Four: Earthly Paradigms
The development of the sciences since Galileo has provided us with a great diversity in ways of looking at aspects of the world. The insight that what we see depends on the way of looking is now well understood in the philosophy of science. In 1958 N.R. Hanson gave us the slogan: 'Observations are theory-laden'. The suggestion is that you can't observe something unless you have some idea what you're looking at. Several philosophers, including Einstein, have also pointed out the converse: that any number of theories can be created to fit the observations. It was beginning to dawn on interested people that science was no longer a Discovery of the Truth.
In 1962 Thomas Kuhn came up with the idea of a paradigm. A paradigm is more than just a theory: it's the whole set of background assumptions and metaphors that we use to make sense of a particular subject matter. We need a paradigm to understand what we see. Students have to be taught to see their subject in the way that their teachers see it. You need to be shown round your first electron microscope image. The ultrasound scan, with which pregnant women are now so familiar, has to be pointed out in detail. If the image isn't exactly what you're looking for, it can be awkward to find it. (As an example, I had a scan, while I was four months pregnant, to look at my kidneys; the operator, who hadn't seen a pregnancy on the scanner before, had to navigate round this unfamiliar entity and found it hard to interpret the image.)
The truth of anything is relative to the paradigm, which is not discovered but created by the observers. This means that no scientist ever proved anything. It seemed like a big problem, and philosophers like Popper were deeply bothered by it. Now, three decades on, we're getting used to it and it really isn't so bad after all. The Newtonian paradigm may have been superseded at the leading edge, but it's still jolly useful in a snooker game. Meanwhile the new insights into the patterns of fractal geometry have enabled us to see something new and wonderful in something that was under our noses all the time - but ignored because it didn't fit into the old mathematical models - things like the dripping of a tap, or the onset of turbulence, or the way a snowflake develops.
To the extent that a paradigm works, it's an appropriate way of looking. It's when we call it Truth that we come unstuck. The one insight that has really brought this home to the scientific temperament is the fact that in theoretical physics there isn't even a consensus among those in the field as to how exactly we are to make sense of the results. This is both alarming and exhilarating: alarming because we are beginning to realise that one of our anchors, the idea that things happen because other things have happened, didn't touch bedrock after all. Exhilarating for this very same reason: we've been doing without that anchor all along without knowing it.
The idea of a paradigm is itself having to change. The new concept of a paradigm in physics is not a model which explains the results, but an attitude to the results. In a word, mystery is back, and it's thanks to science.
Paradigm shifts and the correspondence principle
In the scientific endeavour, when a paradigm metaphor is pushed too far, a new metaphor is eventually brought in to take its place. The choice of new paradigm is not arbitrary. It is heavily circumscribed by a principle first suggested by Niels Bohr, which he called the Correspondence Principle. The correspondence principle ensures that any new scientific paradigm takes account of all the results obtained by its predecessors. The 'upgrade' from Newtonian mechanics to quantum theory is a clear case in point: on everyday scales the quantum theory gives the Newtonian results.
It is the correspondence principle that really distinguishes what counts as a science from what does not. There is correspondence between the physics of atoms and the bottom end of chemistry: chemical effects are explained in terms of what atoms do with one another's electrons, for example. In this sense, chemistry can be said to depend on physics, and biology on chemistry, and so on. (Hence the idea that finishing physics will give us a Theory of Everything.)
So a true scientific paradigm shift is one that accords with the correspondence principle. Any old new metaphor won't do.
Nevertheless, the idea of a paradigm shift can itself be used metaphorically, to refer to any profound change of outlook. Context tells us well enough whether the subject under discussion counts as a science or not.
Paradigm spaces
The idea of a 'paradigm space' is crucial to the way out of our predicament. A space is a mathematical concept, and can have any number of dimensions. One three-dimensional space we all know is the one where we locate physical objects: front-back, right-left and up-down. Given a suitable reference we can locate anything on this space. Exactly where you put zero is entirely arbitrary; the point is that three co-ordinates are all you need to locate something. If you want to talk about change over time, you can add Time as a fourth, and call your space the space-time continuum.
