PZ Myers - The Deepest Links (on Evolution)

A very cool article from Seed Magazine (well, really it's from Pharyngula's PZ Myers) on they ways in which evolution is an adaptive process.

The Deepest Links

Pharyngula / by PZ Myers / July 6, 2009

Evolution is a tinkerer. When novel features evolve, old parts are co-opted for new roles.

Illustration: Alison Schroeer

Open any biology textbook with decent evolution coverage, and you’ll find a version of a familiar diagram—a bat’s wing, a dolphin’s fin, a horse’s leg, a human’s arm. These vertebrate-limb structures are homologous, their similarities the result of shared origins in an ancestral mammal with a general-purpose limb. Evolution has modified each, but all have a common internal structure, a common embryological origin, and a fossil history that reveals a shared phylogenetic origin.

Comparative biology seems to make it clear that the limbs of invertebrates such as insects have different origins. There is little correspondence to what we see in our own structure: Insect limbs lack bones altogether. Embryologically, insect limbs arise as repeated segmental bulges in the cuticle. The comparative evolutionary history of vertebrates and invertebrates is most telling. The ancient chordate ancestors of our finned or limbed modern vertebrates were completely limbless, little more than undulating ribbons of eel-like swimmers, and our appendages are evolutionary novelties, less than 500 million years old. The arthropods, on the other hand, have been flourishing elaborate limbs for as long as they appear in the fossil record, beginning with tracks laid down in the pre-Cambrian, easily 500 million years ago. The last common ancestor of insects and mammals was a legless worm, and each of our lineages independently worked out how to build limbs, so they can’t be homologous.

The same can be said of other structures, like our eyes: The mirror eyes of scallops, the compound eyes of arthropods, and the camera eyes of chordates each represent a unique and unlinked solution to the problem of vision. We would not call a dragonfly eye and a human eye homologous—they seem so different, in so many ways, and the evidence suggests that our last common ancestor was eyeless, with little more than photosensitive spots.

And yet…

A curious phenomenon has nagged at biologists for the past few decades, as they have acquired better tools for probing deeper into the molecular biology of diverse organisms. Where they once assumed that the passage of vast amounts of time, over half a billion years in this case, would have produced divergences in the molecular patterns that govern animal forms as radical as those seen in the forms themselves, it now seems that something else transpired. As we discover more about the molecular basis of building structures like limbs and eyes, we’re finding more instances of homologous molecular players being recruited to do similar jobs in morphological features that are not themselves homologous.

Take insect and vertebrate limbs. They evolved independently, but the molecules that stake out the orientation and location of the various tissues within both kinds of limbs are homologous to an impressive degree. For example, a gene named distal-less in flies affects the tips of the limbs most strongly. A homologous mouse gene called Dlx, revealed as such by their nearly identical sequences, is similarly important in regulating the formation of the most distal elements of the limb.

The similarities go further. The dorsal-ventral boundaries of the vertebrate limb bud and the insect wing disc are established by a gene called fringe; other axes and boundaries are defined by genes in the wingless, apterous, hedgehog, and decapentaplegic families, and they operate in roughly similar ways in both groups of animals. This is like discovering that two cultures have independently invented a game like basketball, and then finding that while the games look vastly different in play, the court dimensions are the same, right down to the distance of the three-point line and the diameter of the center circle. It should make one question how independent their origins actually are.

The underlying similarities in eyes are even more striking. Eyes have evolved dozens of times and diverged wildly, as in the compound eyes of insects and the camera eyes of vertebrates, and have also on occasion converged on similar solutions. The octopus eye and the human eye superficially resemble each other from the outside, but structurally the tissues of each are organized in profoundly different ways, with different arrangements of cells in the retina, different kinds of photosensitive cells, and very different optic nerves. Dig deeper still, however, and all these eyes—octopus eyes, human eyes, fly eyes, spider eyes, flatworm eyespots—have a common master regulator gene, called Pax-6 in vertebrates and eyeless in flies. Wherever the animal expresses this gene, it initiates a cascade of activity that leads to the formation of an eye. And the genes are interchangeable! Extract Pax-6 from a mouse, inject it and express it in the limb of a fly, and the confused tissues of the fly will respond by assembling an eye—a fly’s eye—on its limb.

The photoreceptor types in the eyes were once thought to be distinct. Invertebrates have rhabodomeric cells that use a special version of the photopigment called r-opsin, and activate cells by a particular pathway called a phospholipase-C cascade. We vertebrates have ciliary cells, c-opsin, and a phosphodiesterase pathway. These are fundamental differences, and scientists have not changed their minds about the large differences between the two, but they have discovered an enlightening fact. Many animals have both! In our eyes, we primarily use the ciliary photoreceptors for vision, but we also maintain a set of rhabdomeric photoreceptors that have the job of sensing light to set circadian rhythms. Some invertebrates also have both, but they use the rhabdomeric receptors for vision and the ciliary receptors for circadian rhythms. It is not a difference in kind, but a difference in specialization and emphasis that distinguishes the visual systems of each lineage.

To make sense of the apparent conflict between anatomical divergence and a shared genetic inheritance, three biologists—Neil Shubin, Cliff Tabin, and Sean Carroll—have proposed that we need a new concept that they call deep homology. Evolution is a tinkerer that cobbles together new functions from old ones, and the genome is a kind of parts bin of recyclable elements. When new features evolve, the parts in the bin are co-opted to operate in new roles. As a result, the same parts appear in anatomically and evolutionarily distinct structures because it is faster and easier to reuse an old gene network that almost does what is needed, than it is to spend another few million years evolving a distinct gene for the function.

This makes these master genes precisely analogous to the stock of goods found in a hobbyist’s electronics store. Standard subunits—oscillators, op-amps, field effect transistors, switches, rheostats, and so forth—will get incorporated into many different kinds of projects; whether she is building a radio or a synthesizer or a burglar alarm, the hobbyist will find it easier to just grab an oscillator integrated circuit off the shelf than to design her own. We could sample devices built by different hobbyists with different purposes, and when we rummaged about in their insides, we would find the same subunits incorporated into novel, larger assemblies.

This is what we’re seeing in biology, too. We find an evolutionary novelty, like the vertebrate limb, and we can determine that it arose uniquely in our lineage. At the same time, we find a deeper heritage of shared genes that we hold in common with all other animals—a metazoan tool kit upon which we all draw to evolve.

Tags: evolution, Nature, Science, PZ Myers, The Deepest Links, Seed Magazine, Evolution is a tinkerer, Pharyngula, adaptation

God, Strings, Emergence, and the Future of the World By Nicola Hoggard Creegan

A new issue of The Global Spiral is out, with some great new articles that will be presented at the Metanexus Conference next week in Phoenix, AZ. I had planned to go, but life doesn't always conform to my plans.

Here's one of the many great articles.

God, Strings, Emergence, and the Future of the World

By Nicola Hoggard Creegan

Introduction

This paper is a part of a larger project in which I argue that a reconnection with nature, and a reconceptualization of nature, are necessary accompaniments to a well developed sensus divinitatis. Schleiermacher talks about faith being neither a knowing nor a doing but a kind of feeling, a sense of absolute dependence, and a consequent understanding of all things in and through the infinite.¹ Calvin mentions the sensus divinitatis directly, and also the connection between this sense and the natural world.² Like any capacity, however, it may remain undeveloped or under-developed. The sensus divinitatis may be awakened by connection with, and participation in the natural world—as centuries of mystics testify—although this connection is then explained by and made meaningful in sacred narratives.

The twentieth century has not been an easy time for a theology of nature. This was the century of Karl Barth and a turn away from nature in the interests of affirming the otherness and holiness of God. At the same time, neo-Darwinians taught us to look at all order as only design-like (spandrels). The indeterminacy of the quantum level, combined with the random nature of biological mutation, made any sense of divine presence in nature much more difficult to discern.

The resulting mix of positions in science and theology tended to gravitate either towards a deism, like that espoused by the 2006 recipient of the Templeton Prize, John Barrow, or to the process-like position of many others, like Ian Barbour. Even with the latter, however, there is little sense that God is revealed in nature; in a process theology of nature there is only the presence and influence of God understood as a continuous but perhaps indiscernible lure.

Towards the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, however, there has been a pronounced turn back towards a theology of nature. This has been inspired in part by the growth of eco-theology and by an increasing awareness of the fragility of the planet, and is evident in the new theological language of recent years. Alister McGrath has written on the re-enchantment of nature.³ More recently Anna Primavesi speaks of appreciating the paradoxical in nature,⁴ while those within the ranks of radical orthodoxy argue for a participatory ontology, that is, the understanding that all things exist in and through God rather than as independent beings in their own right, a mistake they credit first to Duns Scotus.⁵ Moreover, animals have now become the objects of theological attention and concern.⁶

But what bearing does this theological return to nature have on science, and what place does science have in illuminating eschatology? I will argue that science and theology, including eschatology, should be brought into conscious dialogue at a level of deep grammar. Negative judgments about the compatibility of science and theology are usually made at the level of intuition. This is the level at which the sensus divinitatis is operating or has been stilled. Many assume that science knows almost all there is to know. We can trace the very small and the very large; we know how cells work, how galaxies hang together and how protein folds. Intuitively it is felt that talk of life after death or of a new heavens and a new earth is incommensurate with such scientific knowledge. Where in all the 12 billion years worth of space might there be room for such things?

Shifts of emphasis in the sciences are changing all this. I will argue that there are a number of aspects of the physical world now apparent to contemporary science which makes a conversation between science and eschatology more fruitful and more fitting than was previously the case. For science and eschatology to have any rapprochement requires the possibility of discernment of purpose within nature and the recognition that that we do indeed see all finite things “in and through the infinite,” that there is an infinite depth to reality, and that we observe only a very small part in the aspects we know as ‘nature.’ Both purpose and depth are of the essence of an eschatological outlook, one which believes by faith that God has not dangled ‘eternity’ in our eyes only to take it from us, but that there will be an end or telos to all things, when “God will be all in all.”⁷ For this to be possible, even though it will always be inscrutable and the movements of God are hidden, requires that we believe in a bigger world than the one we grasp, even in its present immensity, and also that we discern a direction, a movement within a larger whole which can be described as the perception of purpose.

Recent developments in science which are compatible with these eschatological evidences include i) a re-interpretation of evolutionary development that gives more weight to the nature of the constraints under which random mutational change works, and hence more weight to the direction these constraints impose on the process; ii) the advent of the science and philosophy of emergence, in which it is recognized that new ontological states emerge in unpredictable ways from previous states and that the universe will undoubtedly experience more of these; iii) chaos theory, and the pioneering of the physics of strings and of eleven dimensions, of which our small four dimensional time-space continuum is but a small subset. I will argue that the first of these give rumours of purpose and that the second and third present hints of an immensity beyond that which we can see and comprehend. All of this is required if the grammar of eschatology and that of science are to be even partially reconciled.

This new science speaks of a world of wonder and immensity and paradox, a world that can be seen as “re-enchanted” because it is more dense, more interconnected, and more numinous than it once appeared. Science is beginning to glimpse what was once the domain of human intuition and fantasy. What we know of this world is necessarily limited; we can apprehend only a very small slice of all there is. We no longer need to attempt to reconcile transcendent religious longing and hope with the machine-like world of earlier science. In the flat land of scientific modernity God appeared to have so few resources with which to work eschatologically. The more science reduced life to molecular activity and agonized over how many cells constituted personhood, the more it became unthinkable to believe in post-mortem existence. The more scientists believed they were close to cracking the comprehensive understanding of reality, the less room there appeared for the unseen things that faith describes. Now the near impossible glimpses of the future attested by individual and corporate eschatology encounter an almost equally impossible science. Of course eschatology will always remain a matter of faith, something affirmed, as Schleiermacher intimated, at an intuitive, feeling level. But its vision of the future becomes less unthinkable in a natural world which, contemporary science shows, confronts us with its strangeness and otherness.

