On Friday evening I was flying back from Amsterdam to Bristol and reading the New Scientist. There was an article in the magazine about the fact that in America there is a growing anti-scientific sentiment particularly in the Republican party but also among Democrats. The article explained that presenting people with arguments and facts had not been persuasive and the article writer's view was that anti-scientific feeling had increased. The article pondered what to do when faced with people who do not base their life on reason, rationality and evidence based policies. The author of the article
put forward the idea that Science should learn from its opponents and started
to use their tactics of persuasion to win the argument in favour of evidence
based policies and rational thinking in fighting the forces of unreason and
emotion.
In parallel, as I was
reading this, I was engaged in my own private battle of unreason with the
person in the seat in front of me on the plane. This man, immediately following take off, thrust
back his seat, put his earphones in and his blindfold on and thumped back
against his chair bashing my knees.
I decided not to say anything but simply moved my legs to the side as
far as I could. Whilst not overly
tall at six feet one inch, my legs are long in proportion to my height which is
a disadvantage on cramped planes like this one. On this plane the space between the seats was particularly
narrow and the seat leaning back was a matter of inches from me. After trying to sleep, I decided to
read my copy of the New Scientist and started reading this article. My only real option was to prop my New
Scientist against the seat back of the man in front.
In doing this it touched the back of his head. He kept feeling back with his hand to
see what was touching his head and trying to push it away and I stubbornly
pushed it back each time.
Eventually he looked round a couple of times to try without saying
anything to signal that I should move my magazine but when he sat back down again,
I repositioned it and made sure it was pushing slightly against his head. Eventually he turned round and
irritatedly asked me to move it. I
snapped back that I had no space to read since he had inconsiderately pushed his chair so
far back. After this exchange, we continued
to fight a battle for the last 20 mins of the flight. He thought about moving his chair forward but decided
against it and I continued to push my New Scientist against his head. Each of us made slight gestures – he
moved his head forward slightly and I moved my New Scientist back marginally.
Where is the link
between this mini war and the article in the New Scientist? The link is that I realised that
the New Scientist article was busy turning this issue of Science and its
acceptance or non-acceptance into a war with sides. The assumption was that Science was the only source of
truth, knowledge or reason. It
also made the assumption that scientists are a homogenous group of people all
wedded to these things. Furthermore it
made the assumption that those who do not classify themselves as scientists are
wedded to ideology, emotion and irrationality. Whilst many of the points raised were valid, the theme
reflected a polarisation into “us and them”. It is clearly disturbing for those who classify themselves
as scientists that they do not feel that they are being listened to but there
seemed to be nothing in the article to suggest that science or
scientists should examine themselves in looking for where the problems might
lie.
Back to my war with
the man in front of me on the plane; what might the parallels be? I was well aware that my position was
unreasonable and that I was being provocative. By the end of our small war, though, my heart was full of
misgivings about my action and prompted by the article, I reflected on what my
approach was contributing to division between people. When I looked at the
man in front I could see that perhaps he felt some sadness at the
situation. Certainly I saw a
fellow human being and my heart was sad at the discomfort and it resonated with
how his might be feeling. I
realised I had a chance to change things: to apologise. My rational mind told me that he had
been selfish and that he might think twice before being so again but my heart
was having none of it and was not comfortable. My moment passed as people moved between us in the queue to
get off the plane. As I got off
the plane and began walking to passport control there was no sign of him, but, some spirited walking later, I saw him ahead of me and after some reluctance I
caught up with him, clapped him on the shoulder affectionately (I hope he
thought it was!) and apologised to him, saying that I was sorry that I had
snapped at him and that the airplane seats were so small it was that I didn’t
have much room. We chatted very
aimiably all the way to Passport control.
He explained that he had been working away for three days and was worn
out and having been away from home for five days, I commiserated. The intriguing thing was that our
hearts were more open to each other than if we had never talked or met. I felt my heart warm completely to
this amiable and open hearted man.