Now, imagine we want to add some more details than just the location of something in space-time. You might want to say what colour it is, how mellow it feels, how heavy it is, how useful it is. Each of these new 'variables' introduces another dimension to the discussion, corresponding to a new set of possibilities.
For a scientific paradigm space, each dimension has to be measurable in a way that remains in accordance with the correspondence principle - that is, in a way that is consistent with what has gone before. The weight (or mass) of something can be measured; so can temperature, electrical conductivity, viscosity, and any number of other things the curious soul might want to know.
Some variables, like hardness, are more awkward. You can put things in order of hardness perfectly objectively, by seeing which scratches which, but you can't say precisely how much harder one thing is than another. Nevertheless, a scale has been devised, called the Mohs scale after the German mineralogist who invented it, whereby ten different substances, ranging from talc to diamond, provide the reference points.
Mellowness and usefulness, of course, are not what anyone would call scientific concepts. They involve values and so they can't even be put in order in a way that everyone could agree upon. You might find the atmosphere in a place tranquil and agreeable, where I might feel really uncomfortable there. Usefulness is also entirely situation-dependent, as a time-lapse film of an accessible skip will show. Nevertheless, in any particular situation, some things are more useful than others, and the concept makes sense to everyone. Because of this, it can be loosely treated as a dimension in a space.
So we can step outside the correspondence principle to include our values, and with a little arm-waving we can make ourselves understood. It's not scientific, but we don't mind that as long as all the signs are that communication has taken place.
In summary, there are two points here about spaces. One is that even within science, complete with correspondence principle, the paradigm space settled upon is subject to shifts of a quite unforeseeable nature, and is no longer the bedrock we thought it was. The second point is that this idea of a space is quite easily applicable to vague ideas that no one would call scientific.
Where we used to want to know which was the Right Way of Looking, we now realise that we've got any number of spaces to choose from at any one time. This is a kind of freedom never before suspected. It's beginning to look as if it's all going to be worth the pain and bafflement of the original predicament.
Perspective Relativity
There's a glimpse here of a handle on the idea that somehow we make, or choose, our own reality. Everything we see, we see through a way of looking which we make up as we go along. This is not a new idea, but it is becoming less of a threat to the very foundations of our being. There are all sorts of ways of looking at the whole Universe, let alone bits of it.
For instance: we can see the whole universe in terms of cycles - from tiny vibrations within atoms to the rotation of galaxies, with the seasons of the year, the alternations of day and night, breathing in and out, right to left in politics, life to death to new life, and so on, in between. Or we could choose to see a great cosmic battle between Good and Evil, or the more subtle and delicate interaction between Yin and Yang. We can cover everything with the idea of systems within systems, parts within wholes, or the delightful combination of the butterfly effect and emergent self-regulation. We can even put the whole universe in people's minds, and see reality in terms of quality of awareness. And none of these Universes precludes any of the others. We can switch from one to another any time we like. The distinctions we make in the world around us at any particular time depend only on things like what we want to do next.
The fact is, we are all constantly shifting from one space to another according to what we happen to be looking at and why. We build up a whole collection of ways of looking as we go through life. So it's worth exploring how these ways of looking relate to one another. I have called this idea Perspective Relativity.
But first, a word of reassurance about truth.
Ordinary run-of-the-mill truth
If one way of looking doesn't preclude others, there might be some alarm that this perspective relativity is leading to the idea that no-one is ever mistaken. If truth is relative to the way of looking, and values are relative to this unstable truth, then it looks like we have a licence to misbehave and then tell our victims that it's their problem.