If we can perceive of God as closely involved in this vast and complex and paradoxical natural world, the more resources God can appear to have to bring a new order of being into existence, an order that is in continuity as well as in discontinuity with this one. If we are able to catch a glimpse of God’s presence in the natural world, our faith in the purposes God has for the natural world will only be increased. At the same time the faith intuitions we experience at the level of feeling are more likely to be satisfied by the juxtaposing of these with scientific understandings.

In what follows I do not explore how we might imagine the resurrection state, or life after death, or the new heavens and the new earth, or how we might understand them scientifically. Much of that necessarily remains obscure, even if wondering “what if” is intriguing and a part of the imagination of piety. In a paradoxical sense, the whole of God’s revelation is densely hidden. Moreover death itself has still a “sting,” a part of which is our not knowing and not being able to understand God’s activity. We may even be said to intensify the sting of death by our illusory sense of understanding comprehensively what, in fact, we really understand so superficially.

My goal is to examine the ways in which science has limited our imaginations and deadened our intuitive connection to God through nature, and to identify some of the ways in which newer understandings of science, which are more compatible with a theological formulation of God’s surprising and unexpected work in creation, may encourage that connection. For if we are able to re-conceptualize nature as purposeful, and divinely imbued—even if tragically flawed for whatever reason—a conversation between science and Scripture, and particularly a conversation with eschatology, becomes both feasible and rewarding.

I will proceed by examining first the grammar of theology, to show that Christian theology has always assumed God’s presence in and guidance of creation. I will then examine three aspects of the scientific understanding of creation which, although not demanding of a theological interpretation, do allow more interaction with theological notions of eschatology.

The grammar of theology

Christian eschatology, at least in its more orthodox conceptions, necessarily points to the future, to an after-life and to a whole new order. But to what extent does it really speak of nature as intrinsically God’s? Is recent theological language of re-enchantment a new and imaginative reconstrual of traditional belief? Or is it the case, as I believe it is, that Scripture and theology have always affirmed that the whole of the natural order is undergirded by and permeated with the divine.

Many theologians speak of space and time as theological concepts. The old theological language of creation, providence and governance of nature, together with newer understandings of God’s proleptic call to the future, speak undeniably of God’s indwelling of nature. When theologians speak like this, they point to a deep grammar of God’s immanence in and ultimate concern for creation rather than a day by day meddling.

The testimony of Scripture

Throughout Scripture there is explicit and implicit mention made of God’s intimate involvement with the natural world. Parts of Scripture, like passages which speak of the trees “clapping their hands” (Isa 55:12), could be dismissed as mere metaphor. But the witness to God’s closeness to creation is found in every part and at every level the Scripture. It is not just that “in the beginning” everything was made good. There are affirmations that life itself is God’s special preserve, that life is induced by the breath of God (Gen 2:7). God exists in covenant relation with humankind and “with every living creature of all flesh” (Gen 9:11). Therefore our fate and the fate of all creation is closely linked with God’s.

Throughout the Old Testament there are references to the earth as God’s temple,⁸ the sphere God fills with God’s presence, and images of temple continue on in the New Testament, albeit with slightly changed reference. Christ, as well as being the son of Mary and Joseph, has cosmic connections. He is both a bringer of the gospel, and also a calmer of the seas and a worker of miracles in the natural sphere. His followers are told to preach the gospel, not just to human beings, but to the whole of creation (Mark 16:15). At the end of the canonical story, we learn that there will be a new heavens and a new earth and that God will dwell with us on earth (Rev 21).

More than any other player, it is the Holy Spirit who speaks of God’s closeness to the cosmos. The Spirit is that boundless, relentless love of God set forth in redemption and in creation, to blow wherever it wills, to inspire and to revive the dull (Ezek 37) and to raise the dead (Rom 8:11) Speaking of the Spirit, Denis Edwards writes: “The Spirit breathes life into the universe and all its creatures. The story of the Spirit begins not with Pentecost but with the origins of the Big Bang.”⁹ “The Spirit,” he continues, “can be thought of as the ecstasy of the divine Communion, the pure abundance and free overflow of the divine life immanent in creation and grace.”¹⁰

One passage where all of this is brought to a climax is Colossians 1:15-19.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.

Whatever this poem means, it is scarcely reconcilable with a shallow mechanical view of the world. Nor is it reconcilable with an entirely knowable or wholly random universe, nor with a universe in which God is absent or even appears to be absent. The text does not require some arbitrary projection of ontology onto trees or nature, but it does require, at least, an appreciationof the billions of years connection between God and the natural world, long before humans ever arrived, a recognition of what Ruth Page calls “pansyntheism”, God with everything.¹¹

Scripture, then, speaks of a God who is in intimate contact with and governance of nature. Theology, from whatever period, also speaks in terms of God’s intimate indwelling of all that exists.

Theology before Darwin

Before Darwin there was ample theological testimony to this God of nature. “The medieval view of nature, inherited from remnants of the Aristotelian, Platonic and Christian views,” was, as Neil Evernden argues in The Social Creation of Nature, “one resplendent with notions of vitality and otherness, overflowing with the ‘signatures’ of God, its creator. Nature was not ours to tame or to own. It was God’s and could only be known empathically.”¹²

If subsequent theology can be accused of ignoring nature, it is only because its story of human salvation has at times eclipsed proper attention to the natural world. Jonathan Edwards stands out as a prime example of a theologian before Darwin who took the creation seriously, and who studied it as a way of understanding God. Wallace Anderson describes how Edwards “portrayed reality as the emanation, the ‘breathing forth’ of God. The word and idea were somehow unified in an epistemological, metaphysical, and even ontological sense, and conveyed the larger, underlying unity of God and creation.”¹³ This is exemplified by Edwards himself in the Images and Shadows of Divine Things:

Therefore ‘tis allowed that God does purposely make and order one thing to be in an agreeableness and harmony with another. And if so, why should not we suppose that he makes the inferior in imitation of the superior, the material of the spiritual, on purpose to have a resemblance and shadow of them? We see that even in the material world God makes one part of it strangely to agree with another; and why is it not reasonable to suppose he makes the whole as a shadow of the spiritual world?¹⁴

Edwards goes on to affirm the sense of purpose in both nature and theology by saying: “all the world, from growing things, to history of redemption is in a progressive state.”¹⁵

Contemporary theology

Edwards is not unique is his theological appreciation of nature. Consider, for example, Colin Gunton. Speaking of the doctrine of creation he says:

A third feature…also deriving from its Trinitarian structure, is that God remains in close relations of interaction with the creation, but in such a way that he makes it free to be itself. God’s transcendence as the maker of all things is not of such a kind that he is unable also to be immanent in it through his ’two hands.’¹⁶

Conservation, preservation, providence, and redemption, he continues, “are all to do with the way God works in and towards the creation”.¹⁷ All of these are evidence, too, that God has purposes for creation which are not entirely obscured. More recently Robert Jenson has underlined this view when he says:

Theology need not demand that the sciences reopen themselves to teleological explanations–though for all anyone know this too might prove beneficial. But even if the particular sciences must continue to bracket teleology, it is integral to any plausible general interpretation of the world.¹⁸

Such theology is shot through with affirmation that God is very close to the natural world, that God’s glory is revealed in nature, and that the natural world requires the ongoing work of God to exist. God is not posited as a weak force, nor as one secondary cause among many others; rather the “grammar” of God suggests One on which all else is intimately and continuously dependent, acting so to speak at right angles to all other causes. This coheres with the steadfast view of Scripture in which Spirit and logos are the very essence of life and order. The deist picture of the world, now so common, is not found in Scripture at all. Nor to be found there is the Barthian suggestion that God is revealed only through the Word, nor the Calvinist belief that our fallenness is so great that we cannot naturally perceive God’s presence in the beauties of the world around us.

This rich biblical and theological appreciation of nature invites dialogue with science. One objection to such dialogue may be to claim that the two disciplines are non-overlapping magisteria, whose deeper structures never touch. Yet theology has always resisted the idea that knowledge can be compartmentalized in this way. Faith in God’s truth also resists any absolute demarcation, demanding that the two disciplines be brought together in some way, even if this means, as it does for creationists, that modern science is rejected.

A more promising alternative is to attempt a “transversal juxtaposition” of the worlds of science and theology. In this method, developed so well by J. Wentzel Van Huyssteen, the metaphors and life-worlds of two or more disciplines are brought into respectful contact.¹⁹ Neither is reduced to the other, and neither discipline can trump the other. Science cannot trump religion’s sense of the numinosity and promise of nature, something to which Scripture refers and which so many ancient societies lived within. This sense of wonder and promise must always be present in any attempt to understand nature and eschatology, whether theologically or scientifically.

Science beyond quantum and the machine world

Yet the twentieth century was not an easy time for reconciling theology with science. Theology was wary, but in part because science gave so little with which to work. Machine models of the universe were common, and although a certain strangeness entered the scientific scene with quantum mechanics, in some ways this only gave us another kind of randomness, in addition to that implicit in natural selection. Neither shallow mechanism nor randomness appeared reconcilable with the deep careful molding of creation by the God of theology and Scripture. John Haught expresses the dilemma this way:

The main issue now as always, is that of how to reconcile evolution with the idea of divine providence. After Darwin, what does it mean to say that God ‘provides’ or cares for the world?...What most perplexes theology is the Darwinian recipe for the evolution of life over the last 4 billion years.²⁰

Haught’s answer is to go “deeper,” to the see the creativity of God as inherent in randomness, and to appeal to the notion of God’s kenosis in Christ’s incarnation in the world. Others attempt to resolve the dilemma by proposing that we should be seeking, not evidence of God’s purposes in nature, but instead God’s purposes for nature.²¹ Still others, like Alister McGrath, appeal to the way in which all explanations of nature are socially constructed, arguing that Christians have every right to choose to construct reality as God’s creation.²² Yet none of these approaches speaks to the deep unease that scientific portraits of the world create for theological grammar, especially in the area of eschatology.

The approach I wish to advocate stems from recognition that our intuitive religious sense, and our sense of wonder, depend upon a deep connection to nature. Seeing God in and not only for the natural world is vital for faith. I am convinced that there has been a long evolutionary process, that we are kin in more ways than one to all the animals, but I am not convinced that God’s involvement in this process must be opaque. Yet nor do I think that God’s hand is as obvious as some proponents of Intelligent Design claim. If the hand of God is at work, it is in the subtle fabric of the evolutionary process itself.

