a butterfly result from these same morpho processes.

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While both teleo processes and morpho processes require constant energy input, the results are quite different. Morph-forms are collections of chemicals which have a temporarily permanent shape, due to their being at a less than lowest energy level. But life-forms, in contrast, are collections of chemicals that can regulate, repair and replicate themselves.

Deacon says that teleo-processes are related to morpho-processes in the same way that morpho-processes are related to homeo-processes. I don't know how to say that more simply. It's one of the more difficult of Deacon's ideas to understand at first hearing.

See if this helps: Just as morph-processes move from a higher to a lower, but not to the lowest, energy level, so teleo-processes move from a higher to a somewhat lower level, but not as low as the morpho-processes. If we picture homeo-dynamics happening at the bottom of a stairway, then morpho-processes occur several steps higher up, and teleo-processes are happening all the way at the top.

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It's that extra-high energy level which makes teleo-processes unique. They not only maintain a shape the way morpho-processes do, they also sustain themselves from within. Even the most elementary organism-- a bacterium, for example-- can regulate which bio-chemicals in its surroundings may enter into itself through its cell wall membrane.

Single-celled organisms can even respond in a conscious way to their surroundings, moving toward nutrients and away from materials which may be damaging. In comparison, the forms resulting from morpho-processes are totally passive: there's no self in even the most elementary sense, no inner agency which reacts or respond to the external environment.

So "teleo" really is a good name for the higher level energy processes. Living things have a purpose (an end or goal) for the sake of which they work: their own persistence. They search for nutrition, avoid potential harm, even repair and reproduce themselves.

It's seeing how these teleo processes work that can help us understand the origins of life and mind.

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That "how" may be the biggest of our big questions. Since they work so powerfully against the natural tendency to disorder in the material universe, how did these order-producing teleo processes come about? What allowed them to happen in the first place?

I found Deacon's answer to this critical question especially challenging. It did finally make sense, but it took a while for me to catch on to it. So, again, please be patient.

You will remember, from above, that one of Deacon's central ideas is that the more orderly morpho and teleo processes show themselves only when energy is being supplied and when other, lower-level and less-orderly processes are prevented from happening.

It's the constraints-- the limitations or restrictions on the lower level chemical and physical processes-- which makes the higher level processes possible.

I came to understand this idea of constraint better when I realized that the higher level morpho and teleo processes are in fact no less normal in the natural world than are the homeo processes, so that they too occur wherever they can; they emerge whenever the higher levels of energy are available and transition to the lower levels is restricted.

Deacon notes that it's understandable why science hasn't given much attention to these energy dynamics. As I mentioned in Part 1, it has been so successful in improving human conditions on the practical level that it has been reluctant to move away from the static worldview of the past. But it's that dynamic emergent worldview which we now need.

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If you have stayed with me through this difficult second section of the post, there's one more challenge. It's to understand how these teleo processes-- which are a natural part of the energy dynamics of the universe-- happen only when the lower level processes are prevented from happening. We need to make sense of the concept of "constraint."

While it's easy enough to see that living things are specific patterns of complex matter and high energy in the universe, the idea that they emerge only when other patterns or processes are restricted, is not. It helps if we ask, What causes constraints?

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I said earlier that Deacon provides an excellent image that helps us understand what causes the constraints. It comes from an ancient cultural craft which archeologists know to be about 5,000 years old: the weaving of fabric from silk.

When the threads of silk worms are woven together in any specific way, all the other possible random ways in which those threads might have been put together are prevented (excluded, constrained). It's the specific pattern of the threads which is the constraint. 

One pattern prevents all the other potential patterns from resulting.

The great value of this analogy is that while it's obvious that the resulting fabric isn't made of anything other than thread, it's also obvious that the fabric is something more than just thread. We can do very little with thread in comparison to what we can do with fabric.

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Deacon emphasizes that no new physics and chemistry laws come into effect with the emergence of life; what does, however, are new cause-and-effect laws.

And if we ask whether causes really exist-- apart from, or in addition to-- matter and energy, he asks, "What else is there?"

His answer is "relationships." Just as fabric is "thread in-relationship," so living things and human consciousness are "matter and energy in-relationships."

I think this fabric-and-thread analogy is especially helpful for understanding that life and mind are not something added to matter so much as something which naturally emerges from matter and energy when lower level energy processes are prevented from happening.

