OMEGA INDIAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION Vol.8 No.1 June 2009

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Institute of Science and Religion Little Flower Seminary, Aluva - 683 101, Kerala, India.

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The Editorial 3 The Editorial Articles Is Explaining Religion Naturalistically Explaining Religion Away? The relation between science and religion has become a major Willem B. Drees 7 concern of contemporary intellectuals, especially, systematic theologians, philosophers of science, philosophers of religion, etc. There are many Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer on Meaning Conflation elements in this engagement; but, a significant aspect that interests us in in Symbolic Thought this volume is one that is concerned with the question of knowledge. It Paul Cortois 24 will not be an overstatement, I trust, if one announces that science- Dialogue between Psychology and Religion for an religion interrelations have enhanced the human rationality with a new Adequate Representation of the Human Self synthetic perspective: a science-religion perspective. An elastic Dolichan K. M. 49 epistemology is slowly emerging in the global academia. Focus of attention is increasingly getting shifted from own point of view to a view of Ever Approachable, Never Attainable: Scientific and different points. Academicians are gently pressed to re-envision their Philosophical Reflections on the Human Person epistemological enterprises more in terms of the common human Kuruvilla Pandikattu 63 dimensions of the issues at stake than in terms of their field-specific and Christianity and Modern Science in the West: An Overview domain-bound methods. The traditional domains of science and religion Nancey Murphy 81 are re-surveyed in light of new awareness gained in the course of a mutual fecundation between scientific and theological opinions. Soul- Ecosophical Readings of Buddhism: Lessons for Mankind talk, to cite just one example, is not only a usual item in the theological M. Ramakrishnan 102 circles but a hot issue in scientific field as well. Religion and Politics in Ancient India: Reflections on Arthasæaçstra The set of articles embodied in this volume is multi-disciplinary, Lenin C.C. 111 covering contributions from theology, philosophy, psychology, ecosophy, The Indian Epistemic Equilibrium: etc. Although embedded in different disciplines, all articles in this volume A Catalytic Paradigm for Global Science-Religion Dialogue seem to assume a science-religion perspective. While the first four Augustine Pamplany 124 articles presume a science-religion dialogue that is already underway, the remaining four engage in some ground-making researches in reference Review Article to particular religio-philosophical traditions. The Meaning of Life In the first article in this volume Willem B. Drees poses a very K. Babu Joseph 143 significant question in the field of science-religion dialogue: “Is Explaining Religion Naturalistically Explaining Religion Away?” First of all, Drees analyses the question rather thoroughly and in that light sub-divides his Two articles in this volume focus on the human reality: Dolichan work into a preliminary discussion on the phenomena of ‘explanation’ K. M’s “Dialogue between Psychology and Religion for an Adequate and ‘religion’ before he begins to explore the meaning of naturalistic Representation of the Human-self” and Kuruvilla Pandikattu’s “Ever explanation of religion. He argues that explanation need not always be Approachable, Never Attainable: Scientific and Philosophical Reflections eliminative and that it can be affirmative as well. What is explained is on the Human Person.” For an adequate understanding of human self, religion, not God. Religion, for him, is a human phenomenon; it has to do Dolichan K. M proposes a dialogue between modern psychology and with human belief in God. Now, the point is that religion explains itself in ancient religions. In his view, self-construal in psychology as well as in terms of what it believes in, namely divine revelation, whereas naturalistic religion is not comprehensive enough. Nevertheless, each of these approaches to the nature of human reality can be justified with the support explanation does it without any external reference to God. What makes of field-specific arguments. Indeed, there are no inner-disciplinary reasons the difference between the religious and the naturalist explanations of why psychology must be brought into dialogue with religions. From religion is the concept of explanation that underlies each of them. different methodical approaches (presently, psychology and religion) to Interpretations of religion quarrel among one another because interpreters the human reality, Dolichan, then, re-directs our attention to the reality lack concepts that are as comprehensive as the interpretaments. The of each individual person. When perceived from the angle of human complex, pervasive phenomenon of religion needs equally comprehensive person who experiences himself/herself as an integral whole, both the conceptual frames. Does any religion or any explanatory theory have psychological self-construal as an empirical self and the religious self- such comprehensive concepts in its stock? Perhaps, one needs to field construal as a transcendental self seem to be equally partial. Psychology them from the emerging field of science-religion. The second article in and religions may not need each other, but a human person needs them this volume takes us further in this line. If religious phenomenon was the both to understand him/her more holistically. In Kuruvilla Pandikattu’s topic of the previous essay, Paul Cortois, in his “Ernst Cassirer and view, human life is an ambiguous project; and hence in order to make Susanne Langer on Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought” addresses sense of human life, philosophers and theologians need to be informed the issues surrounding the effort to adequately explain meaningful cultural by and borrow metaphors from science. He examines scientific concepts phenomena. We often lack a unified view of our experience and culture. such as seven (colours), five (senses), three (dimensions), one (time), Philosophy of symbolism better interprets cultural experience than the and the zero, and suggests that these concepts point primarily to the analytical and the continental schools of thought do. As Cortois rightly ‘ever approachable and never attainable’ nature of the universe, and observes, Analytical studies require from its practitioners a great expertise analogously to the human nature. in technicalities, while Continental practice seems rather obscure due to The last four articles in this volume examine science-religion its frequent use of closed pseudo-technical jargons. Cortois’ commendable intersections in three different religio-cultural traditions. Nancey Murphy ambition is to bridge the two philosophical styles with a philosophy of deals with the western protestant Christianity; M. Ramakrishnan explores symbolism for which he turns first to Cassirer and Langer and then to the Buddhist philosophical tradition; and, Lenin C. C. and Augustine his own intuition to ‘the logic of participation’ or ‘meaning conflation.’ Pamplany the ancient Indian (Hindu) tradition. Murphy’s contribution in The formal pattern of meaning of our experience and the expressional this volume, “Christianity and Modern Science in the West: An Overview,” aspect of the same experience are in fact inclusive of each other. The is noteworthy in many respects: first of all, her elaborate overview of symbolic expression of our religious or cultural experience can neither the science-religion dialogue in the protestant Christianity in the West be objectified completely nor can its meaning be distinguished from that compliments George Coyne’s similar article (See, Omega, June 2008.) of the original experience. If meaning conflation is thus a fact, then on the current situation of the science-theology interactions in the western systematics in the field of philosophy and theology needs to develop new Catholic tradition; secondly, she makes a historical exposition of the origin categories. of the Western science; and finally, and more importantly, she identifies five major theological issues in the field of science-religion dialogue

4Omega June 2009 5 (divine action, evolution, concept of person, doctrine of creation, and Omega the problem of evil). As said at the beginning, in recent decades thinkers VIII (2009)1, 7-23 are compelled to redesign their epistemological engagements in terms of guiding issues common to all humans. By identifying and assessing some such issues from a synthetic perspective, Murphy has done a pioneering work in the emerging epistemological field. Ramakrishnan on his part offers a brief reconstructive hermeneutic of the basics of Buddhist philosophy. He argues that the ancient Buddhist texts are to be re-read with the contemporary environmental issues in mind, and he hopes that the Buddhist tradition which could once successfully re-direct the human Is Explaining Religion Naturalistically spirit to its cosmic abode can once again cure the ills caused by our alienation from the nature. In the next paper in the series, Lenin makes Explaining Religion Away? a critical survey of Kautilya’s Arthaúâstra with the place of religion in politics in view. Kautilya, in Lenin’s view, kept religion away from his 1 political theorizing, though he emphasized its role in the general social - Willem B. Drees life. The writer of Mahabharata, on the contrary, worked out his political theory on clear religious foundations. Kautilya’s exclusivist tendency in Abstract: Is explaining religion naturalistically explaining religion away, or might it prove that mystics have been right? Some forms of this regard may be gauged as a strange exception to the general trends explanatory reduction undermine beliefs; others may be more affirmative. in the ancient Indian literature. Perhaps, a pertinent question that emerges The paper considers explanations by Dean Hamer, Andrew Newberg in the context of Lenin’s study is: which is a more helpful resource work and Eugene d’Aquili, and David S. Wilson, and compares such for our contemporary political imagination in India, Arthaúâstra or explanations with explanations of perception, morality, and Mahâbhârata? mathematical ideas. Each works out differently with respect to referential The Indian Epistemic Equilibrium: A Catalytic Paradigm for Global claims of beliefs. If one accepts a naturalistic approach, religious beliefs Science-Religion Dialogue by Augustine Pamplany is a reflection on the may serve as terms of praise or approximations to transcendent values and notions (analogous to ethics and mathematics), rather than as Indian scientific traditions with special reference to the Vedic insights. sources of information about the world. Naturalistic explanations of After discussing in detail the epistemological nuances of Indian sciences, religion place religions among other human phenomena; religion would the author goes forward to cull out the Indian parallels for a global no longer be among the gaps that religious explanations would be momentum in the sector of life sciences. A blend of Vedic insights and called upon to fill. However, one can always assume that there is a personal reflections, this article is an attempt at the epistemological creator of natural reality, the primary source of all natural, secondary enhancement of the Indian Sciences. processes. Scientific rationality and religious sensibility are two integral aspects Keywords: Eugene d’ Aquili, Dean Hamer, Explanation, Mathematics, of a reasonable approach to any realm in our human life and the world Naturalism, Andrew Newberg, Reductionism, Religion, Transcendent around us. Efforts have been made in this volume, on the one hand, to values, David S. Wilson highlight and appreciate integral approaches, and on the other hand, to critique and resist all partial approaches. As the Vedic sages prayed, The wisdom of the mystics, it seems, has predicted for centuries “Let noble thoughts come from every side.” what neurology now shows to be true: In Absolute Unitary Being, 2 - Martin K. Sebastian (Guest Editor) self blends into other; mind and matter are one and the same. Catholic University, Louvain

6 Omega June 2009 7 Willem B. Drees Explaining Religion Naturalistically Religion and other symbolic systems designed to motivate action those of the subject and that might not meet with his approval. This is have a beauty and power that seem to wilt when explained in perfectly justifiable and is, in fact, normal procedure.”5 Accepting a 3 functional terms. subject’s experience in the descriptive sense as authentic need not imply Introduction the judgement that the self-description is correct.

Is explaining religion naturalistically explaining religion away, Explaining Away undermining its beauty and power? Or might it be proving that mystics Once I know that what seemed to me to be a snake in a dark have been right all the time? These seem to be major questions with corner was actually a rope, the original experience with its emotional respect to naturalistic explanations of religions. There are related questions components, such as fear, will fade away. ‘It was only a rope.’ Thus, an of a more conceptual nature, as to how ‘explanation’ and ‘religion’ are explana-tion may liberate from unnecessary fear. It may also be a loss understood in such scientific explanations of religion. Clarifying these of the innocence of childhood, diminishing joy and spontaneity, e.g. when concepts is essential to an assessment of the impact of explanatory Santa Claus or his Dutch precursor ‘Sinterklaas’ are unmasked. If an proposals. Fearing the impact, some authors may seek to protect religion explanation is offered for inner experiences, say of the fact that someone by challenging ‘explanations of religion’ as falling short of the explanatory is prone to be irritated (‘hormones; it is your period’), the subject likely ambition or as missing the point of religions. However, it is to be noted takes offense. It seems as if the explanation takes away the genuine that a few authors in the explanatory business claim that their approaches character of the feelings by changing the terms. do not threaten religion or spirituality, but rather help us purify it. The question might then be what this purified religion might be. What would Changing the terms is part of what it is to be an explanation. be left? What would be lost? In this contribution I will address such Explaining why opium puts people to sleep by saying that it has a virtus questions in the following order. dormativa, a sleep inducing power, as happens in Molière’s play Le Malade Imaginaire, is no explanation at all. An explanation explains in 1. What is explanation? How does it relate to elimination? other terms. However, this need not be accompanied by the 2. What is explained? That is, what is religion taken to be? disappearance of the experience. Opium still puts people to sleep, even if one does not consider the statement that opium has a ‘sleep-inducing 3. Is explaining religion different from explaining perception, morality, power’ an explana-tion. When we deal with explanations of religion, or math? part of the discussion should be about the nature of the explanation. 4.What are the losses and gains if religion were to be explained? Does the explanation undermine the experiences, beliefs and practices, or does it offer an understanding without undermining it? 1 What is Explanation? How does it Relate to Elimination? Explanation Need not be Elimination ‘I experienced a tree’ can be said descriptively: ‘I experienced a tree, but then I realized I was mistaken’. But experience is also used as One of the worries evoked by reductionistic explanations is the an achieve-ment word. “This second sense includes a judgment on the fear that successful reduction would eliminate the phenomena considered, part of the observer about the accuracy of the subject’s understanding or more accurately, that it would eliminate our common-sense ideas of his or her experience.”4 It may be appropriate to explain the experience about them. However, there are good arguments for the opposite effect. in a different way than the subject herself does. “Explanatory reduction Finding a physiological basis for a trait can be understood as an affirmation consists in offering an explanation of an experience in terms that are not of its reality. Genes are not less real for being understood as strands of DNA, and pain is not less real if physiologically understood. Rather the

8Omega June 2009 9 Willem B. Drees Explaining Religion Naturalistically opposite: if the doctor can locate the physiological process underlying The compatibility of a common-sense ontology and a scien-tific my pain, my friends will take my complaints with more seriousness. one can be defended in the case of ‘Eddington’s two tables.’ The physicist Sir Arthur Eddington distinguished between ‘two’ tables in his room, the One view of ‘reduction’ is that all empirical conse-quences of the ordinary one, a substantial thing, and the ‘scientific table’, which is ‘mostly first theory, T , can be derived from a more encompassing second theory, 1 emptiness’. The argument is that these ‘two tables differ in properties, T , which is at least equally specific in its predictions and explanations. 2 indeed in essential properties, so they cannot be identical.’10 The fallacy Hence, to explain the phenomena (which were understood as empirical with the argument about the two tables, according to Schwartz, is in the conse-quences of T ) one does not need T . However, if a theory is 1 1 understand-ing of substance, which is both a common-sense notion (I superfluous, it is not thereby wrong. Rather, if one could derive the can lean on it, I cannot put my hand through it, etc.) and a notion which superfluous theory T from the more fundamental theory T the first 1 2 carries various philosophical commitments, for instance that the presence theory would not be auton-omous, but it would still be a good theory for of substance excludes empty space. The common-sense notion of the domain with which it deals. Such a form of reduction is conservative substance, say solidity, is explained by the scientific account. We might with respect to reference; it identifies entities, properties, relations, and have to give up some, or perhaps even all ontological notions attached to 6 questions rather than eliminating them. substance, but we do not eliminate common-sense solids, including Most scientific reductions do not reproduce the earlier theory but Eddington’s ‘first’ table. Any scientific description of the table will have some theory which resembles the original theory – classical mechanics to incorporate the fact that I cannot put my hand through the table. ‘If all is not reproduced by relativity theory. The reduction is corrective, and we mean by commonsense solidity is the functional notion, we have a so, presumably, would be a reduction of psychology to, perhaps, reduction of solidity which preserves the main features of the folk notion neurophysiology. But a corrected psychology “would be a psychology by identifying it with its physical microstructure, or showing how it is 11 still. Insofar as correction and improvement ‘threaten’ our current folk constituted.’ Both tables are equally real; they are the same table. psychology, we should welcome such threats.”7 Such a reduction is moderately conservative rather than radically eliminative. However, in as far as anything is eliminated, it is not the A worry may be that revisions are not ontologically conserva-tive. phenomenon of a solid table but our ontology of substantiality. If there are inconsistencies between scientific chemistry (with the concept of H O) and folk-chemistry (with the concept of water), the One can distinguish a range of cases of ‘reductionism’, ranging 2 from identification (water and H O), where elimination would be folk notion should be dropped. Similarly, it has been argued by Paul 2 Churchland8 that “our commonsense conception of psychological incoherent; constitutive, as when genes are discovered to consist of phenomena consti-tutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally DNA, where the reduction embeds the original notions more strongly in defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will our understanding of reality; approximative, where the uncorrected eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed science remains useful and relevant; and moderately revisionist, where neuroscience.” It will disappear; we shall have to choose between our the effect is not so much elimination as revision (of our ideas about naive views and a better view. If we have to choose, we are not dealing solidity). “In all these, reduction is an alternative to, not a form of, 12 with an example of reduction, but with competing theories. The suggestion elimination.” seems to be that we have to choose between a common-sense view and Thus, to summarize the conclusions of this brief tour, explanations 9 a scientific one, which Sellars called the ‘manifest image’ and the need not be eliminative. However, they can be eliminative or corrective ‘scientific image’, as if they are incompatible. in important respects. The question is whether explanations of religion are like one of he following:

10Omega June 2009 11 Willem B. Drees Explaining Religion Naturalistically

- explanations of the apparent snake or Santa Claus, where our spirituality.14 We have a genetic predisposition for spirituality, while relation to the phenomenon is affected; particular religious forms are cultural, just as bird-song may be hard- wired but the songs themselves are partly cultural.15 William James, - explanations of the solidity of the table, where our idea about the positively appreciated by Hamer, is the author with the longest entry in ontology is modified; or the index. A question for the science of religions might be whether this - reductionist understandings of genes, pain and water, where the distinction between religion and spirituality is viable. It seems to me to reality of the phenomena and the approximate adequacy of our serve an apologetic purpose in advocating a liberal and universal understanding is affirmed by the enlarged picture of reality. ‘spirituality’ that transcends all particular religions with their organizations and doctrines, while leaving all beliefs that conflict with science to 2 What is Explained? That is, What is Religion Taken to be? ‘religion’ rather than spirituality.16

I will briefly consider three examples of naturalistic explanations Secondly, on methodological grounds he claims to be agnostic of religion, to see how the authors understand religion. with respect to truth. ‘This is a book about why humans believe, not whether those beliefs are true.’17 The truth question, whether there is Dean Hamer a God, is beyond science, whereas the question why we do believe in God is potentially within our understanding.18 There is nothing intrinsically 13 Dean Hamer wrote on the penultimate page of The God Gene atheistic or theistic about postulating a genetic and biochemical the following. mechanism for spirituality; if God does exist, he would need a way for The fact that spirituality has a genetic component implies that it us to recognize his presence.19 evolved for a purpose. No matter how selfish a gene is, it still needs a human being as a carrier to perpetuate itself. There is Thirdly, Hamer considers knowledge of the natural processes now reasonable evidence that spirituality is in fact beneficial to underlying spirituality and religion to be purifying. Not only does he our physical as well as mental health. Faith may not only make suggest that spirituality may make people better (see the quote above), people feel better; it may actually make them better people. but also that Religion is based on memes, traditions of culture that are passed on not by DNA but by learning, instruction, and imitation. As a understanding the difference between spirituality and religion result, memes may or may not be beneficial to the people who gives us another tool in offering hope for the future. For while hold them. What determines their survival is how well they are our spirituality may be engraved to a degree in our DNA, we can transmitted from one person to another. The deep and abiding change, reinterpret, and reconsider the memes written on the appeal of religious memes is based not on logic or even benefit to scrolls of our religious history. (…) Some of religion’s least our species, but on their ability to evoke altered states of desirable memes, such as the condemnation of pagans, of non- consciousness and spirituality that are so important in spirituality. believers, of outsiders, can be difficult to erase or reinvent. But they can be altered – and in the case of religious memes that Linking a genetic component to ‘purpose’ and memes as prove themselves to be destructive to peace, understanding, and 20 indifferent to the carriers is in my opinion highly disputable. However, I compassion, they must be. don’t want to focus on his understanding of evolutionary explanations, A moral injunction on the final page of a book is not uncommon. but on the understanding of religion and the agenda pursued. Towards the end of his book The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins called Firstly, Hamer separates spirituality from religion. The upon us to rebel against the selfish genes. While Dawkins thus called explanatory project is not about belief in God or gods but about upon us to make culture (understanding) override genetic impulses, Hamer

12Omega June 2009 13 Willem B. Drees Explaining Religion Naturalistically encourages us to alter culturally determined religious beliefs while more in emotions or in creating (rather than perceiving) an encompass-ing remaining true to our genetically determined drive towards spirituality. perspective which allows for balanced action. Andrew Newberg and Eugene d’Aquili Secondly, they argue that the perception of material reality depends on the self-world distinction, and that this distinction develops over time Andrew Newberg and Eugened’Aquili have a similar interest in in the young brain; in that sense, the brain/mind exists before the personal individual experience and spirituality in relation to the structure of the self. In the neurological processes that arise when external sensory input brain. Two decades ago, D’Aquili spoke about the experience of ‘Absolute is no longer involved, leading to experiences of Absolute Unitary Being, Unitary Being’ (AUB), in which reality is viewed as a whole, arising this process of distinguishing self and world, subjective and objective “from the total functioning of the parietal lobe on the nondominant side reality, is undone. Awareness is freed of the usual subjective sense of (or at least certain parts of that area).”21 The dominant hemisphere self and of the spatial world in which that self could be, thus resulting in deals primarily with our perception of the external world in all its variety; “a state of pure awareness, an awareness stripped of ego, focussed on the non-dominant one might deliver “the perception of absolute, unitary, nothing, oblivious to the passage of time and physical sensation.”23 This atemporal being.”22 is not a proof of the existence of AUB, but “when the mind drops its subjective preoccupation with the needs of the self and the material Why God Won’t Go Away is a presentation of this research distractions of the world, it can perceive this greater reality.”24 The programme that uses non-invasive brain scanning technologies to explore external, material world and the subjective world of the self are both the neurological basis of mystical experiences. They have come up with ‘contained within, and perhaps created by, the reality of the Absolute particular proposals regarding neurological pathways that are involved Unitary Being.’25 in such experiences. They have argued that such capacities of the mind may have beneficial effects in terms of individual health and bonds They also indicate how they understand anthropomorphic ideas between members of groups, and thus have been favoured in the course about God or gods from the traditions. Such personifications are “symbolic of evolution. attempts to grasp the ungraspable.”26 When the images are taken too serious, ‘we create a God who leads us away from unity and compassion, Whatever the details, mechanisms which inhibit certain pathways, towards division and strife.’27 “History suggests that religious intolerance and thereby inhibit certain forms of sensory input and of conceptual is primarily a cultural phenomenon, based in ignorance, fear, xenophobic analysis, may well turn out to correlate with mystical states or other prejudice, and ethnocentric chauvinism’. 28 However, they see it as more experi-ences considered religious. If we can describe such neurol-ogical than just narrow-mindedness; “the presumption of ‘exclusive’ truth, upon processes, does this support or undermine a naturalist view of religious which religious intolerance is based, may rise out of incomplete states of experiences? neurobiological transcendence”29 – thus, exclusivist forms of religion They seem to give two arguments for an affirmative answer. are based on incomplete forms of experience and ‘perception’. Their Firstly, they suggest that we should treat the workings of both hemispheres perspective is clearly pluralist and universalist. “All religions, therefore, with equal seriousness. If we trust that we are in touch with reality via are kin. None of them can exclusively own the realist reality, but all of the dominant hemisphere, why would we not trust, so the argument them, at their best, steer the heart and mind in the right direction.”30 goes, experiences governed by the other side? I think this argument In this universalist context we see also their expectations as to faces various problems. The two hemispheres have co-evolved, but they what their own understanding of religion may bring forth: “The neurology may well function in complementary ways rather than in similar ways; of transcendence can, at very least, provide a biological framework within certain structures are more involved in the perception of the world, others which all religions can be reconciled. But if the unitary states that the 14Omega June 2009 15 Willem B. Drees Explaining Religion Naturalistically brain makes possible are, in fact, glimpses of an actual higher reality, Rather, it [religious belief] is intimately connected to reality by then religions are reflections not only of neurological unity, but of a deeper motivating behaviors that are adaptive in the real world – an absolute reality.”31 The if-then sentence seems trivial (if they are glimpses awesome achievement when we appreciate the complexity that is of reality, religions are reflections of reality), but it emphasizes their required to become connected in this practical sense. It is true interest in spiritual realism and in focussing on the common denominator. that many religious beliefs are false as literal descriptions of the real world, but this merely forces us to recognizer two forms of This returns in the epilogue, where Newberg speaks of megatheology realism; a factual realism based on literal correspondence and a 35 as “a way of approaching religion that focuses on the universal elements practical realism based on behavioral adaptedness. that all religions seem to share.”32 Thus, in a chapter on Calvinism, Wilson explicates how It is to be noted that there hardly is any interest in the situated commandments regarding the people-people relationship were adaptive character of religious ideas and practices or the particular content of in those circumstances, while “the God-people relationship can be beliefs. The focus on religion is on the experiential side and on the reality interpreted as a belief system that is designed to motivate the suggested by mystical experiences, a reality of pure awareness beyond behaviours.”36 “Calvin’s church included a code of behaviors adapted to the limits of subject and object. the local environment, a belief system that powerfully motivated the code inside the mind of the believer, and a social organization that David Sloan Wilson coordinated and enforced the code for leaders and followers alike.”37 Quite different from Hamer, Newberg and D’Aquili is D.S. We always face a trade off between factual and practical realism. Wilson’s approach to religion in Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Practical realism may be supported effectively by fictitious accounts. Religion, and the Nature of Society. Central in his argument is an Science is an exception in that it is explicitly committed to factual realism; ‘organismic concept of religious groups’. Thinking in terms of selection more limited but thereby enriching practical realism in the long run.38 operating at various levels (a genome is a group of genes; a community Religion need not be factual to be significant. “Some of the most beautiful a group of different individuals) has been prominent as well in Wilson’s and moving elements of religion come not from cosmic struggles and earlier work on the evolutionary conditions for altruism, Unto Others: invisible gods but from the vision of a better life on earth.”39 The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (Sober and Wilson 1998). In Darwin’s Cathedral, he presents the following thesis. These naturalistic explanations of religion focus on quite different aspects of religion. Wilson attaches importance to beliefs as they motivate The hypothesis I am seeking to test proposes that religion causes behaviour and to institutional, social organizations; Newberg and Hamer human groups to function as adaptive units. This hypothesis has many rivals, including religion as a tool of exploitation, as a emphasize individual experience and spirituality. 33 cultural parasite, as a by-product of cost-benefit reasoning. They also differ in how they treat the diversity of religious A belief system does not only provide a list of recommended particulars. For Hamer, Newberg, and D’Aquili, differences are relatively behaviours, but offers also justification and possible rewards and unimportant. Besides, differences count as indications of the cultural punishments, thus curtailing cheating. Whether the belief system is and human packaging of the real experience, which is in principle fictional or more realistic is not relevant; a fictional system can be more universal. For Wilson, adaptedness is always to be understood in relation economical and effective. For belief systems, their “adaptedness must to an environment, whether social or cultural. Hence, diversity is be judged by the behaviors they motivate, not by their factual unavoidable upon his approach. correspondence to reality.”34 The other-worldliness of religion is not detached from reality.

