Some of the reference books from
Adventures and
The Wave can make very good reading. I started a new job in September that is in a location--a few blocks from the state Capitol--where I don't want to drive every day, so I started riding light rail instead. Unexpectedly, this has given me 60-90 minutes a day of reading time, and the things I am learning are adding noticeably to my life. Since September I have read Umberto Eco's
Focault's Pendulum and John Gribbin's
In Search of the Double Helix, books that I bought 5 years ago when I discovered this website but never found time to read. I also started Mircea Eliade's
Shamanism, but that one is waiting right now while I do other reading.
When I began reading "Pendulum," I thought "Oh, no--another one of
those," but I stuck with it and was pleasantly surprised. "Helix" was facinating. It was published in 1985 and was out of print even in 2003 when I bought it (used). Some of the information is dated, but I have never before seen such a clear account of the science of evolution and molecular biology. It answered many questions for me, and helped me to clear out mental "junk" I was carrying because of my religious upbringing, disinfo I was taught that was intended to create doubt about well-established data. It is the same religious junk many children are being taught today, actually, since it doesn't evolve the way science does.
As I was finishing "Helix," I learned of a new book,
Reinventing the Sacred - A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion by Stuart A. Kauffman. As I mentioned in a post elsewhere, I am only 1/4 of the way through but it is fascinating reading. I don't know how this can be, but it reads like a sequel to "Helix," building on what I learned there and bringing the science up to the present.
There is a lot about this book ("Reinventing") for which I don't have the background to properly evaluate it, but I think it is well worth reading as a way of expanding your thinking and to see possibilities where you never learned to see possibilities before. "Emergence" is a recurring theme, and Kauffman, a "complexity theorist," shows how phenomena emerge unexpectedly out of our physical and biological "platforms" as complexity increases. At the point where I am reading now, he is starting to talk about the "adjacent possible" -- things on the threshold of emerging, as it were.
I keep noticing that some of the patterns he describes seem to exist on the macro-social level as well. Principles that can be seen across atomic, molecular, organismic, and social levels? As above, so below? Or is it the other way around, or does it just go both ways?
Another theme seems to be that all of the things people attribute to "God" and the supernatural can be understood in terms of the emergent properties of nature. Actually, quoting the introduction from the book cover will say this part better than I can, especially since it starts to diverge from my own feelings about the subject...
Consider the woven integrated complexity of a living cell after 3.8 billion years of evolution. Is it more awesome to suppose that a transcendent God fashioned the cell at a stroke, or to realize the truth: the living cell evolved with no Creator, no Almighty Hand, but arose on its own, created by the evolving biosphere? The truth is much more magnificent, much more worthy of awe and wonder, than our ancient creation myths.
Reinventing the Sacred proposes a new understanding of a natural divinity based on an emerging, scientifically based world view. Complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman does not propose somehow to insert "god" into a cold, lifeless universe, Instead he argues that the qualities of divinity that we hold sacred--creativity, meaning, purposeful action--are in fact properties of the universe that can be investigated scientifically. Along the way, Kauffman offers stunnng new ideas in an abundance of fields--from cell biology to economics to the philosophy of mind--as well as the relation of science to religion. To understand the true role of emergence in science we need to rethink everything from how cells manage work to how economies grow.
I agree that studying nature at all levels is much more fulfilling than wallowing around in religious bunk, but I don't find myself wanting to follow Kauffman into any sort of new, scientifically-based spirituality. I do, however, see interesting parallels with Earth-centered spirituality. For me, the value of the book is in how it clarifies the principles that explain how life can begin, self-organize, emerge, and evolve by running on and taking advantage of the properties of the physical "platform" of atomic matter and quantum mechanics (and how it might be able to run on other platforms as well). I can't begin to understand the underlying physics, but I do recognize themes here that at least clarify if not answer some of my deeper questions about life.
[Oops--this probably should have been a new topic. Please split it if it seems out of place here.]
