Integrating Science and Mysticism (The Kabbalistic Universe, Part 3)

As we described at length in previous articles, modern science began as an act of rebellion. We usually describe this act as directed against beliefs and institutions. But we can also see it as the rebellion of a nascent worldview against older ones. Indeed, we can use the model of the Kabbalistic Multiverse to point specifically at which world-view it was that rebelled against which: the scientific revolution was the awakening from its slumber of the forsaken world-view of Action, and the world-views it rebelled against were those of Formation (Greek science) and Creation (Christian theology).

Science in Action

Let us recall the meaning of the word ‘action’ in Kabbalistic terminology: action is the application of slight modifications to something, which, while changing it, nevertheless does not replace its essence (this is how it’s different from the ‘formation’ of the world just above it, which is the changing of a thing’s essence). When something is said to be ‘acted’ upon, it means that something has changed ever so slightly, so that we can never pinpoint the moment it has changed its form.

Now, what better description could we find other than this one for the sort of naturalistic causality which lies at the heart of modern science? Classical modern physical science assumes nature operates solely according to a strict mechanistic causality. There can be no gaps in the chain of cause and effect, no ‘miraculous’ or ‘magical’ leaps or interferences. Everything is the ongoing product of gradual, step-by-step natural processes. The modern scientific picture of the world is the world-view of Action taken to its extreme and developed in the most thorough way imaginable.

Unlike the transition from Greek science to Christianity, the transition from Christianity to modern science did not add a world to the previous cosmology but rather replaced it with an entirely new world. For example, the whole concept of ‘ideal forms’ or ‘essences’, so fundamental to Greek science and the world-view of Formation, is anathema to modernist thinking. Essences are now deemed as fabrications of the human mind imposed upon nature in order to make sense of it or control it. Similarly, the notion of a providential God, central to Christianity and the world-view of Creation, has also been shunned. The causal chain of nature is defined by science as the strongest fact of being, not to be broken by anything or anyone. In such a worldview God can at best be relegated to the position of a master watchmaker who may have once constructed the universe and set it in motion, but now does no more than hover above it passively—a far cry from the personal, prayer-hearing God of Judaism and Christianity.

The adoption of the world-view of Action by modern science is manifested in the new name, the third in number, given by it to the world itself: after the Greek Cosmos and the Christian Creation came the turn of the modern Universe. By far the least potent and meaning-laden word, it perfectly reflects the modern worldview: the world is but one verse from an unknown poem, a string of atoms and natural laws making up a single mysterious phrase. We can impose interpretations on it and discuss it from now to hereafter, but in and of itself it is silent and meaningless.

Affirmative Action

We have outlined a very brief history of science based upon the model of the Kabbalistic Multiverse. This history discloses the following structure: science was born in Greece out of a Formation worldview; it then ‘evolved’ upward with Christianity to a Creation-and-Formation worldview; and finally with modernity a radical downward jump was made, knocking down both these worldviews on its way, to the world of Action.

Why did this happen? One can only conjecture, but the simplest explanation seems to be that the world-view of Action was perceived as neglected in some way, as if left behind in too hasty of an ascent. It was suffering from discrimination and was in need of affirmative action.

Indeed, it may plausibly be suggested that a variation of the world-view of Action did in fact exist prior to Greek science and was in fact neglected by it. The magical and mythological outlook of archaic tribes could be seen as a primitive sort of Action world-view, in the sense that it was highly connected to physical nature, without imposing any logical forms on it (to be precise, it appears to have been an undifferentiated amalgam of Action and Emanation, identifying nature with various pagan deities). It then turns out that science’s ascent was a three-step process, climbing up from Action to Formation to Creation, but in a way that abandoned the world of Action and contained only the latter, higher two worlds. Modern science—indeed, modernity in general—could to a large extent be seen as an attempt to instate a new version of the archaic world-view of Action.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/progress-or-regress-article-15/

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