16Omega June 2009 17 Willem B. Drees Explaining Religion Naturalistically 3 Is Explaining Religion Different from Explaining Perception, may be seen as a second-order activity, growing out of the analysis of Morality, or Math? human practices such as counting and trading, over time approximating a Platonic realm of timeless mathematical truths. Similarly, ethical To say that religions might be explicable as functional social considerations involve a second-order reflection, upon procedures or symbols or as natural products of healthy brains, is not necessarily to standards which may be fruitful in resolving conflicts of interests with deny that their central terms refer to realities. However, if a religious reference to an (unavail-able) impartial perspective. As second order claim purports to be about a supernatural reality, such as one or more activities, they aim at norms of universal validity, but these universal, gods, one might raise the question of whether the claim may be right or ‘transcendent’ claims may be construed without reference to the existence wrong. For comparison I want to start with the example of observing of a realm of abstract objects apart from the natural realm with all its trees. particulars. On an evolutionary view, the adequacy of our language about In religions there are, in most cases, references to transcendent trees, with notions such as bark, leaves, fire wood, etc., is intelligible realities, denizens of another realm. Whereas such references in morality since the language has been modified in a long history of interactions of and mathematics may be recon-structed in terms of procedures for humans with trees and with each other in conversations about trees. justification, religions are much more tied to an ontological view of those This web of causal interactions lies behind the adequacy of our language realities: gods are either supernatural realities or they are unreal, non- about trees. If one came across a culture with no past experiences with existent. In this sense, an account of the evolutionary origins and adaptive trees, it would be a very surprising coincidence if they had an adequate functions of religion is a much stronger challenge to the truth of some vocabulary for trees. We refer to trees, and we seem to do so in fairly religious doctrines than a similar understanding of the origin and function adequate ways, because our language has arisen and been tested in a of arithmetic or morality would ever be, since mathemat-ical and moral world with particular ostensible trees. Now back to religions and claims are not so much seen here as truth claims about reality, say about reference. On the naturalist view there is no locus for particular divine causally efficacious entities, whereas religious claims are often taken to activities in a similar ostensible way. Thus, it is extremely unlikely that be of such a kind. Thus, whereas an account of ethics which avoids our ideas about gods would conform to their reality.40 Hence, an reference to a non-natural realm would not affect morality, a similar evolutionary view challenges religions not only by offering an account of account in theology would have more radical consequences, as it would their origin but thereby also by undermining the credibility of their undermine the referential character of statements which purport to be references to a reality which would transcend the environ-ments in which about a non-natural God. the religions arose. One may also return to the considerations about explanation and One might propose a different analogy, not between religion and elimination. If an explanation of pain, in terms of a particular nerve firing, sense perception (seeing trees) but between religious claims and claims would not deny the reality of pain (but rather affirm it), why would an in mathematics and ethics. There one can make a strong case that an explanation of religious beliefs undermine their credibility? It seems to account of origins, how we have come to a certain conviction, does not me that the problem has been captured well by Robert Segal:41 in itself decide on the truth or value of that conviction. To conflate issues Unfortunately, God is not, like pain, a reality to be explained but of origins of beliefs and of their justification is to commit what is called it is rather, like atoms, an explanation itself of reality. The reality the ‘genetic fallacy’. to be explained is religion, or its object. Where God is the However, there are relevant differences between the status of explanation offered by nonreductionists, nature, society, and the psyche are among the explanations offered by social scientific mathematics and ethics, and the status of religious ideas. Mathematics reductionists. Those explanations, as rival ones to God, do 18Omega June 2009 19 Willem B. Drees Explaining Religion Naturalistically challenge the reality of God, so that Eliade is justified in fearing being selective, placing all that is considered valuable in the genuine them, even if he is not justified in rejecting them. These core. The diversity of religions and the universality of exclusivist elements explanations may not refute the existence of God, but, if accepted, is not appreciated, and hardly addressed. they may well render his existence superfluous – and in that sense threaten the reality of God. Wilson suffers less from this, as he can more easily explain why 4 Concluding Remarks: Losses and Gains if Religion were to awful behaviour towards others may be beneficial for the group. His be Explained? approach is more consistently ‘naturalist’ by treating religious symbol systems as functional and therefore valuable, but this approach is most Is explaining religion naturalistically explaining religion away, likely to affect religious attitudes and practices in informed participants. undermining its beauty and power? Or might it be proving that mystics The main difference between the approaches considered is that Hamer, have been right all the time? These were the questions we started this Newberg and D’Aquili make experience central, but with it also the paper with. Let me try to take stock and reflect upon the situation. reality as experienced, that is, the ontology associated in the past with these experiences, while Wilson makes behaviour central, and allows Explanation need not be elimination of the phenomenon. Some for the difference between an insider’s account of motivation (God’s reductionist explanations affirm the reality of the phenomenon observed commands) and an outsider’s account. In that sense, he accepts the (e.g. pain/nerves; genes/DNA). However, sometimes reductionist way reductionist explanations may have consequences for the ontology explanations transform (and eliminate) the phenomenon explained (e.g., assumed. the snake/rope; Santa). More generally, reductionist or naturalist explanations change the terms. They may explain a phenomenon in terms If one accepts a more completely naturalistic approach (such as typical of a different level or kind of description. The phenomenon may D.S. Wilson), religious beliefs and claims regarding revelation may serve be preserved, while the ontology changes fundamentally. as normative or motivational terms of praise, recommending behavior and beliefs, rather than as sources of information about the external ‘God’ is not among the phenomena to be explained, but human world. Whatever naturalistic explanation of religion might come available, belief in God (religion) is. Religious traditions mostly offer non-naturalist the result would only be that religion would be among the human explanations of religion. ‘God revealed himself’ is a possible explanation phenomena such as languages and political systems; religion itself would of human belief in God. ‘I experienced a mystical union’ if taken as no longer be among the gaps that religious explanations would be called evidence of God or the Absolute, is the other side of this. However, such upon to fill. One can always assume that in religious language we explanations have to compete with explanations without such references. approximate transcendent values and ideas, as in ethics and mathematics, Explanations such as those of D’Aquili and Newberg, which seek or that there is a creator of natural reality, the primary source of all to stay within the scientific fold but at the same time suggest that within natural, secondary processes. those categories one may have come to the possibility that we are in touch with a higher reality, draw upon the coalescence of two options, namely of treating ‘higher realty’ as distinct (which raises questions as Acknowledgments to how it relates to our existence and experience) or treating ‘Unitary Sections 1 and 3 have been adapted from (Drees 1996, 189-194 and 213-223). Being’ as a different understanding of natural reality (which would raise questions as to how the two descriptions of a single reality relate). Hamer Notes and Newberg/D’Aquili are to some extent apologists for religion, as all 1. Willem B. Drees is Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Ethics and religion-and-science can be in various contexts,42 and they do so by outgoing Dean of the Faculty of Religious Studies of Leiden University. In

20Omega June 2009 21 Willem B. Drees Explaining Religion Naturalistically 2001 he was the Executive Director of ALLEA, All European Academies, a 22. Andrew Newberg and Eugene d’Aquili, 1987, p. 378. federation of national academies of sciences in thirty-eight European 23. Newberg c.s. 2002, p. 151. countries. From 1995-2001 he was extraordinary professor for philosophy of nature and technology at Twente University, Enschede, the Netherlands. 24. Newberg c.s. 2002, p. 155. 2. A. Newberg, E. d’Aquili, Vince Rause. 2002. Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain 25. Newberg c.s. 2002, p. 155. Science and the Biology of Belief (New York: Ballantine Books) (orig. 2001), 26. Newberg c.s. 2002, p.161. p. 156. 27. Newberg c.s. 2002, p. 162. 3. D. S. Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 231. 28. Newberg c.s. 2002, p. 163. 4. W. Proudfoot, Religious Experience (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University 29. Newberg c.s. 2002, p. 164. of California Press, 1985), p. 229. 30. Newberg c.s. 2002, p. 165. 5. Proudfoot, 1985, p. 197. 31. Newberg c.s. 2002, p. 168. 6. J. Schwartz, “Reduction, Elimination, and the Mental.,” in Philosophy of 32. Newberg c.s. 2002, p. 175. Science 58:1991, pp. 203-210. 33. D.S. Wilson, p. 96. 7. Schwartz 1991, p. 212. 34. D.S. Wilson, p. 100. 8. Paul Churchland, “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes,” in Journal of Philosophy 78 (2) (1981), p. 67. 35. D.S. Wilson, p. 228. 9. Sellars (1963, 5) 36. D.S. Wilson, p. 105. 10. Schwartz 1991, p. 213. 37. D.S. Wilson, p. 111. 11. Schwartz 1991, p. 217. 38. D.S. Wilson, pp 229-231. 12. Schwartz 1991, p. 218. 39. D.S. Wilson, p. 231. 13. D. Hamer, The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into our Genes (New 40. Segal, 1989, p. 79. York: Anchor Books, 2004), p. 214. 41. Segal 1999, p. 158. 14. Hamer, pp. 8-9. 42. W. B. Drees, Religion and Science in Context: A Guide to the Debates 15. Hamer, p. 8. (London: Routledge, 2009). 16. Hamer, p. 210. 17. Hamer, p. 16. 18. Hamer, p. 14. 19. Hamer, p. 211. 20. Hamer, p. 215. 21. Andrew Newberg and Eugene d’Aquili, 1987, p. 377.

22Omega June 2009 23 Paul Cortois Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought Omega concerning schools or authors from the remote until the very recent VIII (2009)1, 24-48 past. Assuming that one count the third category among the historiography of philosophy, then, today’s ‘creative’ production (or creation of novel ideas) in philosophy might be conceived as divided among just two styles of reasoning – labeled, in that case, ‘the analytic’ and ‘the continental’. Of course, such a picture must be based on a glaring simplification, if only for ignoring so many potentially novel ideas Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer and problems. To mention just one example: by imposing such a dual on Meaning Conflation in Symbolic classification, determined by the track record of internal research traditions of academic philosophy, the picture largely ignores sources of ideas in Thought other cultural traditions, be it the sciences, the arts, religions, or the common life. Are philosophical descendants of such ideas to be put on - Paul Cortois1 the Procrustean bed of our narrow classification to be worthy of Abstract: Looking for a way to go beyond the new scholasticism of consideration? But not only is the classification not exhaustive, it is not analytical as well as continental schools of thought in order to interpret exclusive either: there are clearly regions of overlap. Moreover, it may meaningful cultural phenomena, this paper proposes to study the well be the case that the picture, although suggestive for the state of the philosophy of symbolism such as it was practiced in the work of Cassirer art of the latter five decades or so, will reduce, in another half a century, and Langer. The focus is on their philosophy of the mythical symbolic to nothing but a footnote in the history of philosophy. By then, who will form. After identifying the basic functions, acts, and forms of all symbolism, still remember that one day academic philosophers tended to believe The author puts forward their really innovative idea about the formal that only two major styles of philosophizing could exist – or rather just pattern of meaning in myth, the mythical symbol being a symbol in a one, since parties were engaged in a fierce and jealous battle for very special sense: although it has connotation and involves processes recognition as the one and only one? of seeing as, and thus cannot be considered a signal, and although it involves the ‘radical metaphor’ that is also the root of language, it lacks Still, stereotyped as it may be, the picture seems to point to a real the distance that makes possible a representation. This is because the phenomenon. Both ‘analytical´ and ‘continental’ philosophy have been mythical symbol (exemplified in the relic) does not have an object, but is growing outside their original geographic boundaries, conquering the its object, while both include each other as a part. The author calls this globalizing intellectual world. New currents tend to get caught in the logic of participation, meaning conflation. In order to fructify this fundamental idea for today’s understanding of mythical, ritual and battle for the right style of thinking. They are forced to take sides. That religious forms of life, however, it is necessary to take a distance from the means that the regions of overlap are not too crowded. When confronted evolutionary scheme of thinking about culture which underlies Cassirer’s with an instantaneous choice about reading or not-reading, potential and Langer’s work. readers assess and classify new publications with a quick glance as to their position according to the analytical/continental divide. Already Keywords: Cassirer, Langer, symbolic function, Cognitive Activity, Meaning Conflation. external reasons such as the format and policy of international journals on the philosophical market force authors to standardize their ideas and 1 The Dual Classification Wars, and a Way Out style of reasoning according to these party lines. Philosophers define themselves and their opponents by means of polarizing labels. Here are Looking at academic philosophy today, a convenient partition some of the more recent ones, at the edges of the spectrum of debate: among three major currents seems to impose itself: so-called continental ‘scientific naturalism’ and ‘postmodernist relativism’. Attitudes on the philosophy, analytical philosophy, and the huge field of historical studies 24 Omega June 2009 25 Paul Cortois Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought dual classification become self-fulfilling prophecies. language philosophy for a long time. Meditating on the connotations associated with such labels as One view that seems to be absent today, however, is a view that naturalism and postmodernism, it seems plausible that there are also unifies several perspectives through a paradigm that had been very more intrinsic reasons to this state of affairs. The main one, I think, is present a few decades ago: I mean the point of view of symbolism. In that philosophy is hovering between two cultural role-models; and the this paper, I would like to present the closely interconnected earlier fight is about which one to identify with. Put simply, the two models are theories of the symbol and symbolic forms that had been elaborated by a scientific and a literary one, respectively. In one tradition, philosophy two thinkers in the period between the 1920’s and the 1960’s: Ernst claims a kind of knowledge which could be called scientific or could Cassirer (1874-1945) and Susanne Langer (1895-1985). Properly compete with science in rigor; in another it aspires at an essayistic speaking, Langer was not a pupil of Cassirer, but she was deeply commentary on experiential phenomena that escape science in a principled influenced by him. Although Cassirer’s work antedates the current way. philosophy wars, it can be seen as already an attempt to overcome them avant-la-lettre in the heyday of logical empiricism and of phenomenology: To me, this split and forced choice between two styles in philosophy more precisely, to construct a unified view of human experience and hardly looks like a desirable state of affairs. If the battle is about identity culture from the overarching perspective of the symbol as the sole entry and the aim to focus on - acquiring the status of scientific knowledge or to a human world and experience. Or rather, this work tried to discuss rather aspiring at a literary essayistic comment on the postmodern the diversity of human experience starting from the view that each condition - there is eo ipso no overarching framework from which to ‘symbolic form’ (myth, language, art, science, technique,…) was the discuss the meaning of the several fields of experience in comparison or effectuation of a specific kind of symbolic consciousness – so that the contrast with each other. The more both the analytical and the continental symbolic perspective points as much to what holds them together as to are attached to their own purity, the more they seem to take refuge in what keeps them apart. In that sense, since it discussed – most elaborately their respective modes of scholasticism. Analytical studies are often in Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (1923-29, 3 vol.) – myth as threatened by an escape in technicalities that creates the outlook of a well as science, this work was equally much wedded to a thorough proper field of expertise; meanwhile many fundamental questions that analysis of phenomena ranging from language to science, as to a synthetic belong to the very subject are avoided, for no other reason than that they view of what makes possible all of these symbol uses. In so far as a resist such a treatment. Continental philosophy, in turn, often recoils in philosophy of language and of science implies a typically ‘analytical’ obscurity and a closed pseudo-technical jargon reserving understanding standpoint, Cassirer was integrating Frege, Russell and Mach as much for the initiates of this peculiar obedience, especially of the most recent as Kant and Husserl. Susanne Langer, who continued and extended vogue. Cassirer’s fields of interest in two opposing directions (art and nature), Are there no alternatives, no more bridges connecting the equally originated an overarching project based on a detailed analysis of riverbanks that separate philosophical styles? Lately several authors have domains of experience but inspired by and discharging in a synoptic, been building bridges. Take for example analytical phenomenology, or synthetic view. The extension consists in this, that Cassirer never really Hilary Putnam’s version of pragmatism, or theories of meaning based systematized his intuitions on art, while the aesthetics of the arts and 3 on the later Wittgenstein, or John McDowell’s holistic argument in Mind especially of music have been at the core of Langer’s work; and on the and World, or Christine Korsgaard2 who brings a new Kantian approach other hand, in the fact that Langer has discussed the relation between to a theory of reason and normativity. As for the other side, people like mind and its emergence from nature in ways that could hardly have Habermas had been attempting to integrate insights from ordinary occurred in Cassirer’s work. In her extensive last work Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling (1965-1985, 3 vol.), she maintained the view of

26Omega June 2009 27 Paul Cortois Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought mind and culture as constituted by symbolic consciousness while at the here intended. In the final part of the paper, however, it will also appear same time linking mind and symbol, as emerging non-reductively from that the relevance of Cassirer’s and Langer’s analysis for contemporary organic activity, to their roots in nature. Today, the latter question would philosophy can manifest itself only in ways that would have been puzzling be considered a typical topic for analytic philosophers of mind. Notice to their originators, since appreciating it today will also demand in a that hardly anyone would know how to classify Langer (or Cassirer, for certain sense a reversal of their own perspectives on the matter. that matter) among analytic or continental philosophers, neither in this respect nor regarding her aesthetics. In sum, I join forces with Michael 2 Cassirer’s Symbolic Functions Friedman’s A Parting of the Ways. Carnap, Cassirer and Heidegger,4 Preparing the field for a semantic analysis of embodied meaning, and enlarge on his call when he enjoins us to take a look at Cassirer let us start with Cassirer’s larger framework.6 As has been said, I will (rather than at Carnap and Heidegger) for a cure for the dramatic parting focus on the basic and correlative types of consciousness and meaning, of the ways in philosophy. But I will do that for the case, not of science, before restricting the scope to the mythical type. The clearest exposition but of myth. of this plurality of symbolic meaning and consciousness types is to be Philosophical thinking outside the western world might be more found in the impressive third and closing volume of Philosophie der open to the discovery or rediscovery of hard to place thinkers, since it is symbolischen Formen. Only while reading through Parts One and Two not yet completely overrun by the dual classification wars and the of this third volume,7 retrospectively the overall organization of the whole dichotomous situation of philosophy as I sketched it. So, a presentation work becomes clear. One principle of division is immediately obvious: of Cassirer’s and Langer’s work might be welcomed in this respect as there are three basic symbolic forms, three ways of experiencing well as for their own sake. However, I do not think it is feasible or whatever it is we call ‘the world’ – each of which is the primordial fruitful to try to summarize the work of one, let alone two important subject of discussion in one of the volumes: myth, language, and science. philosophers in the space of a single contribution. It might be more fruitful Let us reconstruct the pattern of Cassirer’s ‘system’ schematically (and to capture something of their importance by looking at the way both of indeed, that’s still what it looks like: perhaps the last of the great systems them deal with one problem, especially if this way begins to look somewhat of German philosophical thought, even if there is no trace of a speculative like a bridge over the abyss. So, in this paper, I will not try to give an system). But in order not to put the cart of abstraction before the intuitive overview of Cassirer’s and Langer’s thought on the symbolic mind, but horse, let me first sketch the genesis of Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic I hope you to get the feel of what they were aiming at in one important forms, out of which the whole pattern arises. aspect of their work on symbolism. I do not claim this is the way either Cassirer was formed in the neo-Kantian school of Marburg, Cassirer or Langer are being reminded if at all,5 only that it is one way founded around the turn of the century, along with such authors as Cohen they should be reminded. This aspect is linked to their view on mythical and Natorp. Initially, Cassirer joined forces in order to arrive at a kind of symbolism, and to the question of how the mythical (involving the religious rigorization of Kantian epistemology: while Kant had in mind an overall and the ritual) embodies a specific type of meaning, when compared to theory of theoretical reason in the Critique of Pure Reason, they the cognitive and scientific type. In particular, the relevance of Cassirer’s expressly reduced his broad idea to a theory of (genuine) knowledge. and Langer’s analysis, in this respect, pertains to what may be called Moreover, even the project of a theory of knowledge was too broad: the ‘degrees of embodiment of meaning’ – a specific kind of semantic analysis latter in turn had to be reduced to a foundation of the natural sciences. in terms of the relation between meanings and their material realization. This effectuates in questions and answers that have escaped one-sided Why did the Marburgers envisage this narrowing down?8 They approaches, analytical as well as continental, close as philosophers in were convinced that all of the Critique turned around a new conception both styles may sometimes have come to pointing at the phenomena and foundation of objectivity; it was objective experience they wanted

28Omega June 2009 29 Paul Cortois Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought to see safeguarded and founded anew, without any relapse into traditional this be our only meaningful type of relation to reality? If objectivity in the metaphysics (for example into metaphysical realism). And what else is sense of critical epistemology is what scientific knowledge brings in to objective experience but scientific experience? Purity is the result of a constitute the world (or experience) in its authentic scientific sense, does process of abstracting from all historical-empirical conditions of that mean that we would have to restrict our constitution of the world of knowledge. So, remarkably, it is not a tendency towards naturalism (as experience to this objective sense? That sounds like an ambiguous we might tend to think, in one conception of ‘naturalism’), but a critique question, however. It may mean that we might have to go beyond the of naturalism as well as of psychologism that inspired this reduction. notion of objectivity as such, or it may mean that we might extend the What is naturally or psychologically founded is subjective. Conditions of notion of objectivity beyond the scientific attitude. Both readings may possibility of knowledge that belong to that register are conditioned make sense, even within Cassirer’s own perspective, depending on conditions. And how can these conditioned conditions be overcome, and whether you adopt a strict or a broad notion of objectivity (and of what the positing of a purely conditioning condition be reached? Only by turning may be called an object). In any case, the question remains: how can the towards a scientific viewpoint. Next, Natorp and Cohen realized that neo-Kantian view be extended and modified so that it may include other this reduction involved a criticism of Kant himself, viz., of the central types of meaning constitutive relations to the world or worlds of role that remained devolved to the senses in Kant’s epistemology. A experience? Well, in a more Hegelian sense, for example, what is dependence upon the data of the senses for the content of knowledge is objective is what is objectified in the sense of the objective spirit, a dependence on something external and contingent. So they make intuition materialized and externalized beyond the interiority of consciousness. (Anschauung) into a function of pure thought, but in a way that differs Next, in a Husserlian sense, objectivity refers to what is constituted as a from speculative idealism. For Cohen, pure thought, i.e., mathematized noematic correlate, possessing an ideal content, for our conscious acts. thought, produces the scientific image of the world without the Combining these senses, and superimposing them on Kant’s sense, for collaboration of a moment of external data – only data that are interiorized Cassirer there is no sufficient reason to withhold an extended notion of into thought enter the picture. This way, for example, over and against objectivity from other realms of experience: just as the typical function Kant’s affirmation of empirical realism, reality itself is turned into a of thought constitutes scientific objects and objective meanings of category of thought; or rather, in fact, Kant’s own presentation of ‘reality’ concepts, the functions responsible for myth and language may constitute as one of the categories is taken up in the most consequential of ways. totalities of objects in their own right, materialized in mythical entities Reality is a product of scientific objectivity – a function of scientific and linguistic entities (such as classes and natural kinds constituted by thought. This leads to the elaboration of one specific type of idealism: ordinary language with its labels and natural kind terms; see below). sciences producing world views do not produce reality in a metaphysical This is the ‘symbolic turn’ in Cassirer’s thought: the expansion and sense, they produce the scientific meaning of reality. (Far as we may transformation of a specific type of idealistic viewpoint requires an appear to be moving away from our topic of meaning in myth, better extension of the relations or attitudes to the world of experience to other keep this dictum in mind for the sake of myth, since it concerns Cassirer’s spheres, beyond the sole scientific interest. reine Bedeutungsfunktion as represented in scientific thought, which is the contrast notion of meaning in myth.) But why call this a symbolic turn, apart from the obvious fact that myth and language are replete with what is ordinarily called symbols? Now, one could describe the rise of Cassirer’s own standpoint Because, just as in science the world of knowledge is constituted by a from the background of the Marburg school as the movement of totality of concepts and their formal notations, the conglomerate of which transcending the narrow bonds of this view. Not in the sense that the is in itself also a totality of intellectual symbols, so in other spheres what latter affirmation about thought producing the objectified sense of reality is taking place is a formative constitution (Formgebung) of fields of would be wrong, but in the sense that the question arises: why should experience. This process of extension of experiential relations beyond

30Omega June 2009 31 Paul Cortois Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought Marburg neo-Kantianism may be seen to happen in two steps: first, ever of media breaking the light each with a specific refractive index,9 thus since Kant, chemistry, biology, psychology, social science, have gained each creating specific views of things, or rather: specific ‘things,’ their identity as intellectual disciplines, beyond pure mathematics and comprised in their own circles of visibility (i.e., things of the same sort). physics (the only fields of rigorous knowledge recognized by Kant). Only such mediation creates world views (or worlds, as Nelson Goodman Each of them consists in a different set of intellectual symbols; each of would have it, referring to Cassirer),10 and so it might be seen that the them gives rise and form to a world view of their own (interrelated as all notion of the symbolic is nothing else here than the generalization of the these perspectives ought to be, if they are to be held simultaneously). notion of an objectifying meaning constituting relation in the extended This much, already, had to be taken into account by the Marburg view. sense. Next, beyond these intellectual disciplines, and their inherent Thus, we arrive at the finer grained structure of the philosophy of plurality, there are other ways of Formgebung, and thus, other grounds symbolic forms. Expressed in a less metaphorical way, the job of mediating for a further reaching pluralism as well. Language, religion, art, myth, could be called a symbolic function: there are three modes, basically, of ritual, technique, are ways of giving form and sense to a world, or worlds: making things accessible through symbols, and accordingly, three symbolic here the switch takes place from mere Denken to das Ganze des functions. These correspond to three types of mental activity, since a geistigen Lebens. Reality has no form by itself; form has to be conferred function requires a way of achieving it in consciousness. And the products on it. If this is so in science, and if there this is achieved by intellectual of both those functions and activities are called symbolic forms. The symbols (concepts), then it must be so in myth and the other spheres, latter are the well-known forms of myth, language, and science that and here you must find other types of symbols responsible for analogous determine the overall structural division of the work. Each of them is the achievements. To see these as processes of objectivation is clearly product of a specific level of symbolic consciousness. polemically intended against the Marburg view: it means that their results are more than subjective feelings or copies of some external (and illusory) The ‘forms’ refer to concrete and visible products of human activity, given – it means that they have a type of validity of their own. Myth so to say: you can recollect a myth, review a scientific theory. More produces a world, i.e. a sense of reality, a type of objectivity. accurately, they are products of specific ways of symbolizing, which may in turn be considered – I repeat – either as symbolic functions or Moreover, what all spheres have in common and makes for the as types of mental activity. That is to say, first, that not only different eminently symbolic character of the process of all Formgebungen, is types of ‘things’ but also the different symbol types themselves (mythical the fact that all resulting objectivities are mediated by, and owe their symbols, and so on) that are mediators for things, have each time to be status and existence to, the medium of symbolizing that is a peculiar created by specific ways (functions) of symbolizing, and second, that mode of production. Culture is not the product of an autonomous life of each of the latter ways or functions is performed by a certain mental concepts, imperfectly approximated by some kind of materialization (such capacity or activity-type. Now, as ways of producing symbols, the as visualization of an idea in the arts), but all at once given each time in symbolic functions are at the same time symbolific functions: if myths, a vision that can exist only through this or that visual or other material for instance, are products of functions and activities, the latter are not medium of the senses: the symbol itself is all sensual imagination and just subjective correlates of given realities, but conditions of possibility schema, much as what transpires through it is spiritual life (in one of its and makers of objectified symbols of this kind. Further on, although modes). This is the gap between Cassirer’s objectivity and Hegel’s: all there are, according to this schematization, only three primitive symbolic reality is mediated, but the mode of the mediation is the symbol. The forms, other symbol systems such as the arts, ritual, technique, history symbol is mediation. But symbols come in kinds: mythic, linguistic, perhaps, may be viewed as combinations or derived forms of the three scientific, ... Cassirer compares the job they perform with the workings basic forms. Making the implicit schema of the third volume (and, in

32Omega June 2009 33 Paul Cortois Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought retrospect, of the whole work) explicit, one would get a table such as the The way the ‘unprepared’ mind, unfamiliar with generalizing abstractions, following: ‘perceives’ the world, is through the contrast of such places and moments of sacredness and the usual rhythms and locations of profane life. In his Symbolific Function Cognitive Activity Symbolic Form essay Sprache und Mythos (1925),12 Cassirer adduces the notion of Ausdrucksfunktion Wahrnehmung Myth Augenblicksgötter 13(instantaneous gods) as the first foci of sacredness (function of expression) (perception) and the origin of mythico-religious consciousness, to point to what he Darstellungsfunktion Anschauung Language has in mind: before they got names giving them fixed identities, divine (function of presentation/ (intuition) phenomena were present in the guise of these special moments. The act representation) of Wahrnehmung is the mental openness (again, unclouded by concepts) Bedeutungsfunktion Denken Science for the expressive qualities of reality as it presents itself to people on the border of symbolic consciousness: it creates the first symbols to bring (function of meaning)11 (conceptual thought) order (and contrast) in the stream of conscious experience. In the same The second column – listing cognitive or mental capacities (activity sense as some higher animals possess higher capacities for perception types) – will appear familiar to readers of Kant: the items mentioned of distinctive characteristics of their environment than man, man takes correspond more or less to some of the most important cognitive faculties up clues like a facial expression, an unexpected encounter, that are going of the architectonic picture of reason in the Critique of Pure Reason, to be highlighted as carriers of meaning. This happens not only in myth of course. Perception, intuition and pure thought are the receptive and and archaic society as we know it, but goes on in the understream of the discursive capacities in Kant’s theory of human cognition. Whereas mental life in the most modern of modernity: facial recognition, recognition Kant opposes faculties in a dual fashion, leaving a gap between perception of emotional expression, consciousness of other minds, awareness of and intuition as receptive faculties on the one hand and conceptual thought the body as a living organism, falling in love, admiration for carriers of as discursive and spontaneous on the other, Cassirer does not rely on imaginary or symbolic ‘power’ such as sportsmen or great musicians, all ‘zwei [heterogene]Quellen der Erkenntnis’. Furthermore, in this belong to a register where symbolization operates on a level of perceptive schematization, Cassirer does not rely on distinguishing between Verstand action that antedates conceptual subtleties: they belong to a magical, a and Vernunft, but simply calls the capacity of conceptual thought mythical world experience. ‘Denken’. The reason may by now have become obvious: conceptual They even precede the second level of functions and activities: thought in its productive function results, in its own highest achievement, Darstellung and Anschauung. What does Cassirer have in mind here? in science; philosophy is a reflective recollection of the workings of all In the region of Ausdruck as such, there are no labels attached to our symbolic functions, not a production of a world view of its own. focal experiences, so they border between the symbolic and the imaginary, What are the roles of the remaining functions and activities? one might say. In the moment that they are captured, the need to fix Wahrnehmung and Ausdruck; Anschauung and Darstellung? There them arises – and the medium is language, first of all through the naming is a strong suggestion here, that myth is produced by an immediate vision function. So language, although preceded by the first occasions for of the world, called perception. That this cannot mean the empiricist’s mythical consciousness, is co-originating with it, really. Language is the immediacy of the given, must be obvious. The symbolific function that is creation of things in the more narrow sense, the hypostatizing of responsible for it, expression (Ausdruck), contains the cue: the mind is experiences with ever-changing moods and fluctuations into things with first of all a creator of expressive images and actions bringing to the fore an identity. Darstellung is the function of presentation of experiences the way the world ‘impresses’ us in its moments and places of intensity. as things before the mind that is able, then, to represent them, naming them and next, inventing predicates for indicating and fixing their qualities,