Beyond Darwin

We may begin with Darwinism, which is particularly interesting because it has been in a dialogue of sorts with theology for over a hundred years now. Darwinism, of course, is no longer just survival of the fittest and natural selection; it has long since become more sophisticated. On its edges there are understandings which have gone beyond traditional Darwinian reductionism and are already operating within a paradigm more conducive to theological notions of telos. Jonathan Sapp has recently given us a tour of the heterodoxy of evolutionary interpretation in the previous one hundred and fifty years.²³ If Sapp is right there have always been less orthodox voices in the evolutionary mix, and evolution may be construed as equally cooperative and competitive; information flows also from the gene to the environment and backwards as well. With the cracking of the human genome and recent strides in evolutionary theory there have been subtle changes, moving the ground just far enough from a Dawkins-type Darwinism to be more conducive to the idea of formal and final causes behind the evolutionary processes.²⁴

For one hundred and fifty years, give or take a few mavericks, and less known schools of thought, evolution has been seen in a functionalist way, as gradually adding information to the DNA structure, driven only by a randomness the blunt instrument of survival with vague notions of fitness fields hovering somewhere in the background. There is a whole school of evolutionary thought, however, which has until recently received almost no attention. Stephen J. Gould discusses this in a paper entitled...”A Developmental Constraint in Cerion.”²⁵ In this paper Gould discusses the place of constraints in the evolutionary process. Gould, himself had some sort of failure of nerve and reverted back to his doctrine of historical contingency and natural selection in the last decade of his life.

There are now a huge number of other approaches to evolution than the ones made popular in the human mind by Richard Dawkins who is always slanting the Central Dogma of evolution toward one that leads inexorably to the presumption of atheism. The best known alternative voice in this respect is Simon Conway Morris, Cambridge palaeontologist of the Burgess Shale. Conway Morris notes that the evolutionary process comes up with the same or similar answers again and again, namely a pattern of parallel evolution or “convergence”. He likens this to the progression of Polynesians out of Asia into the Pacific Islands. They did not, apparently, go randomly out into the ocean to meet an almost certain death. They had a method for finding islands, using currents, and then returning to base if they found nothing. Evolution proceeds similarly, Conway Morris argues, not selecting from a random set of possibilities but from a much narrower number of outcomes. Some as yet unknown mechanisms guide the evolutionary process toward specific goals, like sentience and spirituality.²⁶ Moreover the scope of this convergence appears to be almost endless in itself. There is a convergence of intelligence, albeit different kinds of intelligence. The prime examples of this is the parallel development of intelligence in crows and apes. Another example, though, is the development of a distributed non-central type of intelligence in colonies and plants. Molecules also exhibit this convergence.²⁷

Constraints and self-organising elements, creativity in the very centre of life, all point to a process which is ‘guided’ from below by deep inner principles of life, by a geometry of sorts—suggestive perhaps of logos. The mystery of life itself is evocative of the constant upholding of being in a dimension at “right angles” to our present existence. Thus God works from below and more actively to uphold all that exists, without in any sense cancelling the freedom, nor the apparent randomness and indeed historical contingency of parts of the process of evolution. What matters to theology here, is that the process is not at heart one of randomness, driven only by the ever pressing will to survive and dominate others. There are deeper, more loving, gentler aspects at work which can be seen to set the direction of the evolutionary process.

This makes more possible a reconciliation of evolutionary theory with theological impulses which affirm the salvation of humans and of creatures as the telos or end of history. If there are deep constraints, working at the level of natural law, as strong and as constraining as gravity and the weak and strong nuclear forces, then we are dealing with a very different phenomenon. This makes more possible the sense that there might be final causes working alongside the efficient and material causes in nature. And if purpose is discernible, as argued in the introduction, then science and eschatology are more compatible.

John Haught, in a recent address, urged us to recognize that evolution can be seen in this multi-layered way, that scientific explanations need not exhaust the possibilities for explanation of a biological event. Nevertheless, offering explanations at several different levels only works if these do not contradict one another or cancel one another out. Natural selection by blind mutation has always had a grammar all but incompatible with that of the indwelling logos and life breathing Spirit. Newer understandings of evolution may break this deep incompatibility and open up new visions of a biology consistent with final causes. In this way, although theology is not directly adding to science, it is contributing to the sense or meaning of the picture science presents.

Others who enter into more exploratory engagements with evolutionary theory include Stuart Kauffmann, Michael Denton, Sean Carroll and Christian de Duve.²⁸ Ian Stewart draws links between mathematics and biology, arguing for levels of reality working in such a complex fashion that they are unpredictable by human observers. The idea that mutations allow an organism to explore its “phase space” and that these are mathematically situated in some as yet unknown manner is subtly but importantly different from the genuinely random mutations of neo-Darwinism.²⁹ Stewart does not at all deny natural selection, which is responsible, he thinks, for the forward movement of the evolutionary process, but he does insist that the constraints on the evolutionary process are of great importance and have been overlooked. These constraints are mathematically determined and are responsible for the recurring patterns and fractal type proportions—not to mention beauty—that keep re-emerging within biology. This sort of understanding of evolution is much more compatible with the perseverance and governing love of God that is a purely random process without constraints.

Both Conway Morris and Ian Stewart allow an understanding of evolution as full of promise and direction, although not a direction that in any sense undermines or devalues the steps along the way. Both see evolution as law-like and humanity as in some sense the telos of evolutionary progress. This resonates with an eschatological paradigm. While we cannot look to evolution to find the key to the universe, or to know God’s ultimate purposes, the theological idea of an ultimate eschatological purpose behind reality is consistent with a progressive evolutionary process, and much less consistent with a random process in which there are no guiding constraints. None of it is conclusive or definitive. A strictly atheistic or agonistic explanation is still always possible. But what was barely audible in science a few decades ago, the possibility of seeing purpose and connection in the natural world, is now being beginning to be heard.

In this respect it is sometimes hard to overestimate the deadening role that Darwinian reductionism has had on religious perceptions for over a century, teaching us systematically to read design as random order. Yet Darwinian insights can also vastly expand and enrich our theological life. Darwin has enabled us to understand deep time and to appreciate the radical interconnection of all life, bound together by common ancestry, insights rich in theological potential.

Emergence, chaos theory and strings

The other characteristic of a science that might speak in the same grammar as theology is one that is aware of the depth of nature beyond our knowing, even our possible knowing. This sense of depth is important in allowing faith space to work. The theory of “emergence” is another clue to God, or at least the possibility of God, and hence of an eschatology. Emergence is recognizable in a number of natural phenomena. Take the hardness of water as it freezes for example. At a certain point a new phenomenon occurs which is not reducible to previous states, even though it has emerged out of them. The universe seems to be full of examples of emergence at every level, of solid planetary bodies from gaseous precursors, of light emerging out of darkness 900,000 light years after the Big Bang, perhaps of life emerging out of the primal mud, of consciousness out of the long evolution of hominids.³⁰

In a world dominated by positivism and reductionist science, distinct levels of reality have long been explained away. Emergence, at least in some of its forms, counters this reductionism, claiming that higher ontological levels really do exist, that direction and movement toward another level is not illusory. There is now a whole science of emergence, with strong and weak forms, and with various thresholds being debated depending on whether the new state can be predicted, whether it acts back upon the substrata, where it is composed or non-composed.

One of the theological repercussions of the science of emergence is that however thorough we think our knowledge of the universe to be, it is likely to be very scant. For inevitably there will be new emergent levels in the future about which we can know nothing or very little in the present. Although a new emergent level sometimes “makes sense” backwards it cannot be predicted or anticipated forwards. This gives us hope that there will indeed be a final, eschatological transformation which will emerge out of this universe, a universe which currently appears to be headed only for annihilation, darkness and emptiness.³¹ Emergence does not necessitate such but it does begin to open up the possibility within the imaginable for the first time in two hundred years. Extrapolating from present parameters gives us only future death—of our species, of our sun, of our galaxy. But extrapolating from previous emergences of new phenomena suggests there may be surprises in the future we cannot yet envisage or begin to imagine. Overall, a conception of strong emergence points to hierarchies of existence, and to an ongoing process whereby the universe, presumably as it is indwelt by God and transformed by incarnation, gives rise by an emergent process to new and surprising states of being.

Similarly, there has been an explosion of interest in string theory. String theory postulates that the universe is constituted, not of elementary particles, but of resonating strings in ten or eleven dimensions. Surpassing string theory is M theory—the very recent contender to the “theory of everything”—which goes further and postulates that reality is lived on a membrane in eleven dimensions. If true, string theory/M theory affords a view of the world that is more wonderful and strange than ever before. It is a world not only of eleven dimensions but of parallel universes.

Physicists are not yet decided on string theory, though some form of testing will be done in the new particle Hadron accelerator in 2010. I am inclined to believe that even if string theory is not true, then something even more improbable is needed to describe reality. For one thing, mathematics deals easily in multiple dimensions. If it can be done it in two or three dimenions, why not in four or eleven. Mathematics also becomes paradoxical around the infinite. There are higher and lower levels of infinity. There are other paradoxes at the heart of mathematics, in set theory for instance. If the universe is reflected in some way mathematically, then it is not surprising that it would also bear puzzles and paradoxes far beyond our grasp, however sophisticated our theories may become. String theory, then, gives us glimpses of immensity, placing our present four dimensional existence into perspective, and is therefore very conducive to a conversation with theology, and in particular with eschatology.

Chaos theory also breaks up the old deterministic mechanistic worldview. Chaos theory postulates the existence of complex systems in which slight differences in boundary points lead to widely varying end results. Neither the initial conditions nor the end result is predictable, yet patterns of great beauty emerge out of these systems. Chaos theory can be used to ‘model’ everything from storms and air flow to economic systems. Chaos give us glimpses of order—in spite of its name—emerging out of unpredictable and highly variable states. These have been understood to mirror both the orderedness and the ‘freedom’ of complex reality. Chaos also gives us a sense of depth and breadth and a tantalising beyondness to our grasp of physical reality, suggesting the possibility of God and of an end point in and beyond the chaos.

I commented earlier that we are sometimes tempted to wonder whether God has enough resources to bring off the eschaton, especially when the cards seem stacked against the very survival of life on this planet. Developments in physics, such as M theory and string theory, give reason to pause, and caution against asking too many pedantic questions about how exactly life after death fits into our truncated views of reality. For strings give us a glimpse of the enormity of God’s resources, the enormity of the project that would bring the universe or universes to another phase of existence. Worm holes, parallel universes, and eleven dimensions are like rumours of the mysterious interconnections between heaven and earth.

Conclusion

All of this makes possible what has been absent for a long time—a theology of nature that is truly in “transversal” conversation with science. But this is only possible if Christian believers become less cautious about their engagement with science. A new science is giving us a renewed sense of our interconnection with all things, of our relationality, and of the numinosity, extraordinary depth and prodigious richness of nature.

This change of paradigm extends also to ourselves. Just as God has become one with us, we too must recognize our oneness with nature. We must journey conceptually back into nature, to recognize the richness of the nature that has brought us forth, inspirited as it is by God. The journey must be spiritual, emotional and rational, for our connection to nature and our sensus divinitatis contain elements of all of these. The way we think about nature inevitably affects our intuitions and attachments to God. If we can reconnect with the natural world, we may be able to reconnect with God, and with the story of God that has its resolution in resurrection and return.

---

Notes

1 Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, translated by John Oman (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958), 36.; Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, edited by H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart (Fortress, 1976), 36f.

2 John Clavin, Institues, Vol 1:3,

3 Alister McGrath, The Re-enchantment of Nature (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2003)

4 Anne Primavesi, Sacred Gaia (Routledge, 2000), 69f

5 Catherine Pickstock, John Milbank, Graham Ward, editors, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology, (Oxford: Routledge, 1999) 50f

6 See for example, Andrew Linzey, Animal Theology (London: SCM, 1994)

7 1 Cor 15:28

8 See for example Rikk Watts’ discussion of this in Rikk Watts, "The New Exodus/New Creational Restoration of the Image of God," in What Does It Mean to Be Saved?, edited by John G. Stackhouse (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerAcademic, 2002).

