The Missing Ingredient

Science holds a deep, extraordinary potential for us as individuals and as a society – a

potential that we might not immediately expect it has. This was recognized in Ancient Greece
where science was an integral part of what it meant to be a true philosopher – a lover of wisdom.
The lives of many of the early scientists, such as Copernicus and Galileo, clearly reflect the
extraordinary potential of science. It is these and other famous scientists that show us the true
potential of science - its ability to lead us into a deep relationship with the natural world, and to
find our own place in it.
Yet today, we have the wrong idea about science. As a society we have created a certain
impression of what science is, how it works and what it means. Since science is authoritative,
this impression of science is also our collective impression of what truth is. We live immersed in
this world view, almost as though it is part of the air we breath. The majority of scientists
themselves take on this impression as an unconscious and unquestioned assumption about their
work and the world we live in. However, I contend that our view of science (and reality) leaves
out a vital ingredient. If each of us took all of the science we experienced in school, and all of the
stories we hear about it today through the media and popular science programs, and all the
scientists themselves tell us, and threw these ingredients into a pot, then the dish would be a
failure. Like a recipe for bread that accidently left out the yeast, it would be missing the active
ingredient most needed for the whole recipe. At best we would create only a kind of stale and
indigestible flat bread.
The worst aspect of leaving something crucial out of our perception of science is that the
perception has become a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy. Scientists themselves have, without
knowing it, a limited view of science. Science has grown to reflect this view, and the crucial
missing ingredient – the topic of this essay - has increasingly been left out, suppressed, or glossed
over. This is so true that, in modern science, we would have to look very hard to find the
ingredient I’m referring to. In professional science itself we do not see it, practice it, or teach it,
and yet in many hidden ways, if we are lucky, it is there.
One tell-tale sign of our ingredient-deficient view of science is found in the common
experience of doing science. It’s fair to say that many (or most) people’s experience of the
practice of science, usually comprising a remembrance of being compelled to sit and learn it in
school, is not exactly positive. The results of science can be portrayed as exciting in television
programs like Nova, but the process of doing science as portrayed and experienced in school
laboratories throughout the world is dry, tedious and devoid of creativity or imagination. Instead
of a warm, fresh, mouth-watering bread, we are spoon fed the indigestion-giving, stale, flat bread
that is the dominant view of what science is.
Because modern science, under the influence of our ideas about it, has been very
successfully obscured the key life-giving ingredient, the easiest place to begin to be able see it is
in history – before it was completely obscured. But even there one has to look past many of our
ideas about how science happened, and how it advanced. One has to get a kind of fake
mythology of science out of the way before one can get a real taste of what actually occurred – a
taste of the missing ingredient.
The key to this approach to history is to include what a so-called “objective” history leaves
out – the inner lives, motivations and experiences of the famous scientists themselves. Many of
the prominent names in the history of science (such as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Darwin)
were really explorers, driven to open out a new frontier. They gave their lives to this exploration
with such a great passion that one might almost call it a religious fervor. What was it that
inspired and motivated these early scientists? It certainly couldn’t have been the lifeless view of
science given to us in our modern classrooms.
It’s good to remember that the beginnings of modern science occurred at times in history
when conditions were much different than today. To get a sense of the motivation and
experience of the early scientists we have to try to place ourselves in the culture and conditions of
the time – in the consciousness of the time. And, in doing so, I suggest that we might have to
open ourselves to the possibility that they were motivated by a deeper and much more holistic
vision of scientific inquiry, its place, and purpose in life than we have today.
To explore this, there is probably no better place to go in history than that period that is
typically cited as marking the beginning of modern science – the Renaissance. In this period
there occurs a monumental episode that seems to hold archetypal significance for modern
science. It is the “mythic beginning” of everything we now experience as science and we call it
the Copernican Revolution. It is here, so the story goes, that science emerged as distinct from
religion and began to become the accepted mode of inquiry into the real and the true. Hence we
call it the birth of modern science.
Appropriately enough, this mythic episode concerned differences between the Catholic
church and certain scientists over the structure of the heavens. The question arose as to whether
the Earth was the center of the universe, or the Sun. The Catholic church, along with most of the
astronomers from the prior 2000 years, held that the Earth must be motionless at the center of the
universe. Copernicus followed by Galileo said that the Sun must be at the center and the Earth in
motion around it. Copernicus was the first to create a predictive mathematical model to
demonstrate this idea.
The ensuing split between science and religion is something that continued to deepen with
time, and basically continues to this day. The reason for this can be found in our view of history
– our developing view of how science progresses and advances. This view suggests that the
arrival of a new scientific theory is data driven. This means that as new data are accumulated,
old theories no longer fit or explain the data and new ones are required. For example, in this view
we assume that Copernicus advanced his theory because of new data on the motion of the planets
that no longer supported the old Earth-centered view. This data-driven process is an objective
one with theories only emerging when required by the data. No need for religion – in fact
religion is seen as getting in the way of this process. The only problem with this data-driven,
historical perspective on how science advances is that, as we’ll see below, it’s not what actually
happened
There is something puzzling that comes to light if we do actually consider the inner lives,
motivations and experiences of the early scientists (or any scientist for that matter) rather than
just the “facts.” If we include what we can find out about their internal motivations, the actual
writings of Copernicus and Galileo, for example, reveal that, far from being opposed to religion,
they would have regarded their scientific ideas as being inspired by their religious faith, and that
the result of their inquiries was a deepening of it. It was not as though science and religion were
unrelated for these explorers. In fact they were closely tied. If science were a purely objective
process, then it’s hard to imagine how this could be so. Clearly something else was going on for
these explorers – something that we don’t find in our modern school laboratories.
