WillSpirit!

Yes, yes. The last post turned out kinda boring. Because I spend so much of my mental energy contemplating spirituality and its relationship to established science, I assume the subject can be part of my WillSpirit project. But after writing a very long post about quantum mechanics, and covering very little ground in the process, I realize it’s a stretch to put this material in a blog. The relationships are too complicated and too equivocal.

It would be so much more exciting if I could offer solid proof of metaphysical effects, and demonstrate once and for all that Jung was right in trying to bring synchronicity into the mainstream of psychology. Wouldn’t it be great to know, without doubt, that the Universe facilitates our lives? Sadly, such certainty is not available to us, and may never be.

That doesn’t mean that strict materialists are right, however. Stuart Kauffman has written eloquently, coherently, and knowledgeably about the weakness of the reductionist argument. His 2008 book, Reinventing the Sacred, identifies many logical flaws in viewing the universe as a random cloud of colliding particles. He exposes fallacies in the conventional belief that the universe would be completely explained if we knew everything about atoms. Kauffman demonstrates that many natural phenomena are emergent, and not predictable even in rough form from the behavior of particles. He postulates great creative energy in the universe, such that we live in a cosmos that inexorably builds structured beauty out of bland chaos.

I referred to emergence at the end of the last post, but I won’t repeat the mistake of trying to explain a complicated scientific principle. Suffice it to say that surprising and intricate order develops spontaneously in many initially messy systems. For reasons that remain unclear, but may have to do with the efficient dispersal of energy, an ongoing input of power applied to disorganized systems often causes an evolution toward structured, organic-appearing forms. This is not at all predicted by the cynical view that randomness rules, and that events could much more likely have gone to hell than to have built a beautiful Earth.

If there is creative potency at play, as Kauffman’s arguments persuasively suggest, then it might be that meaningful coincidences somehow reflect the natural tendency of things to work toward organization and beauty. Kauffman himself does not go that far, even in speculation. I’m not saying that he has any beliefs along these lines, but if he did he would be unlikely to state them publicly. The strident dominance of the reductionist view forces scientists to be extremely cautious about postulating mystery. If they display anything less than fervent commitment to hidebound visions of reality, they risk having all their work dismissed by the establishment.

Luckily, I do not work as a researcher, so there is no reason for me to be overly cautious. I am willing to suggest that emergence is what we might predict if human events tended to follow propitious (i.e., synchronous) courses. I do not postulate a designing deity, and none is required to explain this behavior. But a Universe that favors spontaneous beauty and order should help us feel just a little less adrift. If creativity is a force of nature, then our nagging fear that life is meaningless, random, and essentially doomed may be wrong, and more than a little arrogant.