9 Denis Edwards, Breath of Life: A Theology of the Creator Spirit (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004), 171.

10 Ibid. 174.

11 Ruth Page, God and the Web of Creation (London: SCM Press, 1996), 40.

12 See Neil Evernden, The Social Creation of Nature (Baltimore/London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1992).

13 Wallace E. Anderson, "Editor's Introduction," in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, edited by Wallace E. Anderson, Mason I. Lowance Jr., and David Watters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 26.

14 Jonathan Edwards, "Images and Shadows of Divine Things," in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Typological Writings, edited by Wallace E. Anderson, Mason I. Lowance Jr., and David Watters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 53, #8.

15 “Images and Shadows” #10

16 Colin E. Gunton, "The Doctrine of Creation," in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, edited by Colin E. Gunton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 142.

17 Ibid., 143.

18 Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology: The Works of God. Volume 2. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 128

19 J.Wentzel Van Huyssteen, Alone in the World?: Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006)

20 John F. Haught, "The Boyle Lecture 2003: Darwin, Design and the Promise of Nature," Science and Christian Belief 17/1 (2005), 5.

21 Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett, Evolution from Creation to New Creation: Conflict, Conversation, and Convergence (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2003), 167.

22 Alister E. McGrath, Scientific Theology, Volume 1, Nature (London & New York: T&T Clark, 2001), 110f, 33.

23 Jan Sapp,Genesis: The Evolution of Biology, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)

24 Ian Stewart, Life’s Other Secret: The New Mathematics of the Living World, (New York: John Wiley, 1998)

25 Stephen J. Gould, “A Developmental Constrain in Cerion, with Comments of theDefinition and Interpretation of Constraint in Evolution, Evolution, 43/3, (1989), 516-539

26 Simon Conway Morris, Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 2.

27 See Simon Conway Morris (ed) The Deep Structure of Biology, (Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2008)

28 Christian De Duve, Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative, (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Michael J. Denton, Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, (New York: The Free Press, 1998); Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom, ( New York: W. W. Norton, 2005); Stuart Kauffman, The Origins of Order, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)

29 Stewart, 111.

30See for example, Philip Clayton, Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

31 William R. Stroeger S.J., "Scientific Accounts of Ultimate Catastrophes in Our Life-Bearing Universe," in The End of the World and the Ends of God: Science and Theology on Eschatology, edited by John Polkinghorne and Michael Welker (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000).

Tags: God, Strings, Emergence, Future of the World, Nicola Hoggard Creegan, The Global Spiral, Metanexus Institute, Science, Religion, Spirituality, Nature, sensus divinitatis, theology

Educating Compassion by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Another great article from Thanissaro Bhikkhu, all of which are available at this Access Insight website. Compassion is basis of my approach to life, so I am always trying better to understand its right use.

Educating Compassion

by

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

© 2006–2009

If you have any friends or family members who are sick or dying, I know of no one who would tell you to treat them in a hardhearted way. Everyone would agree that you should be as compassionate as you can. The problem is that there's little agreement on how compassion translates into specific actions. For some people, compassion means extending life as long as possible; for others it means terminating life — through assisted suicide or euthanasia — when quality of life falls below a certain level. And neither of these two groups sees the other as compassionate at all. The first sees the second as criminal; the second sees the first as heartless and cruel.

For those of us trying to negotiate the murky territory between these two extremes, there's not much reliable guidance. Ours is a culture that doesn't like to think about illness and death, and as a result, when faced with someone who's sick or dying, we're at a loss as to what to do. Some people will advise you simply to do what feels right, but feelings have a way of turning slippery and devious. Some things feel right simply because they make you feel good, regardless of whether they're genuinely right for the other person. A desire to extend life may mask a deeper fear of your own death; a desire to terminate a miserable illness may rationalize your distress at having to witness suffering. Even if you're told to act from a place of mindful presence, you may find that what seem to be your spontaneous inspirations are actually conditioned by hidden, unexamined assumptions about what life and death are all about.

This is why the simple injunction to be compassionate or mindful in the presence of a sick or dying person isn't enough. We need help in educating our compassion: specific advice on how to think through the implications of our actions in the face of life and death, and specific examples of how people who have contemplated these issues thoroughly have actually acted in the past.

With this thought in mind, I searched through the Pali canon — the oldest extant record of the Buddha's teachings — to see what lessons could be drawn from the Buddha's example. After all, the Buddha often referred to himself as a doctor, and to his Dharma as medicine for the sufferings of the world. From his point of view, we're all sick and dying on a subtle level, so we all deserve continual compassion. But what sort of advice did this doctor give when face-to-face with the flesh and blood suffering of illness and death? How did he treat people who were physically sick or dying?

You probably know the story of how, together with Ven. Ananda, he once found an unattended sick monk lying in his own filth. After washing the monk, he assembled the other monks, chided them for abandoning their brother, and gave them strong incentive to follow his example: "Whoever would tend to me," he said, "should tend to the sick." He arranged that monks nursing their fellow monks should receive special allotments of food, to encourage them in their work and help lighten their burden. But he didn't subscribe to the notion that medical treatment should try to extend life at all costs. The Vinaya, his monastic discipline, imposes only a minor penalty on a monk who refuses to care for a fellow monk who is sick or dying, or who totally abandons a sick monk before the latter recovers or dies. And there's no penalty for withholding or discontinuing a specific medical treatment. So the rules convey no message that the failure to keep life going is an offense of any kind. At the same time, though, a monk who deliberately ends the life of a patient, even from compassionate motives, is expelled from the monkhood and can never reordain in this life, so there's no room for euthanasia or assisted suicide.

This means that the middle ground is where true compassion can be exercised. The Buddha sets out some guidelines for this area in his definition of the ideal nurse. You're qualified to tend to the sick if (1) you know how to prepare medicines; (2) you know what's amenable to the patient's cure, taking away whatever's unamenable and providing things that are amenable; (3) you're motivated by compassion and not by material gain; (4) you're not squeamish about cleaning up urine, excrement, saliva, or vomit; and (5) you're competent at encouraging the patient at the proper times with talk on Dharma.

Of these five qualifications, the one most discussed in the Pali canon is the fifth: What qualifies as a helpful and compassionate talk on Dharma to a person who is sick or dying? What doesn't?

Here again, the don'ts mark off the territory for the do's. The Vinaya cites cases where monks tell a sick person to focus his thoughts on dying, in the belief that death would be better than the miserable state of his life. The sick person does as they advise, he dies as a result, and the Buddha expels the monks from the monkhood. Thus, from the Buddha's perspective, encouraging a sick person to relax her grip on life or to give up the will to live would not count as an act of compassion. Instead of trying to ease the patient's transition to death, the Buddha focused on easing his or her insight into suffering and its end.

This is because he regarded every moment of life as an opportunity to practice and benefit from the Dharma. It's a well-known principle in all meditation traditions that a moment's insight into the pain of the present is far more beneficial than viewing the present moment with disgust and placing one's hopes on a better future. This principle applies as much at the end of life as it does anywhere in the middle. In fact, the Buddha encouraged his monks to reflect constantly on the potential imminence of death at every moment, even when in ordinary health, so that they could bring a sense of urgency to their practice and give the present moment their full attention. If you learn to treat all moments as potentially your last, then when your last moment does come you will face it prepared.

Most often, though, a sick or dying person hasn't been living with this sort of urgent alertness, so the first step in advising such a person is to aim at clearing away any emotional obstacles to learning from the present. The Pali texts note two such obstacles: worry over the responsibilities the person is leaving behind, and fear of death. In one poignant discourse, a man appears to be dying and his wife consoles him not to worry: She'll be able to provide for herself and their children in his absence; she won't go looking for another husband; and she'll continue in her practice of the Dharma. With each reassurance she repeats the refrain, "So don't be worried as you die. Death is painful for one who is worried. The Blessed One has warned against being worried at the time of death." The man recovers unexpectedly and, while still frail, goes to visit the Buddha, telling him of his wife's reassurances. The Buddha comments on how fortunate the man is for having such a wise and sympathetic wife.

As for fear of death, the Buddha notes that one of the primary reasons for this fear is the remembrance of hurtful or cruel things you've done in the past. Thus the Vinaya shows that monks would often console a fellow monk on his deathbed by asking him to call to mind something more positive — his highest meditative attainment — and to focus his thoughts there. In a similar vein, a common practice in Asian Buddhist countries is to remind a dying person of the acts of generosity or virtue he or she has performed in this life. Even if the person is unable to muster the mindfulness and alertness needed to gain further insight into the present, any Dharma talk that helps allay worries and forestall fears is an act of true compassion.

The Buddha comments, however, that there are three additional reasons for fearing death: attachment to the body, attachment to sensual pleasures, and a lack of direct insight into the unconditioned Dharma of the Deathless. His more advanced instructions for sick and dying people thus focus on cutting these reasons for fear at the root. He once visited a sick ward and told the monks there to approach the moment of death mindful and alert. Instead of focusing on whether they would recover, they should observe the movements of the feelings they were experiencing: painful, pleasant, or neutral. Observing a sensation of pain, for instance, they should notice how inconstant it is and then focus on the repeated dissolution of all pains. They could then apply the same focused alertness to pleasant and neutral feelings as well. The steadiness of their focus would give rise to a sense of ease independent of sensory feelings, and from this point of independence they could develop dispassion and relinquishment, both for the body and for feelings of any sort. With relinquishment would come a genuine insight into the Dharma which, being Deathless, would end all fear of death.

On another occasion, Ven. Sariputta visited the famous supporter of the Buddha, Anathapindika, who was on his deathbed. After learning that Anathapindika's disease was worsening, he advised him to train himself: "I won't cling to the eye; my consciousness won't be dependent on the eye. I won't cling to the ear; my consciousness won't be dependent on the ear," and so forth through all the six senses, their objects, and any mental events dependent on them. Although Anathapindika was unable to develop this independent consciousness in line with Sariputta's instructions, he asked that these instructions be given to other lay people as well, for there would be those who would understand and benefit from them.

Obviously, these recommendations are all shaped by the Buddha's teachings on how the state of one's mind influences the process of death and rebirth, but that doesn't mean that they're appropriate only for those who would call themselves Buddhist. Regardless of your religious beliefs, when you're faced with obvious pain you're bound to see the value of any instructions that show you how to reduce suffering by investigating the pain in and of itself. If you have the strength to follow through with the instructions, you're bound to want to give them a try. And if you encounter the Deathless in the course of your efforts, you're not going to quibble about whether to call it by a Buddhist or non-Buddhist name.

This point is illustrated by another story involving Ven. Sariputta. Visiting an aged brahman on his deathbed, Sariputta reflected that brahmans desire union with Brahma, so he taught the man to develop the four attitudes of a Brahma — infinite good will, compassion, appreciation, and equanimity. After following these instructions, the brahman was reborn as a Brahma after death. The Buddha, however, later chided Sariputta for not teaching the brahman to focus instead on investigating pain, for if he had, the brahman would have experienced nirvana and been freed from rebirth altogether.