Not so. It is indeed possible to be mistaken, and there are all sorts of different kinds of mistake: unwarranted generalisations, illusions, overlooking of relevant details, mistaken identity, self-deception and wishful thinking are just some examples. Perspective relativity even provides ways of pointing to where the mistake is. For instance: snow is white. Yes indeed. But dirty snow is grey or brown. Photographs of ski resorts suggest snow is blue in the shade. My goggles show it to be pink, or green when I take them off. And what about the rainbow sparkles in the sun? A snowflake under a microscope is transparent. And so on. But snow is still white, as far as it goes.
Ordinary language serves an infinity of ways of looking, and the truth or falsehood of something you say will depend on which one, out of that infinity, you mean. This, again, is quite unproblematic - most of the time we know exactly what someone is talking about. Clues to the way of looking are usually there in the context, the body language, the tone of voice or whatever. If you're still baffled, it's perfectly respectable to say so.
What this all boils down to is that it isn't possible to say exactly what you mean and nothing but what you mean. There is no such thing as literal meaning. If Absolute Truth could be spoken, it would take forever. Like the search for enlightenment, it's nice when you stop. Ordinary truths, by contrast, can be and are communicated, (and by the same token, so can lies).
Different spaces
The idea of a paradigm space in science has opened up the principle of perspective relativity, where two paradigms applied to the same 'thing' might see a totally different set of phenomena. The world of molecules and the world of systems are in the same place, but not in the same space.
Not all ways of looking are as explicitly mapped out as those of science. Nevertheless, as mentioned before, this idea of a space can apply just as well to any collection of interrelated concepts. We can have 'washing-up space', which is the world of greasy/squeaky, intact/chipped, suds/rinsing, what to do with the leftovers, room to put things down, a place to dry the tea-towels, yes indeed, a riveting topic, shared by many people, which can rise to the level of chore/pleasure, efficient/laid-back, and the ubiquitous dichotomy of perfection and completeness. This rich and satisfying space can hardly be dignified by the term 'paradigm', because of the correspondence principle, so I shall just call it a perspective space.
A perspective space is a map of possibilities. Modern art, or the taste of wine, or a piece of precision engineering, are in their own perspective spaces which can be as lofty and rarefied as any at the leading edge of science. They also need training to appreciate, and have developed their own arcane terminologies.
Now, for the purpose of this project it would be useful to isolate two kinds of difference between perspective spaces. I'll call them partial compatibility, and incompatibility. (Total compatibility would mean the spaces were the same).
Two spaces are (partially) compatible if it makes sense to talk about 'the same thing' in both. If not, they're incompatible.
For instance, think of your favourite garden plant. Does it have what garden designers call 'year-round interest', or just a brief moment of glory? Does it like an open position or some shelter? Will it tolerate shade? Does it like acid or alkaline, light or heavy, wet or dry soil? Is it invasive? And so on. A botanist could bring technical considerations about the structure of the plant, which might be quite unknown to the gardener. A landscape designer planting a public place would consider such factors as nickability and robustness. An artist might enjoy the play of light on the leaves, a hydrodynamicist might consider the flow of water through the plant, a shivering person might consider its potential for firewood, an ecologist might look at how it interacts with its neighbours, insects and diseases, and so on. All these spaces are partially compatible, because everyone agrees that they are talking about the same thing - in this case, that particular plant. Compatible spaces are held together by a loose version of the correspondence principle. If there's a disagreement, there are ways of finding out who's right.
By contrast, two spaces are incompatible if there is no way at all that they hook together. Intuitively, it looks as though consciousness and brain function might be a case in point. There's the brain, with its neural pathways and chemical transmitters, and there's consciousness: memories, sensations and a strong sense of being someone, something other than my brain and body. In particular, there is the sense that I do things, and things are done to me, which are not accessible to the physician. Broken bones from sticks and stones are of a quite different nature from the hurt I feel from unkind words. The theories of the mind behind the 'talking therapies' take the brain for granted; it doesn't seem problematic that the brain can function perfectly well while the mind needs healing.
