A Calling for the Art of Science
Science is a literary work. But is it a mystery or a tragedy?
I have been working on a book for my grandchildren to give them my perspective on what I have found to be the most important topics in my life, and one of them is the relationship between knowledge and wisdom. I think I have found a good way to frame it by describing knowledge as “the frame itself” and wisdom as that which emerges from the picture within the frame. But in order to get the wisdom, you have to step back and look at the whole picture from a point that is separate from the plane of the “framed picture”. The picture itself represents meaning as assigned to each of the bits of information that make up knowledge. But since the same meaning can be assigned to any number of different symbols, a single symbol only represents meaning, not the true essence of meaning. Wisdom is like a holographic image that emerges out of the plane when you move it and look at it from different perspectives.
The only way to truly “know the meaning” is to experience the event that defined the symbol. That is simple when you’re talking about a single word assigned to a single event, but it gets more difficult for whole sentences and paragraphs and it’s impossible to experience a whole story that someone else tells you. However, if you hear the same story told from many different perspectives, then you begin to get a feel for the experience as it actually happened without bias from a single storyteller. Wisdom gives you a feel for the underlying meaning of the story.
Let’s look at that from a slightly different angle. Knowledge is what we use to express an experience (like running or observing e.g. a red ball) using abstractions — the different words, symbols, icons or even pictures — most of which were invented by our ancestors in different cultures to represent the same experience. They are all different symbols to express the same “thing” but that “thing” is an experience so it is not actually a “thing”. It’s that “deeper understanding” that you get from direct experience.
A fisherman, for example has knowledge focused on what he calls fishing. He knows how to fish and since he actually does it, he “steps back” and looks at his knowledge from different perspectives (as he uses it). So he uses knowledge to repeat the experience and uses experience to refine his knowledge. Eventually, he knows that he knows and that gives him an elevated feeling of knowing. And since that is his life, he gains wisdom about life in general that can be applied as metaphors to many other aspects of life. It also gives him a feel for what to expect in the future if he ignores the signs of nature.
In contrast, a professor who knows the science of oceanography and the engineering aspects of all sorts of fishing vessels and machinery has much more knowledge, but may have never actually been fishing. So he may seem to be much smarter and more impressive than the humble fisherman, but the experience of actually fishing day in and day out gives the fisherman a deeper understanding of what he (the fisherman) calls fishing. On the other hand, the professor has the knowledge and tools that would be required to significantly improve technology, which could then be used to increase the volume of fish to feed more than a single family or town. Again, his knowledge is impressive, but it’s only useful if it is actually needed, e.g. to support life on a grander scale. When it finally is needed, then he demonstrates the wisdom of having foreseen the need for more than what the humble fisherman could provide. He might say, “Now that’s what I call fishing,” and dismiss the fisherman.
As a scientist, I am often humbled by the wisdom of the “humble fisherman”, farmer, mechanic, artist, musician, etc. The lesson that I want my grandchildren to get from this is that knowledge is important, but only as a tool that we can use to frame meaning for the sake of growing wisdom. When I said that knowledge is the frame that frames the picture, you may have imagined a single picture inside of a single frame, but that’s just the “big picture.” That picture is made up of a bazillion quantum bits, each one having its own frame. Those bits interact with each other in different ways, like the water waves that the fisherman experiences. They are all made out of the same “droplets” or “quanta”, but the interactions (i.e. the way we look at them and use them) make them appear to have different characteristics, like different states, shapes, sounds and colors. Characteristics are what we can scale (quantify) and give new names. In other words, when we measure them they become new frames that we catalog and commit to our collective memory. Data points — what actually happened in each measurement — as opposed to theories, models or interpretations, represent truth in science.
Science involves a bazillion data points that we collect and record for reference. It has to be analyzed or looked at from many different perspectives in order to reveal its meaning. We often call data that we collect in an experiment an “endpoint”, but it is more like a juncture, which is actually a junction — a new beginning rather than an endpoint. It adds to knowledge that provides a relatively solid “framework” that hinges on the data points. But until it is needed, each frame is flat and the framework lattice as a whole is empty. Many scientists spend their career working on the framework and never care to venture beyond their domain. Others suddenly find themselves “outside the box” when they recognize patterns in their data that they had experienced in other aspects of life. They realize that one serves as a metaphor for the other and they gain a new perspective to view the framework and “see” the meaning as it emerges. That happened to me in a big way.