What's striking about all these instructions is that, from the Buddha's point of view, deathbed Dharma is no different from Dharma taught to people in ordinary health. The cause of suffering is in every case the same, and the path to the end of suffering is the same as well: comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, realize its cessation, and develop the qualities of mind that lead to its cessation. The only difference is that the obvious proximity of death makes teaching the Dharma both easier and harder — easier in that the patient is freed from extraneous responsibilities and can see clearly the need to understand and gain release from pain; harder in that the patient may be too weakened physically or emotionally, through fear or worry, to put the instructions into practice. But whatever the case, it's worth noting that up to the moment of death the Buddha would have you focus less on the limitations of the situation than on the potential opportunities. Even one moment of insight in the midst of pain and suffering, he said, is worth more than one hundred years of good health.

From my own personal experience — both in watching my teachers implement these instructions and in trying to implement them myself — I've learned two major lessons. One is that the patients best suited for making the most of the Dharma when sick or dying are those who are not tormented with memories of cruel or hurtful things they did in the past, and who have already developed a meditative or contemplative practice prior to their illness. Even if that practice isn't Buddhist, they intuitively respond to the Buddha's message on pain and are able to use it to alleviate their own sufferings. The lesson here is that as long as you know you're going to die someday, it's a good idea to avoid cruel actions and to get started on a meditative practice of your own, so that you'll be prepared for illness and death when they come. As my teacher, Ajaan Fuang, once said, when you meditate you're gaining practice in how to die — how to be mindful and alert, how to endure pain, how to gain control over wayward thoughts and maybe even reach the Deathless — so that when the time comes to die, you'll do it with skill.

The second lesson is that if you want to help other people overcome their fear of death, you have to learn how to overcome your own fear of death as well, by abandoning attachment to the body, abandoning attachment to sensual pleasures, avoiding cruel actions, and gaining direct insight into the Deathless. With your fears overcome, you'll be much more effective in teaching the Dharma to those on their deathbed. You won't be disturbed by the physical horrors of death, you'll be able to communicate directly to the needs of the dying person, and your words will carry more weight, for they come from direct experience. Your compassion will be educated not by books or feelings, but by a clear insight into what dies and what doesn't.

Ultimately, these two lessons boil down to one: Meditate, as an act of compassion both for yourself and for others, even if death seems far away. When the time comes to die, you'll be less of a burden on those who are caring for you. In the meantime, if you're called on to comfort those who are sick or dying, your compassion will be more genuinely helpful, and you'll have a more effective message to teach.

Provenance:

©2006 Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

Transcribed from a file provided by the author.

This Access to Insight edition is ©2006–2009 John T. Bullitt.

Terms of use: You may copy, reformat, reprint, republish, and redistribute this work in any medium whatsoever, provided that: (1) you only make such copies, etc. available free of charge; (2) you clearly indicate that any derivatives of this work (including translations) are derived from this source document; and (3) you include the full text of this license in any copies or derivatives of this work. Otherwise, all rights reserved. For additional information about this license, see the FAQ.

Tags: Educating Compassion, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Buddhism, compassion, education, Dharma, middle ground, Theravada, meditation, death

SciAm Mind - Do Parents Matter?

Well, of course they do. But in what ways, and how much? Nature vs. nurture continues to be a central argument in the psych world (at least in research). But on the ground, most of us agree that it's a little of both. Jonah Lehrer sorts it out with Judith Rich Harris.

Do Parents Matter?

A researcher argues that peers are much more important than parents, that psychologists underestimate the power of genetics and that we have a lot to learn from Asian classrooms

By Jonah Lehrer

Editors' note, 7/8/09: This article was adapted for Scientific American Mind magazine from the Mind Matters article, "Do Parents Matter?", which was published online at ScientificAmerican.com on April 9, 2009.

* * *

In 1998 Judith Rich Harris, an independent researcher and textbook author, published The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do. The book provocatively argued that parents matter much less—at least when it comes to determining the behavior of their children—than is typically assumed. Instead Harris argued that a child’s peer group is far more critical. The Nurture Assumption has recently been reissued in an expanded and revised form (Free Press, 2009). Scientific American Mind contributing editor Jonah Lehrer chatted with Harris about her critics, the evolution of her ideas and why teachers can be more important than parents.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND: Freud famously blamed the problems of the child on the parents. (He was especially hard on mothers.) In The Nurture Assumption, an influential work that was published 10 years ago, you argued that parents are mostly innocent and that peers play a much more influential role. What led you to write the book?

JUDITH RICH HARRIS: It wasn’t just Freud! Psychologists of all persuasions, even behaviorists such as B. F. Skinner, thought the parents were responsible, one way or the other, for whatever went wrong with a child. One of my purposes in writing the book was to reassure parents. I wanted them to know that parenting didn’t have to be such a difficult, anxiety-producing job, that there are many different ways to rear a child, and that no convincing evidence existed that one way produces better results than another.

But my primary motive was scientific. During the years I spent writing child development textbooks for college students, I never questioned the belief that parents have a good deal of power to shape the personalities of their children. (This is the belief I now call the “nurture assumption.”) When I finally began to have doubts and looked more closely at the evidence, I was appalled. Most of the research is so deeply flawed that it is meaningless. And studies using more rigorous methods produce results that do not support the assumption.

MIND: How did the field react?

HARRIS: The initial reaction was far off the mark. Professors of psychology were asked to give their opinion of the book before they’d had a chance to read it, so their comments were based on what they had heard about it. Many of them responded by saying that “Harris has ignored a great deal of evidence.” But when pressed to specify the evidence I had ignored, they’d name the very same kinds of studies I had mercilessly dissected in the book. Or they’d tell the journalist about a study that hadn’t yet been published but that, when published, would prove that Harris was wrong. My attempt to track down those unpublished studies is described in my second book, No Two Alike [W. W. Norton, 2006].

As time went on, the professors calmed down. Some of them began to listen to what I was saying, perhaps because I was also publishing articles in academic journals. My work is now cited in many psychology textbooks and assigned in college courses. Of course, most developmental psychologists still don’t agree with me, but at least they’re acknowledging that there’s another point of view.

There has also been some improvement in research methodology, not because of my nagging but because of a greater awareness of genetic influences on personality. It’s no longer enough to show, for example, that parents who are conscientious about child rearing tend to have children who are conscientious about their schoolwork. Is this correlation the result of what the children learned from their parents or of the genes they inherited from them? Studies using the proper controls consistently favor the second explanation. In fact, personality resemblances between biological relatives are attributable almost entirely to heredity, rather than environment. Adopted children don’t resemble their adoptive parents in personality. I’m not particularly interested in genetic effects, but the point is that they have to be taken into account. Unless we know what the child brings to the environment, we can’t figure out what effect the environment has on the child.

MIND: Why do you think this is such a controversial idea? In other words, why are we so convinced that parents must matter?

HARRIS: It’s part of the culture. Questioning a cherished cultural myth is always risky. What most people don’t realize is that different cultures have different myths about the role of parents. The belief that parents have a great deal of power to determine how their children will turn out is actually a rather new idea. Not until the middle of the last century did ordinary parents start believing it. I was born in 1938, before the cultural change, and parenting had a very different job description back then. Parents didn’t feel they had to sacrifice their own convenience and comfort to gratify the desires of their children. They didn’t worry about boosting the self-esteem of their children. In fact, they often felt that too much attention and praise might spoil them and make them conceited. Physical punishment was used routinely for infractions of household rules. Fathers provided little or no child care; their chief role at home was to administer discipline.

All these things have changed dramatically in the past 70 years, but the changes haven’t had the expected effects. People are the same as ever. Despite the reduction in physical punishment, today’s adults are no less aggressive than their grandparents were. Despite the increase in praise and physical affection, they are not happier or more self-confident or in better mental health. It’s an interesting way to test a theory of child development: persuade millions of parents to rear their children in accordance with the theory and then sit back and watch the results come in. Well, the results are in, and they don’t support the theory!

MIND: Have your ideas changed at all since writing the book?

HARRIS: They’ve expanded rather than changed. I’ve filled in some holes. A few years after the first edition of The Nurture Assumption was published, I realized that the theory proposed in that book, Group Socialization Theory, was incomplete. It does a good job of explaining socialization—the way children acquire the behaviors, skills and attitudes approved by their culture—but a poor job of explaining personality development. As children become socialized, their behavior becomes more similar to that of their same-sex peers. But differences in personality don’t go away—if anything, they widen. Group Socialization Theory doesn’t explain, for example, why identical twins have different personalities, even if they’re reared in the same home and belong to the same peer group. That’s the puzzle I tackled in No Two Alike. The expanded version of the theory is based on the idea that the human mind is modular and that it consists of a number of components, each designed by evolution to perform a specific job, and that three different mental modules are involved in social development. The first deals with relationships, including parent-child relationships. The second handles socialization. The third enables children to work out a successful strategy for competing with their peers, by figuring out what they are good at.

MIND: You emphasize the importance of teachers in shaping a child’s development. How can we apply this new theory of child development to public policy?

HARRIS: I’ve put together a lot of evidence showing that children learn at home how to behave at home (that’s where parents do have power!), and they learn outside the home how to behave outside the home. So if you want to improve the way children behave in school—for instance, by making them more diligent and less disruptive in the classroom—then improving their home environment is not the way to do it. What you need is a school-based intervention. That’s where teachers have power. A talented teacher can influence a whole group of kids.

The teacher’s biggest challenge is to keep this group of kids from splitting up into two opposing factions: one proschool and prolearning, the other antischool and antilearning. When that happens, the differences between the groups widen: the proschool group does well, but the antischool group falls further and further behind. A classroom with 40 kids is more likely to split up into opposing groups than one with 20, which may explain why students tend to do better in smaller classes. But regardless of class size, some teachers have a knack for keeping their classrooms united. Teachers in Asian countries seem to be better at this than Americans, and I suspect this is one of the reasons why Asian kids learn more in school. No doubt there’s a difference in cultures, but maybe we could study how they do it and apply their methods here.

The tendency of kids to split up spontaneously into subgroups also explains the uneven success rate of programs that put children from disadvantaged homes into private or parochial schools. The success of these programs hinges on numbers. If a classroom contains one or two kids who come from a different background, they assimilate and take on the behaviors and attitudes of the others. But if there are five or six, they form a group of their own and retain the behaviors and attitudes they came in with.

President Obama has promised to restore science to its rightful place. I hope he realizes that its rightful place doesn’t have to be a laboratory. It can also be a school classroom.

Tags: Psychology, parenting, brain, education, Scientific American Mind, Do Parents Matter?, Jonah Lehrer, Judith Rich Harris, The Nurture Assumption, Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, nature, nurture

B Alan Wallace - Overlapping Worlds

Tricycle posted a link to this article in the following bit from their blog:

In our Spring 2003 issue, B. Alan Wallace wrote,

Buddhism, like science, presents itself as a body of systematic knowledge about the natural world. It posits a wide array of testable hypotheses and theories concerning the nature of the mind and its relation to the physical environment. These theories have allegedly been tested and experientially confirmed numerous times over the past 2,500 years, by means of duplicable meditative techniques. In this sense, Buddhism may be characterized as a form of empiricism, rather than transcendentalism.

Are Buddhism and science close relatives? If Buddhism disagrees with science, must we side with science? Read the whole article.

I'm posting the original article here, mostly because I enjoy reading anything Wallace writes. But if you have some thoughts on the Buddhism / science mesh, go leave them a comment at their blog.

Overlapping Worlds

By B. Alan Wallace

What do Buddhism and science have to offer each other? According to scientist and author B. Alan Wallace, quite a bit.

