Abstract
Science and spirituality are often seen as two incompatible approaches to reality. This chapter is designed to start bridging this gap. We define science as a joint effort of humans to understand the world and to prevent error, using our senses and invented instruments enhancing our senses. This we call experience of the world in its material aspects. Spirituality can be understood as an effort to understand the general principles or structure of the world through inner experience. There are a few requirements for such an epistemological framework to function. One is that consciousness is understood as complementary to its material substrate, the brain, and hence as capable in principle of having its own access to reality. The other requirement is that dogmatism, both on part of science and on part of religions is put aside and spirituality is understood as a hitherto neglected area of investigation that needs to become part of science as a method of inner experience. Some historical efforts – Roger Bacon’s system in the middle ages or Franz Brentano’s attempt at the beginning of the history of scientific psychology – can serve as examples. Preconditions and open questions are discussed to pave the way for a better understanding.
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- 1.
Compare Bacon’s Opus Majus, (Bacon 1897, Vol 1, IV10. De Figura Mundi p. 152 ff, especially p. 156), where Bacon argues that if the earth were flat crews on deck of a ship should see the harbour at the same time as someone on top of the mast. Also in his “De multiplicatione specierum” (Bacon 1983, 1998, I.6, p. 68): “Sed cum mundus sit spherice figure… since the world has a round form…” Regarding Bacon see below.
- 2.
The decisive documentary evidence can be found in a compilation of works of William Harvey and his major opponent, the renowned physician-philosopher Emilio Parisano, who famously declared “there is no one in Venice who can hear a heart beat.” See Parisano (1947; V. Tactus 79, p. 101 with Harvey’s arguments and V. Contactus 77–79, p. 107 with Parisano’s counterarguments). I have translated and rendered this passage in full in Walach (2005).
- 3.
I apologize to the learned reader for this rash and obviously insufficient treatment of such ancient and complex notions. The reason is simple: to give a proper rendering would require more space than is available in an introductory chapter, and the purpose here is, after all, a clarification of notions, and not the systematic argument that the usage of these notions is or is not compatible with certain traditional streams of thought. I will provide a more systematic treatment of these issues in a forthcoming study.
- 4.
There is, of course, the difficult issue how “revelations” fit into this picture. They can be conceptualized as inner experiences objectified.
- 5.
Vol. 7, p. 218, Scientific Method: “Abduction … is the first step of scientific reasoning, as induction is the concluding step”. It is of course evident that a large part of scientific work is carried out without any of this inventive-inductive reasoning, for instance, when someone works within the bounds of given models, just exploring certain consequences or simply observing something and amassing data. While whole individual lives of scientists may be lived without any of such an inner experience of how facts fit together within a potential theoretical model, science as a whole and as a collective process has this feature of abductive reasoning as a prerequisite.
- 6.
The original Latin text as edited by Bridges reads. “Sed duplex est experientia; una est per sensus exteriores, et sic experimenta ea, quae in coelo sunt… et haec inferiora… experimur.... Et haec experientia est humana et philosophica, quantum homo potest facere secundum gratiam ei datam; sed haec experientia non sufficit homini, quia non plene certificat de corporalibus propter sui difficultatem, et de spiritualibus nihil attingit. Ergo oportet quod intellectus hominis aliter juvetur, et ideo sancti patriarchae et prophetae, qui primo dederunt scientias mundo, receperunt illuminationes interiores et non solum stabant in sensu… Nam gratia fidei illuminat multum… secundum quod Ptolemaeus dicit in Centilogio quod duplex est via deveniendi ad notitiam rerum, una per experientiam philosohiae, alia per divinam inspirationem quae longe melior est, ut dicit. Et sunt septem gradus hujus scientiae interioris, unus per illuminationes pure scientiales. Alius gradus consistit in virtutibus… p. 171 Virtus ergo clarificat mentem ut non solum moralia sed etiam scientialia homo facilius comprehendat… Tertius gradus est in septem donis Spiritus Sancti… Quartus est in beatitudinis, quas Dominus in evangeliis determinat. Quintus est in sensibus spiritualibus. Sextus est in fructibus, de quibus est pax Domini quae exsuperat omnem sensum. Septimus consistit in raptibus et modis eorum secundum quod diversi diversimode capiuntur, ut videant multa, quae non licet homini loqui. Et qui in his experientiis vel in pluribus eorum est diligenter exercitatus, ipse potest certificare se et alios non solum de spiritualibus, sed omnibus scientiis humanis.... necessaria est nobis scientia, quae experimentalis vocatur. Et volo eam explanare, non solum ut utilis est philosophiae, sed sapientiae Dei, et totius mundi regimini”.
- 7.
One could speculate why this was the case. One reason surely is that inner experiences, by their very nature, are paradoxical and difficult to explicate in language, hence misunderstandings are preprogrammed. Another obvious reason is that mystical experiences nearly in all religions threaten the dominance of the ruling class of priests and in particular threatened the teaching of the preeminence of the Church and its role as sole mediator between man and the divine. It seems that today, with political powers of the Churches practically non-existent in the Western world, this issue can become part of the public discourse again.
- 8.
This habilitation document is unpublished. A quote and the reference to the archival material can be found in Wehrle’s dissertation (1989), p. 45.
- 9.
Normally 1879, the date the experimental laboratory was founded by Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig is taken as the decisive date for the founding of scientific psychology.
- 10.
Brentano followed, by and large, Aristotle and his scholastic training, having been trained as a Catholic priest. He obviously thought that introspection would be enough to establish knowledge, thus applying the Aristotelian model of science to psychological, phenomenological data. It is understandable, why he did this; he had no other scientific models at hand. It is also understandable, why this did not work: there is no reference point in inner experience for checking against a given reality, as in scientific experience.
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Walach, H. (2011). Neuroscience, Consciousness, Spirituality – Questions, Problems and Potential Solutions: An Introductory Essay. In: Walach, H., Schmidt, S., Jonas, W. (eds) Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality. Studies in Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2079-4_1
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