The Science of the Enlightened Mind

Piaget was once asked whether his stages of development showed a continuity or a discontinuity of process. Acknowledging both, he replied that the researcher should look for continuity where there is discontinuity and discontinuity where there is continuity. It is in this framework that I wish to discuss the relationship between Science and the Arts and Humanities. The two are clearly distinct in their modes of thought and purpose, but not, I believe, entirely so. For example, the success of both requires an availability to the phenomena of experience and therefore some suspension of self-involvement.

In addition, both require a testing of the engagement with phenomena, the one through observation, experiment and analysis, the other through assessment of the adequacy of its expressive intent. Both are forms of knowledge and understanding precisely because of their attentiveness to and assessment of the subjects of their concern. But the question I wish to address is whether the two kinds of knowledge demonstrated by each is bound together in the sense of shared principles which apply equally to the natural world of fact and the symbolic world of value. This question arises from the thesis that the emergence of the symbolic world is itself a form of adaptation, that culture is, as it were, a new organ that responds to the perils of finding human meaning in a threatening or indifferent world.

We can reasonably expect both continuity, since the symbolic develops from the natural world and the natural world remains the fertile source of the metaphors we employ to understand ourselves, and the discontinuity of a new stage in evolution that has its own form of operation. But we should bear in mind at the outset that, whilst the symbolic may be characterised as a response to the world, it is a response which enables us to ‘take control’. In Science and its associate, Technology, control is direct, a manipulation of nature for the desired ends of theory and practice.

In the Arts and Humanities it is indirect, creating a world offering visions that may soothe or inspire. However, the nature of "taking back control”, whether through technological advance or through embracing a satisfying new perspective on life, may itself be counter-productive without the corresponding act of self-negation: the principle of the insufficient cause then rules with all its propensity for disorder and oppression. A cursory glance at our recent history does indeed give the impression of an "organ” more of a danger to the needs of the environment than a blessing.