The following is Part of a series of short articles on science and spirituality, by John Pickin. Taken from the Golden Web, a free publication.

 

One of the obvious questions to ask when considering the relationship between science and spirituality is whether they could possibly be considered compatible.

When I was younger, it was a lot harder to be taken seriously by a confirmed materialist when advocating for a spiritual view of the world.   Even more so than today, for many people there was no room (nor any need) for Spirit in the universe, given the apparent success and progress of the scientific worldview ever since the time of, for example, Isaac Newton. On the other hand, it was also much harder for people to accept vegetarianism as being anything other than unhealthy – or the idea that the quality of food we eat could involve anything other than the amounts of protein, carbohydrate and fat within it!

 

Thankfully, for many young people, that earlier ignorance (or prejudice?) is now much less common.

 

So today one detects also a more open attitude to the Spirit; as more and more people experience at least in their feelings the inability of the purely materialistic, scientific world view to a) give satisfactory explanations to the inner experiences that we all share; and b) to solve our enormous social, political, economic and cultural problems. For many people, with an explanation of these inner experiences becoming a necessity of the heart, they find the “scientific” view of them – as being nothing but for example, “excitations within the brain” or worse as being illusory – as just not ringing true!

 

So in this series of brief articles, I’d like to show simply how, in my view, both the materialistic, scientific viewpoint and a more esoteric spiritual knowledge can, not only exist together, but can enlighten each other – provided there is a willingness from both sides to recognize the contribution that each can make to world knowledge.

 

Also, not as two separate bodies of knowledge, which forever run parallel to each other, never coming into contact or having any influence upon each other, but which have a real possibility to address each other’s inadequacies and to throw light on the whole of universal knowledge.

 

As an aside it should be noted that Isaac Newton himself was a thorough esotericist who was more interested in spiritual, esoteric and alchemical matters than his more accepted works on gravity and light for example.  So, he clearly saw no incompatibility issues between the (currently) two bodies of knowledge – something that can be a little embarrassing for some of today’s hard-line scientists

 

As this publication is directed towards those people who may not know a lot about the work of Rudolf Steiner, but would like to know more, I’d like to start by giving an example of how Rudolf Steiner explained that his seminal work on the evolution of the universe: “An Outline of Esoteric Science” could happily sit alongside the scientific explanation of the evolution of the Cosmos.

 

He said, imagine you take the life of a particular individual (in his case he took the example of a poet; but I will select, as an example, a more modern figure) – let’s say Paul McCartney!

 

It would be perfectly possible (it might even be useful or interesting to do so) to describe Paul McCartney’s life, including his home upbringing, his early musical education, his relationship with John Lennon and his incredible career as a member of the Beatles, by simply looking at the physical, measurable facts of his existence.

 

For example, the physical characteristics of his body-weight, height, shape, blood pressure, heart rate, the internal conditions of all his organs, the brain waves taking place at every moment within his brain etc., together, say, with the physical facts concerning the places he visited, the arenas he performed in, how many people were there, the velocity of his movements between them, the vehicles which transported him etc etc…! In fact, there would seem to be the opportunity to record a limitless number of pieces of data about the life of Paul McCartney in this way.

 

And this would indeed, if done sufficiently thoroughly, form a scientific picture in one sense of the life of a certain Paul McCartney. Nothing in this description could be disputed. And within its own realm nor should it be.

 

All these “facts” could in theory be established indubitably (though I suspect a lot of people are already dubious about whether these facts would be considered useful! That, though, is for another time and another discussion). These facts would form a scientific picture offering a timeline of data and, with enough instrumentation, potentially an unlimited amount of information describing his life.

 

However, another totally valid (and possibly more valuable!) description of the life of Paul McCartney would consist in a thoroughly researched sensitive and comprehensive biography, written by someone who either knew Paul McCartney really well, or was able to investigate the reasons for his actions and the decisions he made in his life as well as the hugely significant relationships he made throughout it.  These two pictures of Paul McCartney come from two different directions; but can anyone genuinely say that the scientific one is “true” and the biographical one “not true”?  Or even that the scientific one is “more true” than the biographical one?

 

I think many of us may have a similar view of which one is more useful, interesting and practically relevant, but hopefully, despite that, most people would find their way to acknowledging that both are “true” in their respective fields.

 

The problem comes when the scientific viewpoint really is incapable of seeing outside its own narrow field in any kind of useful way – but then proceeds to declare that it’s viewpoint (restricted, correctly, to areas of physical observation and measurement) is the only valid one.

 

So Steiner pointed out that an esoteric picture of the evolution of humanity and the Cosmos could in a similar way be as true as the materialistically scientific viewpoint and possibly far more useful… in fact a spiritual view of the evolution of the Cosmos and humanity could be viewed as a biographical view of the evolution of all of us. (With one important difference in my view, which is that a more complete understanding of spiritual science would eventually encompass both the esoteric and the natural scientific understanding).

 

Having said that, I think it’s important to point out that An Outline of Esoteric Science is far from as easy a read as a well-written biography might be; but, if it’s the sort of thing one is interested in, it is absolutely fascinating. It is in fact an astonishing read and highlights for many people the limitations of the current scientific viewpoint just as the reams and reams of data about Paul McCartney’s life are extremely limited in explaining his significance in the cultural life of the UK and the world.

 

In the next article on science and spirituality I’d like to write more about how scientific and spiritual views of the world can co-exist. I’d also like to give some idea of Rudolf Steiner’s enormous appreciation for the progress of mainstream science – as well as some of his key criticisms about its limitations when it becomes “a gospel”.