As a young adult I discovered that more knowledge made me feel secure about myself (my small yet growing perspective on reality), so I collected as much as I could in every area that I could grasp. I was fortunate in that I was exposed to and had respect for the humanities as well as science. Science gave me a strong framework to climb, but humanities gave me a feel for why they needed to be built. The mythological “call to adventure” taught me that I needed to have the courage to challenge the unknown as well as the known, to become an “honorable knight” and a “seeker of truth”: “truth” being metaphorically represented as the “Holy Grail”. I didn’t need to be rebellions or a “defender of the faith”, thanks to a loving mother and teachers who cared about truth rather than faith. One teacher, Joseph Campbell, taught me that the rebellious feelings inside me were messages from a part of me that science doesn’t recognize. He called it “The hero with a thousand faces”.
I actually learned about the hero’s journey after being “called to adventure” myself. I experienced a state of awareness that transcends our normal domain of 3D space and 1D time. It was the most profound way that one can “step outside of the box” because I was literally outside of my body and could see my “self” as a sphere of event-images. It was an ultimate experience of understanding life by looking at it in reflection. I had been growing my awareness for 32 years and suddenly I was flipped around and reflecting on it as a whole, which was more than the sum of its parts. It seemed to be much more than the events I had collected in this lifetime and it gave me a new perspective on the meaning of time. Ever since (I’m 59 now) I have considered “time” as the inward-outward perspective of the same expanding sphere of consciousness, filled with perpetual relative motion that we perceive as 3D reality.
Although some physicists seem to get it, many are still trapped in the warped relativistic perspective of fragmented reality. Jim Baggott explained in “Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth” (2013) that they are defending the “authorized version” of reality as measured rather than allowing reality as it is to reveal itself. I submit that the problem with science is a severe shortage of humanities. Humanities teach us the art of science. Geometric models for example are a form of art that allows us to draw relational diagrams. But literary tragedies teach us to avoid the tragic error of mistaking the map for the territory — a common problem with interpreting scientific data. Maps, such as space-time diagrams, are framed with scales and drawn with symbols, and it must be understood that they are 2D representations of a deeper movement. You already know it as the kind of “movement” experienced as a musical sonata or the way an artist’s rendition of an experience moves you. That’s the “humanity” part of it that science is missing. Humanities as subjects of learning are needed to fill in the framework of science with higher dimensional images of truth about the human condition.
Unfortunately, if the public school budget is any indication, far too much emphasis is being placed on increasing science, technology, engineering and math through STEM initiatives. This bias for STEM programs over the humanities was expressed in a 2013 article: according to a report on the woeful state of the humanities released by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, “the government pays for well over 50 percent of the scientific research done in universities, and close to 75 percent in some disciplines. Meanwhile, the humanities are fronting all but 20 percent of their own costs.” (From https://newrepublic.com/article/114608/stem-funding-dwarfs-humanities-only-one-crisis). More recent articles express the same concern, like “Eliminating The Humanities Decimates Every Student’s Education” at https://www.forbes.com/sites/willarddix/2018/03/28/eliminating-the-humanities-decimates-every-students-education/#5be759695803
If the symbols and relationships of science tell a story, (which they do) then it’s this: the dismissal of humanities will turn the wondrous mystery of life for this generation of humanity into a tragedy if the “seekers of truth” don’t learn to express themselves loud and clear in peace and love. As a former US Navy submariner, and Medical Physicist in Radiation Oncology at a Naval Medical Center who has seen the “framework” from both inside and outside the box, I have been deeply moved by the insanity of war and the suffering of medical patients. And the wisdom that emerged out of my life experience is that the next step in evolution is an awakening of the collective consciousness as a complete mind. In the words of Leonardo da Vinci,
To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.
The art of science is a process of orchestrating scientific discoveries in a way that raises you up to a higher perspective of truth. I named it a “holomorphic process” because “holomorphosis” includes holotropic — the concept of wholeness that turns on its own center like a pirouette or a musical stanza (coined by Stanislav Grof in his book The Holotropic Mind)— and metamorphosis to describe how the details of knowledge transform into wisdom as “the hero’s journey”. I consider this perspective to be very important for our continued evolution because it provides a model for us to see how the holographic (or holomorphic) images in the mind can take on a life of their own as archetypes. We gain insight to see that everything is a symbolic (artistic) expression and to understand how scientific (logical) “fish” must transform into (psychological) “food” for our expanding awareness, which our ancestors named “Spirit”.
