Science and the Evolution of Consciousness
Evolutionary biology has little to say about human consciousness, except for an occasional speculation about the relative size of the brain cavity in the human skull and what this might signify. A study of fossils simply cannot yield information about the kind of consciousness human beings experienced in the distant past. Yet one of the foundations of the modern scientific world view is the questionable assumption that human consciousness, since its first appearance on the evolutionary stage, has not in itself evolved in any really significant manner; it has simply increased, resulting in a growth in intelligence, but not in qualitatively different experiences. Both now and in the past, humanity is seen as confronting an external world that exists independently of any thoughts we may entertain about it.

Owen Barfield paints a very different picture; he describes an earlier, qualitatively different kind of consciousness—what he calls “original participation”—that all of humanity once shared. Original participation was the source of myth, legend, and symbol, and in these products of ancient cultures its character is still manifest to those who take the time to really look. Barfield postulates an intensely pictorial consciousness, much less self-aware than ours, but more deeply in touch with nature's inner life. It was a consciousness that yielded thoughts about the world that were, in their own way, perfectly valid, but that reflected realities which we no longer experience. He also suggests that this ancient participatory consciousness will return in the future, in an evolved and self-aware form, as “final participation,” and that this evolutionary process is now at a very significant stage. In short, he suggests that a purposeful evolution of human consciousness has taken place and still continues, and that evidence for this can be found in the study of language.

Etymology
Words are fossils of a sort, and they reveal in their history something of the character of those past states of consciousness. For example the word “realism” now has almost the exact opposite meaning from that which it had in medieval philosophy, where it referred not to the reality of the material world, but to the reality of ideas. Yet even this meaning was already a mere remnant of what Barfield meant by original participation. By contrast, modern realism, as Barfield describes it, has taken on the character of idolatry. We can begin to understand his justification for using this pejorative term if we look closely at another of the foundations of modern science: the idea of primary versus secondary qualities. When we understand the full implications of this idea, it will become clearer why it is that science has come to nurture deeply hidden logical contradictions of the kind we have discussed in previous essays. Like ancient idolaters who mistook a material representation of a deity for a real god, modern science assumes that material quantities are the reality behind all mental qualities, even though our knowledge of the former depends entirely on our experience of the latter.

Primary and Secondary Qualities - A Revealing Anomaly
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was the first to tackle the question of human perception in the spirit of modern science, and he reached a radical and disturbing conclusion: namely, that the familiar world with all of its incredible variety, its beauty and its ugliness, is almost entirely a product of the human organism itself. What Galileo observed was that the operations of the human sense organs appear to be mainly subjective. Science's demand for objectivity therefore required that our sense impressions be divided into what he called “primary qualities” and “secondary qualities.” The primary qualities he defined as those four that could be quantified: solidity, extension, motion and number. The secondary qualities consisted of all the remaining qualities that comprise our sense impressions, including the sensations of light, colour, warmth, shape, sound, taste and smell (and all the combinations of these) and any other qualities that we experience and attribute to the world outside us. This primary/secondary distinction was to become the foundation of the quantitative method in science. Because of it, “quality” in general has become relegated to the subjective realm.

Galileo's conclusions, while at first uncompelling, were upheld. The empiricists of the late seventeenth century (Isaac Newton and John Locke, for example) fully supported his analysis, as did the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, and many other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thinkers. Of course, twentieth-century science has gone on to reach even more radical conclusions concerning the nature of primary reality. To understand why this level of unanimity exists, we need to consider the source of Galileo's argument.

His reason for calling most perceptual qualities “secondary” was not arbitrary. Their very existence depended, as far as he could determine, chiefly on the structure of the sense organs themselves, and on their connection to the supposed seat of human consciousness, the brain. As the now familiar train of thought goes, there would be no light or colour without the eye, no sound without the ear nor warmth without a sense of touch, etc.; the only things that exist independently of our sense organs, so Galileo concluded, are the four primary qualities solidity, extension, motion and number. Science then went two steps further. With the advent of atomic physics came the realization that even seemingly solid matter is more than 90% empty space, so physicists began to argue that Galileo had been wrong to include solidity and extension in the realm of primary qualities; these also became relegated to the secondary realm, leaving only motion and number. Then, with the appearance of Heisenberg's “indeterminacy” principle in physics, even motion began to be regarded as subjective. This all led to the seemingly inescapable conclusion, as one of Barfield's fictional characters humorously puts it, “that the only remaining primary quality is quantity.”