What intrigued me with
reference to the article was that my heart had been far better at reasoning
than my “rational” mind and that
he was an engineering consultant – a scientist! In this situation, I had not found a way through by trying
to identify what was wrong with this man’s approach however unreasonable I
might have found his actions to be, but by examining my own unreasonableness. In the hexagram conflict, the I-Ching
says that we must come to meet others halfway, even if we are in the right. The rational mind, concerned with facts
and logic, has trouble understanding emotional realities such as the dangers of pushing
an argument to the bitter end and the destructive effect this might have on the
relationship. In order to reason
well we have to include the heart and the emotions. As Albert Einstein observed "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift
and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society
that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
Most
astrologers would realise that Scientists identify very strongly with the empirical
thinking mindset of earth (senses) and air (thinking) and project as their
shadow fire (intuition) and water (feeling). On my friend Chrissy's pattern of the elements described in
her book The Golden City she describes the opposition Truth which has
intuitive-feeling Pisces at one end and empiric thinking Aquarius at the other
end of this opposition. She labels
this opposition Truth.
Both the scientist and the mystic seek the truth and both are equally
condemning of the other. Where
science triumphs, there is the danger that there is no heart. Where the intuitive mystic triumphs there is the danger of delusion.
The writer of the
article described the foundations of American science as lying in the influence
of Locke, Bacon, Jefferson and the principles of egality and liberty. He quoted Jefferson's declaration of independence: "all men are born equal." I wonder if this notion might be at the heart of the issue, since there is a misconception based on this that all men are equal and all men must be equal. Perhaps if we rephrased it "all men are born unequal" we would have the inclusive and paradoxically wise notion that the way we are all the same is that we are all different, thus we could respect different viewpoints more easily. As Einstein also said "Science without religion is lame, Religion without Science is blind".
The American war of Independence was
fought and won at the time that the planet Uranus was being discovered. When a planet is discovered, it’s
properties shift from operating unconsciously in the collective to operating
consciously. Uranus is the planet
that rules Aquarius and its energy was that of revolution. It is also the planet that rules
science, principles and independence or freedom. The French revolution which was happening contemporaneously
was also based on very Aquarian principles of egalite, fraternite and liberte. There have been many experiments based
on these principles over the years; communism was very much an expression of
this. Yet each time, the effects
have been deeply impersonal and oppressive of individuals as the French
revolution was with the mob running rampant and as the Industrial revolution was with individuals
organised in large masses to serve technical breakthroughs. The same themes persist in modern
culture with global organisations whose call centres and activities ignore the
individual hearts of those interacting with them. Yet unbridled intuitive/feeling, with religious wars over the
truth (think of the crusades and the Spanish inquisition), has been no better. It is interesting to note that, as with
all extremes, the two sides begin
to resemble each other very closely.
On Chrissy’s pattern which she correlates to the I-Ching, Aquarius is the
top line of the hexagram the Creative: “Arrogant dragon will have cause to
repent”. There was something of
this in the tone of the article: science was the only route to the truth. It sounds somewhat religious in
nature. On Chrissy’s model she
posits the position in the middle as being key – that the truth, as the I-Ching
so often advises us, lies in holding to the middle way. This is where the Tao lies.
My own experience in
organisations was that the approach of leaving aside emotion and making
decisions based on policies rationally decided was a disaster because it lacked
any heart and so decisions which looked fine on paper ended up being put into
practice in inhuman ways in the name of consistency and equality. Similarly, a chaotic approach based on
individual whim was equally ineffective.
The only way was to think and reason with the heart. Ie. to reason including all four elements
of feeling, sensing, intuition and thinking. It was ironic that a later book review in the same New Scientist
describing fifteen scientific breakthroughs suggested how effective the
author had been in capturing the perseverance, the willingness to follow
hunches and the overcoming of jealousies, personal ambition and rivalry of
fellow scientists that had been necessary to achieve these breakthroughs. So, no
irrational emotions at play among scientists there then!
Perhaps we are ready
collectively in this age of Aquarius to step away from getting caught by polarities
and instead to work constructively with these creative tensions, these polarities. Can we embrace all four modes of being; sensing, thinking, feeling and intuition without polarising into camps of "us" and "them"? Certainly it will require us to have the humility to put our own house in order rather than demanding others put theirs in order.
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