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Tolerance, generally, is an admirable ideal, although it may often stand in the way of social or intellectual progress. To be ‘against’ something, in the sense that I have used the word in my title, is to be intolerant of a particular status quo, and when one is seriously engaged in the pursuit of truth this can be difficult to avoid, although it can still make one very unpopular. In which case, aware of the irony, one may always appeal for tolerance! This article will strongly oppose the irrationality that must arise from combining, consciously or unconsciously, two logically opposite worldviews. I will also attempt to show that a clear and fully rational although radical alternative to this kind of irrationality does exist, and can lead to a dramatic advance in the progress of human understanding. Let me try to explain.
In philosophy the word 'monism' means that the forces of causality in the universe work from one direction only. In this sense there are two possible monisms in nature, which I shall call ‘A’, and 'B,' but there are very many ‘monist’ worldviews. Put another way, all monist worldviews belong in one of two categories, either in 'A' where nature’s ultimate source is believed to be Mind or spirit (God); or in 'B' where that ultimate source is claimed to be matter. These definitions are crucial to what follows.
In their assumed direction of natural causality, which may be broadly defined as ‘down’ or ‘up,’ ‘A’ and ‘B’ cancel each other out completely, so that only one of them can be true. If one attempts to give credence to them both, i.e. subscribe to the truth of A+B, one must erect a complete disjunction between them, so that at the point where they would meet there is seen to be a gap across which there can be no causal connection whatever. This is usually termed the Cartesian divide, after Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who in effect suggested that both monisms are true, thereby creating a dualism in which nature is seen to be split into two logically opposite and irreconcilable parts—res extensa (extended substance or ‘body’) and res cogitans (thinking substance or ‘mind’)—each seen as having a separate source. Any worldview which is not strictly monist, therefore, is dualist in the Cartesian sense, there being no other options.
Modern thought is everywhere afflicted by contradictory dualisms, conscious or unconscious, each having a different metaphysical, religious, philosophical or quasi-scientific content, and each representing a different combination of A+B or B+A, depending upon whether the initial emphasis is placed upon science or on religion. I say ‘quasi-scientific’ because a true science cannot be grounded upon a causal contradiction that would instantly make it irrational. This means that only a monism can be genuinely scientific, although so far only ‘B’ has been recognized as such. For most of us ‘A’ still remains a pre-critical and therefore pre-scientific worldview, one that is heavily dependent upon the idea of miraculous causation, so that the prospect of turning it into a genuinely monist science appears highly unlikely, if not impossible— even though the name of science is sometimes wrongly used to describe religious worldviews that still remain largely pre-critical in their content, as with ‘Christian Science’.
A science of ‘A’ would be fully incompatible with ‘faith,’ because it might require that the faith in question be set aside or abandoned. It calls instead for an attitude similar to that attributed to Bertrand Russell in the statement “I would not die for my beliefs, because my beliefs may be wrong”. Ideally, science requires a fundamental intolerance towards anything but the truth, an attitude that must apply equally to a fully critical version of either monism. That the science now based upon ‘B’ falls short in this respect, as indicated by Michael Polanyi above, throws doubt upon ‘B’ but does not make science’s commitment to truth less of an ideal. A science based upon ‘A,’ could only lead us to truth if that causal direction in nature is true, which would mean that ‘B’ is ultimately false and would help to explain its current shortcomings. It would also mean that A—Mind must eventually undertake to explain all of B—matter. Just as if a science based upon B—matter is true it should prove capable of fully explaining consciousness, thereby showing A—Mind to be untrue. Any attempt to build a critical worldview upon A+B or B+A, however, must finally fail because of the Cartesian contradiction.