All the perspectives on the plant we contemplated above can be referred back to physics. Even ecology and self-organisation have, with a little help from chaos and complexity theories, turned out to be compatible with physics. On the whole we don't even need to appeal to the weirdness of quantum theory to be quite happy with the idea that physical laws aren't flouted when a system (such as an earthworm, a honeysuckle or a rainforest) follows its own nature. Consciousness, however, remains problematic. Consciousness seems somehow to interfere with nature; the whole world of judgment, of what matters to us, has taken over from natural selection as the underlying mechanism of our evolution.
The question here is: is this a case of incompatible spaces or not? We intuitively assume that it is, and this leads to the kind of remark we hear a lot these days, to the effect that we are 'playing God'. The apparent implication is that we are in some sense competing with the Divine, and that that is a Bad Thing because the Divine is Good. Meanwhile, well away from theological considerations, the problem of consciousness remains the most intractable philosophical conundrum that we have.
Now, if it should turn out that the mind and the brain are not in incompatible spaces after all (and our intuition also tells us that they are intimately linked) both the theological and philosophical problems change radically.
We established early on in this project that the mind is a temporal entity, and that values and choices cannot exist in eternity. Now, you can poke at my brain and I will report sensations or memories specific to that particular place to poke. This passive aspect of the mind is, I think, quite certainly closer to the physical world than to the Divine. The nature of the link remains what David Chalmers has called 'the hard problem', the underlying assumption being that the link is there. Experiences happen according to events in the brain. And, wonder of wonders, Prozac really works: as so many people will tell you, it doesn't change you any more than putting fertiliser in the soil changes your plants, but it definitely, without a doubt, reduces a serious obstacle to personal development if it is used properly.
In the consciousness debate, the hard problem is contrasted with the 'easy' problems of mapping pathways from, say, the eye to the cortex, or explaining the function of the hindbrain in producing emotions. In other words, the 'poke-here-and-get-that-result' projects, though valuable in themselves, do not impinge on the philosophical problem of consciousness. We still can't see how it is possible that the mind can lead a life of its own and at the same time be so intimately linked to the physical brain which is itself, by extension, interconnected ('hard-wired') with the whole of the physical world. It is as if we are, each of us, dragging the entire universe along every time we have a conscious thought, and not only that, but everyone else is also dragging the same universe along a quite distinct path at the same time.
By and large, theories of the mind involve metaphors taken from physical science, in particular the idea of bits of the mind interacting with other bits. There are plenty of theoretical frameworks in psychology and related disciplines, which are supposedly partially compatible with one another. There are as many models, formal and informal, of the mind and of what it's like to be human, as there are people who think about it. 'Evidence' must be vague, owing to the nature of the subject matter, but some theories strike a chord and catch on, and their terminology enters the language in the same sort of way that much of the terminology of physical science has. As with the physical sciences and with the perspective spaces of everyday life, we are free to choose the way of looking which suits the situation, since there is no such thing as the One True Perspective.
Spaces and the Eternal
It's time to take note of exactly why statements about the spiritual life can't dovetail at all with any of our temporal discoveries. If someone says that 'Christianity is true', or that 'there is a God', the scientific temperament goes back into its shell and whimpers.
We've seen that there are plenty of spaces that are non-scientific and yet quite clearly understood by people as they negotiate their own worlds. We've also seen that the scientific temperament has no problem with that. It's not a just a matter of spiritual talk being unscientific. So, where is the problem? Is it a case of incompatible spaces? Some people do think that this is where the problem is: that talk of the Divine is in a space incompatible with any of our temporal ways of looking.
The answer, not to put too fine a point on it, is no. The Eternal is not in a space at all. The idea of a space assumes that things could be otherwise; a perspective space is a map of possibilities. For the Absolute there are no possibilities; there is no way things could be otherwise. It's no wonder that those-who-know go on about stilling the mind.
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Introduction
1: Is anything wrong?
2: Values and possibilities
3: Physical Worlds
4: Earthly Paradigms (Top of page)
5: Mind, Body and Brain
6: Transcendence and Consciousness
