COSMOS & TRANSCENDENCE Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief BY THE SAMEAUTHOR Teilhardism and the New Religion The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology: Contemporary Science in Light of Tradition Sagesse de la Cosnwlogie Ancienne Christian Gnosis (in preparation) Wolfgang Smith COSMOS & TRANSCENDENCE Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief SECOND EDITION SOPHIA PERENNIS SAN RAFAEL, CA Second, revised edition, 2008 First edition, Sherwood Sugden & Co., 1984 © Wolfgang Smith 2oo8 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission For information, address: Sophia Perennis, P.O. Box 151011 San Rafael CA 94915 sophia perennis.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, Wolfgang Cosmos and transcendence: breaking through the barrier of scientistic belief I by Wolfgang Smith.-2nd ed. p. em. Rev. ed. of: Cosmos & Transcendence. c1984 Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-59731-080-2 (pbk: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-59731-084-0 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Science-philosophy. I. Smith, Wolfgang, Cosmos & transcendence. II. Title Q175.S636 2oo8 501--dc21 2008005657 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to reproduce the frontispiece of Codex 2554, a thirteenth-century Bible housed in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Grateful acknowledgment is also made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following material: Douglas Dewar, The Transformist Illusion,© 1995 by Sophia Peren­ ms. Louis Bounoure, Determinisme et finalite, © 1957 by Flammarion. Reprinted with permission of Librairie Ernest Flammarion, Paris. C. G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul,© 1933 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by Norman Kemp Smith, © 1958 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted with permission of St. Martin's Press, New York. Sigmund Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, © 1949 by W. W. Norton & Company. Reprinted with permission of W. W. Norton & Company, New York. Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id, © 1960 by W. W. Norton & Company. Reprinted with permission ofW. W. Norton & Company, New York. Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, © 1965 by W. W. Norton & Company. Reprinted with permission of W. W. Norton & Company, New York. C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffe, trans. by Richard and Clara Winston, © 1963 by Pan­ theon Books, a Division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Random House, Inc., New York. For Thea, whose sound judgment has so many times saved the day CONTENTS Foreword 1 Preface to Second Edition 3 1 The Idea of the Physical Universe 7 2 The Cartesian Dilemma 21 3 Lost Horizons 39 4 Evolution: Fact and Fantasy 64 5 The Ego and the Beast 95 6 The Deification of the Unconscious 115 7 'Progress' in Retrospect 141 Index of Names 167 FOREWORD As THIS nooK makes compellingly dear, the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century heralded the triumph of a particular philo­ sophical outlook (rationalistic, materialist) with its attendant episte­ mology (empiricism) and procedures (the 'scientific method'). Contrary to popular assumption, modern science is not simply a disinterested, detached, and value-free mode of inquiry into the material world: it is a complex of disciplines and techniques anchored in culture-bound assumptions about and attitudes to the nature of reality and the proper means whereby material phenom­ ena might be explored, explained, and, perhaps most tellingly, con­ trolled. It is, in fact, impossible to separate the methods of modern science from its theories and the ideologies which provide its motive force, and it is to this tangled skein-or as he puts it: to the unverifi­ able assumptions which the 'verifiable' propositions of science presuppose-that Wolfgang Smith applies the term 'scientism'. As the book likewise makes clear, the modern scientistic outlook is, in principle, unable to countenance God (by whatever name), who is either repudiated as an obsolete 'hypothesis' or altogether ignored-which amounts to the same thing. Likewise, scientism cannot allow any sense of the sacred, the absence of which is one of the defining characteristics of modernity as a whole. Needless to say, the much-misunderstood issues at stake in the conflict of 'sci­ ence' and 'religion', or 'modernity' and 'tradition', are immense: our view of what constitutes 'reality', 'human nature', 'life' and 'death', transcendence and immanence, and the relationship of the material world to higher spiritual realities, to mention only some of the most salient. It is to an inquiry into these issues-an interrogation of the orthodoxies of modern science in the light of a traditional wisdom, informed by immutable principles and truth~ which are neither 'old' nor 'new' but timeless-that Cosmos and Transcendence sum­ mons us. 2 COSMOS AND TRANSCENDENCE Wolfgang Smith brings to his task a rare combination of qualities and experiences, not the least his