For the average person this may not be an important issue. For those more directly concerned with rationality, however, it is very important, because causal contradictions serve only to emphasize what science thinks that it already knows, namely: that religious and/or traditional belief systems are merely outdated superstitions that lie completely beyond the scope of rational thought. This accounts for the current popularity in academia of so-called ‘post-critical’ thinking, especially among religiously inclined academics who are at heart deeply opposed to ‘B,’ and who look to the work of thinkers like Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) and Owen Barfield (1898-1998)[1] to help them deal with this very real rational dilemma. However, Polanyi and Barfield can only do this to the extent that their trenchant critiques of ‘B’ take us beyond the reach of dualism, and so towards a critical approach to ‘A’. The larger question then reasserts itself, explicitly in the case of Owen Barfield’s work, more implicitly with Michael Polanyi’s ‘personal’ or ‘tacit’ knowing, namely: with which of the two critical monisms may we as knowers finally align ourselves, and why? Even post-critical thinking cannot tarry long in a dualist middle ground; it must either retreat back into ‘B’ or find a fully rational approach to ‘A’. For this reason also the suggestion has been made, notably by John R. Searle in his book The Rediscovery of Consciousness, that we should simply do away with the monist/dualist nomenclature, because it raises what he believes to be insuperable difficulties. Those who hold this view, however, tend only to take monism ‘B’ into account, and to ignore even the possibility of a critical approach to ‘A’. Modern science, moreover, has gone a step further than this in that it effectively outlaws a critical approach to ‘A’ by quietly making use of what Owen Barfield called the ‘great tabu’.[2]
Past, Present and Future
Ultimately, one cannot escape ‘B’ by moving back into a past spirituality, and humanity as a whole has yet to clearly understand how it is possible to move towards a critical account of ‘A,’ a subject that I will touch upon shortly. At the present time, therefore, a deeply pervasive and contradictory dualism covers almost our entire modern world. Recognizing this, we may perhaps ask: Is not human life in any case rife with contradictions? After all a belief in Santa Claus is irrational, yet most would consider it desirable, though they might add ‘only for children’. Yes, to be sure, and certainly contradictions are everywhere present both within and between religious worldviews. But then, in relation to the deeper truths of religion are we not all of us still children? And do we not also need to ‘grow up’? Science as it now stands, claims to exclusively represent that growing up process, i.e. to be a fully rational discipline that cannot allow itself to be tolerant of irrationality. It instead seeks to eliminate all accounts of causal contradiction and so do away with the supposed workings of the miraculous in nature, if only because such things do not further the development of a mature human understanding. In this science may well be right, but, as suggested by Michael Polanyi, there is still something very wrong with its present path.
Critical ‘A’ vs. Critical ‘B’
As noted above, B—matter is inevitably in direct causal conflict with A—Mind, so that ‘A+B’ is irrational, as also is ‘B+A’. This is why Arthur Koestler in his great work The Sleepwalkers, argued that the roots of very many of the critical dilemmas confronting modern humanity are to be found in the now all-pervasive split between science and religion. To awaken from a sleep-walking state, therefore, we must take the challenge of monist causality very seriously indeed, so that as critical individuals we come eventually to adopt either one or the other, but not both, of the possible monist accounts of causality. Our options are ‘A’ or ‘B,’ and perhaps humanity’s future task is to discover with the use of critical thinking, which of them is true. In my view, post-critical thought is justified only as a stepping-stone leading across from ‘B’ to ‘A,’ not as an end in itself.
The Giant Step
How can such a transition take place when only materialism is now thought of as being scientific? Henry Gee, Senior Editor for the science periodical ‘Nature,’ for example, in an article on “concepts” in the December 02 issue of ‘Nature’ (Vol 420, p 611), takes a strong stand in the defence of ‘B,’ by arguing that any concept of ‘progress’ used in relation to Darwinian evolution must be viewed as invalid, because the theory simply does not support that concept (to use it gives us an example of ‘B+A,’ i.e. of a hidden dualism within science). He tells us that the irrational concept of evolutionary progress exists widely, even among scientists, which fact he attributes to a “romanticism” that lies deeply rooted in “nature philosophy,” adding “Perhaps there is a Nature Philosopher in all of us.” Undoubtedly he is right, and he is to be admired for sticking strictly to one monism, as any true scientist must; yet there is an important sense in which the romantic movement itself need not be seen as an irrational addition to science, but rather as the legitimate and fully rational precursor of a critical account of ‘A,’ a proposition explored in Owen Barfield’s work Romanticism Comes of Age.