Buddhism, like science, presents itself as a body of systematic knowledge about the natural world. It posits a wide array of testable hypotheses and theories concerning the nature of the mind and its relation to the physical environment. These theories have allegedly been tested and experientially confirmed numerous times over the past 2,500 years, by means of duplicable meditative techniques. In this sense, Buddhism may be characterized as a form of empiricism, rather than transcendentalism. Of course, there are many divergent Buddhist views about the nature and significance of specific contemplative insights, but the theories and discoveries of science have also been open to varying interpretations over time. A major difference between science and Buddhism is that scientists largely exclude subjective experience from the natural world and attribute causal efficacy only to physical phenomena. Buddhism, in contrast, takes subjective mental phenomena at least as seriously as objective physical phenomena and posits a wide range of interdependent, causal connections between them.

To a much greater extent than modern psychology, for example, Buddhism presents rigorous means of investigating the causes of suffering and happiness. It is intent not only on counteracting suffering once it has arisen, but also on identifying and counteracting the causes of suffering before it arises. All conditioned phenomena arise from multiple causes, and the central theme of Buddhism is to identify the inner causes of joy and sorrow in particular, as they have been found to be more ctucial than outer, physical causes. This is perhaps the most scientific aspect of Buddhism, and it addresses issues in the realm of human experience and consciousness itself that have been largely overlooked by modern science.

One distinction commonly made between science and the contemplative traditions is that science entails collective knowledge, whereas contemplative insights are always private and cannot be shared. As the sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson points out, "One of the strictures of the scientific ethos is that a discovery does not exist until it is safely reviewed and in print." In other words, a discovery is not accepted by the scientific community until it has been reviewed and published. But a genuine discovery, of course, takes place well before it is published! And even after it is published, a scientific discovery normally can be validated only by a relatively small number of experts within a specific field of research. Other scientists and the general public will, for the most part, accept discoveries on the basis of their faith in the experts.

This situation is not so different from discoveries made by Buddhist contemplatives. The discoveries are made in terms of their own firsthand experience. The results then may be reported either verbally or in print, and are subject to peer review by their fellow contemplatives, who may debate the merits or defects of the reported findings. Critiques by anyone other than lifelong contemplatives are taken no more seriously than critiques of scientific theories by nonscientists.

But saying that Buddhism includes scientific elements by no means overlooks or dismisses the many explicitly religious elements of the tradition. As the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said of religion, Buddhism is very much concerned with human purposes, meaning, and value. But, like science, it is also concerned with understanding the realms of sensory and mental experience, and it addresses the questions of what the universe, including both objective and subjective phenomena, is composed of and how it works. Buddhism also addresses questions about the meaning and purpose of life, our ultimate origins and destiny, and our experiences of inner life. But the fact that Buddhism includes elements of religion is not enough to simply categorize it as a religion, any more than it would make sense to call it a science. To study this discipline objectively requires that we loosen our grip on familiar conceptual categories and be prepared to confront something radically unfamiliar to the West that may challenge some of our deepest assumptions. In the process, we may review the status of science itself, in relation to the metaphysical axioms on which it is based.

Indeed, Buddhism does not define itself as a religion or as a science, and traditionally it has made no distinction between religious truths and scientific truths. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who has taken a leading role in dialogues between Buddhism and science, has repeatedly claimed that if compelling scientific evidence refutes any Buddhist assertion, Buddhists should abandon the discredited assertion. This attitude stems, presumably, from the Buddhist belief that sentient beings are fundamentally subject to suffering due to ignorance and delusion, and the way to freedom is by coming to know reality as it is.

If scientific research illuminates errors in Buddhist doctrine, then Buddhists should be grateful for such assistance in their own pursuit of truth. In other words, the Dalai Lama is flatly rejecting the notion that Buddhism and science are like apples and oranges. And he equally rejects the idea that Buddhist assertions arc not subject to verification or refutation.

The way forward for Buddhism and science is through mutually respectful dialogue and collaboration in both empirical and theoretical research. This entails reaching out across disciplines and cultures to increase mutual understanding of areas of common interest. In terms of the interf~lCe between Buddhism and science, we must be conscious of the assumptions we bring to Buddhist studies, while entertaining the possibility of learning about the world from Buddhism, as opposed to studying this tradition merely as a means to learn about Buddhism. The aspects of Buddhism that are most inviting for such interdisciplinary inquiry are those that are accessible to empirical and analytical inquiry.

Moreover, such research will take fully into account the experiences of Buddhist practitioners, past and present, and will not focus on texts alone. In this way, Buddhism may be viewed as a form of "natural philosophy"-the label for early European science-challenging us to ask the deepest possible questions (as in religion) by means of rigorous logical analysis (as in philosophy) and empirical investigation (as in science). This way of grappling with Buddhist claims seeks an objective appraisal of not only the textual doctrines of Buddhism, but also its experiential insights. And objective appraisal of the latter may require testing these assertions by engaging in the Buddhist practices oneself, just as one might test a scientific theory by running experiments oneself.

The scientific engagement with Buddhism can shed fresh light on our own subjectivity, our own language, and our own categories-for example, of religion, science, and philosophy. By recognizing the unique contexts of both Buddhism and science, all participants in such dialogue can begin to escape the bad habit of giving privileged status to our own preconceptions. That alone is reason enough to embark on a cross-culturaland interdisciplinary-journey of understanding.

B. Alan Wallace lectures worldwide on the relationship between modern science and Tibetan Buddhism, and has served as an interpreter for the Dalai Lama during his meetings with eminent scientists. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Images: Mandala: © Patrick A. George; Skull: © Digital Vision

Tags: Buddhism, Science, Philosophy, B Alan Wallace, Overlapping Worlds, Tricycle, meditation, subjective, objective, brain, consciousness, religion, physics

Integral Spirituality By Terri O'Fallon

An article from Kosmos Journal, one of the only consumer magazines for integral theory and practice.

This is a metaphoric rendering from her subjective experience of what an integral spirituality might feel like.

Integral Spirituality

By Terri O'Fallon

Integral spirituality is the experience of a Sacred, embodied, evolutionary “now”, speaking through us in multiple voices. It incarnates all facets of our lives, inviting past and future into one moment. Integral spiritual practice, then, seems to be a consummate, persistent inquiry of many shades and shadows extending throughout life. Though our assumptions about reality restrict and bind us, they also protect us from tumbling permanently into those amazing states into which we “peak”, but do not yet have the energetic capacity to live in consistently. As the formless universe awakens to itself through form, like a sleeping child, our incarnated being begins to know the Sacred as the Sacred simultaneously knows us.

The beauty of this day awakens within me. The ocean tides in my eyes wash over my cheeks with the surprise glimpse of the elegance of the blue from which the sun arises, spilling its kisses onto the shimmering moss-filled branches in my back yard. I arise into the practice of the day, which calls me through its contours, finally, into the night.

I spend little time sleeping even though the night of sleep and dream is the other favorite part of my day. There is that small window of time between the night and the day that is so liminally inviting; the practice of the night calling me into the day and the practice of the day calling me into the night.

Lying in impending slumber I am aware of the gradual decreasing of my bodily rhythms. I witness a lightness of mind and a deepening of the heaviness of my body; the room lights up through closed eyelids and feelings of love course through every cell in my body. In time the body fades away. A dream eventually arises in my field of sight. As I watch it, fully alert, I feel no need to alter it in any way. This incarnated fleshy soul relaxes more deeply as the lucidity drifts away and on this night, for a while outside of time, there is nothing but Awareness.

A wispy dream begins to formulate as this borrowed body begins to arise into the consciousness of the morning practice. This lucid dream becomes so enlivening that even though Awareness knows it’s a dream, it is as real as a boulder in a stream. I have to ask myself, “Am I really dreaming, or am I actually awake”?

This is a prophetic dream. I just watch with ease and delight. I feel my body senses awakening as my dreamy state becomes diffused and wispy. Awareness of my soul infused body arises in full bloom. I sit up on the bed, and feet touch the floor like every other morning, but Awareness has something else in mind this morning. Awareness remains watching Itself dream as I stand shaking the sleepiness out of my eyes. I shudder with disorientation. Am I awake, or am I asleep and still dreaming?

Living fully into our earthly personhood as we “peak” into the transcendent, two prominent, implicit questions seem to be “Who am I?” and, “Who am I not?” Our embodied, immanent experience is with us in awareness from the day we are born. How can we wake up in consciousness to the everyday sacredness we hold within our flesh, skin, heart and bones, and unite it with the transcendent within which we are coming into being?

A question that arises in more comfortable times is “Who am I?” Steeped in the confidence of our own incarnate measure of knowing, there seems to be no other truth. “This is who I am!” In this full exploration of our knowing, we envision everyone else as having, or needing to have, these same beliefs. “Yes! This is the way the world works”!

But inevitably, a disorienting dilemma arrives; we tremble, wondering how we can survive this torturous and ghastly occurrence. We have no way to make sense of this experience. We flail, squirm and wish we could do something to get out of this agonizing space. Our assumptions and beliefs do not make sense any more. There is a discomfort in every cell in our bodies, for our beliefs are not large enough to make sense of the anguish we feel so deeply. Mind numbing fuzziness creeps into our ordinarily cogent mind; the simple task of making a “to do” list seems impossible; let alone the capacity to carry out a plan. We find ourselves living suspended in this liminal space where the being we once were no longer makes sense, and the being we are yet to be, has yet to emerge.

It may take a day, a week, months or even years; be it abrupt or gradual; the perturbation triggers the necessary neural connections to grow throughout the body, to meet, and to shake hands with one another. At that juncture, the entire world of belief and assumption expands to make sense of our suffering and to relieve the disorientation of the dilemma. With a gasp, we suddenly see who we are not… and, it is the person we used to be before the disorienting dilemma! The next investigation comes into view; “If I am no longer that person, then who is this new self that I seem to be?”

Read the whole article.

Tags: Integral Spirituality, Terri O'Fallon, Kosmos Journal, integral theory, spirituality, Philosophy

New Thinking on Metabolism

Not sure what I think of all this - it's pretty simple really, the human body evolved in the absence of any refined foods and simple carbs, therefore we are not likely to process them very well. As evidenced by the obesity and diabetes rates, which have risen in proportion to the amount of refined foods in our diets, we don't handle them well.

New Thinking on Metabolism

By Mary Kearl

Diane Kress, R.D., C.D.E. and author of the new book "The Metabolism Miracle: 3 Easy Steps to Regain Control of Your Weight ... Permanently" offers unsuccessful dieters a highly appealing explanation for failed weight loss attempts. Kress believes that the weight-loss programs themselves are to blame, claiming that diets don't work for 45 percent of dieters because they have a different kind of metabolism, which she calls "Metabolism B."

According to Kress, unlike those with "Metabolism A," calorie restriction doesn't help those with type B. Instead, she posits that people with "Metabolism B" have metabolic syndrome -- a cluster of symptoms including high blood pressure, cholesterol, trigylcerides and blood sugar and fat that collects around the waist. These people, she says, can eat all the calories they want, but need to watch their carbs -- both how many they eat and when they eat them. "Metabolism A" and "B" are not actual accepted medical terms, but we were intrigued by Kress’s argument and decided to dig deeper. See what she -- and other metabolism experts -- have to say about "Metabolism B" and meet some dieters who followed her advice and have reported losing weight.

"Metabolism B" and Metabolic Syndrome -- a Connection?