34Omega June 2009 35 Paul Cortois Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought as well, beyond the mere capacity to refer to them. this way of meaning cannot but engage a form of language, not because meaning as such would require language, but because myth involves Next, here is why Cassirer sees Anschauung as the mental activity hypostases through names and named qualities, inducing meaningful that is operative at this level: in order to perceive phenomena as things, classification and qualification of beings. So, language is a different they have to be not only named, but also located in the space and time symbolic form, but both symbolic forms are inextricably intertwined in a framework that depends on what Kant called our a priori sense intuition. mythical worldview. And though one may be said to precede the other in In mythical consciousness, phenomena were not really in space and the sense that, for example, mental images and ritual acts may precede time, space or room and the moment of contracted intensity were in language, as soon as myth is full-fledged, it arises together with and them. As thinghood is conferred upon them, they get permanence all the from the same well as language. In Sprache und Mythos, the common while moving through space and time. But conversely, Cassirer adds, well of both is identified as the ‘radical metaphor’ or ‘root metaphor’ this is not only the way the senses themselves transcend mere (borrowing a term coined by Max Müller, the famous myth scholar of Ausdrucksphänomene to make a frame of reference allowing for the the 1870’s and ‘80s). The root metaphor, according to Cassirer, is not ordering of selfsame phenomenal things in a co-ordinate space; this the common extension of a word beyond the borders of its acquired ordering in turn depends on fixative expressions of language including usage, or some similar device, but the primordial process through which number schemas and named substances in order to bring a further a hypostasis is contracted from the intensified and concentrated objectifying sense to experience. Space and time, thinghood, and naming perception of the moment out of the ordinary. It is the Fassung and and predicating all go together in the natural attitude of representation. Zusammenfassung of a perception into a word: the invention of the Nevertheless, this linguistic classification is not yet the realm of the word, which is the invention at the same time of the mythical entity and concept: in natural language the stress is on denoting and seeing things of language: the experienced moment being raised, so to say, to mythical according to classes, for example according to taxonomy of natural kinds. proportions. This may be a preparation for a truly objectifying cognition through generalizing and at the same time differentiating concepts, but we keep If we call myth a mode of meaning, the question lays at hand on moving within the natural world view, built by natural language, really, what justifies this characterization, and especially what are the as long as there is no transition to mathematizing abstraction. The latter characteristic features of the mythical worldview in its functioning as a transition would bring us to the symbolic function of pure meaning (reine mode of meaning. Meaning, whether or not linguistic, seems to require, Bedeutungsfunktion) in the strict sense of cognition, science, with the in a minimal reading, something – let us say a sign – signifying something conceptual activity of discursive thought beyond natural classifications. else – the signified. (Besides, talk about signs also presupposes that We will not further investigate this movement here, since all we need to there is a user, say a living organism for which the sign signifies the know about it for our purposes will become clear in the contrastive signified object.) For Cassirer, as well as for Langer, a fundamental comparison with meaning in myth. distinction between two kinds of signs imposes itself: mere signals, and symbols. Signals are typical for animal behavior and animal intelligence, 3 Meaning Conflation symbols require the transition from animal to man: man is the symbolic animal. (This does not preclude, as Leibniz already knew, man from Myth is a meaningful way of symbolizing the world, or a world, functioning on the level of animal intelligence – a lot of the time.) On the and gives form to an experiential sphere with a validity and coherence other hand, the signal, whether in animal or in human behavior, belongs of its own. Myth, in Cassirer’s usage, involves much more than what we to the world of mere Ausdruck: there is no representation involved, no usually call mythical narratives: it involves ritual, magical attitudes, and, interpreting what is lived or uttered, but a free communicating (signaling) of course it overlaps with the Darstellung of the world in natural language and expressing (symptomatically). Conversely, however, Ausdruck is categories. It is, in fact, a way of meaning, not a set of stories or things; 36Omega June 2009 37 Paul Cortois Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought not confined to the signaling function: as we already saw, as Wittgenstein would have it, be seen as intending the signified by the Ausdrucksphänomene define myth in its emergence from the sphere individual or group concerned; I think there is no doubt about the of instinctive survival perception, behavior and orientation in a given applicability of this seeing-as criterion. In Langer’s terms, myth and environment. The transition between the symptomatic and signaling ritual are ‘spontaneous embodiments of ideas,17 such as life and death, communication and expression functions and the corresponding symbolic fear and festiveness. ones happens within the realm of Ausdrucksphänomene, and coincides with the rise of the mythic orientation in a world that involves more than Now we come to the characteristic formal features of the mythical an environment. in this respect, as a schema of meaning relations. Cassirer and Langer readily give us a number of things; the Freudian mechanisms of the Langer is the most explicit about the logical basis of the distinction unconscious appear pertinent: metaphor in the strict sense, as a device between signal and symbol: it is, roughly, linked to the appearance of the of paradigmatic substitution of terms (in De Saussure’s sense),18 Fregean distinction between sense and reference. (In what follows, I metonymy as a horizontal shift of meanings (such as pars pro toto),19 will preferably use Langer’s terminology of connotation and denotation.) condensation of images as in dreams, and so on.20 But this Symbols are the kind of things that require this distinction. Signals simply ‘overdetermination of the non-discursive projection’ is typical for all non- have an object they signify; symbols promote this object into a denoted discursive symbolizing; and we agreed to concentrate on the main object, a reference; more fundamentally, they introduce a sense or characteristic of the mythical meaning relation. Here Cassirer and Langer connotation for the sign, a conceptual interpretation (that may vary while have an original contribution – and they agree completely in this; I will the denotation remains constant).14 follow mainly Langer’s presentation, because nowhere is the thesis so clearly expressed. ‘Conceptual’ has to be understood in a very wide sense here: it means an idea, in the sense that already (prelinguistic attitudes towards) When it is said that the symbolic sign signifies its signified, what life and death are ideas. These are presented and enacted, if anywhere, seems to be implied is that there is a clear distinction between sign and in myth and ritual. Connotations are not the privilege of language: that is signified object (and that the object intended by the symbolic sign is why – as Langer will stress – the realm of symbols is wider than the reached via the connotation or connotations carried by the sign, and so realm of the discursive.15 Her fundamental distinction within the realm on). “The sign must be seen as intending the signified,” according to of symbols is, precisely, between ‘discursive’ and ‘presentational’ the formula mentioned above. Now, the temptation I had to resist in that symbols, the latter being characteristic for myth, ritual, art, music, dreams, formula was this: I was spontaneously attracted to phrase it as “the sign ordinary perception, imagining, metaphor and the like: they all have a must be seen as belonging to the signified,” but if I had given in to that prelinguistic structure, much as they may mingle with the linguistic.16 temptation, something would have been implied that is all but obvious: Calling all this connotational, of course, involves an extension of the what does it mean to say that a sign belongs to its signified? This may notion of connotation (and of concept) beyond all Fregean usage. mean that sign and signified are correlated, and that would seem innocuous enough. (Perhaps, in that case, they are related in a more natural than The test for the assertion that mythical meaning is replete with conventional way, and that might often be the case for myth and ritual.) symbols is the presence of connotations – more than merely signified But it might also mean that, literally, the sign is part of the signified; and objects. That is to say that mythical signs (whether linguistically given that, if anything would be odd. It would mean that a symbol, like a name names such as for divinities, or mere ritual objects such as relics) involve or an image, is really a part, a piece or parcel of what it is supposed to be interpretation: they have to be linked to their denotation via connotations, ‘about’. But in that case, how could it signify its object, a relation that i.e., in a way that requires spontaneous envisagement of the sign as seems to require a distance – the distance required for a representation representative of something else (say, the divinity, the saint). They must, 38Omega June 2009 39 Paul Cortois Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought – or even for a presentation? And if it could signify it, how could this be implicitly present in magic and myth, attributing the power of the symbol anything else than an error or a confusion? to a fusion, from a theory which would simply be basing the relation on a confusion: in Max Müller’s view of mythical names, mythical beliefs Now, precisely this, nothing less, the thesis of ‘belonging’ in the were the result of a disease of language. Names, and therefore also strong sense, is Cassirer’s and Langer’s thesis about mythical conceptions, of divinities, would have their etymological origin in an symbolizing. The strange thing happening here is that, all talk about erroneous shift between the sound and meaning of one word and another, symbols, connotations and denotations notwithstanding, we have before as in the case of Daphne: why does the myth tell us the godly nymph had us a symbol that ‘belongs’ to its object, its signified. At first sight, this to be metamorphosed into a laurel tree when fleeing before her jealously would seem to mean that there is no symbol anymore, but a mere signal, stalking lover, the sun god Phoibos? Because the Sanskrit word for the since the room for connotations is taken away and replaced by a mere dawn (Ahana), dawn itself being a symbol for Daphne as morning nymph, ‘sticking’ to the object, as when a scent track sticks to the prey animal fleeing for the sun, is clearly linked to the Greek word for a laurel tree for the tracker dog. But the true story is different, and far more dramatic; (äáöíì). Hence the identification of the figures involved, hence Daphne’s it is as if the symbol, the connotation and the object collapse into one name. This alleged mechanism is clearly not what Langer and Cassirer reality, without any one of them disappearing. First, there is no way have in mind. They don’t appeal to a pathological identification of a interpretation in the sense of ‘seeing as’ can be missed: I have to see my word sound with an entity through the erroneous association with another picture of a beloved one as belonging to her, to be able to confer a word or sound. unique value upon it. Second, there is no way my beloved one (the object) can be left out of the picture, if I may say so, because the main motive So, in order to distinguish this error-theory from what is here at for venerating the picture will be lost. And third, the picture itself (the stake, I call Cassirer’s and Langer’s view a conflation theory of meaning symbol) can never be replaced by an equivalent: replacement and in mythical contexts. What is fused in conflation is the sign and its meaning equivalence are ideas that have no application in this connection – that (its object or signified), not two meanings through the identification of is, if the picture we are talking about is really a picture that we confer a their word or sound images. The distinction from Müller‘s or other typical ‘devotional’ value upon. Nevertheless, there is no more a clear distinction ‘disease of language’ views is not the only reason to avoid the notion of between the picture, the person pictured, and the envisaging of the picture ‘confusion’. Confusion, whatever the precise mechanism, is generally a as a picture of her. So there is a fusion of sign and signified. The prototype faulty way of thinking, a sophistry in language and conception by mixing of such a relation would be the one involved in a relic: a relic is considered up two or more notions. Now, although we saw that two things were to be a uniquely belonging sign that literally and materially is or was really mixed in mythical meaning, we cannot prejudge the question (considered to be) part of the venerated body. Touching the relic, or whether this is to be conceived as an error, a mere error in the mythical touching the photograph of the beloved, is touching the saint or the beloved. thinking process. Conflation poses a problem for the signifying relation, More even, the example shows that the part-of relation works both ways: that much is clear; and it is clear that both Cassirer and Langer want to the saint, for the devotee, is as much part of the relic as the other way put the finger on that problem. If I were to use the sign as identical with around. They are present in each other: here we have the logic of or part of the signified in ordinary language or in formal languages, that ‘affective participation,’ as Lévy-Bruhl termed it in his posthumous would immediately result in semantic paradoxes: for, example, the work.21 They are fused elements of a holistic representation in the mythic paradoxes of the use/mention type: “Amsterdam is the capital of the consciousness, yet somehow the elements remain distinguishable: the Netherlands;” “Amsterdam consists of nine characters;” “The capital relic is not the whole saint. It does not exhaust his power. of the Netherlands consists of nine characters”. Cassirer and Langer want to distinguish this theory of meaning, But if conflation were eliminated, what would happen to myth as

40Omega June 2009 41 Paul Cortois Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought a complete system of meaning and intention? Let me give a few simple imagining at the other levels, even when concepts of reine Bedeutung examples taken from ordinary contexts. Suppose I lend you a 50 € bill, are at stake. And there would be no affective participation or identification and when you bring it back I would take a close look at it, and refuse it with the object such as it seems required at the basic level of establishing with the words: “I already suspected you were going to cheat on me; a relation of felt significance with the world. But on the other hand, they this is not the same note as the one I lent you”. Would you not rightly cannot but see those other levels as higher levels. Art is a mixture, taking declare me mad? Suppose, however, my father gave me his very old up the heritage of myth (Ausdruck) and elaborating it at the level of watch as an heirloom, and I lost it, would I not be the fool if I told myself Darstellung. Language cannot be freed from the natural world view, “this is no problem at all; I am going to find me a completely identical- expressed in natural language with its folk classifications, and so remains looking watch”. In this case, the supposition that an object with an identical cognitively deficient when compared to scientific abstraction; but it has meaning could exist, is the aberration. In the cases of the value of money definitively gained the clear distinction between the sign and the signified: and the use/mention mix, paradigm rules of the normal linguistic and a prelude and precondition to the emancipation of the concept. Science conceptual usage had been violated: the term mentioned belongs to the is conceptual play, building up a world image or rather symbolic intellections meta-language, not the object language; and the meaning of ordinary of worlds striving for the optimum of coherence and clarity. Reine symbolic concepts such as money is determined by the type, not the Bedeutung means a purification of meaning, leaving behind the burdens token. But the case of the watch – the unique watch – is diametrically of myth and even of natural language while heading for the strictly opposite: here the token is decisive, in its unique and material actuality conceptual. and origin. My diagnosis and I gather also Langer’s, would be that this is because meant object and meaning sign are inextricably linked in cases Because they see conflation as an element of paradox or obscurity, like this. What determines that it is ‘such a case,’ however? Well, I and possibly because they see the productive power of its imagination would say, that it is a case of ‘cultic’ or at least mythical powers being taken up by art without dragging along that obscurity, Cassirer and Langer attributed to the object, and rightly so. My father’s watch has an intrinsic seem to think mythic conflation can and should be left behind, without link with my father, and links me in turn with him, not just at a ‘spiritual’ losing myth’s productive and poetic force. Mythic imagination had to level but in its concrete material identity. This is what Cassirer and Langer lose its grip upon the mind sooner or later, because it had to be purified mean when they talk about sign and signified being fused, and what I from the literal inherence of the symbol in the symbolized, an enclosure call meaning conflation. And such conflation is a feature of what may be that had to block understanding of the world and even the road to more called ‘strongly embodied meanings’ – as they are typical for ritual, powerful and novel imaginings. Art, on the other hand, is (like science) myth, religion, art, music, literary language and many fragments of inexhaustible as a symbolic form, since it replaced the need for a magical ordinary life.22 fusion with the object, with the creation of the work, which is a virtual object, and with the distanced carving and creating of the latter’s infinitely But in fact, and here comes the crux of meaning conflation, possible forms and infinitely novel structures. Susanne Langer has Cassirer’s and Langer’s response is more complicated, and highly substantiated this claim of liberating the symbol from conflation in music ambivalent. On the one hand, they would endorse the reaction I just and the arts by her thesis that the art symbol has an object that is clearly sketched: conflation is essential to one mode of thinking, the mythical; distinct from itself: basically, the flow and forms of human feeling.23 and mythical thinking is one essential level to symbolizing as such; ergo This is the contrast with myth, where the symbol and the symbolized … As these and previous examples have shown, our symbolic life would remain fused, and therefore, in a state of pregnancy: “mythic beliefs are dry up if the world were radically disenchanted. Cassirer and Langer pregnant, and carry an unformulated idea.”24 In fact, the mythic symbol see the mythical imagination as an ineradicable source for thinking and is not consciously felt to be a symbol: about the world of powers, Langer says: “To the mythic consciousness, these creations are realities, not

42Omega June 2009 43 Paul Cortois Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought symbols.”25 animals, on the other hand it is an obstacle on our way to an authentic understanding and construction of the world, and as such it had to be Cassirer and Langer, as children of their times, are and remain metamorphosed in art and/or conceptual knowledge. cultural evolutionists: the mind evolves from the archaic to the more sophisticated. This is the other side of the coin (which I deliberately 4 Afterthought remained silent about up to now, in order not to lose out of sight the revolutionary potential of their idea). For Langer, from the matrix and Perhaps the response is unavoidable, but is it very helpful if we radix of myth two diverging life trees of creative activity were born: on want to understand the power that symbols have or once had over our the one hand art, the telos of mythic feeling and form expressed in minds in connections where we really want it to ‘work’? I don’t mean singular works without generality,26 and on the other hand science, grown working in the sense of causal efficacy, but as something like symbolic out of the cosmological intention of myth. Art is the form of symbolic efficacy in a life form. Even in the case of the picture of a beloved one imagination liberated from the obscurity of conflation, science the infinite being thorn, we feel offended and we cannot do otherwise but reply: my progress of cognition, liberated from the burden of folk natural kinds. beloved or the image of my beloved was present in this picture, not just in any similar image. In catholic liturgy, the consecrated host is somehow What remains to be understood, is why and how Cassirer and fundamentally different from the host before the consecration, and those Langer felt obliged to think that meaning conflation, while not being the who say otherwise declare thereby that their religious world is same as confusion, is still wedded to obscurity and paradox somehow. disenchanted. The proper way to deal with the status of the symbolic in Why are myth and science competitors, while art and science are not? such contexts would be to stress that the very distinction between the The easy way to clear this up is to look at one immediate response to the literal and the symbolic is not appropriate here: life in myth is either example of the watch I have adduced – the response most of us would elemental, or it is not. Elemental life antecedes the divide between two spontaneously give. Isn’t it clear, we would say, that we are talking interpretations, one figurative and the other literal. Of course, we cannot about, precisely, symbolic relations of mixing, fusing and the like; are deny that the situation we live in (or most of us live in) is radically different we really going to believe that some harm done to my father’s watch is from the situation of societies living within myth. That means that, indeed, going to harm him or me in a causal way? We will respond, otherwise we cannot avoid the question of the interpretation of the symbol: said, that the example shows, precisely, that we are beyond literal beliefs secularization brings the religious person in a difficult predicament where in the efficacy of symbols. Once it was the case that people really believed he or she has to distinguish between attitudes. in magical causal powers, but we have learnt, through cultural evolution, that the attribution is ‘only’ symbolic. ‘Symbolic’, ironically, means that In secular life we have to confront the choice between literal and the mythical symbol is not the literal truth. Only in primitive religion was figurative or ‘spiritual’ readings of symbols time and again, while in myth such that it was the elemental reality of individual and collective religious contexts we have to deny the very divide. As modern men and life. Doesn’t the example point to the gap that separates the archaic women we cannot do otherwise but to take an external view upon all from the modern interpretation of the symbol, we having purified ourselves matters, including our religious and otherwise mythic commitments, but from the conflation that obscured our relation to what we intended to at the same time we are well lost if there is no second, internal look upon symbolize? In fact, it is only us moderns who have interpreted the symbol (or rather, into) the same commitments. So, if it remains true that in as symbol at all. I think this response is what lay behind Cassirer’s and religion, poetry, music and elsewhere, in the magic of the ordinary, we Langer’s identification and refusal of meaning conflation. An ambivalent want to keep something of the enchantment that belongs to what I would refusal, since on the one hand conflation is constitutive for one way of call ‘strongly embodied meanings’ and that Cassirer and Langer call the relating to the world that they declare constitutive for us as symbolic symbolic form of myth, we will have to reverse at least somewhat the

44Omega June 2009 45 Paul Cortois Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought perspective cultural evolutionism imposed on them with respect to 8. For this paragraph I have relied on an inspiring oral seminar presentation by meaning conflation. Some kind of identification of the symbol and the and discussion with Cassirer expert Geert Van Eekert (University of Antwerp). symbolized seems to be inherent in strongly embodied meanings of any 9. Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Vol. 3: Phänomenologie der kind, also in art. If the work of art would really be about an object (for Erkenntnis. p.1. example the life of feeling) of a different nature than the very symbolic 10. “Words, Works, Worlds” in N. Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indiana: expression, i.e., a non-symbolic or pre-symbolic object, wouldn’t this be Hackett Publishing Co., 1978), pp. 1-22. endangering the closure – the self-contained character – of the integral aesthetic experience and expression, which is all one of a piece? Perhaps 11. ‘Meaning’ or ‘reine Bedeutung’ being used in a more narrow sense here, of the artwork can be a ‘symbol’ only to the extent that its ‘object’ is itself course, than the one I intended above when speaking about meaning types and embodied meaning. of the same nature than the mode of expression, i.e., no less and no more symbolic than the artwork itself. To the extent that art, whatever 12. Translated by Susanne Langer as Language and Myth (New York and its level of Darstellung, cannot exist without a symbolic Ausdruck of London: Harper & Bros., 1946), x+ 103p. one’s own mode of being and place in the first meaningful world one 13. A notion taken from Hermann Usener, Götternamen.Versuch einer Lehre found oneself in, the mythical world, it cannot leave behind conflation von der religiösen Begriffsbildung (1896). either without losing its meaning. But that, and a closer look at the 14. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, chapter 3. processes of identification or participation at the basis of conflation, would be the starting point for a different story. 15. Language is the symbolism that cannot exist without denotation (remember that naming was its birth act); and although there cannot be symbolisms without connotation, there may be symbolisms without denotation. Music is the exemplary case here; see Philosophy in a New Key, p. 101 and 240. Notes Meditating after the fact on Langer’s distinctions, I would tend to say that 1. Paul Cortois is associate professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Centre for ritual, which for her is clearly distinct from myth, is another case of (almost) Culture and Philosophy in Catholic University, Leuven, Belgium. purely connotational symbolism. 2. Christine M. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge 16. Philosophy in a New Key, ch. 4. The Langer literature is replete with University Press, 1996). discussions on this distinction – I will not take up this theme of her work here. 3. See especially Philosophy in a New Key - A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art (Harvard University Press, 1942); Feeling and Form 17. Philosophy in a New Key, p. 145. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953). 18. One could recognize the logic of metaphor in the phenomenon of avatars, 4. (Chicago: The Open Court, 2000), 144 p. metamorphoses and even incarnations in several myths and religious traditions. 5. Perhaps it is fair to say that in the general reception Cassirer survives best for his unificatory viewpoint achieved through symbolism as such and for 19. Take for example the character of the trickster, who is sometimes reduced to his philosophy of science, while Langer is reminded for her philosophy of one of his own body parts (such as an anus), and subsequently enhanced art, especially of music. to, for instance, the ‘anus of the world.’ 6. In order to develop a synoptic view of the subject within the space limits of 20. For the connection with the analogous mechanisms in poetry see Langer, this contribution, I will have to abstain from extensively quoting the texts. Feeling and Form, p. 240-244. 7. Gesammelte Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe. Ed. Birgit Recki, Bd. 13 (Felix Meiner, 21. Carnets. P.U.F., 1949. Quadrige/P.U.F., 1998. See also E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Hamburg, 2002), p. 49-322. Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), h. 4: “Lévy-

46Omega June 2009 47 Paul Cortois Meaning Conflation in Symbolic Thought Bruhl”. Omega VIIi (2009)1, 49-62 22. See, for an analysis and examples of aspects of this concept, the writings of other philosophers of the ‘Leuven school’ such as Arnold Burms, Herman De Dijn, Paul Moyaert. 23. This is one of the main theses of Feeling and Form. 24. Feeling and Form, p. 81. This doesn’t preclude the view that mythic imagination is the stage of “vegetative growth” of thought, a view taken Dialogue between Psychology and from Emile Cailliet (Symbolisme et âmes primitives, 1936) who likens “the tremendous tangle of symbolism to a jungle where things choke each other Religion for an Adequate in their overgrowth.” Philosophy in an New Key, p. 149. Representation of the Human-self 25. Feeling and Form, p. 190. - Dolichan K. M.1 26. See for example “Abstraction in Science and Abstraction in Art” in S. Langer, Problems of Art (New York: Ch. Scribner’ Sons, 1957), pp. 163-180. Abstract: The paper intends to examine the self-construal in psychology and religion. Psychology, with its modern sensibility, reflected in its various disciplinary offshoots, construes an empirical self whereas religion invites our attention to the transcendental self. The self that one constructs has practical implications as understanding and defining self impact a broad range of cognitive and social processes in humans. In the face of an experience of the empirical and the transcendental self, the solution is neither drawing on an anti-thesis nor reclining in reductionism. What is most suitable is a dialogical and dialectical model of the human-self propounded by the discoveries of modern psychology and the insights of ancient religions. Keywords: Self-construal, Evolutionary Psychology, Neuropsychology, Mirror Neurons, Animism, Advaitic tradition, Atman

Introduction

Victor Frankl has rightly told us that human being is a meaning- making animal. The most fundamental quest in the search for meaning remains to be a search on oneself, manifested in a number of different questions, like who are we? Why are we here? etc. Despite the various attempts made in response to these and similar questions, understanding and representing the human-self has remained a perplexing and intriguing question throughout the history of thought. However, human nature had been understood and represented in mythical, philosophical, scientific and religious paradigms. Traditionally the approach of psychology took

48Omega June 2009 49 Dolichan K. M. Dialogue between Psychology and Religion recourse to the scientific ways of understanding the human-self and and a long line of empirical tradition upheld by Locke, Leibniz, and Hume became a science of human nature. It often varied from the religious that were the inspiration behind the work of Wilhelm Wundt and others, cognizance of human nature, which were inferences from a fundamental who inaugurated the science of psychology.5 Historically the first experience in relation to the ultimate. The paper intends to examine the experimental laboratory established by Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzing, self-construal in psychology and religion and suggest how they should Germany in 1879 marks the birth of scientific psychology. It was a be held together for an adequate representation of the human-self. The laboratory aimed at measuring the psychological experiences of issue is not just limited to theoretical interests but has practical implications individuals corresponding to the impinging physical stimuli. Later, similar as understanding and defining self impact a broad range of cognitive and attempts together came to be called as Psychophysics. social processes in humans.2 A parallel attempt to scientifically explain the human nature can History of Self-construal in Psychology be found in the project of instinct theories. The concluding paragraph of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Prior to psychology, reflections on the human-self belonged to the (1859) promised that the theory of natural selection would be important province of philosophy and philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and St. in securing a foundation for the new field of psychology and would shed Augustine contributed greatly on the issue. The background of the light on human origins. Darwinian evolution insisted that much of human psychological attempt to understand the nature of the human-self was a behavior was instinctual as the animal behavior. The emerging field of confidence in bringing down the self from a mystical-transcendental psychology stepped into the confidence of Darwin’s theory of evolution level to an empirical entity. The inquiry of Rene Descartes, conceptualized and welcomed the advent of instinct theory in explaining the complexities a thinking self that is qualitatively distinct from the extended matter. For of human behavior.6 Drawing directly from Darwin, William James gave him the extended matter could be subjected to scientific inquiry whereas a central place to instinct theory and contended that instincts were common the self was not ruled by the laws of physics and laid outside the purview to animals and human beings.7 So the distinguishing human rationality, of of science. The extensive inquiry into the extended self of Descartes the philosophers, was no more a requirement for explaining human soon began giving way to the empirical confidence in discovering the behavior. His work set the stage for a proliferation of instinct theories, laws of the self-thinking thing. Another influence into the scientific inquiry many of which were ad hoc explanations of observed behavior put under of the human-self was the ‘law of three stages’ formulated by Comte, the label of instincts. But one of the instinct theories that most the father of positivism.3 It states that knowledge in any field passes fundamentally revolutionized the understanding of human nature was through three successively superior stages: theological, metaphysical, the one by Sigmund Freud. He suggested that the whole of human behavior and scientific. The law accords high esteem to science in comparison to could be explained in terms of two basic instincts, Eros and Tanatos, the religious and philosophical conceptualizations. which are translated as life instincts and death instincts. Freud went on to describe the developmental mechanism by which the life instincts The Cartesian gap between human body and mind was constitutes and determines the psychic life of the individual.8 fundamentally challenged by the rise of evolutionary thought in the mid- nineteenth century. Charles Darwin proposed the theory of ‘the origin The Freudian types of theorizing became quite unfashionable as of the species’ in 1859. Life was the result of long evolution. Having the behaviorists began to occupy the stage. Behaviorism as a school has evolved from the animal world, humans like all other living species seem its origin in the seminal works of Ivan Pavlov, whose experimental works to have come into being through the natural selection of the most able or on reflexive conditioning is widely known as classical conditioning. But fittest to survive. The Darwinian threat was to make plausible the idea it was John Watson who championed the cause of Behaviorism and of material monism.4 It was the Darwinian bridging of the Cartesian gap persistently advocated that the whole of human behavior is nothing but

50Omega June 2009 51 Dolichan K. M. Dialogue between Psychology and Religion Stimulus-Response connections. From the early 1920s behaviorism faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors.11 It is in looking for such universal dominated psychology for almost fifty years. On the whole the behaviorist circuits in the brain that EP converges on Neuroscience as a recent revolution replaced the notion of a human nature with a focus on attempt to understand the human being. environment and culture, as the underlying causes of human behavior. The concept of instinct was replaced by more measurable constructs The Truncated Human-self of Scientific Psychology like motivation, drive or reinforcement. Through the 1950s and 1960s, The common theme in the above mentioned developments in the popularity of B.F. Skinner’s theories of environmental conditioning psychology is its commitment to the scientific project of the modernity. kept the idea of the human-self suspended from the picture. There was Psychology was influenced by Francis Bacon’s idea of knowledge as no inherent human nature driving human behavior; rather, our essential power, and of the use of knowledge in controlling nature for improving nature was to be driven by rewards and punishments. B.F. Skinner devoted the state of man. In the mechanistic scheme of things, exercising control his life to ‘mechanizing’ the human soul, founding his theory on an intricate over the environment and exploiting it for one’s need fulfillment are set of reflex neural circuits that could be modified through punishments considered the key to well being. Psychology as a discipline extended and reinforcements. Human beings were infinitely malleable, and hence this exercise of control and exploitation even to the realm of human could be shaped to fit any role those in control deemed desirable.9 behavior. Controlling and manipulating human behavior became part and At the beginning of the 1970s, a group of biologists once again parcel of the science and technology package of psychology. It was this began proposing the idea of instincts to explain the human behavior. attempt at objectification by Wilhelm Wundt and the people of his ilk that Their suggestion came from their careful experimental observations of separated the birth of psychology as distinct from the philosophical the animal world in its natural habitat. The group of biologists eventually depictions of human beings. The Freudian proposal of psychic came to be known as ethologists. The work of ethologists, such as determinism was yet again a dearly cherished theme of modern science. Nikolaus Tinbergen’s Study of Instinct (1951), Konrad Lorenz’s On It was the same ideology that informed the behaviorists’ obsession with Aggression (1966), and Desmond Morris’ The Naked Ape (1967), about measurements. instincts in animals and human beings, led many social scientists to In serving the notions of control and prediction, the fathers of reconsider their confidence in the environmental conditioning. It was a modern psychology, from psychophysicist to Sigmund Freud to B.F. Darwinian sting with a vengeance. Subsequently, three decades of Skinner, each in their own way, focused on the imprisoned inner life of research in cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, psycholinguistics, individuals. Mainstream psychology, even contemporary political and evolutionary biology, paleoanthropology, and neuroscience have social psychology, has been based on a theory of ‘the individual’, with legitimated the study of evolution-produced instincts in humans and other very little attention to the related nature of individual.12 Any psychological animals.10 ‘problems’ were dismissed as merely one of better socializing the Evolutionary psychology (EP) is a multidisciplinary approach within individual to fit into the new social milieu. It is quite contradicting how the Darwinian paradigm that seeks to apply theories of evolutionary the theorizing of the Skinnerian type, with its whole emphasis on the biology in order to understand human psychology. The specific goal of environmental influences, eventually turned its focus to the human-self EP is to discover and understand the design of the human mind in terms for change rather than focusing on the environment of the person, where of Darwinian evolution. In EP, as conceptualized by psychologist Leda its theoretical weight lies. This inward focusing on the human-self by Cosmides and anthropologist John Tooby, two pioneers of evolutionary psychologists was also probably due to the attempt to locate and separate psychology, human behavior is driven by a set of universal reasoning the discipline from rest of the social sciences that defined and represented circuits that were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems the human-self in relation to others. But the result was cutting the person