This sense is further reinforced when we realize that the Copernican (heliocentric) model of
the solar system did not provide an improved fit to the data available at the time. It required just
as many tweaks and added complexities as the older Earth-centered theory. This is inconsistent
with our idea that data is the thing that drives scientific change. To drive this home it is
interesting to note that, in terms of an actual proof of the heliocentric model, it would take
another 200 years or more after Copernicus for that to arrive. Nevertheless, the Copernican
model gained traction and after Galileo and then Kepler began to become the accepted one.
Why?
The clues to this go back even further in time. The real beginnings of modern science can
be traced to the first times that mathematics was applied to the physical world. A time when
observations (or experiments) were first described and “explained” mathematically. This did not
really begin with Galileo, often described as the father of modern science, but with the ancient
Greeks and probably Pythagoras. He and others at the time apparently realized the mathematical
nature of music and harmony. When they looked to the heavens they perceived that the planets
(there were five known at the time) moved according to the same kind of mathematics, forming a
harmony called they called “musica universalis” - the music of the spheres.
For the Pythagoreans there was clearly a kind of order or harmony that underlay the
universe, and this order could be revealed through mathematics. It pointed to a kind of unity in
creation and, hence, it was the reflection of a higher law. Mathematics and science were the
required beginning of an esoteric spiritual path for the Pythagoreans and the study of these
disciplines opened a window on a deep mystery.
So at this time in history science was a kind of doorway to an experience that one might
easily call religious (in the esoteric sense). There was an intimate connection between science
and spiritual experience. If we roll the clock forward to Copernicus and Galileo, they were
obviously experiencing something similar – science deepened their religious faith and experience,
and was a part of it.
In fact, the Renaissance was a time when the ideas and teachings of ancient Greece were
being revisited in a big way. Copernicus was very influenced by the ideas of Pythagoras (and
others) and the idea of the music of the spheres. The existing and complicated Earth-centered
theory clearly offended his sense of harmony. He saw a way to make better music – a way that
created in Copernicus a deeper sense of the unity of creation. Expressed in the language of the
time, this new harmony provided a “greater revelation of God’s glory.” There were openly
metaphysical and aesthetic aspects to his work. Contemplation of the heavens was virtually a
spiritual practice for Copernicus. Like the Pythagoreans, his perception of the harmony in nature
led him to a deeper connection with its mystery. His vision of a sun centered universe was first
and foremost an aesthetic vision – one informed by his scientific training. Though he had to
make his model fit the data it was clearly not data-driven – the time for the idea of a sun-centered
universe had arrived.
Looking at this first of the major paradigm shifts in scientific understanding, and at
subsequent major shifts, it becomes apparent that something else is clearly involved in driving
scientific progress. Rather than being data-driven, when looking at the subjective experience of
the great scientists, it appears that the “truth” arrives first as a kind of aesthetic experience. The
deeper workings of the universe are actually perceived. This seeing touches some deep chord in
the perceiver. This chord is something that could motivate a person to devote their lives to
furthering that truth and even risk their lives for it. The scientists are almost possessed by the
visions they have, and they are completely convinced – issues with the data do not matter.
There seems to be a kind of dual nature to these insight experiences – on the one hand
something important about the world’s workings is perceived, and on the other hand there is
gained a sense of how deep this world goes. In other words, as a new horizon opened there was
simultaneously a foreknowledge of infinite horizons. And those horizons draw the scientist
onward to discover more. There is also a sense of unity, wonder and awe that characterized these
experiences - a deep sense of beauty and appreciation for the workings of life and the universe.
Einstein said that the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.... The fact that it
is comprehensible is a miracle…, and I’m sure this quote is often misunderstood. Far from
feeling that he knew everything about the universe – that he had explained it – his seeing the
harmony (the comprehensibility) deepened his sense of the unknown mystery of it all – the
infinite depths. This clearly captivated him. In fact he was taking the first steps of a Pythagorean
path.
The sense of harmony, beauty and wholeness can be traced from the beginnings of science,
through to our own experience, and all the way into modern science. In modern science theories
are assessed by their “elegance,” and equations are often called “beautiful.” Einstein said that
Maxwell’s equations were so beautiful that they had to be true. One has to ask whether there’s a
connection between this sensibility, the Copernican Revolution, and the Pythagorean spiritual
path. In fact every revolution in science bears the hallmarks of this. The fact is that all the major
paradigm shifts of science have happened before the data actually supported them. There was
very often a religious or spiritual feeling instilled in the scientists themselves.
Today, the physicists at the frontiers of fundamental science are busy searching for a unified
theory. They are convinced that there is one truth at the heart of our universe. This isn’t very
logical or rational. Why should we think that is so – why could there not be many truths
underlying our universe? Physicists are captured by a vision of one fundamental truth. It is an
aesthetic vision. Copernicus would have understood.
The ground breaking scientists were all possessed by a vision that had an aesthetic power.
They saw the possibility of a better music and a better harmony. But for most of these scientists
there was a dual effect of their new theories. There always seems to be something of the mystic
in the great scientists. In seeing more deeply the harmony of the universe, they gained an
experience of its mystery. Like Copernicus, their investigations provided for the greater
revelation of God’s glory.
And this is what is exciting about science. This is the yeast that makes it rise – it is the
missing ingredient. In science we play around with the intelligibility of the universe so that we
can have a greater experience of its true nature, and our own true nature. On the one hand
comprehensible and on the other irretrievably mysterious. Learning about the universe should
awaken wonder and awe – it should reveal that we know but really do not know. And that should
be exciting - it should spur us on to look further and more deeply. In our view of science we
could put back the missing ingredient that is so needed. Then it would become apparent that a
science class could be the first step on a spiritual path, and that it could lead us to a deep sense of
connection and place in this universe.