ability to move freely between the somewhat arcane worlds of contemporary science and traditional metaphysics. Alongside Dr. Smith's imposing qualifications in mathematics, physics, and philosophy, we find his hard-earned expertise in Platonism, Christian theology, traditional cosmologies, and Oriental metaphysics. His outlook has been enriched both by his diverse professional experiences in the high-tech world of the aerospace industry and in academia, and by his own researches in the course of his far-reaching intellectual and spiritual journeying. Here is that rare person who is equally at home with Eckhart and Einstein, Heraclitus and Heisenberg! Dr. Smith is no obscurantist, rejecting well-attested scientific facts, nor a sentimental reactionary seeking to 'turn back the clock'. He is a sober-minded scientist and philosopher who has confronted some of the most daunting issues of the age, refusing to surrender to the shibboleths and complacen­ cies of modernity. In this book Wolfgang Smith excavates the very foundations of modern thought in order to explain the cracks and fissures that are everywhere appearing in what was thought to be the impregnable edifice of 'science'. He also traces the pedigree of some of the most mesmerizing of modern prejudices (the belief in Progress, for instance) and analyzes the intellectual legacy of figures such as Des­ cartes, Newton, Darwin, Freud, and Jung, all the while rendering the most abstruse ideas and principles into lucid and elegant prose, intelligible to any receptive reader. Cosmos and Transcendence, which first appeared a quarter of a century ago, is the fruit of many years of fearless intellectual exploration, of deep rumination, and of seasoned judgment. Our era stands in urgent need of the truths and insights yielded by Wolfgang Smith's wide-ranging inquiry. Sophia Perennis is to be commended for bringing a new edition of this pro­ found and exhilarating work within the purview of a new genera­ tion of readers. HARRY OLDMEADOW LaTrobe University Bendigo, Australia PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION THIS BOOK HAS A TWOFOLD PURPOSE, a twofold content: first, it presents a critique of the modern world, and based upon this cri­ tique, it seeks to expound a timeless metaphysical wisdom. The sec­ ond end presupposes the first: so long as we have not 'broken through the barrier of scientistic belief,' as the subtitle has it, that timeless wisdom-that veritable sophia perennis-remains for us inaccessible. What I object to fundamentally in the scientistic world-view is that it conceives the external universe to be unperceived and unper­ ceivable. The concrete world, made up of sensory elements, such as color and sound, and indeed of innumerable qualities, is thereby subjectivized, which is to say that it is relegated to the sphere of mind, or if you will, of brain-function. Now, in keeping with major philosophic trends (beginning with Husser! and Whitehead), I regard this subjectivization as both illegitimate and grossly decep­ tive. My concern, in Cosmos and Transcendence, has been to show, on the one hand, that the subjectivization of the qualities is not a matter of scientific discovery, as one is nowadays prone to assume, but constitutes in fact an unfounded philosophical assumption stip­ ulated by Rene Descartes, and to demonstrate, on the other, that this Cartesian premise contradicts the perennial wisdom of mankind. On this double basis I could proceed to carry out the twofold inten­ tion of the book, as defined above. And so the matter stood until, a few years later, I became inter­ ested in the so-called 'quantum reality' debate, which had been ongoing since about 1927. What has disturbed physicists and philos­ ophers of science for all these years is that the discoveries of quan­ tum theory do not accord with our accustomed notions concerning 4 COSMOS AND TRANSCENDENCE physical reality, to the point that these findings strike us as paradox­ icaL What particuiarly interested me was to ascertain whether the resources of traditional philosophy-I was thinking especially of the Platonist schools-might have something of value to contribute to the debate; and what I discovered, after a period of considerable confusion, came as a surprise: the key to an understanding of quan­ tum theory, I now perceived, lies precisely in the recognition that the qualities are not after all subjective, as everyone engaged in the debate had all along assumed. It turns out that once this unfounded Cartesian premise is jettisoned, everything falls into place, and I could write, in The Quantum Enigma, that 'Quantum paradox proves to be Nature's way of refuting a spurious philosophy.' Thus it came about that what, in Cosmos and Transcendence, had served as the means of disqualifying the scientistic Weltanschauung, has become key to a philosophic understanding of contemporary physics. The fact is that physics can be interpreted on a non-Carte­ sian basis, and that this reinterpretation constitutes the mandatory rectification which enables us to integrate its positive findings into higher realms of knowing.