52Omega June 2009 53 Dolichan K. M. Dialogue between Psychology and Religion to suit the coat. The human-self upheld by modern psychology, in general Rizzolatti and his colleagues, seemed to be part of the essential substrate was a truncated one, devoid of its related nature. for interpersonal interactions. It is already evident from further research that these mirror neurons are part of a wider network upon which the The theme of the recently developed fields like evolutionary capacity for personal relatedness depends. Such interrelatedness gets psychology and neuropsychology are in no way different. For evolutionary downplayed in the delimiting canvas of the modern psychology, with its psychologists, competition lies at the heart of the natural selection that ‘scientific’ concerns. As Burge, the philosopher of mind states, “non- designs the capacity to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter- individualistic aspects of mentalistic attribution have been held to be gatherer ancestors. In addition to individuals competing with other uncongenial with the purpose and requirements of psychological theory.”17 individuals, groups also compete with other groups leading to in-group and out-group formations that characterize the in-group out-group Inspired by psychology, which developed to have its focus on the antagonisms that is a major source of conflict today. Virtues like love, imprisoned inner-self, the building blocks of the human person in the friendship, cooperativeness, nurturance, communication, a sense of western world include concepts such as individual autonomy, fairness, and self-sacrifice become psychological adaptations that enhance independence, and personal boundaries as related to separation and the fitness of individuals within a group.13 As it comes to the neuroscience, individuation. This obvious individualist orientation is reflected in every we find the scientific confidence reigning high. Neuroscience seems to psychological endeavor such as mental health, organizational behavior have completed the Darwin’s revolution, as the whole human being both and even in social psychology. The application of many of these physical and mental aspects became the object of scientific investigation. individualist concepts can be seen in the educational programs as “Neuroscience has in a sense completed the Darwinian revolution, implemented by the schools and parents. The market-oriented education bringing not only the human body but the human mind as well, into the requires that autonomy be developed in the child, which encourages sphere of scientific investigation.”14 The traditional view that conscious competition and undermines the culture of relatedness and individual experience cannot be the object of scientific investigation because of its loyalties. As the issue of human development commands a high level of subjectivity and privateness is no more valid. Neuroscience has made attention in discourses on national development, much emphasis is placed the realm of consciousness and private experiences subject to the on early independence training, separation and individuation, self- “Galilean” method.15 sufficiency, privacy, individual achievement and competition.18 They are promoted both in theory and practice, envisaging an empowered nation In fact, implications of the recent scientific developments on the taking control of their own economic, political, and social lives. human-self are far beyond the traditional Galilean assumptions and methods. The sentiment is reflected in the words of socio-biologist Wilson, Self-construal in Religion “Since human beings are naturally conventional creatures who often achieve biological adaptation through social learning, the distinction Religion has been an engagement of the humans from pre-historical between what is natural and what is cultural in human behavior is not times. The religious cognition manifested in its belief system, rites and merely difficult to pin down in practice, but impossible to get at in rituals, and theology, attempts within it an understanding of the human- principle”.16 The idea is more concretely demonstrated in Neuroscience self. Primeval people were animistic in their spiritual view of the world that has called our attention to the complexity of humans by identifying and of life. The religion of animism focuses on an awesome awareness the complex factors involved in the mind-brain relationship. To give one that the spirit world influences all of life. Animists believe that an example, one of the most significant neuroscience discoveries in the last impersonal, supernatural power or influence is present within inanimate decade was the identification of a small, specialized group of neurons in objects. Many places are considered sacred due to the residence of the frontal part the brain. These ‘mirror neurons,’ discovered by Giacomo spirits or other super-human beings.19 Human life becomes one essentially

54Omega June 2009 55 Dolichan K. M. Dialogue between Psychology and Religion related to the animated objects of the environment. The relatedness to are understood as an outpouring of the experience of the self in relation the whole universe is more concretely experienced in ones relatedness to the transcendent and not mere psychological adaptations to increase to the community. Apart from the clan membership the individual has no the fitness of the individual in the group. In contrast to modern psychology, role or existence. Even after death, liberation of a tribal depends on the religion gives a different or seemingly opposing picture of the human- reinstatement of him/her into the tribe achieved through religious rituals. self, as its emphasis is on the self-transcending nature of the human- On the whole the human person becomes essentially a related being to self. As per religions, there exists something uniquely human and personal, the clan, to the environment, and finally to the transcendent. beyond instincts and selfish-genes, beyond classical and operant conditioning, and beyond the imperatives of biology and culture. In the Hinduism in general has distinguished between the apparent nature name of science, the psychology of that which is uniquely personal has and the real nature of humans. It does not regard the natural condition in been often neglected and eliminated. which humans are found to be their real condition. For example, the self in the advaitic tradition of Hinduism is the cosmic consciousness and it Psychology-Religion Interaction is called atman. Beyond the world of appearances that is limited by name and forms the atman is unlimited. Liberation is the realization of The knowledge of self in modern psychology assumes and attempts the falsity of the identification of the self with the limited matter. Absence to make the human-self controllable and predictable. Whereas religious of such realization traps the person at a lower level of existence.20 The inquiries into the human-self is fundamentally a call to recognize its ideal is self-realization; the cosmic consciousness, which in fact is a relatedness to the transcendent by an unconditional surrender and superlative expression of one’s relatedness to every other being in an submission to it. Therefore the transcendental nature of the religious essential or fundamental way. inquiry to the human-self, and its efforts to focus on the deeper dimensions of the self, stand in sharp contrast to the molecularist approach of modern In Christian theology human being is given a special place, as psychology. What is the solution to this contradiction? Is it that we totally they are believed to be created in the image and likeness of God. The avoid anyone construction and get ourselves stuck either by the dictates doctrine of the image of God was conceptualized in different ways such of science or religion with regard to the nature of humans? It is precisely as the capacity for moral behavior and moral agency, the unique capacity to this danger the paper wishes to caution the readers and point out the to apprehend the transcendent and the numinous and as a unique capacity need and possibility of engaging psychology and religion constructively for personal relatedness. There is a conjoining of these interpretations, and creatively for an adequate representation of the human-self. as being created in the image of God becomes our capacity to relate to our Creator, to one another, and to the creation of which we have been Why in an age of modern science, one should pay any attention to made responsible stewards. The interpretation is supported by the societal the sentiments conveyed by religions? In answering the question, one nature of the divine image, pointed out by the leading theologians like needs to consider the critical psychology of the 1990s, which showed Brunner and Barth. They emphasized that the image of God is not the how questions of race, gender, and social class were silenced in possession of the isolated individual but of the person in community.21 psychological theory. It also showed how psychology reflected Western cultural values about the self and supported political values of Giving due respect to the religious pluralism and without reclining individualism.22 We have already found that the individualist human-self in inter-religious reductionism, one can safely conclude that all religions propounded by the modern scientific psychology is placing much emphasis define human nature in relation to the transcendental, which in turn on early independence training, separation and individuation, self- becomes the basis of the human relatedness to other beings. In this sufficiency, privacy, individual achievement and competition in the perspective, virtues like love, friendship, nurturance, and self-sacrifice developmental process of the individual and the society. All these values are in sharp contrast to the values of any collective, non-European 56Omega June 2009 57 Dolichan K. M. Dialogue between Psychology and Religion society.23 Absent from this overly individualized human portrayal is any In engaging psychology and religion for an adequate representation consideration for the psychological need to belong and be fully accepted of the human-self, the first step is to recognize where the authenticity of in a community. Undermining the organic social formations like family, their constructions ends and where the exaggeration begins. The clan, religion etc. have created enormous social, psychological and differences between psychology and religion in understanding the human- economic overheads that make contemporary society cost-ineffective self is authentic, to the extent that the religious self remains at a mystical- and psychologically insecure. It is in this sense; according to Sloan transcendental level and psychology derives its identity in bringing down psychology has become part of the bigger problem than the solution.24 the mystical self to the empirical level. But it’s equally true that the This state of the psychology is also closely related to the erosion of differences are often exaggerated. There could be many reasons behind confidence in modern science and technology as ecological crisis, social the exaggeration. One would be certain personal commitment that leads isolation, and fear of nuclear war in the modern society, is making the to a perception of threat to either the scientific or the doctrinal purity emancipatory claims of modern science questionable. Therefore we need that the other group wishes to preserve.26 Another reason comes from to place the human-self in the context of the relatedness, to the the methodology used by both the disciplines. In the western intellectual transcendent and other beings revealed by the religion. tradition there is a sharp division between the natural sciences devoted to the prediction and control, and the humanities that are hermeneutic.27 There are data to argue that people who are serious about religion From among them modern psychology has chosen itself to be in the have to lend a thought to the findings of modern psychology. The former camp and the religious approach is more in tune with the psychological findings on religious experiences, conversion experiences, hermeneutic tradition. A relaxation of this methodological near death experiences, and other paranormal phenomena have cleared compartmentalization would be an important step in promoting a dialogue a vast volume of air around religion. The perspective of viewing spiritual between psychology and religion. development as a positive psychological event, through which individuals could reach their full potential, as with humanistic school of psychology, To promote the psychological and religious conceptualization of invigorated the religious message in uncertain times. According to Carrette, the human person in the right amount, we need a hermeneutic that opens psychology has remained a companion to Christianity in the field of the door to alternative interpretations of the human-self. Historically, it is pastoral care.25 All the above are examples of constructive engagement the best time to develop such a hermeneutic for two reasons. One, the between psychology and religion. But particularly in the context of human critique of any foundationist conceptions of knowledge in the philosophy person, the individual discovered by the psychology has challenged the of science is making the elements of positivism implanted in modern various individual needs that were downplayed by certain traditional psychology not a totally viable position to be maintained.28 Two, the religious practices. An example could be the horrendous neglect of family resurgence of indigenous psychologies all over the globe is positively ties, a member of a religious congregation in the Roman Catholic Church contributing to an increasing spirit of pluralism in psychology.29 Drawing had to make in the past. Such and many more ‘religious’ practices are inspiration from such historical developments, we need to develop a already corrected or are in the course of correction. In addition, the broad paradigm for psychology that is capable of accommodating the absolutist and abstract constructions of religion on the human-self will various construal of self, originating from the various existential needs not help any developing country towards economic development. The of the humans. According to Paranjpe, the diversities of the goals of psychological endeavor as part and parcel of the technological package human life such as material prosperity, mental health, and self-realization is relevant, especially for third world countries like India where the human demand and justify many alternative ways to construct and apply resource development is a major key to the social development. psychological knowledge.30 The comprehensiveness of the multi- dimensional existence of human life, expressed in their needs and goals, would suffer if anyone construction is ignored or underplayed.

58Omega June 2009 59 Dolichan K. M. Dialogue between Psychology and Religion Conclusion 2. H. R. Markus and S. Kitayama, “Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation,” Psychological Review 98 (1991), In the face of an experience of the empirical and the transcendental pp. 224-253. self, the solution is neither drawing on an anti-thesis nor reclining in 3. A. Comte, Introduction to Positive Philosophy (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, reductionism. We need a dialogical and dialectical model of the human- 1970), (Original work published in 1830). self propounded by the discoveries of modern psychology and the insights of ancient religions. The dialectical model required as the science of 4. J.R. Richards, Human Nature after Darwin: A philosophical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2000). psychology is placed in a critical context of the limits of scientific knowledge, and as our religious constructions needs to be better informed 5. C.N. Coffer and M.H. Appley, Motivation: Theory & Research (New by what is measurable and what is beyond measurement. The solution York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966). lies in developing a hermeneutic approach towards the human-self, that 6. Ibid. is rooted in genuine human needs and goals. Exaggerating any one of 7. W. James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Dover, 1950). these diverse needs at the expense of the other will end up in oppressive understanding of human person. While talking about individual, freedom, 8. C. S. Hall and G. Lindzey, Theories of Personality (New York: John Wiley and society, an Indian philosopher has the following to say & Sons, 1978). Democracy recognized the truth of the individual. But the 9. Charles G. Morris, Psychology an Introduction (New Jersey: Prentice individual it recognized and sanctified was the competitive Hall, 1996). individual – but the universal in the individual as a part of its 10. L. Cosmides and J. Tooby, The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology individuality it failed to see. Socialism recognized the universal and the Generation of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). in the individual but made it the whole stuff even of the individuality – the transcendent was not recognized by either. 11. Ibid. And without it freedom loses its reference to the reality of the 12. D. Fox and I. Prilleltensy (eds.), Critical Psychology: An Introduction 31 evolutionary process and its dynamic goals of the future. (CA: Thousand Oaks, Sage, 1997). In the words of Sen we find the individual, the social and the 13. D. E. Brown, Human Universals (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, transcendental dimensions of human existence falling in place. 1991). Psychological and religious explanations of human nature are essentially 14. N. Murphy, “Human nature: historical, scientific, and religious issues,” two approaches to human nature, demonstrating the individual, the social in Whatever Happened to the Soul?: Scientific and Theological Portraits and the transcendental dimensions of human existence. Neither the of Human Nature, Warren S. Brown, Nancy Murphy and H. Newton psychological approach needs the religious approach nor vice versa. Malony, eds., (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), p.1. But, to live life in its fullness, in its multi-dimensionality, human beings 15. C. J. Lumsden and E. O. Wilson, Promethean Fire: Reflections on the need both the approaches. Origin of Mind (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). 16. E. O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Notes 1978), p. 37. 1. Dolichan K.M. obtained his Masters in Psychology from the University 17. Tyler Burge, Foundations of Mind (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 2007), p. of Kerala. Currently he conducts research in Psychology of Religion at 223. Indian Institute of Science and Religion, Pune.

60Omega June 2009 61 Dolichan K. M. Dialogue between Psychology and Religion 18. C. Kaðitçibaþi, “Cross-cultural psychology and development,” In Asian Omega Contributions to Cross-cultural Psychology, Janak Pandey, Durganand VIII (2009)1, 63-80 Sinha, and Dharm P S Bhawuk, eds., (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1996). 19. Steven L. Davis, The Encyclopedia of Religion (Vol. 13) (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1976). 20. Swami Lokeshwarananda, Aspects of Vedanta (Calcutta: The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, 1995). Ever Approachable, Never Attainable: 21. J. Green, “Body and soul? Questions at the Interface of Science and Christian faith,” In What about the Soul?, Joel Green, ed., (Nashville, TN: Scientific and Philosophical Reflections Abingdon Press, 2004). on the Human Person 22. Fox and Prillintsky, Critical Psychology: An Introduction. - Kuruvilla Pandikattu1 23. Kaðitçibaþi, “Cross-cultural Psychology and Development.” 24. T. Sloan, Damaged life: The Crisis of the Modern Psyche (London: Abstract: In light of some philosophical reflections on a few Routledge, 1997). commonplace scientific data the author tries to lay bare the ambiguous project that is human life. The paper aims to to indicate that (a) an 25. J. R. Carrette, “Psychology and Christianity,” In Encyclopedia of amount of inadequacy is inbuilt into reality, (b) that there is room for Christianity, edited by John Bowlden (New York: Oxford University Press, further search and openness in the real world, and (c) that humans 2005). themselves are products of such an ever expanding horizon, that is both 26. Ibid. elusive and enabling. In five sub-sections, well-known scientific data on the seven colours of reality, the five senses of the brain, the three 27. W. Dilthey, Selected writings (H.P. Rickman, ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge dimensions of being, the one directionality of time, and zero attainability University Press, 1976). of heat are reconsidered from a philosophical perspective. Reflections 28. R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton on these instances highlight the ever approachable and never attainable University Press, 1979) and T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific nature of material reality. With the insights thus gained into the limits of Revolutions (2nd ed.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). human knowledge and existence, the paper then raises some theological questions about human capabilities. Taking the whole exercise 29. Anand C. Paranjpe, “Indigenous psychology in the Post-colonial Context: metaphorically, the final section attempts to make some fresh reflections An Historical Perspective,” Psychology and Developing Societies 14 on human life and aspirations. The overall argument developed in the (2002: 1), pp. 27-43. paper is that theology informed by science must attempt to cope with life 30. Anand C. Paranjpe, Self and Identity in Modern Psychology and Indian existentially and make rational sense of the ambiguous and fascinating Thought (New York: Plennum Press, 1998). aspects of ourselves and of reality. 31. Indra Sen, “Individual, freedom and society,” In Science and Philosophy, Keywords: Colours, Brain, Being, Time, Zero, Human Person, N.A. Nikam, ed., (Mysore: International Institute of Philosophy and Philosophy, Theology Indian Philosophy, 1959), p. 65. “The Universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine.”2 Following this perceptive comment, I want to take up a few scientific areas and show that the reality we live in, including our human existence is fascinating even beyond our capacity to imagine.

62Omega June 2009 63 Kuruvilla Pandikattu Ever Approachable, Never Attainable Since there is always “a dimension of the more” inherent in reality, there Normal cones in the human eye sense light in broad colour bands is always room for that “extra step” to march towards this dimension. in the red, green and blue-violet regions of the spectrum. Thus for humans, mixing various amounts of the three primary colours (red, green and The aim of this paper is to indicate the following: (i) An amount of blue) will produce all the colours that can be perceived. That is true for inadequacy is inbuilt into reality, an inadequacy that is both delimiting an additive source like a computer monitor or TV screen that produces and enabling. (ii) There is room for further search and openness in the light. The human eye is sensitive to broad bands of light wavelengths, real world. (iii) Humans beings themselves are products of such an ever and thus it interpolates colours depending which of the three cones are expanding horizon, that is both elusive and enabling. Just as the horizon, receiving light. Colour is actually how our eyes and brain interpret light. humans can always approach each other, never arrive it. Just as the Our eyes can only see radiation with a wavelength of 380 nanometers to horizon invites us by its ever-receding nature, human beings are also 740 nanometers. ever-receding mystery unto each other. Further, it is interesting to note that there are two ways of The method I follow is simple. I base myself on ordinary and perceiving, for example, “yellow” light. Firstly, we can use equal amounts well-known scientific data, which is accessible to most educated of red and green light. These stimulate the red and green cones, and the audiences. This data will be used to lead us to the limits of our knowing brain sees “yellow”. Secondly, we can use a wavelength of light that is and our existence. Finally, I shall raise few theological questions about between red and green (about 565nm). Because the response of the red the adequacy and limits of our knowledge. Such a procedure, it is hoped and green cones overlaps, this single colour also stimulates both the red will open us to be fascinated by the mysterious dimension of the all and green cones. The brain sees “yellow” in both cases. encompassing reality and ever eager to seek a more comprehensive knowledge about it. For pictures using paint or ink, things get a little more complicated because what happens to the light before it strikes the eye is a two-step We begin with a rather sketchy treatment of the seven colours process. Inks are subtractive. They block various colours of light and of reality, the five senses of the brain, the three dimensions of being, the only the colours that are NOT blocked are reflected from the paper to one directionality of time and zero attainability of heat (the heart). This, the eyes. it is hoped, will be taken metaphorically for the very nature of reality and of human beings. In fact, there is rarely an object of one pure colour. Instead, an object appears red because it absorbs all colours except red. The red 1 The Seven: Colours of Reality light is reflected to our eyes and we see red. As children we marveled at the colours of the rainbow. As adults This difference explains why, when we mix red, green, and blue we are fascinated by the colours and contours of nature and try to light sources we perceive white light, but if we mix, red green and blue comprehend its intricacies. It is generally accepted that light is composed colours we get black. The red colour absorbs green and blue, green of seven colours, which can be demonstrated through elementary absorbs red and blue and blue absorbs red and green. The net result is experiments with a prism.3 all colours of light get absorbed and we perceive black. Normally we make a distinction between “primary” and Similar to these primary colours, there are three types of colour “secondary” colours. The first thing to realise here is that the number of blindness, depending on which colour sensor is defective in the receiver’s “primary” colours depend on the type of creature looking at it. A human eyes. being sees things differently from the way a dog or a bird would see the same things. 64Omega June 2009 65 Kuruvilla Pandikattu Ever Approachable, Never Attainable Going beyond primary and secondary colours, we can dwell a bit Then, the optic nerve carries the picture we see and this message is sent on the actual number of colours. To the important question of how many to the brain. What the brain does after the message goes to the brain is colours the eye can distinguish, the published literature is remarkably that it turns the picture right side up. Then it figures out what we are inefficient at providing an answer. An often quoted reference states that seeing and how we should respond to it. Having two eyes increases our 10 million surface colours can be distinguished by the normal human eye angle of vision and it helps to judge depth. Having two eyes allows us to under optimum observing conditions. Other estimates put it just 1 lakh cover 180 degrees and three-dimensional objects. This gives us the depth colours. of vision, so central to our movements. Dogs, on the other hand, seem to have only two kinds of colour Our ears send information about sounds to the brain in the form receptors in the eye. They see fewer separate colours. Many birds, of nerve impulses. Sounds are collected in the outer ear and are sent however, have four or more types of cones (the extra one is ultraviolet). through the ear canal to the eardrum. Three small bones in the middle They therefore see potentially many more colours than humans, depending part of the ear amplify the sounds. The receptor cells send impulses to on how the brain perceives this colour. Birds would need to use a TV the auditory nerve which goes to the brain. The brain receives impulses with four primary colours. from the auditory nerve and gives meaning to the sound impulses. Because we have two ears, the sound usually hits one ear a fraction of a second These questions raise some larger theological and religious issues: before the other and produces stronger vibrations in that ear. This helps Does colour really exist? Does it exist apart from humans who perceive us to sense the direction of the sounds. Such directionality is crucial for them? What justification do we have to classify nature into seven colours? human survival. How many colours do in fact, exist? How do we meaningfully quantify them? Isn’t our recourse to reality enabled and limited by our colour Taste helps us to determine the flavour and palatability of food. It perception? Will dogs and birds have a different perception of colour even signals dangerous gases and toxic food. All over our tongue, there and reality? Isn’t material reality much more complex than perceived by are little bumps called taste buds. There are four different types of taste our eyes? buds, to taste sweet, sour, bitter or salty things.4 After these elementary observations on colour, we are in a position Touch enables our skin to have physical contact with another to move to the larger aspect of human life: the world of our senses. It is object. Touch or sensory receptors are located in clusters around the with our sense organs that we are able to relate to the reality around us. skin. When they are squeezed, the layers rub against each other causing Obviously the colour of light is just a subset of the larger domain of an electrical nerve impulse. The most sensitive touch receptors are senses. located at the face, back of the neck and chest. 2 The Five: Senses of the Brain Skin works together with the hypothalamus, which contains cells highly sensitive to heat and cold. The hypothalamus responds by The five senses work together all the time in order to allow our increasing the number of nerve impulses transmitted by the brain. Skins body to function properly in the world and to respond adequately to the helps to regulate the temperature of the body by preventing excess of external stimuli. The brain in fact is also the centre of the sensual body, heat (hyperthermia) or dearth of it (hypothermia). which acts through the five senses. Every time we breathe, air flows through the nasal cavity, To enable us to see something light bounces off the object we are facilitating the air flow down through the back of the mouth into the looking at to the pupil. The light crosses the lens and the images gets throat. Simultaneously some of it passes the olfactory organs. Any odour focused upside down. The object, thus, shines on the retina of the eye. molecules in the air will pass by and get stuck to the mucus in our nose. 66 Omega June 2009 67 Kuruvilla Pandikattu Ever Approachable, Never Attainable The sensory hairs sense the odour and transmit messages to our brain. The three dimensional world around us enables us to experience Our brain, therefore knows the odour. The smell receptor cell is located the fabulous reality as we see it. But the mathematics of dimensions high up behind the nose and the receptor is sensitive to chemicals in the itself does not put any limit on the possible number of dimensions as mucus in it. such to reality. Strictly speaking we can have more than three dimensions, which however would be impossible for us to imagine. The five senses are our window to the world. All our technologies are mere extensions of our senses. Senses are much more intimately Some versions of the super string theory in physics assume that connected with our brain than we think. So the larger questions connected reality has eleven dimensions (M-theory). They assume that right at the with the senses are: Are there not other senses that we are unaware of beginning of the universe all these dimensions were active. Later they just now? Is mind another sense, as implied by Indian philosophy? If folded themselves up and so at present we can perceive only three humans had collectively lacked one sense or had one more of it, what dimensions. Imagining the Tenth Dimension by Rob Bryanton is an would our world look like? In fact, we are helped and hampered by our insightful but controversial book.6 five senses. We are truly captivated and captured by our senses. Reality is far grander and greater than our wonderful senses can perceive.5 The philosophical and religious challenges posed by these speculations are tremendous. When religions try to approach the Ultimate These reflections on the grandeur of the senses take us to another Reality, are we thinking of an existence with more than the three (or crucial and profound aspect of reality: the three dimensions of the spatial four?) that we are familiar with ? What would life after death look like? world, which is the door to the material objects we constantly interact Is it a continuation of our space-time existence or a dimensionally different with. It is here that we can perceive the depth and roughness of life. mode of existence? 3 The Three: Dimensions of Being God, the reference of all religions, must be experienced by us in our three-dimensional world. But that does not imply that God is limited We are fortunate to live in a three dimensional world of space. to the three dimensions only. If He is the Creator, he would have created The length, breadth and height constitutes the space around us and make the other dimensions too. But it is very possible that he would be existing up the reality we live in. It is marvellous to experience the depth of in a radically new dimension with the possibility of intervening in our space that is possible only in a three dimensional world. three dimensional world. However, it is plausible for us to imagine dimensions that are less Just as a two-dimensional being cannot understand how a coin than three. In a simplified one dimensional world, an ant – that has only has appeared on the surface of the glass plane, are we not really intelligent length – can walk back and forth on a string that is stretched tight. but limited beings who cannot experience the full depth and complexity Unaware of the other dimensions around it, the ant lives in a happy but of the rich physical reality around us? isolated world. Further, if human beings are able to create the initial conditions A being on a two dimensional world can walk on the surface of a similar to the Big Bang, as is being tried at CERN, Switzerland, do we perfectly plane glass, and enjoy seeing the full 360 degrees around it. reach nearer to the complexity of reality? Will it be possible for humans But if a human being puts down a coin on the glass, the appearance of to add new dimensions to their existence? the coin would be a miracle for this two-dimensional being. A downpour of the rain would also be another unexplained miracle for this being. These questions are profound and worth pursuing. They do add Even basic features like absorption or digestion of food would be to the magnificent data available to humanity that we can truly marvel impossible for such a poor two dimensional creature. at. They do challenge the way we live our spiritual and religious life. So 68Omega June 2009 69 Kuruvilla Pandikattu Ever Approachable, Never Attainable the possibility of new discoveries by physicists must excite us. At the One crucial difference of time, compared to other dimensions of same time, we must remember that we have not exhausted the mystery reality, is its direction. Why does time always flow forward? In the case and complexity of the three-dimensional world which we are sure of. of space, we know we can move forward or backward and so no restrictions on the directionality of time are implied. So mathematically Let us continue to marvel at the robustness and roughness of our we can have reverse (or negative) time. At the same time we know three dimensional being! But we can and must remain open to further that what makes human life as we know it possible, is this unique realms of possibilities. The reality is truly and marvellously complex. If directionality of time. so, how much can we human beings be open to it? As human beings how much should we struggle to be open to such a reality? This leads us The theory of relativity does take this directionality of time seriously. to the next section, where we deal with our finitude or temporality. We Most of us have not accepted the significance of the simple conclusion are beings in time and so we come to exist, grow and cease to be! This of the theory of relativity: that time is relative to the frame of reference. profound mystery of our temporality invites us to deeper reflections on In other words the “common-sense” or absolute notion of time is possible our meaning system. only under certain limited conditions.Time thus provides us with one of the enduring mysteries of life and reality. Many of our common-sense 4 The One: Directionality of Time notions of everyday life are shattered by recent scientific discoveries. Further, according to the theory of relativity, under certain conditions, It is a truism to say that we live in time. Time enables us to be the simultaneity of two events cannot be always assumed. So too, in born, to grow, to mature and finally to blow out. Time with its past, some rare cases involving quantum particles, the distinction between the present and future is a key enigma. We are not much better than Augustine past and the future vanishes. who claimed 1500 years ago: “I do know what time is if you do not ask me; but if you ask me I do not know.”7 This possibility, which would enable one to travel back in time, has spurred the imagination of science-fiction writers. What would happen The simplistic view of the three aspects of time helps us to cope if I were to go back in time and eliminate my grandmother? Would I be with the normal routine of life. But let us remember that the past is not able to prevent my own birth, then? merely something that has happened previously. Events in the past shape our present and the memory of the past helps us to live the present. In Such questions may be entertaining, but there-in lies a deeper fact some philosophers are of the opinion that the “remembrance of the significance. If we live in a four (or even ten) dimensional space, what things past” truly makes up the present.8 In the same way, the future is really limits or enables the directionality of time? What enables time to not just something that will happen. We truly anticipate the future right move only in one direction? Why can’t time at least move sideways? now. Without that hope and anticipation of the future, the present does not make sense. Physicists answer these questions by bringing in the law of entropy. Though physics can legitimately seek such answers, the metaphysical So the usual linear description of time as being divided into past, and religious quests cannot be ignored. In fact the metaphysical questions present and future is simplistic and inadequate, though useful. We need on time help us to marvel at the nature of the life-sustaining reality. to appreciate the complex dimensions of the past intermingling with the present and being carried over into the future. The present now that we But the more profound query is : Why is reality so constructed experience is, in fact, constituted also by the memory of the past and that beings like us can grow, mature and die? What enables us to anticipation of the future. experience the joys and sorrows of life and affirm, “This too will pass away?” Can we make a better case for a “cyclic” or even a “spiral”

70Omega June 2009 71 Kuruvilla Pandikattu Ever Approachable, Never Attainable time, which includes the non-linear dimensions of ordinary time? Such Temperatures within a few billionths of a degree of absolute zero perceptive questions on time leads us to another deep dimension, that of have been achieved in the laboratory. At such low temperatures, zero. When we genuinely look into our own selves, deep down there are substances have been seen to enter a peculiar state, known as the Bose- traces of nothings. It is these traces of emptiness that opens our eyes to Einstein condensate, in which their quantum wave-functions merge and the larger mystery of the totality, that we may paradoxically call fullness. particles lose their individual identities. So the next paradoxial section deals with the emptiness that emerges from and leads to fullness. This is truly reflective of our human condition. In theory, the lowest possible temperature denotes the lowest possible total energy of a system. Although it might be expected that all 5 The Zero: Emptiness of the Fullness particle motion would stop at absolute zero, this is not in fact the case. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle asserts that even at the minimum Indians are credited with the discovery of zero. The Greeks could conceivable temperature, subatomic particles would still possess a residual not admit zero or infinity into their system of mathematics, since zero kinetic energy known as zero point energy. A strange outcome of this is threatened to regard ‘nothing’ as ‘something’ and to smuggle a that closely packed electrons in a metal at absolute zero would have the contradiction, like a Trojan horse, into their elegant logic. same energy as an ordinary gas at 50,000°C. Thus, although at absolute zero a system’s entropy is zero, the total energy of a system is not zero. If we divide any number by zero, we get infinity. If we add any number to infinity, we still get infinity.9 This is the route Brahmagupta Another reason why the absolute zero temperature is physically took in 628 AD to define zero and introduce the decimal system of unattainable, is the third law of thermodynamics. At first sight, this might arithmetic. He could easily write: seem unreasonable. There is no upper temperature limit, so why should there be a lower one? In trying to understand this, it is helpful to think in Infinity = 1/0 or 0 = 1/infinity terms of temperature ratios rather than temperature differences – the That gave rise to the elegant mathematical system that ratio from 10,000 K to 1,000 K, say, being the same as that from 0.001 K contemporary science is so used to today.10 to 0.0001 K. Just as by supplying more and more energy to a system we can add as many zeros before the decimal point of the Kelvin reading as But in reality such elegance is unattainable. I shall illustrate this we choose, so by continuing to take energy out of a system we can add by the simple phenomenon of temperature. As physicists remind us, an arbitrary number of zeros after the decimal point. Yet just as we can temperature is in fact the average measure of the energy or movement never reach an infinitely high temperature, so we can never attain an of a system. The higher the temperature, the faster the molecules move. infinitely low one – absolute zero itself. Absolute Zero is the coldest possible temperature and it means the particles are in total rest. Since gas follows certain laws connecting In a profound sense, absolute zero lies at the asymptotic limit of pressure and volume we can easily deduce the relation between pressure, low energy just as the speed of light lies, for particles with mass, at the volume and temperature of a gas.11 One can calculate how cold we asymptotic limit of high energy.13 In both cases, energy of motion – would have to make the gas, in order for the temperature to be zero. kinetic energy – is the key quantity involved. At the high-energy end, as This calculated temperature is the same temperature for all quantities of the average speed of the particles of a substance approaches the speed all gases and is -273.16°C. This is the temperature at which a gas does of light, the temperature rises without limit.14 not move and has zero volume. Since in reality, gas cannot have a zero Thus the real world, unlike the elegant and coherent world of the volume and absolute zero temperature cannot be practically reached. ideal mathematics, is the tensional in-between, bridging the two extremes, So, absolute zero is an unattainable limit.12 both of which are unattainable. The beauty of the real, including our

72Omega June 2009 73 Kuruvilla Pandikattu Ever Approachable, Never Attainable own selves, lies in the fact that we can dream of the ideal, march towards it is expanding through it. This causes people to wonder where in the the ideal, without ever attaining it. The elusive and fascinating horizon universe it started, as if by running the clock backwards we would reach invites us always. the point where all the galaxies come together in the centre of the universe. The universe does not have a centre, any more than the surface of a It is hoped that what we have been saying about the heat could be sphere has a centre, there is no preferred place that could be termed the metaphorically or symbolically applied to the heart – the realm of human centre. relationship and love. Just as is the case with heat, we can always love deeper, become more intimate, but never attain the complete union of The standard model of the Big Bang theory proposes that the hearts, which we so ardently long for. This may be called the “emptiness universe emerged from a “singularity,” at time zero. Scientists can describe of the fullness.” all that has happened since 0.0001 of a second after this moment of creation. The temperature of the universe at that time was 1,000 billion Conclusion degrees Kelvin and had a density that of nuclear matter, 1014 grams per cubic centimeter. Under these extreme conditions, the photons of the In this concluding section we want to sum up the crucial insights ‘background’ radiation carry so much energy that they are interchangeable we have gathered above regarding the fascinating and ambiguous with particles. Photons create pairs of particles and antiparticles which aspects of reality and human beings in terms of the horizon of reality and annihilate one another to make energetic photons in a constant interchange of human nature. Here we look at reality as ever approchable and of energy. Because of a small asymmetry in the way the fundamental humans as the finite search for the infinite. interactions work, slightly more particles were produced than antiparticles a. World Horizon: Ever Approachable, Never Attainable - about one in a billion more particles than antiparticles.