Viewed from a purely philosophical perspective, the pursuit of a critical account of A—Mind means that we must seek to deny ourselves recourse to the countless metaphysical and transcendental concepts that arise out of dualism. In relation to religion especially, we must adopt a more unyielding critical stance, i.e. be prepared to reject all of the claims of authority, not because they are necessarily untrue, but because faith in authority is no longer enough. We shall need to develop a genuinely scientific approach to ‘A,’ one that, in spirit at least, is similar to that now being attempted by the Jesus Seminar, but they do not go far enough. It is not sufficient only to attempt to critically analyse the meaning of holy writ, which seems to result in their aligning themselves increasingly with ‘B’.[3] The fierce debate now going on in academia between biblical ‘minimalists’ and ‘maximalists’ over whether or not the Old Testament narrative is historically accurate, also whittles away at the foundations of religion’s claim to truth in a way that favours ‘B,’ all of which is not surprising, because given a purely empirical foundation that is where critical thought leads us. Post-critical thought, in and of itself cannot change this; it can at best fight a rearguard action. We must instead strive to bring the crucial epistemological issue ever more clearly to the fore, because if knowledge is only the outcome of physical sense perception, then ‘B’ must inevitably win this contest. Only by overcoming Barfield’s ‘great tabu’ can the wider issue, the direct cognitive experience of spiritual realities, potentially by each human individual, become the immediate concern of critical thought. In short, if we are to transform ‘A’ into a critical worldview we must first thoroughly re-examine the cognitive act itself, but do so without any of the preconceptions that have for so long arisen out of ‘B’.
Epistemology
In relation to ‘B,’ there have been very many attempts over the past three centuries to critically explain how, if it were true, the human mind might be seen to connect with matter (empiricism) and so bring forth knowledge. These explanations have formed the study of epistemology, and are usually referred to as 'theories of knowledge' or 'concepts of mind'. So far all such theories have ruled out ‘A’ in advance, their chief purpose being to help demonstrate the truth of ‘B’ by showing exactly how it was that knowledge could be seen to arise from matter. However, all of the many attempts to do this can now be seen to have failed completely, see John Horgan’s work The Undiscovered Mind.[4] Added to this, there is not now, nor has there ever been, the remotest possibility of an epistemological account demonstrating the truth of dualism. There remains, therefore, only the long-neglected but very real possibility of an epistemological approach to A—Mind, one capable of completely transforming ‘A’ into a science that will undertake to critically explain all of B—matter.
A monism of Mind or spirit 'A' has long existed in pre-critical form, predicated upon an ill-defined cognitive activity called ‘revelation,’ and on the widespread acceptance of miraculous causation in nature. It was present long before our capacity for critical thought arose, which in recent times was greatly heightened through the influence of 'B'. Indeed in an important sense it was 'A' that gave birth to 'B,' because the earliest beginnings of science are to be found in 'A'. As ‘B’ developed, however, empirically based critical thought led it away from 'A,' causally speaking, until that point was reached at which it had fully adopted a view of natural causation wherein all causes were thought to be physical causes. This came with science’s enthusiastic adoption of Darwin’s theory of origins. Two monist accounts of the workings of causality in nature then existed, because ‘B’ had developed into the exact logical opposite of 'A,' and so was now antipathetic to it to the degree to the two could not be made to logically coexist, except when forced within the context of a contradictory dualism. Historically, one may see ‘B’ to have been the means whereby human thought could be emancipated from ‘A,’ which had fallen into the deadening grip of dogmatic theology. It also allowed us to begin to take the material world seriously, as never before, because we now began to view matter as the primary reality, a step that religion left to itself would never have permitted. This eventually led us, even in theology, to contemplate the ‘death of God,’ but it also left our opening question unanswered, namely: from the viewpoint of ultimate causality which of the two monisms is true?
