The Necessary 2021 Marriage of Science and Spirituality
Neither Will Continue to Exist Without the Other
Science will not be enough for human survival. If we are to survive we need a perpetual ongoing change of consciousness and in 2021 we have reached the need to jump the chasm to the cliche “new age of peace and love”. An example is the constantly discussed existential threat of global warming. Science based data and counsel has shown repeatedly it is ineffective for motivating enduring behavioral change. It is within the realm of plausibility to aggressively use an approach written about in 1962 by Thomas Kunz “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” and make the leap by combining science and spirituality in a way that is nothing short of alchemic.
Science is materialistic and hence is intrinsically limited. It is a structured set of principals that is disciplinarily focused on the observable, measurable, quantitative, rational, objective. It provides critical information useful for technology and understanding the material universe.
Spirituality evokes a human tendency to ascribe in some way the unknown and postulate possibilities greater than those obvious in human explainability. It is not hocus-pocus but is rather a pervasive innate human trait. It is sometimes confused in a mix with religion, arts, science fiction or God but none of these mixes are a prerequisite for the field to exist. Spirituality is categorically about the inexpressible, that which is the infinite unknown and can not be articulated. Spirituality is the place that holds the awkward concept of infinity with no beginning or end, no center or edge, no brightest or darkest, no biggest or smallest, no more or less significant. It embodies the incomprehensible and inarguable timeless spaceless unified whole of the cosmos. It is unwieldy and ethereal but so are the mathematical concepts of infinity and the field of theoretical quantum physics.
Why is it required to have acknowledgement, respect and the acceptance of the duality between science and spirituality? The survival and progress of the human species is contingent upon it. We won’t muster the will to conform to the care of our delicate vulnerable planet through science alone. Science can tell us we are modifying our own environment in self harming ways but it takes a pandemic of consciousness change to reach a critical mass of changed attitudes and values. Science will simply predict then objectively track our extinction but it will not change our hearts.
Science is not any the less for this duality. There is vibrant life not death in the yin and yang with spirituality. Humans with authentic open heartedness can accept with equanimity that the two fields are not in the least competitive or exclusive but rather as partners in a dance that is sometimes intimate and sometimes nearly solo with one of the partners in the darkened shadows of background. Art does not deny science, it expresses that which science has not yet or perhaps can never convey.
Love is as elementary to spirituality as the hydrogen atom is to our known universe. A precious gift of a beautiful radiant happy woman whose roots are on the shores of an archipelago chain of islands called by science our solar system. Our ancestors have lived here for thousands of years amidst the vastness of the space ocean and the abundance of our island earth. Our babies splashed in the salt water on the beach and clung to our hair when the water was swift or too deep. We have now braved the ocean and the jungles of our own psyche. We have comforted each other naturally with our breath, touch and kindness of goodwill. This earth island is a place where nature and humans formed a like a natural womb the circle of life. It will require the paradoxical duality of a humanity of science and honoring of spirituality to progress to a new age that can sustain us. The journey to survival is our choice.