Though the Big Bang theory has not found acceptance among all When the universe had cooled to the point that photons no longer scientists, it is still the most popular theory we have regarding the origin had the energy required to make particles, all the paired particles and of the universe, of time and of space. Cosmological models of the “Big antiparticles annihilated, and the one-in-a-billion particles left over, settled Bang” expansion of the universe have converged on a general framework down to become stable matter. in time, energy and temperature. Below is an attempt to show some of One-hundredth of a second after time zero, the temperature had the features of the models on a time line as explained in the bestseller, fallen 90% to 100 billion K. By one-tenth of a second after time zero, the 15 The First Three Minutes by Nobel Laureate Stephen Weinberg. temperature was down to 30 billion K. The temperature after 13.8 seconds An overwhelming weight of evidence has convinced cosmologists was down to 3 billion K, and by three minutes and two seconds it had that the universe came into existence at a definite moment in time, some cooled to 1 billion K, only 70 times hotter than the centre of the Sun 13 billion years ago, in the form of a superhot, superdense fireball of today. At this temperature nuclei of deuterium and helium could be formed energetic radiation. Until the arrival of this Big Bang theory the universe and stick together despite collisions with other particles. was believed to be essentially eternal and unchanging, represented by What is insightful is that astrophysicists have been able to describe the Steady State model. the phenomenon of the Big Bang upto three minutes with a very high It is necessary to understand that the Big Bang did not begin as a degree of precision. They can trace the origin of the Big Bang to say, huge explosion within the universe, the Big Bang created the universe. 0.0001 seconds after its beginning and describe the situation satisfactorily. A popular misconception is that it happened within the universe and that When they want to investigate the situation of the Big Bang close to zero seconds, it becomes more and more difficult, and finally almost

74Omega June 2009 75 Kuruvilla Pandikattu Ever Approachable, Never Attainable impossible. To describe the phenomenon closest to zero, we need to The swing between the two makes us the unique creatures that we are. expend almost an infinite amount of energy. It is in this unique “in-betweenness” that we can situate and understand our own freedom. This situation of the universe may be best described as a horizon, which remains always elusive. It is ever approachable and never As an infinite god who is bound to finite matter and as a final attainable. It becomes almost impossible to describe the beginning of the being who reaches out to the unlimited we lead a “tensional existence.” universe as time approaches zero (T à 0). Here emerges precious freedom that we are capable of. Here we perceive also our fragility. It is precisely in its fragility that the beauty b. Human Nature: Finite Search for the Infinite and uniqueness of the human shines forth! If reality is ever approachable but never attainable, we can assert Given such a human situation, where the voluntary is in the the same thing about human beings themselves. involuntary, the material is in the spiritual, the quest for human nature and freedom will always remain precarious with us. The urge to reach To apply the phenomenon to humans, using the insights of Paul out to the infinite will enable us to remain humans. This quest can be Ricour, we can claim that human beings themselves live the tension stifled only at the cost of being human. Thus humans are the limited between the finite and the infinite. Limiting only to one aspect of human embraced by the unlimited, the material overwhelmed by the spiritual. life, feeling or affectivity, we can trace a similar situation. Just as the material reality is ever approachable, but never Ricour contends, that human affectivity displays two directions or attainable, so too human beings could be understood in this paradoxical dimensions: pleasure and happiness. The finite pole is to be found in and ambiguous manner. So it is ever approachable and never attainable. 16 pleasure which, Ricour contends, terminates in finite acts. Pleasure is So human beings, including our ideals, perfections, our relationship and the movement of feeling towards the good fulfilled in the instant. As even happiness, are approachable, but never realizable. such it is precarious and perishable. Its focus is upon its bond with bodily life, and the fulfilment of pleasure is feeling at the existential condition Therein lies the precious and precarious nature of reality and for bodily life. In this condition, pleasure stands as the condition (or human beings. In such a scenario, our human endeavor is to make possibility) for all other good.17 In itself pleasure has its own type of sense of this ambiguous project that is human life. So the role of philosophy totality and is non-reducible. It has an “innocence”, but it is a “menaced and theology is to mediate these two tensional aspects of life: that of the innocence” in that the potential for conflict with happiness is always material and the beyond. If we understand by religion the spiritual realm, present. and by science the material, then we can understand the insight of Whitehead: “Philosophy [or theology] attains its chief importance by The pole of infinitude in the feeling is happiness (bonheur). fusing ... religion and science into one rational scheme of thought.”19 Happiness or blissfulness is that dimension of feeling which revolves Thus theology is an attempt to cope with life existentially and make around the need for unity or wholeness in human life. It terminates in the rational sense of the ambiguous and fascinating aspects of ourselves existential project which is destiny. The feeling of happiness is intimately and of reality. connected to the idea of well-being, but is more than merely an idea, since it is the fulfilment of this direction in beatitude.18 So we can talk of human affectivity and its two dynamic polarities of finitude and infinite. The infinite in us is both bound and enabled by the finite. We remain always open to the infinite and rooted in the finite.

76Omega June 2009 77 Kuruvilla Pandikattu Ever Approachable, Never Attainable Notes 6. Rob Bryanton, Tenth Dimension: A New Way of Thinking about Time 1 Dr. Kuruvilla Pandikattu is the lecturer in Phiosophy of Science and Sci- and Space, Trafford Publishing, 2006. A simplified youtube movie is ence and Religion at Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune. He is the founder- available on the internet. See also Kuruvilla Pandikattu, “Human Fulfilment director of Janana Discussion group for Science and Religion. Here and Now: Some Anthropological Considerations,” Satya Nilayam: Chennai Journal of Intercultural Philosophy, Vol 15, Feb 2009, 107-109. 2. J. Haldane. Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 286. The full quote is “I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more 7. Saint Augustine, Confessions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that p. 230. The whole quote is insightful: “What is time? Who can explain the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we this easily and briefly? Who can comprehend this in thought so as to can suppose.” articulate the answer in words? Yet what do we speak of, in our familiar everyday conversation, more than of time? We surely know what we 3. All these different sections were published as regular columns in The mean when we speak of it. We also know what is meant when we hear Financial Chronicle, on its regular feature column, “The Sacred Bull” in someone else talking about it. What then is time? Provided that no one Jan-February 2009. They have been modified for the purpose of this asks me, I know. If I want to explain to an inquirer, I do not know.” article. 8. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past (New York: Vintage Books, 4. It is interesting to note that we have not developed a quantified 1982) has become a classic both as a novel and as a philosophy source measurement to predict the taste of a thing. No one really knows, for material. instance, the taste of arsenic. It is so poisonous that anyone who attempts to taste it will instantly perish. 9. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad Chapters 5.1.1 says: “That is fullness, this is fullness. From fullness, fullness proceeds. If we take away fullness 5. It is assumed that humans have another sense of “equilibrium” which is from fullness, even then fullness still remains.” located in the inner ear. Equilibrioception is our sense of balance, perceived by the position of fluids in the inner ear. It can be sent off kilter 10. Though the decimal system has found universal acceptability today, the if one spins around in a circle too many times. Having a sensory faculty dated FPS System of units based on the foot, pound, and second as for the perception of balance is essential for any bipedal species. units of length, mass, and time, respectively is still being in many parts of the world today. . It has now been replaced for scientific work by the SI Proprioception is the perception of one’s body in space. Like system. It is based on seven basic units: the metre (m) for length, kilogram equilibrioception, the data for this sensory faculty comes from within the (kg) for mass, second (s) for time, ampere (A) for electrical current, Kelvin body rather than from the environment. Proprioception is what a police (K) for temperature, mole (mol) for amount of substance, and candela officer tests when they pull you to the side of the road on suspicion of (cd) for luminosity. drunk driving. 11. Boyle’s Law is named after the Irish natural philosopher Robert Boyle Thermoception and nociception were once thought to be simple variations (1627-1691) who was the first to publish it in 1662. The mathematical on touch, but they are not. Thermoception is the sensation of heat and equation for Boyle’s law is: P.V = k, which may also be denoted as PiVi nociception is the sensation of pain. Thermoception of external heat =PfVf. Charles’ Law describes the relation between volume (V) and sources is quite distinct from the sensation of internal body temperature, temperature (T) and is given by the equation Vi/Ti = Vf/Tf. which uses a different apparatus. Also, nociception has sometimes been categorized as three senses rather than one, because different receptors 12. For more details on zero see Binoy Pichalakkattu, “Dialoging with perceive pain on the skin, the joints and bones, and the body organs Symbols: Exploring Zero, Sunyata and Trinity for a Holistic Reality,” respectively. For details see “How Many Human Senses Are There?” at Omega: Indian Journal of Science and Religion 5/2 December 2006, pp. http://www.wisegeek.com/how-many-human-senses-are-there.htm, 25-41. accessed March 2009.

78Omega June 2009 79 Kuruvilla Pandikattu Ever Approachable, Never Attainable 13. In coordinate geometry, a straight line that a curve approaches Omega progressively more closely but never reaches is an asymptote. VIII (2009)1, 81-101 14. This implies that even if we increase the velocity of a moving particle, it will only approach the speed of light, since so much of its energy is converted to higher temperature. Similarly a the lower energy level, of we try to reduce the energy, the velocity will tend to zero, but will never reach zero, since much more of energy (reaching almost energy) is needed to reduce the temperature at close domains of zero. Christianity and Modern Science in the West: 15. Stephen Weinberg, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the An Overview Origin of the Universe (New York, Basic Books, 1994). 1 16. Paul Ricœur, Philosophie de la volonté . Vol. 2. Finitude et Cultpabilité. - Nancey Murphy Livre 1: L’homme faillible. Livre II: La symbolique du mal (Philosophie de Abstract: The overall aim of this article is to give an overview of science- l’espirit). Aubier, Paris 1960 Reprint 1988, p. 109. See also D. Ihde, Hermeneutic theology dialogue that focuses largely on protestant Christianity in the Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricour (Evanston: Northwestern West. More specifically, it seeks to achieve two goals: (a) to explain the Univ Press, 1971), p. 132. difference between evangelical and liberal protestant approaches to 17. Ibid, 110. science in the West and (b) to describe some of the most important points 18. 18 Ibid., 109. of contact between current science and Christian theology. The overall argument it makes is that the contemporary Western scientific theories, 19. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, especially, big-bang cosmology, fine-tuning, and quantum physics, etc., edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (Free Press. 1929), provide added credibility to a theistic worldview than to atheism. The p. 15. article considers five issues in the field: (1) quantum physics and divine action; (2) evolution and several points of intersection with Christian doctrine; (3) neuroscience and Christian anthropology; (4) cosmology and the doctrine of creation; and (5) the fine-tuning of the cosmological constants, design, and the problem of evil. The elaborate discussion on these topics is prefaced with a brief historical introduction, which shows that modern Western science originated within the matrix of a thoroughly Christian worldview and that there need be no conflict between Christian and scientific accounts of nature. Finally, in light of an overview of the preceding discussions on the central issues in contemporary science-theology dialogue, the pressing need for a consistent and coherent account of science and its relations to theology is highlighted. Keywords: Quantum Physics, Divine Action, Evolution, Creation, Neuroscience, Christian Anthropology, Cosmology, Fine-tuning, Design, Problem of Evil.

80Omega June 2009 81 Nancey Murphy Christianity and Modern Science in the West 1 Introduction “scientist” was not coined until the nineteenth century. Earlier contributions to what we now call science were called natural philosophy; The June 2008 issue of Omega offered several valuable overviews in fact natural philosophy and natural theology were so closely tied in the of science-religion dialogue in the Indian context, and George Coyne’s seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the works of Johannes Kepler article on science and theology in the thought of Pope John Paul II (1571-1630), Isaac Newton (1642-1727), and others have been called provides insights into the history and current situation in the Catholic “physico-theology.” Church. It may not be amiss, then, to offer in this issue a general overview of science-theology dialogue that focuses largely on protestant Christianity It is a common but erroneous perception (as noted above, gleefully in the West. perpetuated by the media) that science and Christianity are at war. One early and legitimate source of this perception was the fact that early While much of what is discussed here will be familiar to many scientists developed theories that conflicted with the scholastic synthesis readers, it seems important to put it into print whenever a generous of Aristotelian philosophy with theology; therefore their work appeared editor allows it because of the strong media bias in favor of what historians to some to threaten Catholic theology. Gradually, however, the new now call the warfare myth regarding science and religion. Here is one science presented itself as more compatible with Christianity than the example of the way Western media have used my own work to promote “pagan” Aristotelianism that it displaced.4 the myth. For over ten years I have been writing on human nature, arguing on biblical and theological grounds in favor of a physicalist (as The warfare thesis was advanced by two historians, Andrew Dixon opposed to dualist) account, and publishing and lecturing extensively to White and John Draper. Their thesis, now called the warfare myth, has make the point that there need be no conflict between Christian and been thoroughly discredited by recent historians as one-sided, and scientific accounts of human nature. Nonetheless, Cornelia Dean, in a motivated in part by power struggles between the new scientific elite New York Times article titled “Science and the Soul? ‘I Think, Therefore and the administrators, typically Christian clergymen, who controlled I Am’ Is Losing It’s Force,”2 quotes me so effectively out of context higher education. 5 that she makes it appear that my recent book3 argues not only that However, genuine conflict between religion and science began in humans have souls, but that animals do too! the United States in the early twentieth century with the development of So for the sake of the record, I shall preface my account of what the Fundamentalist Movement. Shaken by the arrival of higher criticism I see as the most promising current points of theology-science dialogue of the Scriptures in the U. S. and by the development of a version of with a historical introduction. Then I turn to five clusters of issues: (1) liberal theology called modernism, fundamentalist Christians adopted a quantum physics and divine action; (2) evolution and several points of literalist and inerrantist strategy for reading Scripture—thus taking intersection with Christian doctrine; (3) neuroscience and Christian evolutionary biology to be in conflict with biblical views of the age of the anthropology; (4) cosmology and the doctrine of creation; and (5) the earth and human origins. This conflict continues today, even though fine-tuning of the cosmological constants, design, and the problem of many conservative theologians made impressive moves to reconcile evil. theology with scientific developments.6 It is important to note that the relations between protestant 2 A Bit of History Christianity and science cannot be understood without appreciating the fact that there is a sharp divide between liberal and conservative theologies It is important to recall that modern Western science originated (by conservative, I mean to refer to both fundamentalists, who are largely within the matrix of a thoroughly Christian worldview. The term identified by their resistance to science, and to more moderate

82Omega June 2009 83 Nancey Murphy Christianity and Modern Science in the West evangelicals, many of whom have worked to integrate theology and in the sense of that approved by the authorities). The scientific revolution science all along). It is a bit ironic that liberal theology developed in replaced medieval opinio with our contemporary sense of probable large part as a strategy to immunize theology from science. Immanuel knowledge based on empirical evidence. The need to redefine theology Kant’s (1724-1804) philosophical system was largely a response to the in modern epistemological categories created a major crisis for Christian threat that Newtonian determinism posed to human freedom and morality, scholars. Much of the character of evangelical theology is a consequence and thus to religion. One aspect of his solution led to the birth of liberal of attempting to model theological reasoning on accounts of science theology. He made a sharp distinction between the spheres of knowledge from philosophers such as Francis Bacon (1561-1626), famous for (science and metaphysics) and ethics. These involve different forms of proposing that science worked by gathering all relevant facts and drawing reason and different objects (the world of experience versus the world inductive conclusions. This has had the unfortunate consequence of of things in themselves). Religion belongs to the sphere of ethics, and leading some theologians to speak of the Bible as a collection of facts, there is no valid way to argue from science to theological conclusions. merely needing to be combined into a coherent system. As already noted, liberal theology has been shaped methodologically by distinguishing Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), founder of the liberal itself from science. theological tradition, kept Kant’s notion of independent spheres but located religion in a third, aesthetic sphere. The consequence was an A second change with drastic effects on theology was a new understanding of theology that bore no intellectual relation whatsoever view of causation. Medieval writers imposed order on reality by fitting to science. For example, the doctrine of creation says nothing about the a phenomenon into a pattern of similar items. The scientific revolution origin of the universe, but speaks of human religious awareness of its embodied a new form of explanation—fitting events into causal accounts, dependence on God. This development created a gulf between the with causation understood in terms of laws of nature. While this change liberal tradition and theologians still holding to the traditional understanding was motivated theologically—it was an answer to the question of how of theology as knowledge, and it accounts for the fact that it is only God governs the universe—the concept of nature as entirely determined conservative Christians who have seen science as a threat. by strict causal laws soon made God’s ongoing involvement seem problematic. How, then, to understand revelation, special providence, The indifference of liberal theologians to science began, a and continuing creation? generation ago, to give way to a new round of engagement (and they have been engaged with Catholics in these projects). Scholars with dual Here we see another split between liberal and conservative training in science and theology have contributed to a growing movement protestants. Liberal theologians gave up on all notions of special divine to relate theology to current developments in science. action. Instead they emphasized God’s immanence in the world; God’s ongoing action is limited to upholding the whole natural order. Insofar as Regardless of theologians’ attitudes toward science, there is an event seems to be a special act of God, this is only because subjectively scarcely a doctrine that has not been affected, for good or ill, by science. it reveals God’s purposes more than others. I shall note some of these briefly, and then turn to contemporary points of dialogue. Conservative theologians objected that this “immanentist” view of divine action, removing God from history, evacuates Christianity of its The development of modern science led to a shift in philosophical meaning. They maintain (with the liberals) that God works constantly understandings of knowledge, which in turn had a significant impact on within the order of nature, but contend that God can and does intervene— theological methods. Medieval theologians had two sets of occasionally violating the laws of nature in order to bring about special epistemological categories, those relating to scientia (deductive systems events.7 such as geometry) and those relating to opinio (“probable” knowledge,

84Omega June 2009 85 Nancey Murphy Christianity and Modern Science in the West The new view of nature as a closed causal order had philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) argued that in such a case God consequences for understanding humans as well. At the beginning of would be involved in self-contradiction. Second, if action in the material the modern period (ca.1650) there were two major options for world requires a force, then to conceive of God making things happen in understanding human nature. One was René Descartes’s (1596-1650) the world is to conceive of God as a force among forces. This is dualism of body and mind or soul. The other was Thomas Hobbes’s problematic since it reduces God to the level of a Demiurge. (1588-1679) reductive physicalism: Hobbes denied the existence of a nonmaterial element, and asserted that human behavior could be reduced One current possibility for reconciling special divine action with to physics. Christians tended to shape their views of human nature what we know of the regularities of nature is to postulate that God along Cartesian lines, yet, given the causal closure of the physical world works at the quantum level, and thereby brings about macroscopic events. it has become increasingly evident that no account can be given of how This approach emphasizes, with the liberals, God’s immanence in all of a soul could interact with the body. nature; thus, necessarily God is immanent in the events and entities at the quantum level. Robert John Russell is the most prolific defender of A third aspect of the scientific worldview has affected Christian quantum divine action (QDA). He argues that God acts directly at the understandings of the church, salvation, and the kingdom of God. The quantum level to sustain the development of elementary processes and atomism that worked so well in the new physics was soon extended also to determine otherwise indeterminate quantum events. This latter metaphorically to all aspects of reality. Humans came to be understood sort of action is the means by which God brings about special, providential, as the atoms that constituted social groups, and two related attributes and revelatory events at the macro-level. God’s action is in cooperation were carried along by the metaphor: human atoms are logically prior to with natural causes: it involves “a continuous creative (divine) presence social organizations, and they are not intrinsically affected by social within each (quantum) event, co-determining the outcome of these relations. This modern form of individualism has made it difficult to elementary physical processes.”8 So this is not a picture of God maintain the biblical view of the church as the body of Christ, and has occasionally acting from outside the world, but rather a scientifically allowed concern for personal (individual) salvation to eclipse expectation informed specification of the nature of immanent divine causation. for the social and political reign of God. Because of the (widely accepted) ontological indeterminacy of events at the quantum level there is no violation of natural laws. I turn now to topics of current interest in science-theology dialogue: quantum physics and divine action; evolution and creation; neuroscience This account has many critics. One criticism is that action only at and Christian anthropology; big-bang cosmology and creation; the quantum level would have almost no possibility for noticeable events cosmological fine-tuning and the problem of suffering. at the macroscopic level. Other criticisms turn on technical disagreements about issues in quantum physics, which cannot be addressed here. 9 3 Quantum Physics and Divine Action The first objection is illegitimate because QDA does not postulate An issue of great interest among current scholars is whether it is God acting in only one quantum event at a time. Hence, the charge that possible to give an account of special divine action (continuing creation, individual quantum events have limited effects because all are averaged special providence) without postulating intervention—that is, without out at the macro-level is beside the point. Second, there are in fact violation of the laws of nature. As mentioned above, liberal theologians important points at which individual quantum events have significant tended to reject special divine action. First, it was seen to represent an effects, such as in causing some of the mutations that drive the unacceptable view of the nature of God. If God created the laws in the evolutionary process.10 It is also likely that quantum events play a role first place, then God’s violation of them would be irrational; Jewish in brain processes, thus potentially affecting human thoughts and emotions. 86Omega June 2009 87 Nancey Murphy Christianity and Modern Science in the West Finally, if one divine action problem is to explain how God acts at Contemporary biblical scholarship addresses this cluster of issues all, a second problem is the question of why, in the face of so much by recognizing the genre of Genesis 1-11 as closer to narrative theology suffering, God appears to do so little. If God does restrict divine activity than natural history. There are two creation stories. In the second to the quantum level in order to preserve the integrity of nature, this (older) story, man (’adam) is made from the dust of the ground criticism of the limited scope of possible divine acts is actually a help in (’adamah); Adam and Eve are everyman and everywoman. Thus, addressing one aspect of the problem of evil. more recent theologies have shifted their focus from a catastrophic first sin to fallen-ness as a universal fact of the human condition. This Note that divine action as here understood will always be invisible development, however, reopens the question of how to reconcile death to science, since it will originate in events that can only appear to scientific and suffering with God’s love and power (addressed below). investigation as chance occurrences. The difference between Russell’s proposal and that of the Intelligent Design movement will become In addition to doctrinal issues, ethical concerns have contributed apparent below. to some Christian’s resistance to evolutionary theory. One objection is that Darwin’s work was the source of “social Darwinism.” In fact, the 4 Evolution, Doctrine, and Divine Action laissez-faire economics to which this term is applied was already prominent in Darwin’s day, before he published Origin of Species (1859). Wholesale opposition by Christians to Darwinian evolution has Darwin credited his theory of natural selection to Anglican clergyman existed in the U. S. since the development of the Fundamentalist Thomas Malthus, who argued in his Essay on the Principle of Movement in the early twentieth century. Liberal or modernist Christians Population (1798) that population, if unchecked, will increase have regularly seen evolutionary theory as either irrelevant to theology, geometrically and food supply, at best, could only increase arithmetically. or have found it easy to incorporate it into a progressivist view of nature Struggle, competition, and starvation would be the natural outcome. and society. Early conservative reactions were mixed; many Malthus himself was writing in the tradition of Adam Smith’s laissez- conservative theologians also incorporated the new biology into their faire economics. Smith had argued (in Wealth of Nations, 1776) that theological worldviews.11 the pursuit of self-interest would contribute to the general welfare. Smith’s The history of evangelicals coming to terms with evolutionary contemporaries already used such views of providential ordering of biology is complex.12 Apart from issues such as the age of the earth and society for the purpose of theodicy—at one stroke justifying God’s the historicity of the Flood, which arise from a literalist reading of Genesis, providence and excusing human misery. So it is not the case that Darwin’s there are important doctrinal issues that have more to do with earlier theory produced social Darwinism; also a variety of contrasting social theological formulations than with Scripture itself. Most of these relate and political programs found “support” in the new biology. to theological anthropology. One is body-soul dualism, to be discussed in A more popular objection to evolutionary theory is that it contributes the next section. The second relates to the doctrine of the Fall. Here a to personal immorality by showing that humans are nothing but animals. still-common objection is the argument that if evolutionary theory it is This objection reflects a reductionistic view of human life, which I address true then Adam and Eve were not historical figures. If no first parents, below. then no Fall, and no need for salvation. A related concern comes from theological formulations such as Augustine’s (354-430) that explain death Current science-theology dialogue contributes to the ongoing and other forms of “natural evil” as a consequence of a historic Fall— reconciliation of theology with evolutionary biology in regard to the issue while natural history indicates that disorder, death, and suffering predated of divine action. I stated above that conservative theologians have the appearance of humans by billions of years. generally claimed that, in addition to sustaining the natural order, God

88 Omega June 2009 89 Nancey Murphy Christianity and Modern Science in the West sometimes intervenes in the processes of nature in order to bring about 5 Neuroscience and Christian Anthropology special (miraculous) events. This interventionist theory was used early on to attempt to reconcile the creation account in Genesis 1 with the Since the beginning of the modern period, dualism and physicalism findings of science. Called “progressive creationism,” this is the view have been philosophical options for understanding human nature. For that much of the development of the universe took place according to approximately sixteen centuries the Hebrew Scriptures were taken to natural law but, particularly in the creation of life, God intervened at teach body-soul dualism, yet beginning over a century ago both Jewish various points. Progressive creationism allowed for a literal reading of and Christian scholars have argued that the original Hebraic view was Genesis 1 by interpreting each “day” as an extended epoch. monist and physicalist, with no well-developed account of life after death. This conclusion is widely accepted across the theological spectrum. A current version of intenventionism is the “intelligent design movement,” which began in the U. S. in the 1990s. ID theorists are Hebraic thought emphasized that humans have an inner life that intellectual descendants of the fundamentalists in their belief that is the seat of emotions and the source of action, designated by terms evolutionary theory is either false or severely inadequate. They contend later translated as “soul,” “spirit,” “heart,” and others. But it was only that nature includes highly complex mechanisms that any unbiased around the second century BCE that this inner aspect was conceived by observer would judge to be a product of design, and whose existence, some as a separate entity capable of surviving the death of the body. furthermore, cannot be accounted for as a result of gradual development. This development was probably due to the influence of Greek philosophy (and perhaps to influences of Indian religions in Greek thought?). In the A much more common understanding of evolution across the book of Daniel where hints of dualism appear, the idea of the resurrection theological spectrum, called “theistic evolutionism,” is the view that God of the body was introduced. At the beginning of the Christian era the created all present life forms through the process of evolution. However, Pharisees held to body-soul dualism and the immortality of the soul; this thesis is ambiguous. Does it mean merely that God willed the others accepted resurrection at the end of time but without body-soul evolutionary process to occur, and that the process alone has produced dualism; and still others (the Sadducees) retained the original physicalist all of the results? Or does it mean that God worked subtly within the view with no account of life after death. process to produce these results? If the former, then theistic evolutionism is open to the same sorts of objections as other “immanentist” accounts Many scholars (liberal and some evangelical) now take the New or divine action—it is difficult to claim that the evolution of Homo sapiens Testament view of human nature to be largely continuous with earlier is any more an act of God than the evolution of, say, cockroaches. Hebraic views, but with a central emphasis on the resurrection of the body, as a consequence of belief that Jesus had been raised from the If theistic evolution is taken in the latter sense, then must it not be dead. However, as Christianity spread throughout the Mediterranean merely a subtler form of interventionism? Here we see the relevance of world its theology was developed using the concepts of Greek philosophy. theories of noninterventionist special divine action. For example, Russell Already in the second century, dualism began to appear in Christian argues that divine action at the quantum level could account for certain teaching. The Epistle to Diognetus (ca.130) described humans as sorts of mutations, and thus, indirectly, for some aspects of the direction possessing an immortal soul. By Augustine’s day, in the early fifth century, of the evolutionary process. The purpose of such theories is to enable a modified Platonic form of dualism was taken as the orthodox position. the theologian to claim that God has been involved in shaping the outcome of natural processes, but without making God merely one cause among If the majority of current scholars are right about biblical views of other (natural) causes.13 human nature, this raises the question of how so many earlier scholars could have been wrong. Part of the explanation is translation. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, dating from

