At a time before the Scientific Revolution, in fact for about 10 to 14 centuries before the Scientific Revolution, there was one sole source of authority in which you go to for truth about the meaning and nature of reality. This was the Roman Catholic Church. They had claimed complete ownership of authority as to the nature of the spiritual realm (of subjectivity, consciousness, mind, soul etc.), the divine realm (of supernatural influences, miracles, divine intervention etc.) and to the physical realm (especially pertaining to the origins of earth, origins of life on earth, and the order of the universe). As to the nature of the physical realm they claimed that a geocentric view of the universe, as laid out by Aristotle and the Greek astronomer Ptolemy, was The Truth and it could not be refuted.
However, at the beginning of the Scientific Revolution there were a few natural philosophers, as they called themselves, who were devising alternate theories of the universe. Copernicus was the first amongst these to devise a heliocentric view of the universe in which the earth was not at the center of the universe but instead revolved around the sun, which was at the center and in fear of e Church he did not want his ideas published until after his death. Given that this challenges the geocentric system held by the Roman Catholic Church it is surprising that there were members high in the church who urged the reluctant Copernicus to publish his heliocentric system. Perhaps this was due to the fact that, at this point, the heliocentric view Copernicus devised was purely a mathematical formulation. It did not even prove mathematically the heliocentric view over the geocentric one, for both were mathematically possible, rather it was simply a more simplified and elegant mathematical model. Furthermore, the geocentric view is supported by common observation that we experience the planets and stars revolving around earth and that the earth does not move. The heliocentric theory put forth by Copernicus, and further refined and modified by Johannes Kepler, would not be taken seriously by the Roman Catholic Church until nearly a hundred years later when Galileo Galilei decided to point the telescope upwards to the stars and planets.
When Galileo pointed the telescope upwards, of course after refining it to be a reliable tool of observation, for the first time in history he began to make empirical observations that refuted the geocentric theory of the universe put forth by Aristotle and Ptolemy and claimed as the truth by the Roman Catholic Church on the basis of scripture. Although Galileo was a devout and faithful Roman Catholic he was not making these observations as a member of the church but as a natural philosopher. It is this distinction that made Galileo a major target of the Church. He was not just refuting the truth held by the Church, for this has already been done by those like Copernicus and Kepler without much attack from the Church. He was making a claim that “We natural philosophers have ways of empirically investigating physical reality that the Church does not. And that if we natural philosophers empirically discover, by way of reliable tools and methods of observation, that you are wrong when it comes to the physical realm then you cannot refute our observations.” For he was claiming a piece of this authority that the Roman Catholic Church has held for 14 centuries, leaving the Church with the spiritual and divine realms. Oh but did the Roman Catholic Church not like this, putting him under house arrest until his death. While Copernicus is often considered as to have sparked the Scientific Revolution it is Galileo who ignited it, by beginning the long battle over these pieces of authority that even continues to this day but in a much different scenario.
The natural philosophers, who would come to be known as natural scientists, had to fight against the dogma of the Church in order to build this wonderful scientific tradition we have today as the source of authority over physical phenomena. After 400 years of investigating the physical world scientists have made remarkable discoveries probing further into the depths of the universe and penetrating all the way to the very microscopic world of quantum mechanics. Along the way many scientific discoveries have been made that challenge the authority of the Church and the Bibles account of the physical world. One of the biggest and most recent ones is the evolutionary theory of the origins of our species. As a result of such controversial discoveries many scientists and non-scientists today regard science as the sole authority as to the nature of reality in entirety, leaving the realm of the divine as unscientific and thus to the theologians and now claiming authority of the spiritual realm by concluding that it simply emerges from and is nothing other than manifestation of the physical world. This is a serious claim and one that is not based upon irrefutable scientific evidence but rather irrefutable faith that it is (based upon authority claimed by scientists) and will be shown to be scientifically true. Thus any claims about our subjective nature made by authoritative religious and contemplative figures are regarded as unscientific and not real. Since scientific methods can only observe the physical world and science has the authority as to the nature of reality; the nature of reality is thus physical. In short, this is the metaphysical doctrine of scientific materialism in the Church of Scientism.
Science is the the methodological investigation of the nature of reality not a metaphysical premise about it’s nature. The ideals of skepticism and objectivity are central to it’s mode of investigation to battle against dogma and metaphysical principles while avoiding the superimposition of our desires, beliefs, and emotions on our observations. Nevertheless many scientists and non-scientists (anybody of the non-scientific community) alike often conflate Scientism with science and thus give greater authority to scientific truth claims about the physical world than to religious truth claims about the nature of our subjective world. It is not always easy to understand how much influence Scientism has not only on aspiring scientists but the general public when one does not look for it. But it becomes readily apparent once we start attending to it, for we are educated in it from the time of elementary school all the way up to higher education without once doing a double take and questioning this.
Towards the end of the 20th century and now into the 21st century scientists are again taking the topic of consciousness seriously as a field of investigation. However the vast majority of scientists exploring this field are doing so under the authority of Scientism. And since the doctrines of Scientism are physical the investigation of consciousness is done solely by way of physical phenomena and instead of using the normal mode of scientific investigation by observing the phenomena of interest directly only the behavioral and neural correlates of consciousness are observed and counted as real data while neglecting any introspective data. Furthermore, any attempts to explain or propose a theory of consciousness as existing independently from the physical brain and having any causal efficacy on the brain is deemed non-scientific. Any scientists who does this must go up against the Church of Scientism just as Copernicus and Kepler were afraid of challenging the Roman Catholic Church.
The point I want to get across here however is that while Copernicus first devised a theory of the universe that seriously challenged the Roman Catholic Church that’s all it remained, a very elegant mathematical model of the universe that merely “saved the appearances” but was not physically real. It was not until Galileo directly observed celestial phenomena themselves, with a highly refined tool of observation, empirically refuting the geocentric view held by the Church and bringing reliable authority to the scientific investigation of the physical universe that the Scientific Revolution was ignited. Similarly, Alan Wallace proposes that as long as philosophers of mind and scientists only argue the philosophical problems of scientific materialism and proposing alternative philosophical theories to include consciousness in our universe they will remain, just as Copernicus’ theory did for a hundred years, as elegant philosophical models and will be forgotten and make no real difference to a science of consciousness. Alan further proposes that what is needed to ignite another Scientific Revolution, this time (and for the first time) in the mind sciences, parallels Galileo and the igniting of The Scientific Revolution. There needs to be ways of developing a very refined tool of observing consciousness directly through first person observations of introspection and then this needs to be applied to the direct observation of mental phenomena just as Galileo developed and refined the telescope to directly observe celestial phenomena. Without such empirical observations employed by the rigorous standards of science our subjective nature (the spiritual realm) will forever remain in the grips of Scientism and the authoritative religious and contemplative claims about the origins, nature and potentials of our consciousness will remain in the dark.
This post is inspired by a talk given by Alan Wallace. Alan is always very passionate in his talks but this time you can truly sense his deep determination in bringing forth this vision into a reality. I have done a very amateur presentation of his vision here. For a full experience of his vision I invite you to listen to this talk by following the link below. For the more relevant aspects of this post feel free to skip the unguided meditation starting from about 55 minutes, into the talk, to 1:23:05.
http://podcasts.sbinstitute.com/spring2011/podcast-audio/41afternoon.mp3
Pingback: Introduction to the Scientific Revolution « Earthpages.org