This last step – that of reducing objective reality to mere quantity – is not necessary for the argument we wish to present; it is sufficient that we hold in mind the by now commonplace view that objective reality consists only of atomic and sub-atomic particles, the existence of which is not so much experienced as inferred. All the furniture of the familiar world – everything that our senses experience – therefore consists of a host of secondary qualities that are manufactured by the sense organs themselves. The usual way of explaining this in philosophic language is to state that "all sense-data are mental" and therefore subjective. It was this construction of the act of knowledge, depicting it as unavoidably subjective, that caused Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) to claim that the "thing in itself" is unknowable.

The theory of primary and secondary qualities remains one of the chief foundations of materialistic science. It tells us that sense perception is a kind of subtle illusion, the end result of the interaction between our sense organs, brain, and the unseen particulate components of external reality. Accordingly, the “real” world is not the one we experience, but the one that particle physicists investigate in their laboratories. The external world is now seen to be merely a product of our own sensory and cerebral make up, and its ultimate relationship to the particle world of physics is felt to be both unknown and unknowable.

How is it that we came to distrust our sense organs in the first place? The answer is simple: we observed that they mediate between us and the external world, rather than giving us direct and immediate knowledge of it; furthermore, we observe that the organs, particularly the eyes, are subject to a variety of defects and disturbances which appear to make them unreliable, so that the objectivity so much valued by science can be found only in the realm of primary qualities. But is this primary realm really accessible?

We must answer, yes, but never in isolation from the sensory information which alone makes it meaningful. In the very act of concluding that the colour blue, for example, is really only a photon of a certain wavelength, a scientist relies entirely on the observation of the blue colour juxtaposed with the reading on his measuring apparatus. Without the assistance of a sighted person, therefore, a blind person could not reach the same conclusion. This fact demonstrates that the objectivity seemingly guaranteed by numbers is still dependent on the so-called subjective realm of secondary qualities.

It is all very well to theorize that the world we experience is illusory whereas the world of colliding particles is real, but in order to be consistent, this necessitates that we translate all sensory experience—all colour, warmth, shape etc.—into mathematical representations of those particles and their activity, as science can have no dealings with the illusory. Yet in order for science to have any practical relevance it must give us knowledge about the world we actually experience, “real” or not; so it should come as no surprise that, despite Galileo's findings, science treats secondary qualities “as if” they were primary. In practise, animals, plants, fossils, the earth, the stars – all of them mere collections of secondary qualities – have remained for science every bit as real in their unreduced state as in their atomic construction. Like the descriptive language used to support Darwin's theory, which treats nature as if it were the product of consciousness, science in general must treat sense impressions (secondary qualities) as if they were real, in order to reach conclusions possessing both mathematical certitude and practical relevance.

Barfield calls it idolatry when science, after denying the reality of the perceived world in the name of objectivity, rehabilitates it in the name of necessity. We pretend that the familiar world is real, i.e. objectively real, when all the time our science is based upon findings which tell us the exact opposite – that it is all merely the subjective product of our own brains and sense organs.

The Consequence of Primary/Secondary Qualities for Evolution
The materialist's dilemma goes even deeper, because one cannot make any knowledge claims about the familiar world without reference to secondary qualities. We could not even claim, for example, that object “x” is merely an assemblage of particles, for without secondary qualities we would have no knowledge whatever of the existence of object “x.” The only kind of knowledge that might be possible without reference to secondary qualities is mathematical knowledge. Yet there is nothing so utterly immaterial as mathematics! Such knowledge might form the basis for an idealist philosophy (such as Pythagoras founded), but a materialist philosophy can never find a proper foundation in something mental. Materialism, to make any sense at all, needs secondary qualities to be real—the very qualities that Galileo tells us are illusory.