90Omega June 2009 91 Nancey Murphy Christianity and Modern Science in the West around 250 BCE. This text translated Hebrew anthropological all of the human capacities once attributed to the mind or soul are now terminology into Greek, and then it contained the terms that, in the minds being fruitfully studied as brain processes. A note on terminology: of those influenced by Greek philosophy, referred to constituent parts of contemporary scientists and philosophers speak of the mind and its relation humans. The clearest instance of this is the Hebrew word nephesh, to the brain. In religious contexts the common term is “soul.” Although which was translated as psyche in the Septuagint and later translated there are two different words in English, they could be used into English as “soul.” interchangeably at the beginning of the modern era. New Testament scholar James Dunn makes a helpful distinction It is enlightening to see how many of the capacities once attributed for understanding the difference between the Hebraic uses of these to the mind or soul are now studied fruitfully by neurobiologists. The psychological terms and later Greek usage. Hebraic thought was most significant developments are localization studies—research indicating “aspective,” while Greek thought was “partitive.” So the Greeks were not only that the brain is involved in specific mental operations, but that interested in the question: what are the essential parts that make up a very specific regions or systems correlate with very specific cognitive human being? In contrast, for Hebrew authors each “part” stands for abilities. Here is a sample of the results: The senses are well understood. the whole person considered from a certain angle. For example, nephesh Vision depends on the transmission of signals from the retina to the usually refers to the whole person as a vital, living being.14 visual cortex. Smell involves transmitting signals from six kinds of receptors to the olfactory lobes. Memory has been much researched. Two developments in modern science have implications for the Long-term memory is conceived of as the result of patterns of connections dualism-physicalism issue. The first, of course, is evolutionary biology. within the neural network. Short-term memory is believed to be enabled This development pushed many thinkers in the direction of physicalist by a system of “recurrent pathways,” such that information is processed, accounts of human nature: if animals have no souls (as modern thinkers, then recycled and fed into the process again. The hippocampus is known beginning with Descartes, assumed) then humans must not have them to be involved in converting short-term to long-term memory. The parietal either. However, many theologians, including some evangelicals, evaded lobes are involved in memory of faces. Language abilities are associated this physicalist conclusion by granting that the human body is a product with two regions of neocortex, called Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. of evolution, but maintaining that God creates a soul for each individual Recall of words is even more precisely located: different regions seem at conception. to be involved for verbs, proper names, and common nouns. So in two ways evolutionary biology required Christians to re- Antonio Damasio has reported on victims of localized brain damage examine what it means to be created in the image of God. Despite lack whose injuries or illnesses have resulted in the specific loss of moral of biblical support, many Christians had come to believe that it was the character. That is, their intellectual capacities remain unaffected, but possession of an immortal, immaterial soul that constituted the divine they are unable to act in accord with what reason tells them.15 image. If humans in fact have no souls, and if, as biology indicates, Note that none of this research strictly disproves mind-body or humans are closely related to the other animals, then in what does the body-soul dualism. One can still argue that it is the nonmaterial mind (or divine image consist? Again, more careful exegesis resolves the problem. soul) that is responsible for these functions, and that for some reason The context of Genesis 1:26-27 suggests that humans’ special place in they are simply well correlated with brain activity. However, it is clear God’s plan be understood in terms of their dominion over other creatures that the burden of proof has shifted to the dualists to explain why it is and their ability for personal relationships (“male and female”). necessary to postulate an additional entity, the mind, when accounts in The most significant current scientific development is in the terms of brain activity are becoming increasingly more powerful. cognitive neurosciences. Their impact can be summarized as follows:

92Omega June 2009 93 Nancey Murphy Christianity and Modern Science in the West For theologians and biblical scholars reading this article, body- once attributed to the soul, such as free will, morality, and the capacity soul dualism may seem an outdated issue. Among the U. S. public it is for a relationship with God, but explains them in terms of humans’ complex anything but that. Authors such as Francis Crick write that neuroscience neural equipment, long history of cultural development and, especially, has shown there to be no soul, and that this has falsified religion.16 Informal due to the action of God in human life.18 polls show that the vast majority of lay Americans are divided between dualism and “trichotomism”—the view that the person is composed of 6 Cosmology and Creation body, soul, and spirit. Scholarly audiences are more and more predictably In the Middle Ages there was a consensus among theologians physicalist, except among conservative Christians; these are divided that the doctrine of creation was relevant to a number of cosmological between dualism and physicalism. So the discussion of this issue within issues, such as the nature of time and the question of whether the universe the theology-science community has made an important contribution had a beginning. However, due to a variety of factors in the modern simply by bringing the earlier theological and biblical-critical work to period, primarily the Schleiermacherian turn, many theologians concluded public awareness. that theology in general and the doctrine of creation in particular are A second contribution involves the issue of reductionism. There irrelevant to the big cosmological questions—theology is basically about are two ways to arrive at a physicalist account of human nature. One is humankind’s relation to God. The ironic development in our own day is to begin with something like Descartes’s dualism, involving a mechanistic that science is now putting all of those big cosmological questions back or reductionistic account of the body, and then simply to subtract the on the table. Two issues considered here are big-bang theory and (in the mind/soul. The other begins with the image of the hierarchy of the next section) the “fine-tuning” of the cosmological constants. sciences, studying increasingly complex entities or systems. In the early The most obvious theological issue that has been reopened by twentieth century, philosophers of biology debated whether living developments in cosmology is the question of whether God created the organisms emerge from nonliving matter due entirely to increased universe in time or from eternity. That is, did the universe have a temporal complexity and organization, or whether a non-material entity such as a beginning, or has it always existed, with its existence dependent upon vital force needed to be presupposed. The outcome was the rejection of God? From the time of Schleiermacher many have argued that this vitalism, and the recognition that, as one goes up the hierarchy of complex question is irrelevant to the doctrine of creation. systems, new systems emerge with capacities (such as life) that are not reducible to the lower levels. Copernicus overturned the Ptolemaic conceptions of the organization and of the motion of the universe but not the conception of In a similar manner, biochemist and theologian Arthur Peacocke the universe as eternal and static. In the 1920s astronomers had to give (d. 2006) and others have argued that the capacities for sentience, up the idea that the universe is static. Its observable expansion forms consciousness, and intelligence emerge at higher levels of the hierarchy the basis for the big-bang theory of the origin of the universe. This due to increased complexity and organization, and not due to the sudden origin was immediately interpreted by some—believers and incorporation of a nonmaterial mind or soul. Higher-order entities such atheists alike—as confirmation of the traditional account of creation as as humans exert whole-part constraint on their components; therefore temporal origination. Cooler heads refused the temptation to claim that human thought and behavior are not reducible to the biological level.17 science had shown the truth of the doctrine; Ernan McMullin’s account These resources from philosophy of science, particularly as of the science and theology as “consonant” has turned out to be the developed within the theology-science dialogue, have made available an most reasonable. He says that “if the universe began in time through alternative to both dualism and the reductive physicalism of Hobbes. the act of a Creator, from our vantage point it would look something like Nonreductive physicalism maintains all of the higher human capacities the Big Bang that cosmologists are now talking about.”19 94 Omega June 2009 95 Nancey Murphy Christianity and Modern Science in the West More recent (and highly speculative) developments in theories of The modern philosopher G. W. F. Leibniz (1646-1716) argued that origins threaten this tidy consonance. Cosmologists have attempted to this must be “the best of all possible worlds.” He pointed out that the go beyond what was once thought to be the absolute explanatory limit of more we understand the interconnectedness among things and events science and explain the origin of the Big Bang itself. Andrei Linde the less we can imagine a world that preserves all the goods of this one speculates that our universe started out as a very small bubble in space- and eliminates all of the evils. This observation can be all the better time; the bubble’s swift inflation produced the Big Bang.20 The notion supported in light of current science, especially by noting the connections that the universe must have expanded at a “fantastic” rate at the beginning that can be drawn among the laws of the various sciences, from physics is widely accepted. Linde’s claim that our universe is but one small to sociology. One important contributor to the goodness of a world, in bubble in an infinite assemblage of universes is controversial, yet the Leibniz’s view, is the feature whereby the most results are produced in very possibility shows that the Big Bang cannot simply be identified with the simplest ways. On this account, Leibniz would have considered his the creation of the universe. thesis to be confirmed by the unification of the laws of physics that we have witnessed in the past decades, and especially by current hopes of 7 Fine-Tuning, Design, and Natural Evil finding a theory of everything, a single theory that governs all four of the basic physical forces. The problem of evil can be expressed simply: if God is all good and all powerful, one would expect God to eliminate evil from the world, Even more pertinent to Leibniz’s argument is the current discussion yet clearly God has not done so. It has become common to distinguish of fine-tuning and the anthropic principle. Scientists such as John Barrow among three kinds of evil, designated as moral, natural, and metaphysical and Frank Tipler have marshaled calculations showing that the evolution evil. The theological task has been to reconcile these with the assumption of life in the universe is dependent upon exquisitely fine balances among of the ultimate goodness of the created order. Moral evil—human sin— the forces and quantities of basic physics.21 These calculations have led has always been the easiest to account for. I focus here on natural to reflections on the abstract possibility of a vast number of different evil—that is, the (apparent) disorder in nature and the suffering it causes sets of physical laws. These reflections, in turn, allow us to make better for humans and animals—and on the closely related topic of limitation, sense of Leibniz’s notion of God selecting the best of all possible worlds. often called metaphysical evil. Here God selects, from among a number of possible worlds, one of the incredibly small number in which the development of life would be Augustine produced an elaborate set of answers to these three possible. interrelated problems. Unfortunately, his answer to the problem of natural evil was also dependent on an account of the human Fall as an historical “Metaphysical evil” refers to the basic facts of finitude and event and especially on the notion of the fall of the angels; both premises limitation. It has regularly been seen as an occasion for both natural and are highly questionable on biblical grounds as well as scientifically. moral evil. Light can be shed on this ancient idea by focusing on one particular law of nature—the second law of thermodynamics, which A first step in providing a credible treatment of natural evil is to states that entropy (disorder) in a closed system always increases. Russell recognize that all purely natural evil is a simple consequence of the argues that entropy is a prefiguring of evil on the physical level. Evil is regular working of the laws of nature. Children fall and injure themselves likened to a disorder, a disfunction in an organism, or an imperfection in because of the law of gravity; mountain-climbers freeze and people being. Entropy refers to such disorder, measuring the dissipation of a starve because of the laws of thermodynamics; deadly bacteria evolve system, the fracturing of a whole. The pain and cost of natural disasters by means of the same biological laws that have produced ourselves. are all rooted in the press of entropy, the relentless disintegration of form, environment, organism. Furthermore, the constant need to replenish

96Omega June 2009 97 Nancey Murphy Christianity and Modern Science in the West the human body—the need for food and other forms of energy—is the is based on science, and that religious belief is incompatible with science. cause of much moral evil. While we may dream of a world without this Barr claims that while earlier science could be taken to support constant loss and degradation of energy, Russell argues on the basis of materialism, developments in the twentieth century such as big-bang the work of Ilya Prigogine that the second law of thermodynamics actually cosmology, fine-tuning, and quantum physics provide added credibility to plays a necessary catalytic role in the development of higher forms of a theistic worldview.2424 Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient order, particularly in the development of life.22 Faith (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2003). Thus, the task of incorporating science into our current theological worldview is highly These scientific considerations give theologians additional resources for dealing with evil: natural and metaphysical evil are both important for apologetic reasons. necessary but unwanted by-products of conditions that were required to fulfill God’s purposes—including particularly the existence of beings who could freely return his love. One obvious condition for such beings is an orderly, lawlike universe. We now see, in addition, that human life could only exist in a universe that operates according to laws practically Notes indistinguishable from those we observe. If the existence of intelligent life is central to God’s purposes in creating a universe, then this universe 1. Nancey Murphy is Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary. Her first book, Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning, is indeed one of the best of an uncountable number of possible worlds.23 won prizes from both the American Academy of Religion and the Templeton 8 Overview Foundation. She is also co-author with George F.R. Ellis of On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics. Murphy is a This article has sought to achieve two goals. One is to explain the member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences and an ordained minister in the Church of the Brethren. difference between evangelical and liberal protestant approaches to science in the West. The second is to describe some of the most 2. Cornilia Dean, “Science and the Soul? ‘I Think, Therefore I Am’ Is Losing important points of contact between current science and Christian it’s Force,” New York Times, June 26, 2007, Science Section, p. D8. theology. We have considered five major topics, and it turns out that 3. Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (Cambridge: they are all connected. The fine tuning of the cosmological constants Cambridge University Press, 2006). Even sophisticated publishers help connects to the topics of big-bang cosmology and evolution, in that the keep controversies alive. I have two books, this one and an edited values of the constants are shown to be necessary to allow the evolution collection, the point of both being to argue that Christians need not and of life in a universe beginning in a big bang. Reconciling evolutionary probably should not think of themselves as possessing souls. In both biology and Christian theology turns on the problem of divine action, cases the editors insisted that the term “soul” appear in the titles. The which is (perhaps) soluble with insights from quantum physics. A other is Warren S. Brown, Nancey Murphy, and H. Newton Malony, eds., Whatever Happened to the Soul: Scientific and Theological Portraits physicalist account of human nature is consistent with our evolutionary of Human Nature (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1998). origins. 4. Peter Harrison, “Religion, the Royal Society, and the Rise of Science,” A consistent and coherent account of science and its relations Theology and Science 6, no. 3 (August 2008), pp. 255-271; quotation to theology is important. Stephen Barr notes that, while Christian belief 264. and science are not in conflict, there is a very important conflict between 5. See David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., God and Nature: Christianity and a materialist tradition that has developed through the Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science modern period. Contemporary atheists often claim that their worldview (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). 98Omega June 2009 99 Nancey Murphy Christianity and Modern Science in the West 6. See David N. Livingstone, Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders: The 18. For a critique of reductionism and an argument in support of human free Encounter Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought will, see Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown, Did My Neurons Make (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987); and James R. Moore, The Post-Darwinian Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms Responsibility and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900 (Cambridge: 19. Ernan McMullin, “How Should Cosmology Relate to Theology?, in A. R. Cambridge University, 1979). Peacocke, ed., The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century 7. See Nancey Murphy, Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 17-57; 39. Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda 20. See Paul Davies, The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational (Harrisonburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996). World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 70. 8. Robert John Russell, Cosmology from Alpha to Omega: The Creative 21. John Barrow and Frank J. Tippler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle Mutual Interaction of Theology and Science (Minneapolis: Fortress, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). 2008), p. 156. 22. Russell, Cosmology, chap. 7. 9. See Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and William R. Stoeger SJ, eds., Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action: Twenty Years of Challenge 23. Nancey Murphy, Robert John Russell, and William R. Stoeger, SJ, eds., and Progress (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Press, 2008). Physics and Cosmology: Scientific Perspectives on the Problem of Natural Evil (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory, 2007). 10. Russell, Cosmology, chap 6. 11. See Livingstone; and Moore. 12. See Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creation to Intelligent Design, expanded ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); and Carl Gibberson, Saving Darwin (New York: HarperCollins, 2008). 13. See Russell, Cosmology, chap. 6. 14. James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 54, 76. 15. Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994). 16. Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994), p. 261. 17. See Robert John Russell et al., eds., Neuroscience and the Person: Scientific Perspectives on the Divine Action (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory, 1999); and Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown, Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility an Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

100Omega June 2009 101 M. Ramakrishnan Ecosophical Readings of Buddhism Omega concern was the misery and pain of human existence. His mission was VIII (2009)1, 102-110 to prescribe a way of life leading to enlightenment and peace. Hence Buddhism placed the destiny of man back into its original abode namely the grand cosmos. Buddha insisted on choosing the middle path between extreme self-indulgence and self-mortification. It has been widely held that Buddha “was primarily an ethical Ecosophical Readings of Buddhism: teacher and social reformer rather than a theoretical philosopher.”3 We can say more appropriately that the metaphysics of Buddhism remains a Lessons for Mankind grey area as it was meant to be the handmaiden of its ethics with its - M. Ramakrishnan1 precise diagnosis and prescription to cure. Some of the recent studies on Buddhism focus on the critical dimension of the system that had developed Abstract: This article offers a re-interpretation of the content and context in response to the socio-cultural conditions in ancient India. A Chinese of Buddhist philosophy from a perspective of our environment. Although author analyses the cultural background of India in which Buddhism had human misery is the unique starting point of Buddhist reflections, the emerged thus: unsurpassable heights of this tradition lies in its efforts to redirect the human spirit towards its original cosmic abode. The overall objective of But most of all, returning from the lofty concept of Atman to this article is to restore some basic Buddhist tenets that foster an eco- ordinary human life, the intermediate level, a humanistic system of philosophical perspective on the question of sustainable co-existence thought, was lacking.4 of human and non-human aspects of nature. The systematic retake of some of the essential elements of the Buddhist thought is prompted by In those times the Upanishads indeed formed “the fountain-head three questions: (a) In what sense Buddhism is both conventional and of the highest Indian thought.”5 Yet the philosophers’ craving for radical within the context of classical Indian Philosophy? (b) What are transcending the duality between Atman and Brahman or the microcosm the Buddhist prescriptions that foster an eco-philosophical standpoint and the macrocosm remained, by and large, academic since the essential for the present day? (c) In what all ways the Buddhist diagnosis of prescription of unity seldom penetrated into the caste-ridden social suffering becomes a prognosis for the generations to come? structure. There had been a wide gulf between the ideal (vision of unity) Keywords: Buddhahood, Dependent Origination, Environment, and the actual (practice of discrimination). It was therefore the historical Eco-Buddhism necessity for a philosopher of compassion like Buddha to preach liberation in all its dimensions including the personal and the social. While professional ethics such as engineering ethics is meaningful Objectives and Methodology only to the profession (except as the well-being of the public is 2 affected), environmental ethics applies to every human being. Situated in this world of incredible change and material progress Introduction it seems to be a curious exercise to look back into the centuries old perspective of a visionary and his monastic order, yet philosophical license This paper has been planned to give an account of not what permits it. So in this paper, we define our purpose in terms of Buddha’s Buddhism is, but what it is doing and can do as a living philosophy in the own prescription – ‘right understanding and right alertness’.6 present day world. Gautama Buddha was averse to any sophistry that declared one doctrine as true and another one as false. His primary This has become mandatory in the context of the widespread ecological crises that threaten the very survival of life forms on this 102Omega June 2009 103 M. Ramakrishnan Ecosophical Readings of Buddhism ‘only one earth’. There is also the irrefutable realization that the crises that the world is not eternal. Whatever be the case, there still remains are man-made. Hence we are concerned here with the recurring birth, death, sorrow, misery and despair and the means for their extinction.8 relevance of Buddha’ analysis of the cause of suffering (dukkha- samudaya) as pertinent to the theme of environmental ethics and its Buddha had retained the convention of viewing human life in eco-philosophical basis. relation to the bondage of karma and the concept of ultimate liberation as breaking the attachment to Samsara. What is unique in Buddhism is The methodology adopted here involves an evaluative review of the reinterpretation of these concepts in terms of worldly existence. the Buddhist tenets that would foster an eco-philosophical perspective Hence Nirvana is the end of a definite way of life rather than the mystical integrating a decentred vision of man with a prudent sense of coexistence unification with an indefinable Brahman. The Anatta concept of in the widest possible sense. This is intended to be carried out by reading Buddhism rejects the conventional theological notion of Atman as the the basic postulates of this age-old system in the empirical context of immutable essence of human being. Momentariness is the ultimate truth pressing environmental issues that we face today. This paper is therefore that spares nothing including the self. structured to explore the following themes: The Buddha is in Everything i. In what sense Buddhism is both conventional and radical within the context of classical Indian Philosophy? The iconography of Buddhism identifies Dhyana Buddha with the Bodhi Tree (Ficus religiosus), and this companionship symbolizes ii. What are the Buddhist prescriptions that foster an eco- the Buddhist way of conceiving everything in nature as endowed with philosophical standpoint for the present day? and the inherent Buddhahood. Buddhism is at odds with the Vedic theology iii. In what all ways the Buddhist diagnosis of suffering becomes a that laid emphasis on ritualistic prayers and yajnas to propitiate the gods prognosis for the generations to come? of a hierarchically conceived pantheon. Its central principle is a non- hierarchical cosmos in which man is just an interdependent component. Buddhism – The Original Context In the popular Jataka stories, animals and trees speak like humans and even preach man in ethical matters. The genius of Gautama Buddha confronted a socio-cultural milieu in which the Upanishadic vision of essential unity had been obscured Buddha had reiterated the traditional Indian faith in rebirth and by ritualism and casteism. In the introduction to a compilation of Buddha’s transmigration. This conception implies the essential interconnectedness teachings the author says, “In general, that situation was one of radical and reciprocity between the human and non-human forms of life. “Even social readjustment and deepening religious need. Wars were frequent the stones smile” is the Buddhist expression of ecosophical egalitarianism. between the petty princes and rival clans in northern India, and the If you can understand the Buddhahood of a tree or a deer as identical organization of society was moving more and more in the direction of a with your own being in this world and listen to what it communicates rigid caste system.”7 about the universal interconnectedness, you are enlightened. So, Buddhism developed as a heterodox viewpoint mainly in Religions and cosmologies with their logically moulded doctrines response to the evils of ritualism and casteism. It was also critical about have been concerned with the question of man-world relationship. But the academic tendency to establish diverse positions about the one truth. they could hardly transcend the implicit duality in man-world nexus. In reply to the queries of Malunkyaputta, Buddha makes it clear that Religions, by and large, maintained eschatology of world-negation, and religious life does not depend on the dogma that the world is eternal or homocentric philosophies insisted on recognizing the glory of the human being. Buddhism, in spite if being recognized as a religion, is an exception

104Omega June 2009 105 M. Ramakrishnan Ecosophical Readings of Buddhism to this since it had never shared the world negation aspect of theology. It Buddhist concept of self-realization and liberation therefore eliminates regards reality as a composition of co-arising and co-existing Buddhas even the least of solipsism by recognizing co-arising and co-existence as that form a harmonious whole of interdependent phenomena. The terms essential to being in this world. Buddhas and dharmas (specifically in plural) are used interchangeably to designate all things in nature in terms of their natural order and harmony. Prospects of an Eco-Buddhism Dependent Origination Buddhism is a living philosophy with its prescriptions to universal compassion and identification. In addition to the traditional Buddhist The Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination and its corollary communities in Ladakh in India and those in other eastern countries, the namely the doctrine of nothingness in fact lead to the denial of the western environmentalist groups pay attention to the Buddhist ecosophy anthropocentric sense of a separate human self. In this regard, the and develop its potentials to postulate an Eco-Buddhism. The example Buddhist metaphysics is to be understood in contrast with the Atman- of the Thai monk Buddhdasa Bhikku demonstrates the role of monks in centric eschatology in the Brahmanical texts. The denial of a separate translating Buddhist doctrines into active conservationist ethics.9 He and distinct human self makes Buddhism more akin to the pre-Vedic conceives nature as Dhammajati or the source of birth for every being. tribal eco-spiritualism of India rather than to the Moksa prescription in The Bhikku uses the Pali term Anurakkha (Thai Anurak) to denote the orthodox systems. As the Korean monk Uisang says, man’s essential moral concern for nature. In one is all, in many is one. The Gathas composed by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh One is identical to all, many is identical to one. remind us of our obligation to nature even in our daily routine of dining Buddhism conceived enlightenment not in terms of detachment and washing hands. So, before turning on the tap or drinking a glass of from the world, but as the meditative realization of one’s essential identity water, one has to remember this wonderful universe that supports us with the naturalness of Buddhas. Hence enlightenment is engagement. unconditionally by saying, Salvation is not a passive withdrawal from nature, but the active Water flows from high in the mountains involvement in nature as a part of it by deepening the sense of Water runs deep in the earth interconnection and interdependence between all phenomena. Nirvana Miraculously, water comes to us, and sustains all life.10 is the realization that ‘Mind is not other than mountains and rivers and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars’. It is well known that Buddhist ethics has its core in the strict taboo on injuring in any form. This notion of Ahimsa includes not only Emptiness and Co-Arising abstention from doing harm but also the positive moral expression namely loving-kindness and compassion to all Buddhas in nature. So the Nagarjuna’s doctrine of emptiness has a deep ecosophical sense enlightened human being or Buddha11 is one who imbibes the following that can be understood in relation to the Buddhist denial of a distinct eco-philosophical vision: human self and the doctrine of co-arising. You are yourself empty and your being acquires meaning only in relation to the myriad other being in Thus as a mother with her life the world. The notion of original emptiness substantiates the necessary Will guard her son, her only child, interconnection and interdependence between all Buddhas in nature. Let him extend without bounds Enlightenment is nothing but realizing one’s own Buddhahood in relation His heart to every living being.12 to the infinite number of human and non human components in the world. Nature’s body is composed of all lands and the Buddhas inhabiting them. 106 Omega June 2009 107 M. Ramakrishnan Ecosophical Readings of Buddhism Conclusion a Tathagata or one who has attained what is really so; and the real state of affairs shows nothing but the co-arising and co-existence of all abiotic The Buddhist doctrines and conceptions that we have already and biotic components of the world. discussed include mainly Finally, it is worth attempting an ecosophical reading of the oft- i. The doctrine of momentariness and its corollary of Anatta Vada repeated theme of Buddhist catechism – the threefold nidana or cause or the doctrine of no-self. of miseries namely avidya (ignorance), trsna (craving) and ahamkara 14 ii. The concept of trans-species transmigration and rebirth. (egoism). The man who is ignorant of the Four Noble Truths is bound to be infected with craving that comprises the three roots of evil namely iii. The doctrine of Pratitya-samutpada or dependent origination, and greed, hatred and delusion. These evils in association with Ahamkara, which assumes a wider connotation in the species conceit of man, beyond iv. The concept of all beings as enlivened by the inherent Buddha doubt form the psycho-social complex prompting the widespread hood. environmental devastation. Nirvana the ideal state of peace and harmony Synthesizing these in the light of the preceding analysis against can be attained only by the annihilation of these evils that manifest on the backdrop of the mounting environmental crises we will be able to both the individual and the collective levels. recognize their renewed relevance in terms of the environmental ethics By reading the Buddhist hermeneutics of suffering and its diagnosis badly needed today. and cure in the empirical context of environmental concern we can (i) is of much ecosophical import as it implies that no being not ascertain that much of our miseries are due to man’s ignorance of or even the human is having a separate or distinct self. As shown in (iv) reluctance to understand the interdependent existence of the species in every being in Buddhahood, and hence it is meaningless and unjust to this vast cosmos. It is the ceaseless craving to gratify one’s own pleasures ascribe superiority to human being. The so called superiority of the species without considering others and the limited resources available that enjoys only the tacit approval of Buddhism, and that too is in terms of instigates violence to nature. And it is the species conceit that blinds us man’s responsibility to be compassionate to all beings. to the truth of harmonious coexistence. Hence Buddhism demands a new reading in the context of emerging environmental crises in order to (ii) and (iii) put together strengthen the environmentalist critique discover its ecosophical potentials for our generation and the generations directed against the anthropocentric speceisism that has been responsible to come. It gives us prudent reasons for loving the world that we are for the crises. This is clear from the following remark: living in. Buddhism draws no hard and fast line between different forms of Notes life. Although it recognizes that human life has a special value, it acknowledges that all living creatures are entitled to respect in 1. Dr. Ramakrishnan is professor of philosophy at Dept. of Philosophy at their own right, not simply because of the utility they may Govt. Brennen College, Thalassery, Kerala. 13 possess for human beings. 2. Anand Vesilind and Alastair S. Gunn, “A Note on Terminology,” Environmentalists by imbibing this Buddhist perspective of Engineering, Ethics and the Environment (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), p. ecospherical egalitarianism in terms of universal interconnectedness and xvi. interdependence can easily find the ecosophical ground for doing away 3. Chandradhar Sharma, A Critical Survey of Indian Philosophy (Delhi: with their bete noire of anthropocentric speceisism. Becoming oneself Motilal Banarsidass, 1997), p. 70. enlightened or attaining Buddhahood is inseparable from becoming oneself

108Omega June 2009 109 M. Ramakrishnan Ecosophical Readings of Buddhism 4. Nan Huai- Chin, Basic Buddhism: Exploring Buddhism and Zen, Omega (Mumbai: Jaico, 2003), p. 5. VIII (2009)1, 111-123 5. Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1971), p. 13. 6. Two prescriptions of the Eightfold Path elaborating the fourth Noble Truth; others are Right purpose, Right speech, Right conduct, Right vocation, Right effort and Right concentration. Religion and Politics in Ancient India: 7. E. A. Burtt, Ed., The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha (New Reflections on Aarthasæaçstra York: New American Library, 1962), p. 19. - Lenin C.C1 8. Sutta 63 of the Mjjhima-Nikaya 9. David L. Gosling, Religion and Ecology: In India and Southeast Asia Abstract: The paper attempts to discuss Kautilya’s conception of (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 92-16. religion as it is explicated in Arthasæaçstra, and its role in shaping up the formation of state and its decision making policies. The central 10. Batchelor and Brown, p. 105. argument here is that, religion as ‘a set of symbolic forms and acts 11. The enlightened is also addressed as the Bodhisattva who demonstrates which relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence’ does not boundless compassion for the suffering human beings and non-human find an important place in Arthasæaçstra. Kautilya in his political treatise beings and guides them to the path of Nirvana. tries to present a political system and its management in a rational manner, with least metaphysical presuppositions. He elaborately 12. Quoted form Thirteenth Chapter of First Corinthians in Sutta-Nipata. discusses the hierarchical structure of the state that helps conceiving it 13. Damien Keown, Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: OUP, as a rational and secular arrangement that aims material welfare. 2000), p. 121. Keywords: Saptaçnga theory, Artha, Yogaksàema, Dharma 14. The Truth of Suffering (Dukkha), The Truth of its Arising (Samudaya), The Truth of its Cessation (Nirodha) and the Truth of The Path (Marga). Introduction

The contemporary discussions on the relationship between state and religion assume significance in the context of certain debates on the nature and function of the democratic state. Secularism can be one way of looking at this issue. Politically, it aims at separating religion from the state. This can refer to reducing ties between a government and a state religion, replacing laws based on scriptures. For instance Amartya Sen in his Article Secularism and Its Discontents observes that secularism in the political sense requires the separation of the state from any particular religious order. Sen has interpreted this notion in two ways. The first view argues that secularism demands that the state be equidistant from all religions. The second way to conceive it is to argue that the state must not have any relation at all with any religion.2 In the West there

110Omega June 2009 111 Lenin C.C. Religion and Politics in Ancient India have been attempts to separate the domain and concerns of state from the state, the emphasis on the duties of a king (Raçjadharma), the order that of religion. This tendency has been prominent from the enlightenment of the society, etc., are some of the principal contents that form the period; and it is an attempt to comprehend the question of legitimacy for locus of Indian political thought. The paper focuses on some of these the existence of state, the notions of welfare state, justice and the like. issues to explicate the relationship between the domains of politics and At present there are many modern democracies in the West that attempt religion in Arthasæaçstra. to gain a secular understanding of the state and to separate the concerns of government and of religion. Religion in Arthasæaçstra This paper is an attempt to understand the contributions of ancient Kautilya is not giving any explicit/detailed account of religion in wisdom in the direction of the relationship between the state and religion his Arthasæaçstra; rather we get an idea about religion from some of the in ancient India, with a special reference to Kautilya’s important political numerous and scattered references. Kautilya has accepted the traditional treatise, namely the Arthasæaçstra. The paper seeks to examine the role way of understanding religion. While discussing religion and politics in and function of religion in the functioning of a state. This will also shed Arthasæaçstra, Ram Sharan Sharma observes that the Kautilyan state light on Kautilya’s conception of polity. This analysis will lead to the has upheld the Braçhmanical social order and follows the Braçhmanical examination of the nature of relationship between these spheres. Kautilya religious practices.3 The acceptance of the fourfold division of the society does not see the need for any important link between religion and the and the varnàaçsramadharma or the duties of varnàaçs at different stages state. I argue that although he acknowledges the importance of religion of life support this argument. Kautilya says: “…the king is the guardian in the social domain, it plays a minimal role as far as the sovereign of the right conducts of this world with its four varnàaçs and açsramas; he elements of the state and its decision making policies are concerned. alone can enact and promulgate laws to uphold them, when all traditional The justification for the existence of state, for Kautilya comes from codes of conduct perish through disuse and disobedience”.4 within. In Arthasæastra Kautilya often mentions about religion in the form Religion and Political Life in Indian Context of certain ritualistic practices. For example, Kautilya states that in case of drought, he (the king) should cause worship of Lord Sæaci, the Much of the indications and sources of ancient India and its Ganges, mountains, and Mahaçkachchha to be made.5 Again Kautilya religions can be found in Vedas, Braçhmanàas, Upanisàads, Buddhist and mentions the names of Vedic gods like Indra, Varunààa, Agni, Soçma, Jain literatures. We could find the references on political thought mainly Yama and many others. He recognizes priesthood as a profession.6 For in Dharmasuçtras, the epics along with specialized treatises on social example, the chief priest is required to officiate in the performance of (Manusmriti), and political (Arthasæaçstra) realities. These texts provide oblations and the making of offerings to gods on ordinary and full moon foundation for the understanding of Indian culture and therefore form days. He also mentions about the chief priest (ritvik) and other priests. the contextual backdrop of our analysis of ancient India. Some traditions War is another occasion when the priests or fortune tellers’ presence in ancient India had treated the Vedic corpus as the authority in are required as they have to boost the morale of the army by proclaiming determining various aspects of human life, as they believed that the (falsely) the presence of auspicious omens in favour of the king, if it is Vedas are infallible. The texts after the post-Vedic period later propose weak. These are some of the references of religion in Arthasæaçstra. a different kind of authority and continuation of the tradition in a different Kautilya acknowledges religion as a social force, which has its role and sense as they highlight the contextual variations or the historicity of the influence in the lives of the people. Therefore Kautilya approves reality in the form of epistemological, moral, metaphysical, social and whatever that fosters the sense of collective consciousness and order political contemplations. Dharma, danàdaniçti, artha, saptaçnga theory of as long as they serve the ultimate objective of the state, viz. the

112Omega June 2009 113 Lenin C.C. Religion and Politics in Ancient India accumulation and preservation of wealth. However when it comes to A ruler who possesses the elements of state and who wisely takes the decision making process of the sovereign elements of the state the care of them will never be defeated and Kautilya devotes a significant role of religion is very minimal. There is no place for religious aspects portion for the systematic analysis of the troubles and calamities which like priest in Kautilya’s exposition of the sovereign elements of state. might befall each one of these elements in other words to their 8 Perhaps, a brief analysis that follows will make argument clearer. malfunctioning.

