The Reenchantment of the World (21 page)

any
culture "the phenomenal world arises from the relationship between
a conscious and an unconscious and that evolution is the story of the
changes that relationship has undergone and is undergoing." Denying that
the unconscious plays a role in our conceptualization of reality may
be a strange way of relating to it, but it is still a way of relating,
and it does not erase tacit knowing. Modern textbooks still project the
image of a formally applied "scientific method," a method in which any
notion of participating consciousness would be tantamount to heresy. Yet
the disparity between official image and actual practice is enormous;
and as science has perhaps dimly realized, the excommunication of the
heresy would bring down the rest of the church in its wake.

 

 

The dimensions of this paradox are thrown into sharp relief when we
reflect on the unexpected resurfacing of participating consciousness
in modern physics in the 1920s. I am referring to the emergence of
quantum mechanics, whose theoretical basis involves a full-scale break
with the epistemology of Western science. Since the appearance of
quantum mechanics is analogous to Ptolemaic astronomy suddenly finding
Copernicus in its camp, we should not be surprised that the scientific
establishment has managed to ignore the embarrassing intruder for more
than five decades. There is, nevertheless, a voluminous literature on
the subject, much too extensive to discuss at length here. Instead,
I wish to summarize briefly the philosophical implications that can and
have been drawn from this branch of physics.12

 

 

Two concepts are absolutely essential to the epistemology of classical
(including Einsteinian) physics. The first is the notion that all reality
is ultimately describable in terms of matter and motion; that the position
of material particles, and their momentum (mass times velocity), is the
basic reality of the phenomenal world. The second point is that ours is
a nonparticipating consciousness: the phenomena of the world remain the
same whether or not we are present to observe them; our minds in no way
alter that bedrock reality. The first of these concepts is the basis of
strict causality, or determinism, and it was perhaps best expressed by
the French mathematician Pierre Simon de Laplace in 1812. Our physics
is such, he said, that if it were possible to know the position and
momentum of all the particles in the universe at any one time, we could
then calculate their position and momentum at any other time, past or
future. The second concept, the conviction that the experimenter is not
part of his experiment, affirms the materialism of the first point, and
also guarantees that experiments are formally replicable. If, for example,
a scientist claimed that by simply concentrating on cubes (e.g., dice)
that have been mechanically dropped down a chute, he could influence
their spatial pattern, and if his claim turned out to be valid, he would
not only have disproved the content of this aspect of physics, he would
have destroyed the theoretical basis of physics itself. Not only would
consciousness become part of the world "out there," returning our science
to some sort of alchemical status, but the premise of predictability
would be (at least theoretically) invalidated.

 

 

The major philosophical implication of quantum mechanics is that there
is no such thing as an independent observer. One of its founders,
Werner Heisenberg, summarized this point in popular form in 1927 when
he formulated his Uncertainty Principle. Imagine, he said, a microscope
powerful enough to observe an atomic particle, such as an electron. We
shine light down the instrument to enable observation, only to discover
that the light possesses enough energy to knock the electron out of
position. We can never see that particular electron, for the experiment
itself alters its own results. Our consciousness, our behavior, becomes
part of the experiment, and there is no clear boundary here between
subject and object. We are sensuous participants in the very world we
seek to describe.

 

 

In more technical terms, Heisenberg had discovered that position and
momentum are complementary entities. One can determine the exact position
of a particle only if one abandons the attempt to know anything about
its motion (velocity), and vice versa. This discovery means that the
Laplacian program is a delusion. Atomic or subatomic particles cannot be
located precisely in space and time; and in an epistemology that equates
the real with the material, the definition of the word "real" is suddenly
open to question. Note that the Uncertainty Principle does
not
refer
to a margin of error, which is present in every scientific experiment,
and which reflects the accuracy of the verification of the prediction
made. Instead, Heisenberg is talking about a probability that enters
into the very definition of the state of the physical system. He says,
in effect, that consciousness is part of the measurement and therefore
reality (as it has been defined in the West for nearly four hundred years)
is inherently blurry, or indeterminate.13 The "change in the concept of
reality manifesting itself in quantum theory," wrote Heisenberg in 1958,
"is not simply a continuation of the past; it seems to be a real break
in the structure of modern science." The so-called probability wave of
quantum mechanics, he continued, "was a quantitative version of the
old concept of 'potentia' in Aristotelian philosophy. It introduced
something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the
actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle
between possibility and reality." The break, of course, lies in the
subject/object distinction itself; the "strange kind of physical reality"
is consciousness, which we now see has material consequences. "What we
observe," said Heisenberg, "is not nature in itself but nature exposed
to our method of questioning." This was precisely Polanyi's point about
tacit knowing. The great irony of quantum mechanics is that in the classic
fashion of 'yin' finally turning into 'yang,' the Cartesian attempt to
find the ultimate material entity, thereby "explaining" reality and ruling
out subjectivity once and for all, resulted in discoveries that mocked
Cartesian assumptions and established subjectivity as the cornerstone of
"objective" knowledge.14

 

 

The enormous resistance of scientists to the philosophical implications of
quantum mechanics is fully understandable, for once these implications
are fully accepted, it becomes unclear just what is involved in
"doing science." Either we are back to Aristotle's 'potentia' (or
the alchemical alembic), or we sit in a crowded stadium watching
spoon-bending demonstrations by charlatans (but
are
they? That's
the point!). Apparently, falling cubes can be influenced by mental
concentration, and there is no way such information can be accommodated
within the Cartesian paradigm.15 Alternatively, quantum mechanics points
to Buddhism and mysticism in its general scheme of the world, something
first noted by Joseph Needham in "Science and Civilization in China," and
since elaborated upon by a number of writers.16 The animism implicit in
quantum mechanics has been explored
mathematically
by the physicist Evan
Harris Walker, who argues that every particle in the universe possesses
consciousness.17 At the very least, we are forced to conclude that
the "world" is not independent of "us." It is not composed of building
blocks of matter, and indeed, exactly what matter is has become highly
problematical. Everything, it seems, is related to everything else. The
"lesson of modern physics is that the subject (perceiving apparatus)
and object (the reality measured) form one seamless whole."18 'Panta
rhei,' said Heraclitus; everything flows, only process is real.

