Today’s Post
Last week we took a first look at Teilhard’s insights into how we can begin to see Christianity as less a competitor to science and more as a step toward an integrated understanding of the human person and his place in Teilhard’s ‘noosphere’.
Last week’s three insights were taken from Teilhard’s collection of papers entitled “Human Energy”. This week we will continue looking at Teilhard’s conviction of the value of Science and Religion to each other, taking four more insights from his cornerstone book, “The Phenomenon of Man”.
Science and Religion: Getting From Here To There
In the fourth insight, Teilhard cites his belief that to live the noosphere we must understand it:
“Man is, if I have not gone astray in these pages, an object of unique value to science for two reasons.
(i) (The human person) represents, individually and socially, the most synthesized state of order which the stuff of the universe is available to us.
(ii) Collectively, he is at present the most mobile (in the process of changing) point of the stuff in course of transformation.
For these two reasons, to decipher man is essentially to try to find out how the world was made and how it ought to go on making itself. The science of man is the practical and theoretical science of hominisation. It means profound study of the past and of origins. But still more, it means constructive experimentation pursued on a continually renewed object. The program is immense and its only aim is that of the future.”
In the fifth insight, he recognizes, however, that the emergence of science was not without its seeming competition with religion. As Steven Pinker outlines in his book, “Enlightenment Now”, the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, while offering great clarification of human affairs appropriate to the ‘articulation of the noosphere’, still placed most of the ills of the noosphere at the feet of religion:
“To outward appearance, the modern world was born of an anti-religious movement: man becoming self-sufficient and reason supplanting belief. Our generation and the two that preceded it have heard little but talk of the conflict between science and faith; indeed it seemed at one moment a foregone conclusion that the former was destined to take the place of the latter.”
This sentiment was strongly evident in the earliest claims of the superiority of empiricism over that of intuition, such as that which appeared in the Enlightenment. As much as I value the insights of Steven Pinker in his book, “Enlightenment Now”, this biased viewpoint can still be found tucked into the back chapters.
Further, as Pinker undertakes the difficult subject of personal happiness in this book, he is forced to recognize the significant correlation between meaning and life satisfaction. He does not seem to understand that science does not incorporate meaning at the personal level into its wonderful insights. As Jonathan Sacks points out:
“Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean. The difference between them is fundamental and irreducible. They represent two distinct activities of the mind. Neither is dispensable. Both, together, constitute a full expression of our humanity. They are as different and as necessary as the twin hemispheres of the brain. It is in fact from the hemispherical asymmetry of the brain that the entire drama of the mutual misunderstanding and conjoint creativity of religion and science derive.”
In his sixth insight, Teilhard, goes on to envision a future relationship between science and religion in which their viewpoints capitalize on Sack’s potential synergies, and they begin to come into a synthesis in which the manifest structures of human evolution are seen as facets of a single thing:
“But, as the tension is prolonged, the conflict visibly seems to be resolved in terms of an entirely different form of equilibrium- not in elimination, nor duality, but in synthesis. After close on to two centuries of passionate struggles, neither science nor faith has succeeded in discrediting its adversary. On the contrary, it becomes obvious that neither can develop normally without the other. And the reason is simple: the same life animates both. Neither in its impetus nor its achievements can science go to its limits without becoming tinged with mysticism and charged with faith.“
And, so, Teihard summarizes his understanding of how the empiricism of science and the intuition of religion, the traditionally understood ‘left’ and ‘right’ brain perspectives that Sacks highlights, can now be seen as potentially two integrated and synthesized human enterprises. Long envisioned as the opposite sides of a deep-seated duality, Teilhard sees them as destined to bring us to a more complete understanding of ourselves and the noosphere which we inhabit.
In his seventh insight, Teilhard summarizes his belief that such synthesis is necessary for the continuation of human evolution:
“Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge– the only one that can embrace the past and future of evolution so as to contemplate, measure and fulfil them.”
As we have seen, Johan Norberg, in his book, “Progress”, implicitly agrees when he cites the three factors of freedom, innovation and relationships as essential for the continuation of the human progress (which we have seen is essentially quantification of human evolution). In showing how these three factors are critical to secular progress, he is in implicit agreement with Teilhard that “neither (science nor religion) can develop normally without the other” and Sacks that “Both, together, constitute a full expression of our humanity”.
These three factors of course are seldom cited as aspects of intuitional thinking, but are addressed in some form in every expression of religious belief.
The Next Post
This week we have completed looking at Teilhard’s seven insights that underlay his assertion that the continuation of human evolution requires a synergy between science and religion if it is to continue.
While this week we cited the belief of Jonathan Sacks on the two ‘domains of thought’ of these two enterprises, next week we will look a little more deeply into his insights of how they can better team to assure this continuation.