Kautilya’s Conception of Polity: The Saptaçnga Theory of It is remarkable that no religious element is present in Kautilya’s State description of the sovereign elements of the state. In most political establishments, especially in ancient times the first attempt which is Arthasæaçstra covers a range of topics from manual of statecraft, likely to happen in the governmental level is to seek some rationale for wealth and practical expediency of ways of acquiring and maintaining its legitimacy. If the administration depends solely on the force of violent power to Economics, International Relations, Public Administration, and suppressive methods might not be able to fetch the desired ends for Spying, Disaster Management and Jurisprudence. This reveals his holistic a longer period because of the lack of the effective cooperation from its approach towards state and its obligations. Welfare is conceived from a subjects. Kautilya says that if a king adopts excessive violent and broader perspective so that the function of every element is well designed suppressive means the subjects will either overthrow him or will approach for its achievement. Kautilya talks about four kinds of sciences viz. his enemy kings. Therefore the attempts to create a favourable relation Anviksàiki or philosophy or logical reasoning, the three vedas between the state and the subjects will end up in search for external or (Trayi) which included rik, Yajur and yaçma, vaçrta or agriculture, internal sources. However Kautilya tries to present a political system cattle-breeding and trade, and Danàdaniçti the science of and its management in a rational manner, with least metaphysical government. Kautilya says that “…righteous and unrighteous acts presuppositions and he elaborately discusses those aspects of the state (dharmaçdharmau) are learnt from the triple Vedas; wealth and non- that help conceiving it as a rational, non-religious arrangement that aims wealth from Vaçrta; the expedient and the inexpedient (nayaçnayau), as material welfare. In this process the role of religious element in the well as potency and impotency (balaçbale) from the science of sovereign elements is very minimal. However he was aware of the government”.7 He elaborately discusses about saptaçnga theory of state, existence of theories like the quasi-divine origination theory of the state which describes the various functions of the state under seven as well. Arthasæaçstra mentions such a theory in the following form components headed by the king. This conception explicates Kautilya’s “…people overwhelmed by the law of the fishes, made Manu, conception of state as a sovereign element. George Modelski observes the son of Vivasævaçt, their king. And they assigned one-sixth of the grains that “Kautilya gives a methodical enumeration of the desirable qualities and one-tenth of the commodities and money as his share. Maintained each of these elements should display and his list of elements is arranged by that, kings bring about the well being of the subjects. …This is the in descending order of importance: each succeeding element is less office of Indra and Yama viz. (that of) the kings whose wrath and favour important than the one before it, the king being most important of all”. are visibly manifest.”9 Saptaçnga theory divides the state into seven components hierarchically to achieve the highest objective of the state, welfare. The seven limbs One of the implications of this theory is that, since the source is of the state are: the king (svaçmin), the councillors and ministers divine whatever state or practically the ruler does is the representation/ (amaçtya), the territory and the population (janapada), the treasury the expression of the celestial will. It is considered as infallible and (koçsæa), the fort (durga), the forces (sreçnài) and the allies (mitra). therefore is unquestionable. Thus the subjects have to abide by it Modelski adds: irrespective of the nature of the rule. He elaborately discusses those aspects of the state that help conceiving it as a rational secular 114Omega June 2009 115 Lenin C.C. Religion and Politics in Ancient India arrangement that aims material welfare. His endeavour is to find the threefold. The first limb of the tripartite obligatory set is raksàa or legitimization or justification for the existence of the state from the protection of the country from the aggression of various external threats; sources which are inherent in it. In other words he has not sought the the second is paçlana or maintaining internal security of the state by the help of religious or abstract principles to prove the existence of a state protection of the people from all the anti-social elements like deceitful as self explanatory. Kautilya put forwards the following arguments for traders and artisans, thieves, dacoits and murderers and it also covers his claim: guarding the society from all kinds of vyasanaçs or natural calamities. The third and the most important function of the king is Yogaksàema or The primary function of the state is protection of its subjects safeguarding the welfare of the people.13 Sources that which constitute from various internal and external threats. Kautilya therefore insists the acquisition and security are sæama (peace) which brings about security that the king should keep his citizens from all forms of aggression. of enjoyment of the fruits of works vyaçyaçma (activity/war) - brings Otherwise matsyaniçti or the law of the might will prevail, a condition about the accomplishments of works undertaken.14 Thus a king has a where the strong will overpower the weak. Krishna Rao observes that two tier obligation; as he has to act as a lokabandhu, the friend of if the state fails in the implementation of law will result in the gradual people and lokana tha or one who protects the people from all their 10 ç degradation of the society and that situation may lead it to anarchy. hardships. That is the reason why Kautilya manoeuvring responsibilities pertaining to the king in his political treatise fairly elaborately. Apart from these basic responsibilities the King needs to prevent disturbances at the social domain and should safeguard people from For Kautilya the country and its welfare are more important than varnàasamákara. According to Kautilya, every disorder will create hazards anything else. He will take advantage of whatever that fosters this for the efficacious functioning of the accumulation and preservation of objective. It will be possible only when the system is administered wealth. Varnàasamákara provides one such threat. The notion means efficiently and coherently. Therefore ultimate power is vested on the confusion of orders or mixture of castes.15 Economic instability will be king. For instance wherever there is a dispute, the king’s commands the direct outcome this peculiar situation, as it creates confusion in the rein. Kautilya asserts that Sacred law (Dharma), evidence professional fields. The natural culmination of the situation will be (Vyavahaçra), history (Charitra), and edicts of kings (Raçjasæaçsana) disorder in the social structure, where the economic order is actually are the four legs of law and of these four in order, the latter is superior built into. In the state of varn asam kara or the confusion of respective 11 à á to the one previously mentioned. The following section will discuss duties men fall away from their appointed duties. Society’s order and why the political elements are significant in Kautilya’s exposition and thereby the pursuit of economic activity will be in jeopardy if the why not the religious elements through the analysis of the political individuals are transgressing their respective duties which they are functionary in Arthasæaçstra. supposed to perform. In order to prevent this situation as well as the efficacious discharge of his fundamental duties a king needs continuous Duties of a King and rigorous training. He needs to train in Vedas to have a logical mind; Va rta or science of economics for a complete control over the various The king is equal to the state and therefore is the embodiment of ç economic activities and the king has to learn various aspects of dan dani ti all power. However that power cannot be used arbitrarily. Kautilya à ç or the science of law and administration to have a better understanding says that “…in the happiness of the subjects lies the King’s happiness; of the various aspects of the dispensation of justice. We shall have a in their welfare his welfare. He shall not consider as good only that close look at the conception of Dan dani ti which acts as the medium by which pleases him but treat as beneficial to him whatever pleases his à ç which the King prevents the varn asam kara as well as it also acts as one subjects”.12 Kautilya classifies the fundamental duties of a king as à á of the aspects if the justificatory factor of a state in the following section.

116Omega June 2009 117 Lenin C.C. Religion and Politics in Ancient India

Danàdaniçti justifications are provided from the perspective of a political realist’s outlook. In Kautilya’s scheme of things religion plays minor role. Although Danàdaniti or roughly the science of law enforcement assumes Kautilya acknowledges the presence and importance of religion in the utmost significance in the scheme of Kautilyan statecraft because it janapada, he clearly downplays the role of religion in determining the prepares the security system of the state both internally as well as fundamental duties and decision making procedures of the state. externally; and therefore forms an integral part in Arthasæastra. Danàda Conclusion: Religion and Polity in Arthasæaçstra literally means rod and it is an embodiment of the power a King possesses. Yet the various lexical meaning of danàda ranges from simple stick to The legitimacy of a state is often derived from the state’s origin the complex notion of legal punishments. It becomes essential when or foundation, such as a belief that the law is received from the gods by the society is under the threat of matsyanaya or the “law of fish” a state’s priests or wise men, or that the state is founded by heroes with where of the principle of ‘the might is right’ prevails. In this exceptional virtues, or that the state was established by contract among situation the strong will determine the course of social action. its citizens. Ralph Buultjens, in his article “India: Religion, Political Danàda prevents matsyanaya and thereby satisfies the basic Legitimacy, and the Secular State” argues that the quest for this 18 requirement of the state, i.e., protection. In other words, the legitimacy took government to religion. The divine origin of state and enforcement of Danàdaniçti presupposes justice. kingship is one such attempt, which sought to explain and establish the legitimacy and authority of the state in terms of religious/supernatural Kangle points out that “the means of ensuring the pursuit of source. Subrata Kumar Mitra is another thinker who subscribes to the philosophy, the three Vedas and economics is the rod (wielded by the view that religion provides the moral basis of the state’s authority, as king). Its administration constitutes the science of politics, to accumulate well as an institutional and metaphysical structure for social and preserve wealth.”16 Danàda is dharma itself, as it is the prominent transactions.19 Jan Gonda also observes that, the Indian form of the Raçjadharma, or duty of the king. Dharma understood in this sense widespread veneration for authority and of the more or less permanent reflects the power of the king. In other words, Danàda signifies the association between authority and supernatural power.20 However in principle of omnipotence and omnipresence of the ruler and is supposed Arthasaçstra the role and influence of religion except in the population to do the protection of all individuals and of the social order. Here the and territories (janapada) seem to be very minimal. However as very act of protection backs the legitimization for the existence of the explained earlier, Kautilya has used it for the benefit of the state. Roger state. Kautilya elaborates: Boesche points out that Kautilya readily gave way to customs and the “…a king who observes his duty of protecting his people justly rules of religion on minor issues of behaviour and rituals, but he subtly and according to law will go to heaven, whereas one who does promoted state power, the king’s supremacy over the demands of class not protect them or inflicts unjust punishments to them will not; and religion.21 and it is the power of the punishment alone, when exercised impartially in proportion to the guilt and irrespective of whether The central objective of the state is to attain material welfare in the person punished is the King’s son or an enemy that protects terms of its acquisition and preservation of wealth. Radhakrishna 17 the world and the next”. Choudhari argues that Kautilyan state subordinated moral principles to The saptaçnga theory as well as the sections which discuss the the necessities of its own existence and welfare and the same attitude duties of the king categorically asserts the political and ethical supremacy was assumed towards religion and the religion was made even a means 22 of the sovereign. The fundamental authority of the king’s inscriptions on for accomplishing political end. For Kautilya whatever that fosters matters of statecraft validates this point. To justify this, Kautilya does this process definitely carries significance. In the political treatise he not take recourse in any metaphysical or religious theories. All his conceives state as the agency which dispenses welfare, Yogaksàema.

118Omega June 2009 119 Lenin C.C. Religion and Politics in Ancient India Though Kautilya acknowledges the presence of religion in the state, is daçna, bheçda and danàda- can be considered as a king’s effort to attain not giving much space for it to determine the political aspects of the order in both in social as well as in individual levels. state. Kautilya judged the means by the result, and the result he sought was the general good of his kingdom.23 So whatever that was conducive In Arthasæaçstra the notion of order is a basic presupposition for for the fundamental objective of the state was being used by Kautilya., the acquisition and the augmentation of wealth. Establishing order is in a sense represents the enactment of ràta, the concept which stands for Another point which will help us understanding the absolute cosmic as well as moral order. Emphasizing the performance of the authority of the king is that while discussing about the foundations of obligations could be interpreted as ràna, which is the individual’s law Kautilya mentions that, whenever there is a legal dispute the king’s obligations towards the ancestors, the gods and so on. Kautilya is least decision will overrule that of law, transaction and customs. Whoever or interested in the metaphysical imports of these concepts. Instead, he whatever goes against the state and its interests will be severely punished. emphasizes them to ensure order at the social domain. He mentions that any person who aims at the kingdom, who forces entrance into the king’s harem, who instigates wild tribes or enemies Kautilya’s view on the objectives of life is another justification (against the king), or who creates disaffection in forts, country parts, or for the argument that state finds its validation from within. As a political in the army shall be burnt alive from head to foot. If a Brahman does realist Kautilya’s intention is not to give a metaphysically oriented similar acts, he shall be drowned. This is another instance where Kautilya understanding of the aims in life. Instead he presents a secular is emphasizing the importance of the state over and above other understanding of the latter by distancing from religious ideals like moksha. considerations. Kautilya maintains that artha (sound economics) is most important and the other goals-dharma and kaçma- are dependent on it.25 Kautilya has Therefore we may argue that the reasons by which Kautilya is tried to see the possibility to achieve these goals in the concrete social legitimizing the existence of state is from within rather than seeking domains with least metaphysical presuppositions. The discourse on polity justification from any external sources. Kautilya relies on the political is very visible in Mahaçbhaçrata and Raçmaçyana as well. But their rather than the religious to justify the existence of state. The above discussions on the former presuppose religious and metaphysical mentioned notions are largely ethical in character. As mentioned earlier foundations. On the other hand, Kautilya places this whole enquiry in Kautilya’s understanding of welfare includes everyone in the social fold the socio-political domain. For Kautilya state was more important though including the slaves and prisoners. As J L Mackie notes those who have he prescribes duties for the individuals. Thus Kautilya justifies the begun by identifying morality with divine commands naturally conclude existence of state by drawing upon the factors which are political and that if there were no God there could be no moral principles or secular. commands.24Thus Kautilya’s arguments to establish the legitimacy of the state come from within the state itself. Yogaksàema, Kautilya’s conception of welfare, which is defined in terms of material welfare Acknowledgements also rules out any possibility of external justificatory principles for the existence of state. Another argument is from the perspective of the I am deeply indebted to my research supervisor Dr. N Sreekumar for his valuable comments and suggestions. I also wish to acknowledge my notion of justice, where the state’s act of protecting its subjects from friend Nishikant Kolge’s critical comments in developing this paper into matsyaniti could be seen as the act of justice. It satisfies the fundamental its full form. function of state viz. protection. Danàdaniçti/enforcement of law, preventing varnàasamákara and persuading the citizens to perform their respective duties and obligations through the four fold means-saçma,

120Omega June 2009 121 Lenin C.C. Religion and Politics in Ancient India Notes 16. Kangle, (1972), p. 9. 1. Lenin C. C. is a Lecturer in Govt. College, Chittur, Palakkad. Presently he 17. Rangarajan, p. 377. is pursuing his doctoral studies on the topic, Dharma: a Philosophical 18. Ralph Buultjens, “India: Religion, Political Legitimacy, and the Secular Study of the Social and the Political Dimension, at the Department of State, Religion and the State: The Struggle for Legitimacy and Power,” Humanities and Social Sciences in Indian Institute of Technology, Madras Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1986, 2. Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian Culture, Vol. 483), p. 94. History and Identity (London: Penguin, 2005, ), pp.295,296 19. Subrata Kumar Mitra, “Desecularizing the State: Religion and Politics in 3. R. S. Sharma, Aspects of Political Ideas in Ancient India (Delhi: Motilal India after Independence,” Comparative Studies in Society and History Banarsidas, 1996), p.253. (1991, Vol. 33, No. 4), p. 711. 4. L.N. Rangarajan, Kautilya: The Arthasastra (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 20. J. Gonda, “Ancient Indian Kingship from the Religious Point of View,” 1992), p.377. Numen (1956, Vol. 3, Fasc. 1), p. 44. 5. R. P.Kangle, The Kautilya Arthasastra, part-2 (New Delhi: Motilal 21. Roger Boesche, The First Great Political Realist: Kautilya and His Banarsidas, 1972), p. 263. Arthasastra (New York: Lexington Books, 2002), p. 30. 6. Ibid. p.241, (Kautilya mentions that the salary of a priest as 48,000 panas 22. R. Choudhari, Kautilya’s Political Ideas and Institutions (Varanasi: and this is equal to the salary of the commander of the army, the heir- Chowkambha Sanskrit Series Office, 1971), p. 244. apparent prince, the mother of the king, and the queen. One reason 23. Boesche, p. 34. for the high salary is to keep them appeased to abstain from 24. J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London: Penguin, 1977), instigating revolt against the king. p. 302). p. 227. 25. Rangarajan, p.145. 7. R.Shaamsastry (Tran.), Kautilya Arthasastra, (Bangalore: Government Press, 1915), p.4. 8. George Modelski, 1964, “Kautilya: Foreign Policy and International System in the Ancient Hindu World,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 58, No. 3, p. 551. 9. Kangle, p. 28, Also chapter 67 of Santiparva of Mahabharata 10. Krishna Rao, Studies in Kautilya (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1979), p. 35 11. Ibib. p. 124. 12. Kangle,1972, p. 28. 13. Rangarajan, p. 15. 14. Kangle, p. 317. 15. V. N. Jha, “VarGasamákara in the Dharma Suçtras: Theory and Practice,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (Nov. 1970), Vol. 13, No. 3, p. 275.

122Omega June 2009 123 Augustine Pamplany The Indian Epistemic Equilibrium Omega ‘Indian science’ refers to the typical cultural practices followed by Indian VIII (2009)1, 124-142 scientists.”2 If we accept the sweeping presuppositions of this statement uncritically, the very rationale for this article would be invalidated. We don’t fail to see in what sense the claims of Salwi could be justified. However, on the other hand, there is a hidden conceptual submission here to the Western understanding of science, the exclusivist self-vision of which does not let any regional concern in science. While such The Indian Epistemic Equilibrium negations may be justified within the strict contours of the definition of A Catalytic Paradigm for Global science, a courageous openness to challenge and revision the fundamentals of that which constitutes the scientific enterprise would Science-Religion Dialogue necessarily invite the rich elusiveness and uniqueness of the regional - Augustine Pamplany1 sciences to the mainstream science. My initiation to the Indian scientific tradition compels me to adjudge the above-mentioned claims as untenable Abstract: After taking a panoramic view of the India scientific tradition for there are several elements that render the Indian scientific legacy to particularly from the perspective of astronomy, mathematics and be specifically Indian. And this unique legacy has something in it to medicine the author discusses some of the central epistemological tenets revamp the global momentum of the science-spirituality dialogue. of the India scientific tradition, which is accountable for its ontological proximity with philosophy and religion culminating in a scientifically In the first part of this article, we will take a panoramic view of warranted spiritual holism. He concludes the article with some the Indian scientific tradition particularly from the perspective of observations on what the global science-religion momentum can benefit astronomy, mathematics and medicine. Then we discuss some of the from the science-religion equilibrium of India. The author is of the view central epistemological tenets of the Indian scientific tradition, which is that the emerging interdisciplinary attempt needs to be enhanced by accountable for its ontological proximity with philosophy and religion transferring its scope and spheres to more substantial and metaphysical culminating in a scientifically warranted spiritual holism. We conclude domains of truth. The India paradigm where the science-religion dialogue with some observations on what the global science-religion momentum itself is part of a wider spectrum of the manifestation of truth could be helpful in this regard. can benefit from the science-religion equilibrium of India. Keywords: Ayurveda, India Science, Global Scene, Science-religion 1. Indian Scientific Legacy Dialogue. Contrary to the popular belief that Indian civilization has been largely “other--worldly,” a critical historical scrutiny suggests that some Introduction of the greatest Indian minds were much more concerned with developing philosophical paradigms that were grounded in the reality of the secular Dilip M. Salwi’s Nonsense in Indian Science, published by world. Indian thinking is often criticized for its transcendental dimension. Konark Publishers Pvt. Ltd. in 1998 does a paradoxical practice by Indian philosophy is more practical than theoretical in the sense that it is printing an apology in the place normally devoted to a preface. The concerned with the problems of practical existence. The different schools apology goes on to say: “there is no such thing as ‘Indian science’ or of Indian philosophy present themselves as the way (marga) through ‘Australian science’ or for that matter ‘Western science.’ Science is correct knowledge (jnana) to salvation (moksa). To a certain extent, science - the country where it is practiced docs not matter. In this book, for the Western tradition, the union between body and soul seem to be

124Omega June 2009 125 Augustine Pamplany The Indian Epistemic Equilibrium confined only to philosophical books. In India, the four Purusharthas, of mathematics: “Whatever object exists in this moving and non-moving viz., artha, kama, dharma, and moksa indicate a profoundly integral world, cannot be understood without the base of Ganit.” understanding of the biological, psychological and religious dimensions of human life. There are several prayers in Vedas for material welfare. Arithmetic operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, Atharvaveda states that one who worships world alone is in darkness fractions, squares, cubes and roots are enumerated in the Narad Vishnu and one who worships God alone is blind. Purana attributed to Ved Vyas (pre-1000 BC). Examples of geometric knowledge (rekha-ganit) are to be found in the Sulva-Sutras of The scientific temper in India can be easily identified over the Baudhayana (800 BC). The description of the techniques for the past centuries. The solely mystical and intuitive representation of Indian construction of the ritual altars in Apasthmaba (600 BC) is suggestive philosophy is, to some extent, a colonial product which obfuscates a rich as to how scientific knowledge is tapped for religious purposes. tradition of scientific thought and analysis in India. Baudhayana’s Sutra displays an understanding of basic geometric shapes But even amongst those Indian philosophers who accepted the and techniques of converting one geometric shape (such as a rectangle) separation of mind and body and argued for the existence of the to another of equivalent (or multiple, or fractional) area (such as a square). soul, there was considerable dedication to the scientific method Most of these formulations are found to be accurate barring some and to developing the principles of deductive and inductive logic. approximations, revealing a certain degree of practical ingenuity as well From 1000 B.C to the 4th C A.D (also described as India’s as some theoretical understanding of basic geometric principles. Modern rationalistic period) treatises in astronomy, mathematics, logic, methods of multiplication and addition probably emerged from the medicine and linguistics were produced. The philosophers of the techniques described in the Sulva-Sutras.4 Sankhya school, the Nyaya-Vaisesika schools and early Jain and Buddhist scholars made substantial contributions to the growth There are also studies suggesting that the great Greek of science and learning. . . . In particular, the rational period mathematician and philosopher, Pythagoras, was influenced by the produced some of the most fascinating series of debates on what Upanishads and developed his geometry from the Sulva-Sutra. constitutes the ‘scientific method’: How does one separate our sensory perceptions from dreams and hallucinations? When does Apasthamba’s sutra, which is an expansion of Baudhayana’s works, an observation of reality become accepted as fact, and as scientific provides a value for the square root of 2 that is accurate to the fifth truth? How should the principles of inductive and deductive decimal place. Apasthamba also looked at the problems of squaring a logic be developed and applied? How does one evaluate a circle, dividing a segment into seven equal parts, and a solution to the hypothesis for its scientific merit? What is a valid inference? general linear equation. These examples show how vigorous was the What constitutes a scientific proof? These and other questions mathematical awareness of ancient India. 3 were attacked with an unexpected intellectual vigour. A significant observation which is relevant for our contention of Indians have been the pioneers in the field of astronomy and the interaction between science and religion is the impact of the medicine and several other physical sciences. The study of Ganit i.e., philosophical traditions upon the development of the mathematical mathematics was given considerable importance in the Vedic period. formulations. Jainism and Buddhism have exerted large philosophical The Vedang Jyotish (1000 BC) includes the statement: “Just as the influence on the mathematical assumptions of the ancient period. Jainism feathers of a peacock and the jewel-stone of a snake are placed at the along with the Upanishads believed in limitless space and time. This led highest point of the body (at the forehead), similarly, the position of Ganit to a deep interest in very large numbers and definitions of infinite numbers. is the highest amongst all branches of the Vedas and the Sastras.” The Permutations and combinations are listed in the Bhagvati Sutras (3rd C same emphasis could be found in the statement of Jain mathematician BC) and Sathananga Sutra (2nd C BC). from Mysore, Mahaviracharya, who further emphasized the importance