Darwinism, as materialism's representative in biology, claims that a creative Consciousness does not exist in nature, yet it cannot make sense of any living process without importing consciousness in the form of as if intentionality (see essays 3, 4, 8, 10, 11 & 21). Scientific materialism as a whole makes continuous use of the same false logic: everywhere it treats Galileo's secondary qualities as if they were real, while at the same time adhering to Galileo's claim that they are not. This simple “as if,” then, permits complex and interrelated edifices of claimed scientific knowledge to be built, all of it premised on the assertion that consciousness is a materially derived epiphenomena. Scientific materialism claims that the secondary qualities which constitute our everyday experience are subjective and unreal, but then it requires that we forget their non-reality and pretend that they are real. This, as we shall shortly describe, has truly horrendous but largely unnoticed consequences in logic.

The Puzzle of the Past
A widely overlooked consequence of the primary/secondary quality issue is the fact that in many areas of scientific enquiry not directly concerned with particle physics—such as geology, evolutionary biology, paleontology and the like—we presume to study the existence of past terrestrial conditions; that is, conditions which are thought to have existed before human brains and sense organs made their appearance on the earth. The host of secondary qualities that constitute our familiar world could not, therefore, have been present at that time, or so at least Galileo has assured us, because only primary qualities in the form of atomic particles would then have existed. There would be no sunrises or sunsets, no mountains or rivers, no plants, no trees, in short nothing at all that we would recognize as conventional reality.

Clearly, something is seriously wrong with the theory of primary/secondary qualities, or with some hitherto largely unquestioned assumption concerning it. Common sense insists that the world has always possessed secondary qualities, but how? How did a world prior to the appearance of human sense organs and brains—or animal sense organs and brains, if one wishes to push the problem back further in time—how did the world possess qualities which are the exclusive and subjective product of sensory and cerebral activity?

The answer is as simple as it is profound. Human consciousness is not the product of a stimulated organism, as Galileo assumed to be the case, and as science has continued for centuries to dogmatically assert. Rather it is the product of our individual participation in a universal Consciousness, and it is that same Consciousness—call it 'God' if you like, but this word has the power to stop all thought in its tracks—which creates and maintains the familiar world, and gives it continuity over time, even without the existence of brains and sense organs.

Matter as the Impossible Source of Everything
Science insists that in order for any consciousness to exist, a sensory organ has first to be physically stimulated. For our familiar world to exist, this stimulation must occur at the human level. According to materialism, therefore, the world-creative process must have been somewhat as follows: first, collocations of purpose-less atomic particles, impinging upon each other in accidental fashion over countless millions of years, yield simple organisms. These then evolve, accidentally, into more complex organisms possessing purposeful parts, like sense organs and brains. The stimulation of these organs by the particles that still remain external to them causes consciousness to first make its appearance. So only at a late stage of this rather incredible tale, when human consciousness itself finally evolves, does the familiar world of our experience also appear.

Thus arises the problem referred to earlier, namely that the evolutionary processes deemed to have occurred before humanity appeared upon the scene, simply could not have occurred if the plants and animals, in their unreduced form, possess no reality outside of human sensory and cerebral activity. This is not just a mental game we play; it is the unavoidable consequence of the rigorous application of Galileo's theory of primary/secondary qualities. If his theory is correct, then we shall need to conclude that any materialistic account of evolution is pointless because until the human stage was finally reached primitive organisms (or indeed organisms of any kind) and even the inorganic realms of rock, wind, water and fire could not possibly have existed—because at that time only atomic particles were real.

To be sure, the secondary qualities provided by human sense organs could be seen to have somehow existed “in potential,” but that potential would still need to remain unrealized until the sense organs and brains came into existence. At best we could claim that this potential had a spiritual existence, which would entirely defeat materialism's purpose.

