The Regrettable Death of the Mystical Scientist and the Scientific Mystic: Or why I’ve Decided to Become an Alchemist.
The mystic and the scientist have been having rather a hard time communicating recently. Wittgenstein would say that the mystic and the scientist are playing two different language games, which have very different rules. The words they use may look the same and sound the same, but carry entirely different meanings, and so no true communication, or resolution of arguments, is possible. Basically, when a mystic and a scientist argue, one is playing golf, and one is playing rugby. They can’t even agree on what the word “ball” refers to, and they certainly can’t agree on who has won the game. In fact it’s worse than that; one is flying a kite, and one is playing billiards. And so the scientist and the mystic often have trouble even recognising that what the other person is doing is a legitimate game.
Now, I’m very fond of both games, and I think each is able to get at truths which are unavailable to the other. They are simply very different ways of encountering reality; and they give you very different results, which are valid in their own realms. (And yes, a lot of mystical thought and writing is nonsense; and yes a lot of scientific thought and writing is nonsense. However, the best of both contain profound truths.)
But there is a tendency for each to dismiss the other, and the other’s results, out of hand. And the resultant gap which has opened up between the mystic and the scientist is not good for either.
If we go back a few hundred years, there was no such gap. Newton was both a mystic and a scientist. Much of his early work was on alchemy.
But when I read scientific websites, or scientific papers now (as I often do, when researching my fiction), I frequently find myself frustrated by the way the scientists are unable to make sense of their data (especially in areas like consciousness research), because they have no knowledge of the other tools which should take over at the point where their experiment ends; they have no knowledge of the enormous amount of practical, subjective work on consciousness done by, say, Zen buddhists, or the many religions which use psychedelic drugs. And when I read mystical and spiritual books or websites, I am often intensely frustrated by the writer’s lack of knowledge of physics or neuroscience, knowledge which would be immensely helpful in clarifying what they are trying to say. The scientist and the mystic seem to me to be struggling to solve problems which would be much easier to solve if each had access to the trove of data held by the other.
So I’ve decided to bridge that gap, and become an alchemist. (Rather in the spirit that Alan Moore decided, on his 40th birthday, to become a magician; it’s cheaper than buying a midlife-crisis red Ferrari, and it makes life more interesting.) No, I’m not going to try to turn lead into gold (physicists have already done that). I’m going to see if I can synthesise mysticism and science; find a way to explain them to each other, apply their insights to each other; and see what happens.
Oh, and I’ll also apply insights from particular areas of science to problems in other areas, to see if anything interesting happens. Scientific problems have, traditionally, often been solved by insights from scientists, or civilians, working in other fields; but the increasingly specialised nature of science means this doesn’t happen as often as it should.
I plan to write an irregular series of posts, over the next year or two, with the results of my inquiries. Some might end up as blog posts, some might be newspaper or magazine articles, but I will also post them all in this new Adventures in Alchemy publication, to make them easier to find. (Just hit Follow, and you’ll hear about them as they arrive.) You can talk to me about this here, or on Twitter.
And yes, I’m half-joking when I say I’m becoming an alchemist. (But only half joking.) It’s a useful word, which carries less baggage than magician, say. People have strong opinions about magicians, and mystics, and scientists. Most people don’t have a strong bias either way about alchemists. (Most people don’t even know what they are.) And alchemy is nicely situated between the spiritual/mystical/subjective and scientific/materialist/objective traditions…
OK. (Picks up microscope and gong.) I shall report back later.