While metabolic syndrome has been a known health issue for 25 years, the cause -- a hormonal imbalance that leads to excess insulin production -- was only recently discovered, Kress notes. "Insulin is a fat-gain hormone, so it stands to reason that if your body is making more insulin than it should, you're going to have more fat on your body than you should and you're going to have more fat in your blood vessels, higher cholesterol, higher triglycerides and your blood pressure's going to go up," says Kress.

Thus the two-part "Miracle Metabolism" diet -- an initial eight-week low-carb program to ease the stress on the pancreas -- the organ that makes insulin -- and step two, which introduces what she calls "low-impact carbs" -- things like whole-wheat pasta, multigrain breads and fiber-filled fruits and vegetables, which she says must be regulated throughout the day to keep your pancreas from being overloaded with insulin.

What Experts Have to Say About "Metabolism B"

Kress may be taking liberties with some of the exact science, says Stuart Weiss, M.D. and assistant clinical professor at New York University School of Medicine, but he thinks that her plan has the potential to help dieters. "We do know that people who are at risk for metabolic syndrome do respond to a low-carb diet, with improvements in their metabolic parameters." And while he notes that pancreatic rest has not produced enough solid real-world results in the laboratory, "clinically it seems like it should work."

"She's right about two things. Certain carbs are more prone to push out more insulin," leading to fat build-up, says Ray Samoa, M.D. and endocrinologist at City of Hope hospital. Another potential benefit of following this diet is that, "If you lower blood sugar by eating more complex carbs, you won't get as much toxicity from higher carbs." He cautions that while this "makes sense with somebody with diabetes or pre-diabetes, the glycemic index is something that is not well established so it needs a lot of investigation. But anything that increases fiber seems to be a benefit for someone with metabolic disorder."

* * * * *

"The Metabolism Miracle" Diet Investigated

The Carb Counting vs. Calorie Counting Debate

As long as you're regulating your carbs -- spreading your "low-impact carbs" throughout the day, you don't need to count calories, says Kress. "The calories are not the issue, [you] could [follow] an 800-calorie diet, but if carbs make up 80 percent of your calories, you're never going to lose an ounce because your body is over-processing that carb," says Kress. "Not eating carbs will cause weight gain too. If you don't hit a minimum of carbs, the liver is designed to self-feed blood sugar … [at] the equivalent of a bagel's worth of carbs. So [you'll learn to eat the] carb amount that is restful to the pancreas, which will lead to weight loss every time for a person with Metabolism B."

Reducing calorie intake may not always work, agrees Dr. Weiss. "When there is insulin resistance in diabetes, the initial dietary changes do not necessarily produce weight loss. It may however change body-fat composition -- causing clothes to feel looser."

Dr. Samoa and Keri Gans, R.D. and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, caution that recommendations call for a well-balanced diet -- one that is balanced in carbohydrates, healthy fats and lean proteins.

"The benefit of a low-carb diet is still being evaluated, [but] the thinking is that it induces a low-insulin secreting state which in turn reduces appetite," says Dr. Samoa. "Insulin in itself is an appetite stimulator. There are so many things that influence insulin -- in regards to hormones, stress levels, one's eating habits, but low-carb diets try to manipulate this to induce weight loss."

Are There Really Two Types of Metabolism?

"I can't say based on science that there are two types of metabolism," says Gans. But, she adds, "The diet for metabolic syndrome would be basically a well-balanced diet. Part of a healthy diet that works for everybody, is monitoring all our nutrients -- not just carbs ... For what I can find, what she is saying might be truly anecdotal ... She does have years of experience and she is a registered dietitian, so perhaps she has seen [this hold true] with her patients."

Tags: New Thinking on Metabolism, AOL, fitness, nutrition, Health, metabolism, carbohydrates, metabolic disorder, The Metabolism Miracle

iEvolve - The Teal Shadow: Integral Expert, First-Tier Allergy

A great post on the dark side of making the jump into integral awareness, from Kelly Sosan Bearer at iEvolve. Go check out her site from some great integral content.

In Ken Wilber's integral model, Teal is the first integral stage, comparable to Yellow in the Spiral Dynamics model. It's the first stage at which, when healthy, is capable of honoring the value of all the first tier stages. Kelly looks here at what can happen in the stage when shadow material becomes prominent.

The Teal Shadow: Integral Expert, First-Tier Allergy

Sun, 05/10/2009 - 18:47 — admin

We all have shadows, or disowned, repressed, dissociated parts of ourselves, and as we grow and develop from one stage to the next, and even as we grow into higher stages of development, a simple fact remains — the shadow does not go away, but rather follows us as we ascend into the higher reaches of self. Is it possible that certain types of shadow qualities are more probable to arise at certain levels of development? When we apply this question to the integral or teal level of development, what types of shadow material will we generally encounter in both ourselves and others? When we have the courage to take an honest view of ourselves, and as we learn more about and live an integral life, what shadow tendencies do we see? Let’s explore, with a light heart and hand, the general flavors of shadow material that we may be grappling with specifically once we acquire an Integral awareness. See Figure 1. Two specific shadow manifestations that can potentially arise with Integral awareness, at the teal level of development, can be called the “integral expert” and the “1st tier allergy.”

We do not necessarily need to understand the Integral approach (or this chart) for our center of gravity to be stationed at teal. With that said, once we learn the Integral model, in all of its dimensions, we can often come away feeling like we now fully understand everything. Comprehending the Integral model helps us feel as though we can find a place for everything and anything we come across, both within and without, which is truly wonderful — but it can easily begin to eclipse our relationship with the Mystery, with the Great Unknown. Here, it is possible for the “integral expert” shadow to manifest. This shadow quality can actually inhibit our growth and development. For instance, if we feel that we know everything, why would we continue to explore how the Integral model manifests in real time? How is it possible to approach the mystery of existence from beginner’s mind? How can we let the grace of Spirit fall into us if we are closed to new possibilities arising? We want to be aware that the potential for this “integral expert” shadow to arise is very real and to notice how it manifests. This is no fault of the Integral approach, but an issue of translation on the part of the practitioner. Once we are integrally informed, there seems to be a tendency to feel like we know everything, while Integral wisdom simply suggests a few parameters to help honor everything we CANNOT know…

While it is true that “cognition is necessary but not sufficient” to grow into higher stages of consciousness, many of us tend to step off the developmental ladder once the mind is properly satiated. And what can satiate a thirsty mind more than Integral theory? Again, this is not a fault of the theory. For many, understanding cognitively the Integral approach seems to replace the need for true state training. We cognitively grasp the existence and importance of states. We are even cognizant of how they unfold in a stage-like progression, moving from gross to subtle to causal to nondual. See figure 1. What occurs is that we truly and rather innocently mistake the map for the territory. We can often find ourselves and others more interested in talking about practice, rather than actually engaging practice on a regular basis. We can be quick to judge without actually experiencing, first hand, these topics that so fascinate and intrigue us. There is a tendency to fall victim to the “talking school” or become “armchair” philosophers — meaning, we have a conceptual understanding, a cognitive understanding, but this understanding is not grounded in any real world experience, not grounded emotionally, experientially, socially, or relationally. This can be applied to much more than state training of course, and this is used as only one of many examples of how this “integral expert” shadow quality may arise.

In extreme cases, the “integral expert” shadow can actually manifest itself in a way where people begin to misuse the Integral model to disengage from the world, to hide from life, negating all responsibility. For example, if we are approached by someone who has feedback about our behavior, or how we have shown up in a meeting, or during an exchange, one response that seems to reflect this “integral expert” shadow quality is “you should 3-2-1 that”. We may not neccesarily say this outloud, but there is a tendency to internally experience this and so we brush off feedback — justifying ourselves by thinking “this person is just projecting onto me.” Instead of actually receiving, what could be very helpful feedback, we actually push it away. What is ironic here is that we actually push feedback away by using the 3-2-1 process instead of using the 3-2-1 process to go deeper into the feedback that was so graciously offered. What the Integral model invites, encourages and almost demands from us to do is actually participate in the world more, for the simple fact that we do have a greater understanding and awareness — not to use the tools of the model to hide or turn away from manifest reality. Learn it, live it, apply it… That is what the Integral approach calls us to do in every moment.

Another shadow quality that may arise at the teal level of development can be called the “first tier allergy”, which is the general resistance to participating with all structures prior to teal. This often shows up as mistaking the idea that people can be color coded according to the developmental model as seen in Figure 1. We are all probability waves, as Kohlberg points out — the probability of finding a particular behavior at a particular time tends to follow the 25-50-25 rule. But often too many of us walk around dismissing people as being “so totally green” or “way too orange”. With these strong judgements, we tend to cut ourselves off from 95% of the world. Elitism is fine — because everyone is invited, snobbery is not. All too often we come off as Integral snobs when we use developmental schemes as a way to judge others and ultimately ignore them simply because they are not inhabiting the same developmental space that we are. One of the major benefits of Integral awareness is that we can act as developmental wizards, understanding that each and every level of development is utterly needed and appropriate, that we can locate within ourselves all of the levels of first tier, and realize that everyone has the right to be at any stage they are stationed at. This is a Upaya, or a skillful means of the model — one that could potentially help the world tremendously in a number of areas from politics to spirituality, education to business, ecology to healthcare. The importance of understanding where someone is stationed developmentally is not to judge them and write them off completely, but rather to inform us so that we can then choose the best way to interact with this person to have the best possible outcome. This outcome is understanding. And an understanding that then translates into action in the world on the part of the person we were just engaging. Imagine if we were to touch one person a day with the implications of the Integral approach? The possibilities are endless.

Of course the “expert” and “allergy” can manifest at each developmental stage and these are generally a part of the growth process. As we grow from one stage to the next we tend to dis-identify with the stage we previously inhabited. Another way to say this is that we make our previous subject, object — we turn our 1st-person experience into a 3rd- person experience. During that process, it is almost certain that we can acquire an “allergy” (or an addiction, but that’s another blog post) to our previous level of development. Once we grow into a higher stage, it is also possible that with a deeper and wider understanding of self, we can feel as “expert” to our previous self. The difference at the integral or teal level of development is that the “expert” and “allergy” of the growth process in first tier, has the potential to actually turn into shadow qualities. We now have greater vision and responsibility to recognize the “integral expert” and “1st tier allergy” shadows and to work with these repressed aspects of self. Fortunately, the Integral model not only includes, but encourages us to work with our shadow traits. The 3-2-1 process is a great place to start.

--

Kelly Sosan Bearer

Tags: Integral, Psychology, shadow work, Kelly Sosan Bearer, Teal Shadow, Integral Expert, First-Tier Allergy, iEvolve, philosophy, 3-2-1 shadow process

Interview with B. Alan Wallace, Author of Hidden Dimensions

Columbia University Press posted this cool interview with Alan Wallace on his new book, Hidden Dimensions, which I will be reviewing for Wildmind Buddhist Meditation in the not-too-distant future.

Interview with B. Alan Wallace

In Hidden Dimensions, Wallace bridges the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual. Wallace's theory of ontological relativity suggests that mental phenomena do not emerge from the brain. Rather, they arise from a hidden dimension of reality that is more fundamental than the bifurcation of mind and matter.

Question: What is consciousness? Can you give us a basic sense of the different ways that this word is understood by scientists and Buddhists?

Alan Wallace: A primary strength of science is its array of empirical methods for measuring objective, physical, quantifiable phenomena and then subjecting the data from such measurements to quantitative analysis. But consciousness is subjective, it displays no physical characteristics, and it is qualitative, not quantitative. So it is invisible to all objective methods of measurement, and it eludes quantitative analysis. For these reasons, scientists have yet to come to any consensus regarding the nature of consciousness; they have no means of objectively detecting it; and they have yet to identify its necessary and sufficient causes.