Materialism’s incoherence becomes even more evident when one considers that the sense organs and brains which are credited by modern science with the remarkable feat of constructing the familiar world out of such particles, are in themselves only a collection of secondary qualities. Their primary reality is supposedly also particles, so that another set of sense organs and a brain must exist in order to construct a reality that includes the first set. The second set requires a third, and so on, ad infinitum.

We are thus faced with a classic case of absurd contradiction. Nothing possessing secondary qualities can exist unless human sense organs and brains exist, but human sense organs and brains have secondary qualities; so they cannot exist, unless they already exist!. This is the theoretical ground upon which a materialistic approach to the sciences is constructed. It is only because science in practise ignores the theory of primary/secondary qualities, that it leads to knowledge at all.

If we add to this absurd contradiction the concerns we have expressed elsewhere concerning the misuse of the word “mechanism” in facilitating the conceptual development of materialism, and our discussion above concerning the need for an “as if” subversion of logic to make materialism itself appear even a little credible, then it slowly begins to dawn on us that never before in the entire history of human understanding has a world view so important and so influential rested on a foundation so flimsy and self-contradictory.

It is more than a little ironic, therefore, that Bertrand Russell once advised that a scientist going to church should "check his brains at the door before entering," presumably because without doing so he would be overwhelmed by the irrationality of the subject matter being handled within .... perhaps enough said!

In light of this appraisal of the materialist position, a new question presents itself: why, if it is not logically or experientially compelling, have so many intelligent people accepted materialism? If reality finds its basis in spirit rather than in matter, how and why has the knowledge of this spiritual basis been lost, if we ever had it?

Why Materialism?
Owen Barfield's work shows us that the ancients, to the extent that the Old Gnosis still worked in them, were consciously in touch with nature's inner realities in a way that we now find difficult to emulate. But it is nevertheless this contact with the spiritual outside of ourselves that is the unrecognized source of Noam Chomsky's "deep structure" (see essay #6) and David Bohm's "deep reality."(see essay #13).

Barfield calls that lost awareness “original participation.” As Theodore Roszak describes it, in the magical world-view of the Old Gnosis, all things – animal, plant, mineral – radiate meanings; they are intelligible beings – or the natural faces such beings put on for us in the physical world (see essay #4). But this intensely pictorial consciousness would not (could not) allow for the  development of selfhood. To fully develop a capacity for self-awareness, it was necessary for this consciousness to recede and be extinguished. To wake up, as it were, human beings needed to experience isolation from a dreamy immersion in nature, and needed to feel a growing alienation from the world and from each other. This required an end to original participation, the last remnant of which disappeared with the eclipse of medieval scholastic Realism by Nominalism (see essay #2).

What led us into the age of science was the Nominalist-inspired belief that our minds are forever cut off from external “objective” reality (Kant's “thing in itself”). Later, human consciousness became viewed as a mere accidental, evolutionary by-product of that same reality. This belief was heightened by our growing sense of autonomous self-awareness, which led Friedrich Nietzsche to declare that God was dead, and we were  completely on our own. The widespread acceptance of Darwinism made this isolation complete, because it permits nothing greater than subjective, individual purposes to be ascribed to human existence, which then gave rise to the entire  existentialist movement in modern philosophy, with its view of purposeful individuals trapped in a purposeless universe.

However, like materialism, the resulting nihilism, whatever its seeming justification can only be maintained for as long as we accept without question Galileo's primary/secondary quality theory, while continuing—in total contradiction to what that theory tells us—to assume that human consciousness, still held to be born of brains and sense organs, plays no part in shaping “objective” external reality. Having overlooked the resulting contradiction, with the aid of as if thinking, we retain with Darwin's help the convinction that consciousness is a mere accidental by-product of that same external reality, which, despite Galileo, is still thought of as possessing a concreteness that he had been such pains to tell us was a subjective unreality born of our sense organs and brains (idolatry).

Then, in the logical tradition of having our cake and eating it too, we go on to credit this as if concreteness of the external world with a deterministic dominance over our brains and minds, which, if it were true, would make human freedom impossible.

In truth, of course, both the subatomic and the phenomenal world of the senses are real, but we can only reach that conclusion honestly when we first accept that in the universe Consciouness is primary, and matter secondary.