In the modern world 'A' has continued to exist only in a pre-critical form as religious thought, wherein the chief requirement was a willingness to believe fully in the concept of a divine authority, and in one of the very many religious accounts of what that authority had prescribed; rather than to seek for a knowledge of it based upon direct human experience. Indeed, this latter option tended to be sternly discouraged by religious authorities and attempts to exercise it often resulted in torture or burning at the stake. Only after 'B' had become well established as natural science, was the first real attempt made to transform ‘A’ also into a critical worldview. This initially required that it be given a sound basis in epistemology. It was in the work of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), that this was attempted, and I would say accomplished. He argued, very convincingly where knowledge is concerned, for the primacy of thought over matter (thinking can never be explained by anything other than itself, because it is always thinking that does the explaining), and for the long overlooked importance to philosophy of the activity of ‘thinking about thought,’ an activity which on close examination can be seen to lie at the root of human self-awareness. He was also strongly opposed to dualism in the Cartesian sense, and was perhaps the first ever proponent of an ‘evolution of human consciousness’ that was tied together with the emergence of individuality from an older racial and group awareness.
Steiner, as he describes in his Story of My Life, had from his earliest recollections been deeply aware of the workings of forces and beings in nature that he found he could not talk to adults about. This painful dilemma caused him to develop a deep concern with the problem of knowledge, with the result that he read Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason for the first time at the age of twelve. He found no help in Kant; only later, when as a young student he was introduced to the scientific works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, did he find the critical help that he needed. He then went on to become one of Germany’s finest Goethe scholars, and to edit the two major national editions of Goethe’s scientific writings.
With Goethe as his inspiration, together with his own immediate personal experience of the pervasive reality of a spiritual world—from which the true causal forces in nature appeared everywhere to flow—Steiner went on to develop a ‘monism of thought,’ calculated to demonstrate the critical truth of 'A'. After which he devoted the remainder of his life to showing how, with a monism of thought as its foundation, ‘A’ could be transformed into a scientific worldview. In doing this he everywhere rejected the ‘miraculous,’ replacing it with a far deeper and wider account of the workings of natural law than that which already existed in ‘B’. He called that account ‘anthroposophy.’
Rudolf Steiner’s concept of mind is formally outlined in his doctoral thesis Truth and Science, given in 1892 at the University of Rostock, and was further developed in his later work The Philosophy of Freedom, in which the connection between human and divine creativity is clearly explained. Here it should be noted that, unlike ‘A,’ ‘B’ is a fully deterministic worldview that cannot allow for human freedom to even exist. At the end of his Philosophy of Freedom, Steiner specifically declines to name his thought ‘an epistemological monism’, because others had already used this phrase to describe a content related to ‘B’; he suggests instead “a monism of thought,” i.e. a monist epistemology that is based upon the direct experience of ‘A’ in the form of thought, and so rests firmly upon individual human experience.[5] Further discussion of this vital question is to be found in the works which he had earlier devoted to the theory of knowledge implicit in Goethe's worldview. One may say that Steiner’s entire epistemology is devoted to the task of showing how 'A' can be transformed from a pre-critical worldview, based upon faith and on miraculous causation, into a non-miraculous and genuinely critical search for knowledge. An excellent description of Steiner's thought in this respect, is to be found in Owen Barfield's essay 'Rudolf Steiner's Concept of Mind,' first published in a commemorative volume entitled The Faithful Thinker, celebrating the 1961 centennial of Rudolf Steiner’s birth.