The analogy helps us to see that there is complete continuity between the physical matter of the universe and the world of living things. It lets us recognize that the emergence of dynamic teleo processes is a completely natural aspect of the workings of the cosmos.

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Deacon makes a special point of mentioning that this understanding of life and mind-- as natural results of the evolutionary development of the universe-- will not be accepted unless we are able to let go of philosophical dualism.

For many, the willingness to give up dualistic perspectives is a tremendous challenge. But if we can be clear about the idea of life and mind resulting not from matter but from the relationships between the energy processes which matter undergoes, we can see that religious dualism isn't necessary for an understanding of the place of living things and personal consciousness in the physical universe.

Please note that I am not saying (and neither is Deacon, as far as I know) that this dynamic understanding of life and mind excludes a religious perspective, but only that it excludes the static perspective on which religious and philosophical dualism is based.

This second part of the post on "The Unfinished Business of Science" has-- if you're still reading it-- given you quite a workout. Me, too. Time for a break!

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PART THREE (added March 1, 2012). In the brief third part of this post I share my understanding of the unique characteristics of all living things, including ourselves, which are the results of the emergent teleo processes of the cosmos.

To appreciate the unique nature of life-- and to contribute, by our efforts, to the "unfinished business of science"-- we need to be clear about how the results of the teleo-dynamic life-processes are radically different from the results of the morpho processes.

If you haven't read the second part of this post, you might want to read it before going on. The differences between "morpho" and "teleo" are critical not just for the understanding of life-processes but for our own personal and global-communal-human self-understanding.

Both the shape-producing morpho processes and the end-directed teleo processes go against the general tendency of inanimate matter to move toward increasingly disorganized states. Both depend on an influx of energy from outside themselves-- and both result, thereby, in a spontaneous increase in order, regularity and complexity.

But, as I've said, the results of the higher-energy teleo processes are radically different from those of the lower-energy morpho processes. Because we humans are the results on our planet of four billion years of these teleo processes, it's important that we get this right. Why? If we don't get it right, we're stuck with scientific reductionism or religious dualism.

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Remember from Part 2 that, while the material shapes which result from morpho processes are conventionally called "self-organizing," in fact the term isn't accurate since there is no "self" in any real sense. There's no "active agency," as Deacon says.

In the case of the life forms which result from teleo processes, however, "self-organizing" is indeed the correct term. Life and mind are goal-directed processes; there is an active agent present in all living things.

Every plant and animal on Earth is made of the same cosmic matter and energy which emerged at the birth of the universe fourteen billion years ago, and each human being is the result of the teleo-dynamics by which life emerged on our planet ten billion years later.

It is our understanding of those life processes-- and thus of ourselves-- which is "the unfinished business of science." So the focus of this third part of my long post is simply to help readers be clear about the distinction between the results of "morpho" and "teleo" processes.

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Deacon lists four major ways in which living things (from single-celled bacteria to plants, animals and humans) differ from morpho forms (such as whirlpools, convection cells and Saturn's north pole hexagon). Here's his list:

1) Living things do not merely result, as morph-forms do, from the conditions in their surrounding environment; organisms make active use of the energy and materials of the environment to keep themselves going. It's a clear distinction: morph-forms result from their surrounding environment, living things interact with it.

We know, for example, that plants use the energy of the sun to convert the surrounding air and water into sugar molecules, which they then use for their on-going life processes such as growth and reproduction. We humans too interact with our physical environment to keep ourselves going; we know from personal experience how quickly we wear out without a constant supply of water and food. We also interact with our psychological environment, and quickly wear out there too without the on-going support of family, friends and culture.

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2) In contrast to snowflake crystals and other morph forms, even the most elementary living things-- yeast cells, for example-- initiate changes within themselves in response to external changes in their environment. While organisms change internally to adapt to external changes, morph forms don't do anything like that; they have no "within" or "inner agency."

Yeast cells offer a familiar example of changes from within. In the absence of water and nutrients, yeast cells shut down; they go dormant. When we're planning to make bread, we buy packages of those dormant yeast cells, which-- once we provide them with the right environment of water and sugar-- initiate changes within themselves. We then use the products of those internal changes (gas bubbles, in this case) to make bread dough rise.

Another common example of internal change is the response of plants and animals to the changing seasons. As winter weather approaches, many species of trees lose their leaves and many animals hibernate. They change themselves from within, for the sake of their own persistence through the cold months. We do something similar every day. After many hours of busy mental and emotional responses to our human environment, we too temporarily shut down; we need to go to sleep for a while. We go dormant-- just like yeast cells do.