126Omega June 2009 127 Augustine Pamplany The Indian Epistemic Equilibrium Jain set theory probably arose in parallel with the Syadavada of the planets in space. Aryabhatta had a profound influence on the system of Jain epistemology in which reality was described in astronomers and mathematicians who followed him. He had a remarkably terms of pairs of truth conditions and state changes. The Anuyoga close approximations on pi and the circumference of the earth. Bhaskara Dwara Sutra demonstrates an understanding of the law of indices I continued where Aryabhatta left off, and discussed in further detail and uses it to develop the notion of logarithms. Terms like ardh topics such as the longitudes of the planets, conjunctions of the planets aached, trik aached and chatur aached are used to denote log with each other and with bright stars, risings and settings of the planets, base 2, log base 3 and log base 4 respectively. In Satkhandagama 8 various sets are operated upon by logarithmic functions to base and the lunar crescent. Another important astronomer was Varahamira th two, by squaring and extracting square roots, and by raising to (6 C, Ujjain) who made important additions to Aryabhatta’s finite or infinite powers. The operations are repeated to produce trigonometric formulas. His works on permutations and combinations new sets. In other works the relation of the number of complemented what had been previously achieved by Jain combinations to the coefficients occurring in the binomial mathematicians. In the 7th century, Brahmagupta did important works in expansion is noted. Since Jain epistemology allowed for a degree enumerating the basic principles of algebra. of indeterminacy in describing reality, it probably helped in grappling with indeterminate equations and finding numerical The geographical factors like the need to have accurate calendars 5 approximations to irrational numbers. and a better understanding of climate and rainfall patterns for timely The Buddhist philosophical literature also was instrumental in the sowing and choice of crops also necessitated the development of formulations concerning Sunya. “Philosophical formulations concerning astronomy. Meanwhile, it is also observed that religion and astrology Sunya - i.e. emptiness or the void may have facilitated in the introduction also played a role in creating an interest in astronomy. of the concept of zero. While the zero (bindu) as an empty place holder One of the most scientific of the scientific achievements of India in the place-value numeral system appears much earlier, algebraic is in the field of Medicine. Ayurveda is India’s ancient holistic healing definitions of the zero and its relationship to mathematical functions appear science. Considered to be the “Mother of all healing,” it is claimed by in the mathematical treatises of Brahmagupta in the 7th C AD. Although some to be more than 6,000 years old. This system is neatly and intimately scholars are divided about how early the symbol for zero came to be intertwined with the religious, philosophical and cultural traditions of India. used in numeric notation in India, tangible evidence for the use of the According to this system, the source of disease is in a complex zero begins to proliferate towards the end of the Gupta period.”6 Buddhist interconnected web of factors in the body, mind and spirit. Hence mathematics was classified either as Garna (Simple Mathematics) or treatment aims fundamentally at bringing about a harmony between the Sankhyan (Higher Mathematics). Numbers were deemed to be of three physical, emotional, mental and spiritual dimensions and functions of types: Sankheya (countable), Asankheya (uncountable) and Anant humans. Hence Charaka says, “The whole of suffering which cleaves (infinite). mind and body has ignorance for its basis, and conversely, all happiness Inidans had remarkable achievements in the field of astronomy is found in clear scientific knowledge.” “That is named Ayurveda (the and cosmology. Aryabhatta, Varahamihira, Bhaskara, etc. are the leading science of life) wherein is laid down the principles of the good and bad astronomers in the Indian history. Aryabhatta made pioneering discoveries life.”9 Ayurveda is a practical science of life rooted in the harmonious in the realm of planetary motion. This led to advances in the definition of relationship between humans and nature. Ultimate liberation of the space and time measuring units and better comprehension of concepts Individual is the ultimate concern of Ayurveda. such as gravitation, motion and velocity.7 The study of astronomy also For Ayurveda, the body-mind dichotomy is artificial. Body is the led to a great interest in quantifying very large and very small units of synchronized conglomeration of the Five Great Elements (pancha time and space. Aryabhatta provided a systematic treatment of the position mahabhutas), viz., earth, water, fire, air, space or akasa. When the 128Omega June 2009 129 Augustine Pamplany The Indian Epistemic Equilibrium variations and combinations of pancha mahabhutas are well balanced, linguistic commonalities with the religious epistemological structures the body is intact.10 Exponents of Ayurveda explained all body functions render their intersection indispensable. The rethinking on revealed in relation to the happenings of the universe. All the activities in the knowledge and the recent awareness of the hermeneutical nature of human body are grouped into three basic functions of creation, scientific knowledge further corroborate this. preservation and destruction. The universe is the macrocosm while man is the microcosm. All things in life are interconnected from the essential That there is an opaque depth to every ordinary phenomenon has elemental level.11 been a predominant insight in several religious and philosophical traditions. While the poetic perception of this depth may lead to the romanticisation Ayurvedic treatment is based upon the ascertainment of the of nature, the mystical experience of it may result in the divinization of individual constitution. Ayurveda regards disease as a complication of the world. The awareness of the mysterious depths of the physical reality constitutional imbalance. According to Ayurveda there are three bodies has been pushed forward to its speculative conclusion in the discovery attached with our soul – our essential nature, and pure nature, and our of an ultimate reality, often termed as God. The mind-set which penetrates Consciousness. (The same applies to Universe). The first one is physical into the unseen behind the seen has articulated its experience in divergent component of the body, the anatomy, the physiology, the biochemistry, theosophies which are cosmocentric in nature. The parallel approach the pathology of our body. Second one is Subtle and Pranic body – the guided by the metaphysical principle, “as the operation is, so the agent,” field of vital energy that is subtler than the electron, proton and neutron has also generated its own divine categories with its methodically of atomic realm. Third is Causal body – the body that is the root of the characteristic preference for analysis over synthesis. While monism and physical and Pranic body. Beyond the three bodies is our essence, our pantheism have been the fate of the former, dualism and transcendentalism pure consciousness, our soul. Our health depends upon equilibrium of were the inevitable corollary of the latter. The absolutist claims of these these body parts and their functioning.12 doctrines not only render these theories often rivals for supremacy, but betray the very content of them to be parochial. The uncritical 2. The Epistemology of the Indian Sciences ontologisation of the experience of the depth in the form of pantheism and monism paves the way to the anarchic identification of God and Our general historical glance at the development of the various world, and the naive dualism and transcendentalism may be causative of branches of science also suggests how rich they are with philosophical fragmentation and alienation between God and world. underpinnings and religious overtones, especially, a spiritual holism. This holistic nature of the Indian sciences is owing to the unique epistemological Notwithstanding the substantial speculative achievements of this structures of the Indian thinking. Here we attempt to show how a unified cosmocentric or at least cosmically conditioned theosophies, the approach towards the pursuit after truth has been fragmented by the conceptual limitations exhibited by them pause before us serious questions Western rationalistic determinism which in turn has caused the concerning their developmental strategy and speculative methodology. unwarranted split between science and religion and how the Indian Despite the mystical perception of a depth in each physical reality, the epistemological approach, especially the advaitic (monistic) approach of subsequent process of ontologisation has been marked by a considerable Hinduism serves as a new hermeneutical tool for a substantive intersection amount of ignorance of the very content of the physical reality. A basic of science and religion. It is our contention that, on the one hand, the presupposition that can be traced back to the very beginning of speculative logic of integration dominant in the Hindu approach towards reality philosophy and predominantly explicitated by the Platonists is that matter necessarily entails an ontologically complimentary vision of science and is passive, dead, inert, void and formless. The concepts of space, time, religion, and on the other hand, the emerging epistemological context etc. were considered insignificant in the scholastic thought as they were generated by the compelling scientific knowledge and its methodic and only the accidental properties of a being. An inadequate understanding

130Omega June 2009 131 Augustine Pamplany The Indian Epistemic Equilibrium of the structure and constitution of the physical reality and an The scientific methodic monism was again perpetuated by the underestimation of its implications in the speculative process have positivist thinking on language and mathematics in modern times. produced a lot of conceptual loopholes and imaginative jumps in several Wittgenstein said there is no linguistically identifiable experience which metaphysical doctrines. This basic epistemological vagueness at the was exclusively private. Language does very little with the real existent, starting point of our pursuit after truth has in a way resulted in a conceptual it is concerned with the universal abstract. Language reduces an existent crisis as regards the ultimate questions, and brought us to the verge of into an illustrative example of category. My proper name is an the present cultural inferno. acknowledgement of the truth that linguistic concepts are unable to encompass me. Such a way in modern philosophical thinking language The science-religion tension, too, is a conceptual outcome of this and meaning are looked upon more from a social and cultural point of ontologically alienated and epistemologically misinformed evolutionary view with very little attention to the metaphysical underpinnings. Such development of the human knowledge-enterprise. The European positivist thinking on language also is in a way in the clutches of the romanticisation of science as the only or the most supreme form of Aristotelian logic of identity in difference.15 The social and cultural knowledge was basically the outcome of an ontologically and epistemically platforms of interpretations alone are no adequate grounds for a deviated state of affairs. The ontological dualism in the form of an substantive interface of science and religion. anthropocentric worldview was corroborated by an epistemological dualism as found in the logical system of Aristotelian logic of identity Barring these philosophical appropriations of truth, does the with its anthropocentric bifurcation and the resulting binaries. The religious knowledge, with its supernatural foundations on revelation, offer anthropocentric epistemology envisaged a hierarchy of knowledge having us a complete and integral account of truth? In fact, a glimpse into the graded inequality. The inductive method of science is in a way a consort very landscape where revelation and revealed knowledge find its shape to this Aristotelian logic of identity in difference. This logic of difference and expression compel us to answer in the negative. Often, the conceptual can promote only a compartmentalized view of reality with its divergent panorama of the speculative knowledge serves as the epistemological disciplines often in rivalry with each other. Physicist Bernard D’espagnat, background in which the hermeneutic of religious knowledge takes place. is quite right in his observation: “Systematic thought is gravely hampered Hence the concept-laden categories of revelation cannot be expected to by an ideal of purity that obliges every specialist, be he a mathematician, offer us an easy outlet from this epistemological imbroglio. a physicist, a biologist, or a philosopher, to contemplate reality solely through the spectacles of his own specialism. Human knowledge is What we need is an epistemology that is capable of dealing with now so extensive that to reflect on the `great questions’ in this restrictive human and his context with all its expressions in life, action, language, way is to deny ourselves the possibility of a balanced view.” 1313 Bernard art and culture as an integral unit. Despite the absolutist or sometimes Despagnat, the contrary reductionist strategy of speculative knowledge and the supernatural nature of the revelation, a basic methodological Reality and the Physicist - Knowledge, Duration and the Quantum presupposition in both of these approaches has been the dialectical World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 119. relationship between God and the world in unraveling the mystery of each other. The mystery of the ‘invisible’ God can be explained by According to Wesley J. Wildman, the root cause of the problematic unfolding the physical mystery of the visible universe and vice versa. character of modern Western Culture is a profound confusion, a Avoiding the pitfalls of the above-mentioned uncritical ontologisations, schizopherenic uncertainty, about how to be in the world, about how to building upon this fundamental presupposition by discovering a new integral think ethically and scientifically, technologically and worshipfully, critically epistemology may throw us into many so far undreamt wonderlands of 14 and religiously. knowledge.

132Omega June 2009 133 Augustine Pamplany The Indian Epistemic Equilibrium This ontological proximity between God and world does not seem experienced from the standpoint of the subject who experiences and from the to have obtained due hermeneutical attention in the interpretative circles perspective of the object that is being experienced. The ayam when it is of science and religion in the Western tradition. It is in this background experienced from the perspective of the subject is known as atman (self) and of the need for an epistemological development from a methodological when it is experienced and expressed from the perspective of the object is monism to a methodological pluralism that the advaitic epistemology of known as Brahman (the Absolute). It is not possible to conceive either subject or object that is different from experiences. The subject, object, process and the the Indian tradition is to be evaluated as a viable alternative hermeneutical product are fused with experience. Such a non-differentiation of experience in tool. which the subject, the object, the process and the product remain as an integrated The experiential basis of knowledge is the key factor here. The whole is technically called ayam. The changing aspect of ayam is termed as agama and the non-changing aspect aspect is known as nigama. Thus ayam is advaitic epistemology begins with experience and ends in experience the experience of the agama which is based on nigama. and knowledge is experience itself. This position is different from the Space-time manifestations are the means to experience and express rationalistic and empiricist tradition of Western epistemology. The Western something that is not limited by space and time. This is the hall- Epistemology distinguishes between subject, object and knowledge. mark of Indian tradition in general. Words in poetry, sounds in Hence each form of knowledge is different from the other. This method music and colors in painting and body movements in dance are tends to present the claims of Art, Literature, Science and Religion, etc. only the various forms of spatio-temporal means to experience as mutually exclusive disciplines. While the dualistic categories of the and express something that can never be touched by these spatio West tends to be mutually exclusive, the unified and synthetic vision of temporal limitations. Hence it is said that words are not poetry though poetry is filled with words. Silence is music though an the East tends be mutually completing. For the Hindu epistemology, even 18 the compartmentalized treatment of science and religion is the outcome accord of sounds is essential to create music. of avidya or ignorance, let alone the conflict between science and religion. Given such an ontologically overarching nature of the logic of The Hindu intelligence is always one-pointed. This is often termed as integration, the Hindu vision postulates no difference between the one-centredness or ekanishtata. According to Brahmabandhab methodologies of darsana (philosophy) and sastra (philosophy and Upadhyay, ekanishtata (One-centredness) is the essence of the Hindu’s science). Every branch of knowledge has the same goal and same Hinduness. methodology. What varies according to disciplines is only the various modes of operation of the same methodology. Hence religion is in a way The relation of non-difference between Agent and effect, the appearance in reflecting creation of a reflective Creator, the science and science is in a way religion. Hence in India, philosophy and 19 deceptive manifoldness of the (One) without a second, have (all) science have the same goal, i.e. Ananda, bliss. nourished the one-pointed intuitive vision of the seers. . . . The The role of science in India is to be assessed from this point of tendency to one-centred thinking, the seeing into the thinghood of a thing (bastur bastutvadarsan), the experience of ultimate view. Science is termed as sastra in India. Sastra is different from non-difference between Agent and effect, the knowledge of the science in various respects. Sastra deals with the foundational, deceptiveness (mayikata) of multiplicity, comprise the Hindu’s methodologoical and axiological issues as the indivisible part of its subject 16 Hinduness. matter and course of study. Like science sastra relies on experience. K. S. Radhakrishnan finds the Upanishadic Mahavakya (Great Saying) But unlike science sastra penetrates deep down into the more and more Ayam Athmam Brahmam as clearly bearing the hallmark of an integral subtle levels by developing the inbuilt natural capacity of the sense organs. epistemology.17 In it, the term ayam literally means that which moves. Anything The experience of agama and nigama can be expressed in many forms that moves is spatio-temporal and anything spatio-temporal can be known by and sastra is only one among them and hence sastra is not the only the operation of the sensory and motor organs. Hence ayam means anything form of experience. The whole of reality that is experienced in our that can be known by sensory and motor organs. The same experience can be

134Omega June 2009 135 Augustine Pamplany The Indian Epistemic Equilibrium divergent experiences is the ayam alone and since there is nothing other characteristic of science. In the Greek science, we find the then than ayam that is to be known, every claim to know is only one of the cosmologists shifting the focus from a god-governed universe to a law- ways of experience and expression of the ayam and as such art, literature, governed universe through their scientific activities. Greek astronomers religion, science, philosophy, etc. are the different forms of expression believed in the rationality of nature transcending the limited horizons of of one and the same mode of experience. It is to be noted that Indian mythological doctrines and paving the way to a more objective and rational sastra never makes a distinction between science and technology. appropriation of the cosmic phenomenon. Adherence to false superstitions can often pose serious impediments to the advance of science. The praxis point of this unified epistemology is the peaceful co- existence of pluralistic perspectives and divergent disciplines and multiple Societies that believed that only the ‘gods’ knew the secrets of nature and that it was futile for humans to attempt to unravel the ideologies. Issues like science and religion, fiends or foes or conflict or mysteries of the universe were naturally incapable of making any complimentarity are totally alien to the Indian mind-set. substantial progress in the realm of the sciences. Even in societies 3. Crossing Borders –The Indian Paradigm alongside the where there were no formal religious taboos in understanding real-world phenomenon in a scientific way, the power and the Global Momentum influence of the priests could serve as an obstacle to scientific progress. For instance, in a society where ritual practices alone In the light of the historical and epistemological analysis made were considered sufficient in achieving desired goals, there would above, we shall try to highlight the implications of the Indian scientific naturally be little scope for serious investigation into the legacy for the Global momentum of the science-religion dialogue. In properties and laws of nature. While ancient India did not generally India, as we have seen, the origin of science is very much associated suffer from the first affliction (of religious opposition to science), with religion. Science initially was an aid to religion. Sacrifice was the it did suffer from the second (the proliferation of rituals and prime religious avocation of the Vedic Hindus. Sacrifice was to be superstitions). The progress of science in India was thus inextricably linked to challenges to the domination of the priests, performed on an altar of prescribed size and shape. Even the slightest 21 discrepancy in the prescriptions would adversely affect the efficacy of and resistance to the proliferation of rituals and sacrifices. the sacrifices. This in turn was influential in the birth of geometry and Scientific thinking in India has forced at least a sect of the society mathematics. The birth of geometry was necessitated by finding the to think that rituals alone were insufficient in producing desired results, proper time and space for the performance of the sacrifice. However, in and that some measure of rational observation of the world was necessary the course of time, these sciences outgrew their original purpose and in shaping human destiny. “It is therefore no accident that, by and large, came out to be cultivated for their own sake.2020 See Aruna Goel, Ancient developments in science and technology came in parallel with the advance Sankrit Wisdom – Modern Science and Beyond (New Delhi: Deep and of rational philosophy in India.”22 That is why Indian scientists in the Deep Publications, 2005), p. 19. past have recorded useful scientific observations without serious attempts at quantification, or deeper investigation into the physical and chemical As we have seen, the progress of science has also been impacted causes of what they observed. While the ancient Indian astronomy was by religious ideas. Philosophical doctrines also had a profound influence based on proper scientific methods, in other fields of scientific investigation, on the development of mathematical concepts and formulations. Indian scientists seemed to remain content with intuitive and general When we look at the history of interaction between science and observations, tolerating a far greater degree of vagueness and imprecision. religion in India, it could be observed that it had a liberative potential at This was because astronomy was triggered partly by practical the social milieu owing to its challenges to the religious taboos and irrational considerations such as the need for accurate monsoon prediction and indoctrination of mystical or magical phenomenon, as is universally rainfall mapping, but perhaps even more so, by the growing demand for

136Omega June 2009 137 Augustine Pamplany The Indian Epistemic Equilibrium “good” astrologers. The obsession with astrological charts - both amongst The societal and ethical commitments of the natural sciences can the royalty and mercantile classes led to considerable state patronage of be reinforced and redefined quite radically by the existential and religious intellectuals who wished to pursue the study of astronomy.23 sitz im leben of the Indian scientific tradition. The polarity between As a remnant of the religious obsessions, even today in India, the scientific discovery and the ethical questions discovered today there is a very negative trend towards the romanticisation of the ancient will be almost unwarranted provided we develop adequate Indian scientific tradition often rating its chronological precedence as a methodological tools and set humanistically and cosmically sound goals quantitative and qualitative superiority over the Western tradition. and objectives for the scientific enterprise after the model of the “Everything was stated long ago in the Vedas” is the clichéd jargon. Indian tradition. For instance, the Ayurvedic ethics is summed up in Indian Science-religion dialogue has a tendency to go by an uncritical Susruta’s dictum: “He who regards kindness to himself and to humanity juxtaposing of the two rather than a more ontological and hermeneutical as his supreme dharma and treats his patients accordingly, succeeds interface of science and religion. A deeper religious hermeneutic of the best in achieving the aims of life and obtains the greatest happiness.” Indian tradition of science may alleviate the superficial treatment of the The following statements from the ancient texts give a glimpse into the same and place the present-day science-religion dialogue in India on its cosmic ethical sensitivity in the ancient medical tradition of India. proper and authentic platform. “The physician should regard all his patients as if they were his own A religious appropriation of the specific characteristics of the Indian children and vigilantly guard them from all harm, considering this to sciences can make the science-religion momentum to be truly global. be his highest dharma (duty)”; “Those whose compassion for all While the science-religion enterprise in the West is very much dominated creatures is great and who are devoted to truth are ever zealous in by the inter-placement of the natural sciences and the Christian theology, putting down false doctrines”; “The patient who may distrust his the Eastern scientific and religious traditions are yet to establish own parents, sons and relations should repose an imperfect faith in his themselves in this emerging interdisciplinary field. own physician and put his own life in his hands without apprehension A dialogue between the Indian sciences and the Western sciences of danger. can restore to science its lost aesthetic elegance and moral charm which Hence a physician should protect his patient as his own begotten could conversely promote the proximity between science and religion on child.”Epistemological enhancement is another area where the global methodological and axiological grounds. In terms of pedagogy, it is science-religion momentum can profit from the Indian tradition. said that there is an excessive abstraction inmost text books, and While in the West our picture of reality is partly constructed by our undue theoretical complexity is thrust upon students. Incontrast, the epistemological and methodological tools, in the East the Experience of Indian approach with its stress on observation of natural phenomenon, Reality dictates our methodological and epistemological structures. and epistemological approach to understanding each field with a good In India, the divergent experiences of reality at their core have a unifying intuitive way of perceiving scientific phenomenon can be more appealing.24 experience which accommodates even the diametrically opposite In the contemporary natural sciences, we witness an emerging mystification representations without conflict, rather as complementary. Hence we of the sciences at the top of the ascending scientific inquiry. Meanwhile need to think whether a case to case dialogue between science and the Indian tradition testifies to a descending mystery from the cosmic religion would suffice, or do we need to begin with a metaphysical level to the phenomenal level of the sciences. This dialogue can analogically bedrock anchoring upon which we address the oscillating challenges boost the scientific re-mystification of nature and cosmos. from science, which would make religion more confident and not

138Omega June 2009 139 Augustine Pamplany The Indian Epistemic Equilibrium to tremble at any new scientific discovery. It is to be noted in this context and spheres to more substantial and metaphysical domains of truth. The that in sharp contrast to the Western logic which inquires whether the form Indian paradigm where the science-religion dialogue itself is part of a of a proposition and argument is true, the Indian logic is based on the wider spectrum of the manifestation of truth could be helpful in this conviction that logic is an instrument for the discovery and regard. understanding of reality, and not a mere formal discipline wholly unrelated to the world. Indian logicians reject the verbalist view that logic is only concerned with thought-forms and symbols and not with Notes content and referents. Such radical rethinking on our epistemological 1. Recipient of numerous scientific fellowships and awards, Dr. Augustine tools is essential for developing some perennial conceptual structures Pamplany has published a volley of articles and books in the area of for the dialogue between science and religion. science-religion dialogues. He is also the director of Institute of Science and Religion, Aluva which acts as a catalyst for science-religion dialogues The hermeneutical appropriation of the spiritual vision behind the in many parts of India. Indian sciences can very well add an affective and emotive dimension 2. Dilip M. Salwi, Nonsense in Indian Science (Delhi: Konark Publishers to the Western interdisciplinary attempts dominated by the cognitive and Pvt. Ltd., 1998). rationalistic approaches. There is more to the science-religion dialogue than mere conceptual clarifications or theoretical rapprochement, which 3. http://india_resource.tripod.com/scienceh.htm. Pages from the history of the Indian sub-continent: Realism, Skepticism, Rational Thinking, is the dominating trend in this field as of now. In bridging the gap between Scientific Progress and Social Ethics. the brain and the heart in this field, the Indian science-religion paradigm is of vital significance. The activity of knowledge in India remains 4. Ibid. incomplete without embracing the praxis level. The penetrating question 5. Ibid. of the guru (teacher) to the sisya (disciple) was whether he possessed 6. Ibid. that, by possessing which he possessed everything else or whether he knew that by knowing which he knew everything else. That is why in 7. http://india_resource.tripod.com/physics.htm. Pages from the history of India, there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge the Indian sub-continent: Science and Technology in India. is something that is absorbing one’s total person. In translating the plethora 8. http://india_resource.tripod.com/mathematics.htm. Pages from the history of activities in the interdisciplinary field of science and religion to such of the Indian sub-continent: Science and Mathematics in India an absorbing, scintillating and enchanting experience of learning and 9. Charaka Samhitha – Sutra Sthana, 1: 41. living, the substantively holistic nuances of the science-religion unity of India may be availed of. 10. See K U Chacko, “Ayurveda – A Holistic Treatment Born of a Holistic Vision,” in Omega – Indian Journal of Science and Religion, (2: 2003), Conclusion pp. 11-12. 11. See Ibid. I have a feeling that there is too much of science-religion dialogue in the Western academic circles without clarifying the proper foundations 12. The Holistic nature of Ayurveda or Holistic Ayurveda: http:// www.ayurvedahc.com/articlelive/articles/112/1/The-Holistic-nature-of- and methodologies, without articulating the real goals and objectives, Ayurveda-or-Holistic-Ayurveda by Dr Vikramaditya Tomar, Published drawing too many parallels often bit superficial. This emerging on 04/22/2005. interdisciplinary attempt needs to be enhanced by transferring its scope

140Omega June 2009 141 Augustine Pamplany The Indian Epistemic Equilibrium

14. See Wesley J. Wildman, “The Quest for Harmony - An Interpretation of Omega Contemporary Theology and Science,” W. Mark Richardson and Wesley J. VIII (2009)1, 143-145 Wildman (eds.), Religion and Science - History, Method, Dialogue, (New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 44. 15. See K. S. Radhakrishnan, Science, Technology and Values – An Indian Perspective, Paper presented in CTNS-SRCP Workshop in Pune, India, The Meaning of Life December, 2001, pp. 14-16. - K. Babu Joseph1 16. Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, “The One-Centredness of the Hindu Race,” J. J. Lipner, (tr.), Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflections, LXI, Oct. 1981, Terry Eagleton. The Meaning of Life, Oxford University Press, p. 419, 421. Indian Edition, 2008, New Delhi. 17. See K. S. Radhakrishnan. This compact book, set out in less than 200 pages, by Terry 18. Ibid., p. 14. Eagleton, John Edwards Taylor, Professor of English at the University 19. Ibid. of Manchester, a fellow of the British Academy, and a writer of 21. http://india_resource.tripod.com/physics.htm. Pages from the history of international repute, poses one of the most difficult questions man has the Indian sub-continent: Science and Technology in India. been asking from time immemorial and veers to an answer hatched in 22. Ibid. the author’s thought. Though the last word on the question reflects his own attitudes, a lot of discussion precedes it. One’s meaning of life, 23. See Ibid. according to him, is not a solution to a problem but a matter of living in a 24. See Ibid. certain way that is ethical rather than metaphysical. It is society’s life which is meaningful and not that of individual. A society bound by the thread of agape or love has discovered the meaning of life. The book has four chapters. The first chapter carries out a detailed analysis of the philosophical as well as logical nature of questions and answers. Invoking Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas on linguistic analysis, he critically examines the import of the phrases meaning and life. The statement ‘what is the meaning of life’ is different from the statement ‘what is the capital of Albania,’ even though both are of the same grammatical structure. The first structure lacks clarity in the corresponding signifier-signified relationship, while the second one is amply clear. Words have no intrinsic meaning of their own. It is the context which imparts meaning to words. Despite its woolliness, the very fact that we talk about the meaning of life, makes the question non- trivial. Not being able to understand the mystery of life, man lives under the constant shadow of death. For believers in god, there is a ready-

142Omega June 2009 143 K. Babu Joseph The Meaning of Life made answer to the question of existence. We were created out of his In the third chapter, entitled the Eclipse of Meaning, the author love, and the world runs according to his law. Eagleton goes on to consider argues in favour of an expanded concept of meaning. He points out that a lot of non-theological attempts made in the past to unravel the mystery a full-fledged linguistic system may not be required always to convey of life. He also criticizes the derivation of religions from their traditional some meaning. For example, the phenomenon of snowing is meaningful path of spirituality. He stresses the importance of raking humanity as a in its own right, as, if one point to it, a signifier-signified correspondence whole in the quest for a solution to the problem posed. This is contrary to is established at once. Meaning can arise only in a social situation. There the paths taken by post-structuralism and post-modernism, which maintain are no one-person languages. Some say that life is what you make it. that it was this kind of ‘totalizing’ theory tat led to the death-camps of Does it give one the freedom to do as one pleases? The idea that one the totalitarian state. The observation that capitalism is anti-religious and can determine the meaning of one’s life is an illusion because it can ever immoral in its pursuit of wealth while socialism is religious and moral is be described only in relation to one’s social group. thought-provoking. The study come to a close in the fourth chapter when he says that In the second chapter the author examines the intricacies of the the argument that one has to go outside one’s human existence to be word meaning. There are three kinds of use of the word: One is related able to survey life as a whole, is questionable. Only God can do this. to the mind, another concern signification, and the third combine the Another way of putting it is that life cannot be judged as valuable or two, representing the act of intending or having it in mind to signify, valueless because such an action itself is part of life. But from experience something. ‘Did you mean to strangle him’, is an instance of the first we know that we need not go overseas in order to criticize our category of use. The statement ‘These clouds mean rain’, signifies that motherland! Inspite of minor differences between human beings, mankind rain is imminent. However, a question of the type ‘what did she mean by is one entity. For Aristotle, happiness is akin to the practice of virtue. a flea-bitten, geriatric donkey?’ is an expression of an intention to signify Thomas Aquinas equated ethics to well-being or love. A little reflection something. Simply learning the dictionary meanings of words is not enough would reveal the interdependence of the two criteria. Happiness and to master the language. Words acquire meaning in relation to some love are mutually bound up. context, a point stressed by Wittgenstein. In the query ‘What is the Eagleton concludes his book with a very brief presentation of his meaning of life?’ the reference is to a phenomenon and not a thing. Thus thesis that the meaning of life is to be sought for society as a whole and the expected answer must fall within the combination category. not for each individual. Since we are social animals, individual fulfillment A somewhat lengthy analysis of the famous lives in Shakespeare’s become the ground for the fulfillment of others. ‘Do unto each as you Macbeth which describe life as a ‘tale told by an idiot, full of sound and would have each do unto you.’ This rules out murder, exploitation, torture, fury, signifying nothing’, is carried out. This passage suggests two notions: selfishness and the like. (1) Human existence is an empty farce. (2) Life is unintelligible and The book is rich in quotes and extracts from a variety of sources. senseless. The first one is an absolutist proposition, but the second one is Written in an easy-to-read style, it is addressed to the intelligent, lay an open admission of failure. Marxists, on the contrary, are said to believe reader rather than the expert. Had more space been devoted to the tat human life or ‘history’ has a pattern. But the pattern may be one that author’s theory, the book would have drawn greater appreciation. nobody would have intended. According to Schopenhauer, the whole of reality including life, is a product of the Will, a voracious, implacable Notes force. The meaning of life is perhaps not intended to be discovered at 1. Prof. Dr. K. Babu Joseph was the former Vice Chancellor of the Cochin all. Life may just be a biological accident! University of Science and Technology.

144Omega June 2009 145 Shibu Joseph Science, Spirituality and the Modernization of India

OMEGA INDIAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

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194 Omega December 2008 Editor-in-Chief Dr. Job Kozhamthadam Indian Institute of Science and Religion, Pune, India. Associate Editor Dr. Ronald Cole-Turner Vice President, International Society for Science and Religion, Cambridge. Book Review Editors Dr. Miguel Farias Ian Ramsey Centre, Oxford University. Omega Dr. Jonathan B. Edelmann Mississippi, Mississippi State University. Indian Journal of Science and Religion Dr. Martin Sebastian Catholic University, Leuven. I JSR Managing Editor Dr. Augustine Pamplany Institute of Science and Religion, Aluva, India SUBSCRIPTION RATES Editorial Board India Foreign Dr. Nancey Murphy Fuller Theological Seminary, California. 1 Year Rs. 100.00 $ 20.00 € 15.00 Dr. Philip Clayton Claremont School of Theology, California. Dr. Kasturiranjan National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. 3 Years Rs. 250.00 $ 50.00 € 40.00 Dr. Bert Gordijn Dublin City Univesity, Ireland. Dr. Makarand Paranjpe Indian Association of Science and Spirituality, JNU, New Delhi. Life Rs. 1500.00 $ 400.00 300.00 Dr. Philip Sloan Notre Dame University, Indiana. Dr. Georger V. Coyne Director Emeritus, Vatican Observatory. • Subcription to be paid by Money Order, Demand Draft or Cheque. Dr. K. Babu Joseph Former VC, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin. Dr. K. S. Radhakrishnan Sree Sanakracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady. • Make Cheque / DD / MO payable to “Manager, Omega.” Dr. John Brooke University of Oxford. • Add Rs. 15/- for outstation cheques (in India). Dr. Kuruvilla Pandikattu Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune. Dr. Ted Peters Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. • Subscription could begin with any number. Dr. Varadaraja V. Raman Rochester Institute of Technology, New York. Dr. Kang Phee Seng Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong. Dr. Heup Young Kim Kangnam University, South Korea. Dr. Pauline M. Rudd Dublin-Oxford Glycobiology Laboratory, Dublin, Ireland. Dr. Gerald Grudzen University of Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Sarojini Henry Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary, Chennai. All Correspondence to : Dr. Mathew Chandrankunnel Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram, Bangalore. Managing Editor, Dr. Lieven Bouve Catholic University, Louvain. Omega, Little Flower Seminary, Dr. B. V. Subbarayyappa National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. Aluva - 683 101, Kerala, India. Dr. Roger Trigg University of Oxford. E-mail: [email protected] Dr. Taede A Smedes Catholic Univesity, Louvain. Dr. Nicola Hoggard Creegan Tyndale-Carey Graduate School, New Zealand. Dr. Jean Staune Interdisciplinary University, Paris. Typeset : Dr. Shamsur Rahman Bangladesh Centre for Science and Spirituality, Dhaka. D’Signs, Aluva.

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