Resolving ‘A’ vs. ‘B’
In determining which of the two critical monisms is true, much depends on the way in which they describe each other. Here ‘B’ has the easiest task, it only needs to convincingly deny the validity of all the phenomena usually attributed to ‘A’, or to dismiss them as ‘superstition;’ a vital part of doing this, however, is to provide a convincing alternative explanations. In explaining NDE’s (near death experiences) as caused by unknown aberrations of brain chemistry ‘B,’ however, seems now to be grasping at straws. In contrast clear explanations of how spirit gives rise to matter are to be found in many of Rudolf Steiner’s works, and this is only a minor part of their content.
Rudolf Steiner’s name is well known today because of the many practical developments that have followed from his work, a new art of education in the Waldorf school movement for example, and a new holistic science of agriculture called Biodynamics, to name only two; but few today understand that by far his greatest accomplishment was to demonstrate to the world how ‘A’ could be transformed into a critical worldview. One who did understand this, the American writer Russell Davenport, one time editor of Fortune, paid Steiner this tribute in his 1960’s book The Dignity of Man.
“That the academic world has managed to dismiss Rudolf Steiner’s works as inconsequential and irrelevant, is one of the intellectual wonders of the twentieth century. Anyone who is willing to study these vast works with an open mind (let us say a hundred of his titles) will find themselves confronted with one of the greatest thinkers of all time, whose grasp of modern science is equalled only by his profound learning in the ancient ones. Steiner was no more of a mystic than Albert Einstein; he was a scientist, rather—but a scientist who dared enter into the mysteries of life.”
Steiner was a scientist, so his work must be viewed as fallible, he did not wish it to be otherwise. His lifelong striving was to research a reality in which the actual causal direction is ‘A,’ not ‘B.’ He possessed a wide knowledge of contemporary science, but viewed it as a transitional phenomenon, necessary for the evolution of human awareness, but one that he knew from direct experience could never lead to a true understanding, either of mankind or of the universe. He proposed instead a non-contradictory monism of thought, leading to an experience based and genuinely critical ‘science of the spirit’.
Conclusion
Rudolf Steiner was a forerunner, he bequeathed to the world an open and fallible scientific worldview; evolutionary to its very core and in many ways supportive of the work of Charles Darwin, but strongly opposed to that aspect of Darwin’s thought which derives from ‘B,’ though he new it to be a necessary step. His transformed and now critical version of ‘A’ includes within its reach all of the physical sciences, and the technology that has arisen from them, but offers a totally opposite view of the direction of causality in nature. It tells us that all matter is ultimately the product of Mind or spirit, and not the other way around as ‘B’ has for so long assumed. Furthermore, that all knowledge, even knowledge of matter, is in fact spiritual knowledge, because thinking itself, upon which all science is based, is ‘a spiritual activity’. In an age of heightened ecological awareness, such an insight into the source of all knowledge can only bring with it new feelings of reverence for life, and for the sacredness of its source, causing us increasingly to pause before we use science irresponsibly. Also, as Russell Davenport observed, Steiner’s critical science of ‘A’ can bring an understanding of ‘life’ into a now declining science of dead matter.[6] Is it any wonder then, that Albert Schweizer once wrote: “My meeting with Rudolf Steiner led me occupy myself with him from that time forth and to remain always aware of his significance… we both felt the same obligation to lead men once again to true inner culture. I have rejoiced at the achievements which his great personality and profound humanity have brought about in the world”.[7] I think, therefore, it is safe to state that in the future the more we come to value life, the more we shall value the work of Rudolf Steiner.
In an article entitled ‘The New Convergence,’ in the December 2002 issue of the magazine ‘Wired,’ Gregg Easterbrook explores the many attempts that are now being made to develop a reconciliation between science and religion—between ‘A’ and ‘B’—but nowhere in this article is the problem of their contradictory causal logics even mentioned. It is a difficult issue to be sure, but it is also easy to see that without taking it fully into account, the end result of any such attempt cannot be a genuine ‘convergence’ but only be a deeply unsatisfactory and contradictory dualism.
Don Cruse
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