On February 21, 2012, the New York Times reported a spectacular example of the persistence of the active agent in a dormant life-form. The report said that Russian scientists have been able to germinate dormant seeds from an arctic flower called "campion," which had been stored by an arctic ground squirrel in its burrow on the tundra of northeastern Siberia. According to radioactivity dating, those seeds had lain buried for 32,000 years.

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3) A third major characteristic of life and mind is that living organisms are able, in Deacon's words, to "assess or evaluate various gradients in their surroundings" and thus can "move so as to anticipate and avoid depleted conditions and seek more optimal ones."

A familiar example of this evaluative characteristic is the autumn flights of birds migrating south where food will be more readily available. A less familiar example is the fact that a single-celled animal, such as a paramecium, will move away from a drop of acid which an experimenter might add to its liquid environment. Even a one-celled organism can judge and act on the evaluation of its environmental surroundings!

If you have ever ducked into a doorway during a rain shower, you too were an example of a life-form "seeking more optimal conditions." We too evaluate everything: we are drawn to some people more than others, we select our friends, some of us change jobs often. We too, like all life-forms, are always assessing our surroundings and seeking better conditions.

Even our attraction to compassionate behavior and our aversion to cruelty involve the same kind of assessment and evaluation of the "various gradients in our surroundings." Our concern for value has its ancient basis in the teleo processes common to all life-forms.

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4) Probably the most obvious distinction between living things and inanimate matter is that organisms reproduce themselves. Morph forms don't have babies-- or any kind of progeny-- while even the most elementary kinds of living things do. And their "babies" also have babies, resulting in lineages of living things. Lineages adapt (both within and without, just as individuals do) to continuing environmental changes; those unable to adapt become extinct, while those that can adapt evolve over time into ever more complex forms.

I think the best example of these on-going developmental processes is the entire history of life on our planet. For the first several billion years there were only one-celled organisms, and while most of them became extinct, the survivors continued to adapt to changing conditions. Little by little, over millions of years, the result was the spectacular complex of multicellular plants and animals we have today in the various bioregions of the Earth.

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Deacon's list is impressive. I hope my intentionally elementary examples help make it clear that the emerging results of the dynamic teleo processes include far more than those static forms which result from morpho processes.

Here's a quick summary of that "far more": Living things act for their own sake, they are self-perpetuating, self-modifying, and in their capacity for self-repair and self-replication they respond, adapt and evolve. Morph forms just don't do any of that.

Living things are not reducible to their components. They show different properties-- and thus have a certain freedom-- from what they're made of. And even at the level of one-celled organisms, they all have an inner agency, an authentic acting "self." We do, too.

As life's complexity increased over evolutionary time-- from one-celled creatures to molds, lichens, sponges, worms, fish, reptiles, birds, mammals and anthropoids-- so did the depth of the inner agency's self-awareness. We are the long-term fruit of an immense evolutionary story. Our minds and hearts-- our conscious awareness and our personal relatedness-- are no less real than that "more" which is characteristic of all living things.

Like every living creature, we too interact with our environment, we too change ourselves in response to it, we too evaluate its positive and negative aspects. We too, with our personal freedom and creativity, are expressions-- absolutely unique-in-all-the-world expressions-- of the universe's vast process of emergence.

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Remember from Part 2 that Deacon says about emergence that it "does not mean new physics and chemistry laws but new cause-and-effect laws." And that his response is "relationships" when we ask, "What else is there besides matter and energy?"

The unique characteristics of the fabric of life and mind are woven from the same matter and energy that constitute the rest of the world. There is complete continuity between the world of physics and chemistry and the world of living things-- including us. After 500 years of modern science we can stop saying to ourselves, "Maybe I don't belong here."

We can see that what Deacon calls the "ententionals"-- meaning, purpose and value at the depths of human life-- are as real as atoms and molecules. And that they are the "zero" that will transform modern science just as the numerical marker "0" once transformed ancient math.

And, as he says, The emergence of these attributes can be understood without attributing them to an external source or denying that a real threshold has been crossed.

Good words to end this long introduction to Deacon's book!

sam@macspeno.com

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PS. In case you missed it in the comment section, I had a note from Michael Dowd saying that he and his wife Connie recently did an interview with Terrence Deacon. You might like to listen:

http://inspiringnaturalism.libsyn.com/

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