Religion in an Age of Science by Ian Barbour
Chapter 4: Physics and Metaphysics
III. Metaphysical Implications
3. Physics and Eastern Mysticism
seems equally one-sided. (3) There is an implicit reductionism in assuming that God acts at the lowest level, that of the atomic components. Do we not want to allow also for God’s influence on higher levels, "from the top down" rather than "from the bottom up"?
Isn’t God related to the integrated human self, for example, and not just to the atomic events in the brain?
Arthur Peacocke takes quantum effects to be only one example of chance, which occurs at many points in nature. Moreover, he portrays God as acting through the whole process of chance and law, not
primarily through chance events. God does not predetermine and control all events; chance is real for God as it is for us. The creative process is itself God’s action in the world. We will examine this view in detail in chapter 6.
which the individual is merged. The new physics says that the observer and the observed are inseparable, much as the mystic tradition envisages the union of subject and object.
Next, both physics and Eastern thought are said to see the world as dynamic and ever-changing. Particles are patterns of vibration that are continually being created and destroyed. Matter appears as energy and vice versa. Asian religions hold that life is transitory, all existence is impermanent and in ceaseless motion. The dance of Shiva is an image of the cosmic dance of form and energy. But in both fields there is also an underlying timeless realm. Capra maintains that in relativity spacetime is timeless; the eternal now of mystical experience is also timeless.
Capra is particularly enthusiastic about bootstrap theory (or S-matrix theory), which proposes that there are no smallest components of matter but only a network of mutual relations. In this theory, each particle generates other particles, which in turn generate it -- an egalitarian rather than a hierarchical arrangement. Capra compares this to the sense of interdependence in some Asian writings, in which no part is held to be more fundamental than others. He mentions the Hindu image of Indra’s net of jewels, each of which reflects all the other. Unfortunately, bootstrap theory, while promising at the time Capra wrote, has few adherents today since the success of quark theory, which does provide hierarchically ordered constituents (though with the peculiar kind of inseparability mentioned earlier). This section of Capra’s book shows the dangers of tying religious beliefs too closely to particular scientific theories that may turn out to be rather short-lived.
In general, I think Capra has overstressed the similarities and virtually ignored the differences between the two disciplines. Often he finds a parallel by comparing particular terms or concepts, abstracted from the wider contexts that are radically different.41 For example, Asian
traditions speak of undifferentiated unity. But the wholeness and unity that physics expresses is highly differentiated and structured, subject to strict constraints, symmetry principles, and conservation laws. Space, time, matter, and energy are all unified in relativity, but there are exact transformation rules. The mystic’s structureless unity, in which all
distinctions are obliterated, also seems very different from the organized interaction and cooperative behavior of higher-level wholes, seen
already in physics but much more evident in biology. If mechanists see only the parts, Capra gives one-sided attention to wholes. Process
thought seems to me to strike a more tenable balance between unity and
diversity, with a basic pluralism rather than a monism.
I believe the relation between time and timelessness is also significantly different in physics and in mysticism. Physics deals with the realm of temporal change. I agree with Capra that in the atomic world there is impermanence and an ever-changing flux of events. But I do not agree that spacetime is a static and timeless block. I have argued that relativity points to the temporalization of space rather than the spatialization of time. On the other hand, for much of Eastern mysticism, especially the Advaita tradition in Hinduism, the temporal world is illusory and
ultimate reality is timeless. Beneath the surface flux of maya (illusion) is the unchanging center, which alone is truly real, even though the world exhibits regular patterns to which a qualified reality can be ascribed. In Buddhism, timelessness also refers to the realization of our unity with all things, which releases us from bondage to time and the threat of impermanence and suffering. Meditative disciplines do bring the experience of a sense of timelessness (though this may be partly the product of absorptive attention which stops the flow of thought and shifting consciousness).
Capra ignores the diversity among and within Eastern religions and says nothing about Western mysticism. Moreover, he says little about the difference in the goals of physics and mysticism, or the distinctive functions of their languages. The goal of meditation is not primarily a new conceptual system but the transformation of personal existence, a new state of consciousness and being, an experience of enlightenment.
We have seen that the mystical strand in both East and West emphasizes experience. There are implicit or explicit beliefs, to be sure, but they must always be considered as components of mysticism as a total way of life.
David Bohm is more cautious in delineating parallels between physics and mysticism. We discussed earlier his idea of instantaneous, nonlocal, noncausal correlations, which would provide an explanation of the Bell’s Theorem experiments. He has extended these ideas as a more general metaphysical system. He proposes that mind and matter are two different projections of the underlying implicate order; they are two related expressions of a single deeper reality. Bohm also finds in Eastern religions a recognition of the basic unity of all things; in meditation there is a direct experience of undivided wholeness. Fragmentation and egocentricity can be overcome in the absorption of the self in the
undifferentiated and timeless whole.42 Here is an ultimate monism that
contrasts with the greater pluralism of Western religions and of process theology. For Bohm, the answer to the fragmentation of personal life is the dissolution of the separate self, rather than the healing of brokenness by the restoration of relationships to God and the neighbor which
Christian thought advocates.
In a recent volume, Science and Mysticism, Richard Jones gives a detailed comparison of themes in the new physics, Advaita Hinduism, and Theravada Buddhism; he emphasizes the differences among them.43 He subscribes basically to what I have called the Independence thesis:
science and mysticism are independent and separate, but both have cognitive value. Science has authority concerning objective structures and regularities in the realm of becoming and change, while mysticism is an experience of the unstructured, nonobjectifiable reality beneath the surface multiplicity. For the most part, their claims are
incommensurable, and no integration is possible, for they refer to different realms. Science deals objectively with differentiated lawful structures, while the mystic encounters the undifferentiated wholeness of the underlying reality in the experience of meditation. Jones is critical of the vague parallels that Capra draws and his use of phrases abstracted from their contexts.
Jones grants that the classical forms of these Eastern traditions devalued the world of phenomena in a way that offers no encouragement to
science. He himself defends the cognitive value of both science and mysticism, each on its own level. He acknowledges that mysticism does not start from uninterpreted experience but inescapably uses theoretical interpretive concepts. Some beliefs might conflict with or be supported by science, and we do not end with total independence. For example, one belief shared by many Eastern traditions is the idea of karma, the infinite cycle of rebirths, which requires an infinite span of time -- and this belief might conflict with some astronomical theories but not others.
Jones accepts the timelessness of ultimate reality in these Eastern traditions. I have greater reservations about this concept. Medieval
Christian thought also asserted the timelessness of God, though God was there understood in predominantly personal terms, and the doctrine of creation gave a stronger affirmation of the reality and goodness of the temporal world than is found in most of the East. The God of classical theism was eternal, unchanging, impassible, omniscient, and
omnipotent, influencing the world but not influenced by it. But both biblical thought and process theology have had a dynamic understanding
of a God who is intimately involved in the temporality of the world. In Hartshorne’s dipolar theism, God is unchanging in purpose but changes in experience of the world.44 We will return in a later chapter to this question of divine temporality and timelessness. At the moment I am suggesting that while timelessness is an important idea in religious thought of both East and West, we can find little support for it in current physics.