 

 

Quantum mechanics thus affords us a glimpse of a new participating
consciousness, one that is not a simple reversion to naive animism. As we
consider the implications of quantum mechanics, it becomes quite clear
that the most significant alteration of our scientific world view would
stem from the deliberate inclusion in our scientific thinking of the
awareness that we participate reality. Historically, we have been limited
to a choice of two possibilities. One either asserted the existence of
a disembodied intellect, as we have done since 1600 A.D.; or one argued
(contrary to what we manifestly perceive with our present consciousness)
that stones, houses, furniture, clouds, this book and the ink in it are
alive, possess an indwelling spirit -- as men and women did believe prior
to the Scientific Revolution. From what has been said above it should
be clear that no matter how long the dominant culture continues to hold
on to the first choice, that choice has no philosophical future. Both
the discoveries of quantum mechanics and the Polanyi/Barfield analysis
demonstrate that the totality of human consciousness, including tacit
knowing and the information stored in the unconscious, is a significant
factor in our perception and construction of reality. Like our X-ray
student or ornithologist, we participate that reality subliminally in the
learning process, and it later hardens into formulas that we then figurate
as abstract entities. There is no need to make an external mystery out
of this process, but it is an internal mystery, at least at this point
in our understanding of the workings of the human mind. We have only
the vaguest notion of how the conscious/unconscious interface operates,
or how it brings us to conclusions about "reality." But since this thing,
this alleged neuronal behavior pattern, operates partly in nonempirical
ways (e.g., dreams, body knowledge), we are forced to conclude that the
empirical/rational/mechanical view of nature, by denying nonempirical
reality even while it depends on it, limits itself to descriptions
of alpha-thoughts and conscious constructs. Such a view is thus both
self-contradictory and erroneous. It must be supplemented so as to
include our unconscious, to include nonempirical reality and the type of
dialectical reasoning discussed in Chapter 3. But "supplemented" suggests
the unintegrated addition of a lesser item and is thus a potentially
misleading word. Perhaps the relationship I am suggesting can best be
expressed by the metaphor of a nucleus embedded in a cell. The ego is
embedded in a larger consciousness in which we partialpate, and acts
as the organizer of life, and as in the cell, the proper relationship
between the two modalities is osmotic. Modern science, on the other hand,
identifies ego-knowledge with the whole of knowing; it tries to make
that osmotic membrane rigid and impermeable. As a result, this type of
consciousness begins to suffocate and die.

 

 

As it turns out, a number of thinkers are beginning to argue that the
intellect, or conscious mind, is a subsystem of a larger system that
we might call Mind with a capital M. This Mind is in fact the "strange
kind of physical reality" of which Heisenberg spoke (above), suspended
between possibility and reality. As Gregory Bateson has put it:

 

 

The individual mind is immanent but not only in the body. It
is immanent also in the pathways and messages outside the body;
and there is a larger Mind of which the individual mind is only a
subsystem. This larger Mind is comparable to God and is perhaps what
some people mean by "God," but it is still immanent in the total
interconnected social system and planetary ecology.19

 

 

There is no "transcendance" in this conceptual schema; there is no "God"
present in the usual sense of the term. It is not 'mana' that alters (or
permeates) matter, but the human unconscious, or more comprehensively,
Mind. There are no spirits out there within the rocks or trees, but
neither is my relationship to those "objects" one of a disembodied
intellect confronting inert items. My relationship to those "objects"
is systemic, ecological in the broadeat sense. The reality lies in
my relationship with them. Just as two lovers create a relationship
that is itself a particular entity (process), so does my working at the
typewriter in front of me constitute an entity (process) that is larger
than either Berman or Olympia Portable. My typewriter is not alive,
there is no original participation here, but I am engaged with it in a
process -- writing this book, in fact -- which is its own reality, and
which is larger than either myself or the typewriter. The machine and I
form a system so long as I engage its use or attend to its existence. As
a result, the common perception of my skin as a sharp boundary between
myself and the rest of the world begins to weaken, but without my becoming
a schizophrenic or a preconscious infant.20 A science that attends to
such relationships rather than to so-called discrete entities would be
a science of what has been called "participant observation," and it
is this type of holistic thinking which might hold the key to future
human evolution. This approach might qualify, in Ferenczi's words, as an
"animism no longer anthropomorphic."

 

 

It should be clear that there is an enormous similarity between what
Bateson is suggesting and the view of nature which emerges from quantum
mechanics. Both state that it is inherent in the configuration of the
relationship between ourselves and nature (to use the misleading language
of Cartesian dichotomy) that we can never get more than a partial
description of reality, or even of our own minds. Quantum mechanics
implies that nature is
fundamentally
indeterministic, that elementary
particles are
ontologically
always in partially defined states.21
From this point of view, a direct correlation can be drawn between the
mind/body dichotomy and the Freudian program of attempting to render the
unconscious conscious. Bateson underlies the impossibility of what Freud
wanted to do when he compares it to the attempt to construct "a television
set which would report upon its screen