Thinking Our Way to a New Gnosis
When we sit in a room on a cold day to think, our ability to do so effectively can be impeded if the furnace does not work, but this does not mean that the furnace is doing the thinking. Similarly, our thought processes can be affected by the chemical balance in the brain, but this does not mean that thought itself is a product of the brain. The assumption that thought is merely an accidental by-product of a supposedly “objective” external reality, existing in complete independence from us, is what Owen Barfield appropriately terms idolatry. The alienation from living nature that marks it, in part fostered by our preoccupation with machinery of all kinds, has led to what T.S. Elliot called "the wasteland,” populated by “the hollow men,” and to that exploitative attitude towards living things that in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings gives rise to the  underground abominations of Isenguard, and the depravity of Mordor. It is probably no accident that both writers were friends of Owen Barfield and his work.

There is no going back to the Old Gnosis, as much of the New Age movement is now attempting. Nor can most who have lived through materialism and its consequent atheism, now return to traditional religion, and even if we attempt this we are still faced with a Cartesian causal contradiction. If we wish to be a part of humanity's cutting-edge, our way lies forward to a New Gnosis, which is why Barfield so admired the work of Rudolf Steiner. Steiner asks us to awaken in full self-awareness to the fact that in the universe, Consciousness is primary, and matter secondary. This premise will require an end to Darwinism (a theory which marks idolatry's highest point), but not an end to science. Instead, a reversal in our understanding of nature's causal logic must take place. Nature will then regain its spiritual inwardness, and Consciousness be once more experienced as a universal process in which our individual minds deeply participate. Until this happens the primary/secondary quality problem will remain unresolved, and science will be constantly faced with the need to conceal, or try to ignore, its own deep underlying irrationality.

Hopeful Signs of Change
Science's long-established dogmatic belief in an objective world existing independently of the human mind has, for many years now, been challenged by quantum physics, where we increasingly find our own consciousness to be a part of the reality which we observe (see essay #13). In biological science, the gauntlet has now been decisively thrown down as well. The remarkable 84 year old scientist Barry Commoner has critically demolished the the Central Dogma of genetics in an article entitled “Unraveling The DNA Myth: The spurious foundation of genetic engineering,” published in the February 2002 edition of Harper's Magazine. The central dogma of which he speaks is the widely accepted but "false" belief that DNA is the sole and only necessary repository of information required to construct an organism:

Why, then, has the central dogma continued to stand? To some degree the theory has been protected from criticism by a device more common to religion than science: dissent, or merely the discovery of a discordant fact, is a punishable offense, a heresy that might easily lead to professional ostracism. Much of this bias can be attributed to institutional inertia, a failure of rigor, but there are other, more insidious, reasons why molecular geneticists might be satisfied with the status quo; the central dogma has given them such a satisfying, seductively simplistic explanation of heredity that it seemed sacrilegious to entertain doubts. The central dogma was simply too good not to be true.

In the light of what we have here drawn to our reader's attention, we would like to suggest that these words of Barry Commoner apply to a far wider spectrum of scientific thought than just genetics. They are a manifestation of what Owen Barfield called the "great tabu” (see reference #3), the penalties for breaching which are exactly as Barry Commoner describes. Fortunately for us, and for him, Commoner's age has lent him immunity.

Barfield's view of the evolution of human consciousness, moving from original participation through idolatry to final participation, covers a span of many millennia. It suggests that science is still very young, and that once it has shaken off its present burden of idolatry, it will progress to embrace higher forms of knowledge based upon the realization that human consciousness is intimately connected, at every point and in a progressively creative manner, with the world of external phenomena. This in turn will lead to an age of disciplined higher knowledge, a New Gnosis, bringing us in course of time to “final participation.” Step by step along this path, the mystery of human evolution will be clarified. First, however, we must overcome the deadening grip and the deeply-buried but profound irrationality that materialism, Darwinism, and for the religiously inclined the consequent philosophic dualisms, have inadvertently placed upon our thinking (see essay #1).