A primary strength of Buddhism, in contrast, is its array of experiential methods observing mental processes and states directly, and this includes subtle dimensions of consciousness that are experientially accessible only to those who have achieved advanced levels of samadhi, or highly focused attention. There is widespread agreement among Buddhist contemplatives that consciousness bears two unique characteristics: luminosity and cognizance. "Luminosity" refers to the quality of consciousness of illuminating all manner of appearances, both physical and mental. It is only because of consciousness that the world we experience is imbued with colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile qualities. And it is consciousness alone that makes manifest our thoughts, emotions, dreams and all other subjective experience. "Cognizance" refers to the quality of knowing: not only do appearances become manifest to consciousness, but they are also known, or cognized. The multiple hues of a sunset appear to visual consciousness and they are also known for what they are by consciousness. These two qualities are unique to consciousness, and a world without consciousness would be one devoid of appearances and knowing.

Q: What grounds are there for believing that the mind is physical?

AW: In 1847, Hermann von Helmholtz presented a mathematical formulation of the principle of the conservation of energy, and subsequent generations of physicists have regarded this as the key to understanding nature as a whole. This principle lays the ground for the so-called "closure principle," which states that only physical phenomena can be influenced by or exert influence in the physical universe. The brain obviously influences the mind, and there is growing evidence that the mind influences the brain, and these provide sufficient reasons for most cognitive scientists to believe that the mind must be physical. Any alternative, they believe, leads to an antiquated Cartesian dualism or other kinds of unscientific, "magical" thinking.

Many people who adopt this view think that the category of "physical" is simple and straightforward, and indeed it was through most of the nineteenth century. But advances in physics since then have made it more and more difficult to determine exactly what the term "physical" denotes. One way of operationally defining it is: anything that can be measured with the instruments used by physicists or that can be defined in the language and concepts used by physicists. But this poses a problem: no subjectively experienced mental state or process can be measured with the instruments used by physicists, and none can be defined in the language and concepts used by physicists. Moreover, when we experience mental states and processes directly, they exhibit no physical qualities, such as spatial extension, mass, or velocity.

The principle of Occam's razor is: "It is vain to do with more assumptions what can be done with fewer assumptions." I believe it is high time to apply this principle of parsimony to the scientific view of the mind and simply acknowledge that we do not know whether the mind and consciousness are physical or not. Why, after all, should we believe that the universe fits neatly into a human conceptual category—the physical—which has undergone many changing definitions throughout the history of modern science?

Q: What are the necessary and sufficient causes for the emergence of consciousness?

AW: Neuroscientists are discovering more and more neural correlates to specific kinds of consciousness, such as visual perception, conscious memories, and so on. We know that in humans a properly functioning visual cortex, for example, is needed in order to generate visual awareness. So the eye, optic nerve, and visual cortex are all necessary causes for visual perception in human beings. But no one knows what it is about the neuronal configurations in the visual cortex that enables it to generate or even influence visual perception. So we don't know all the sufficient causes for any kind of consciousness. Moreover, researchers in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics are intent on developing conscious computers and robots, and they are assuming that non-organic processes may provide the necessary and sufficient causes for consciousness. It is not certain that a visual cortex is needed for visual awareness, so no scientist can say for sure what the necessary and sufficient causes of any kind of consciousness are.

Q: A number of eminent physicists, including Wolfgang Pauli, David Bohm, and Roger Penrose, as well as psychologists such as William James and Carl Jung have proposed that the world of mind and matter emerges from another dimension of reality that exists prior to this distinction. Is there any such view in Buddhism, and if so, how is this hypothesis put to the test of experience?

AW: Buddhists have long maintained that the physical world as we know it evolved from a subtler dimension of existence known as the "form realm." While the scientifically known universe is divided into the categories of mind and matter, the form realm transcends these coarse divisions. It is comprised of archetypal forms corresponding to the basic elements of physical experience—earth (solidity), water (fluidity), fire (warmth), and air (motility)—as well as subtle dimensions of consciousness that can be known only through the development of highly focused, refined consciousness known as samadhi. Classic Buddhist texts describe in detail how to achieve such states of samadhi, requiring hundreds or even thousands of hours of rigorous, continuous training, and how to use such refined attention to experientially explore the form realm and its relation to the physical universe.

Q: John Wheeler proposed that the universe exists as a "self-excited circuit," in which observers play an active role in generating the world of their experience. How does this hypothesis relate to the Buddhist view of emptiness and dependent origination?

AW: The Middle Way view of Buddhism declares that all observed objects exist only relative to the mode of observation by which they are detected, and all theoretical objects exist only relative to the conceptual framework in which they are conceived. It is impossible to know anything independently of the means by which it is known, so it makes no sense to speak of the objective world as it exists independently of all modes of inquiry. These principles are very compatible with Wheeler's theories of observer-participancy, and they also closely reflect the views of Stephen Hawking and Anton Zeilinger, all of whom propose that the insights of quantum physics be applied to the universe as a whole. This suggests that we are co-creators of the universe as we experience it and conceive of it. It was not pre-given, waiting for scientists to discover its "true nature." Rather, among an infinite array of possibilities, on the basis of their systems of measurement and conceptual frameworks, scientists choose the world they inhabit, and the same is true of everyone else, Buddhists included.

Q: Physicists in the field of quantum cosmology speak of the problem of "frozen time," which arises when you apply quantum theory to Einstein's general theory of relativity using a procedure called canonical quantization. This indicates that without the presence of an observer the universe should be frozen in time, never changing. This raises the question: why do we see the universe evolving in time in a given way? Is there any such notion in Buddhism, and if so, how does this relate to Buddhist practice?

AW: Scientists see the universe having evolved in a certain way because of the kinds of questions they have asked for the past 400 years since Copernicus, the methods of observation and experimentation they have employed, and the kinds of concepts they have used to make their empirical data intelligible. As both John Wheeler and more recently Stephen Hawking suggest, scientists actually choose the history of the universe on the basis of their subjective means of inquiry. It was not already there, passively waiting for them to get it right. Likewise, according to the Middle Way view and the Great Perfection tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the phenomenal world rises up to meet us in relation to the ways we perceive and conceive of it. But it is also possible to tap into the deepest dimension of awareness known as "primordial consciousness," which transcends relative space and time. Such pristine awareness is said to be associated with the "fourth time," which transcends, yet subsumes the three times of past, present, and future.

Q: How might science and Buddhism collaborate in the study of consciousness?

AW: Regarding the study of the mind, the strengths of science are in its methods of gathering quantitative data, exploring the mind indirectly by way of behavior and brain activity. But the cognitive sciences have never devised sophisticated means for observing or exploring states of consciousness directly. This is the strength of Buddhism and other contemplative traditions. By integrating these strengths, we may fulfill the vision of William James, who proposed that the mind be studied by way of behavior and brain functions, but that the primary focus be on introspection.

Q: What benefits might arise as a result of such collaboration?

AW: As long as the scientific study of the mind is confined to examining its behavioral and neural correlates, scientific understanding of the mind will necessarily remain materialistic. Moreover, as long as such studies are confined to the minds of normal people, the mentally ill, and the brain-damaged, the scientific imagination of the potentials of human consciousness will remain very limited. Buddhism has developed sophisticated means for exploring a wide range of mental states and processes directly, and it also includes the development and study of highly advanced states of consciousness in terms of highly focused attention, compassion, and wisdom. But the benefits of such inquiry and personal practice have remained largely anecdotal within the Buddhist tradition. By collaborating with scientists, Buddhists may gain a clearer understanding of the benefits and limitations of their own theories and practices, and this may lead to more effective means in the modern era for transforming the mind and discovering its fullest potentials.

Tags: Buddhism, Science, Philosophy, books, B. Alan Wallace, Hidden Dimensions, Columbia University Press, interview, ontological relativity, consciousness, mind, spirituality

Marco Iacoboni on Empathy and Fairness

Nice two-part video.

An interesting talk on the evolutionary precursors of morality, mirror neurons and more.

Taken from Beyond Belief 2008.

Part One:


Part Two:

Tags: Psychology, brain, empathy, Marco Iacoboni, Empathy and Fairness, Beyond Belief, 2008, neuroscience

Integral Enlightenment - The Future of God: Spirituality in an Evolving Universe

A cool Integral Enlightenment podcast for download.

The Future of God: Spirituality in an Evolving Universe

In this reflection on the purpose of life in the 21st century, Integral Enlightenment founder Craig Hamilton calls us to wholeheartedly embrace a path of conscious evolution, not simply for our own happiness, but as our contribution to the further evolution of Life and Spirit.

Click Here to download this audio.

Tags: integral, philosophy, spirituality, Craig Hamilton, Integral Enlightenment, The Future of God, Spirituality in an Evolving Universe

I, We, and It - the Good, the True and the Beautiful by Ken Wilber

An old one but a good one.

I, We, and It - the Good, the True and the Beautiful by Ken Wilber

• Artist: Ken Wilber
• Title: I, We, and It - the Good, the True and the Beautifu
• Album: Kosmic Consciousness - 1
• Length: 19:00 minutes (26.11 MB)
• Format: MP3 Stereo 44kHz 192Kbps (CBR)

• Interview

Download audio file [Play]

Tags: Integral, Philosophy, I, We, and It, the Good, the True, the Beautiful, Ken Wilber, integral theory, Kosmic Consciousness, interview

Robert Augustus Masters - What Matters About Matter

Nice new article from Robert Masters in this month's newsletter.

WHAT MATTERS ABOUT MATTER

Matter is more than what we typically think of as matter. There’s more to it than meets the eye, more to it than its density and mass, more to it than the popularization of it as but dumb putty to be molded or manipulated by an overseeing mind.

We commonly take as a given the notion of mind over matter, but rarely consider the notion of mind as matter, or matter as externalized mind.

Matter matters.

Though denser than mind, soul, or spirit, matter is not necessarily lesser than them, because it fundamentally is just the outside-ness of them crystallized into relative solidity, and without an outside, what can we say about an inside?

We have to be especially careful with language here, for what’s outside typically (or conventionally) contains what’s inside, but in the case of matter, what’s outside is contained by what’s inside, in the sense that a greater depth contains a lesser depth.

And so the body does not contain the soul (our individualized essence), but the soul contains the body — and in a even deeper sense, the body does not contain the soul, but rather is an expression of the soul. What we truly are is not making an appearance in a body, but as a body.

So let us cast a kinder eye on matter, and cease viewing it as a mere sheath or sensory integument for (or impediment to realizing) higher realities, for the densified outside-ness that characterizes it constitutes not a literal container or housing project for what’s inside, but rather a precipitated extension of what’s inside, providing a medium for that interiority or central depth to relate to what lies outside it.

Matter, as part of its job description, does the dirty work, and doesn’t really mind, because that’s its nature. Someone has to take out the garbage and build the highways. Grunt work matters, and as a matter-of-fact needs to be honored as such.

Mind is itself a kind of mass-less matter, the interiority of which could be called soul, or the individualized core of what we truly are. Soul has less of a problem with matter than does mind, because it has more of a view. The deeper inside we are, the higher our view. What’s further up the mountain can see more than what’s at lower elevations.

Inside and outside are but inseparable sides of a primal geography, together on their knees before the same old yet everfresh Mystery. When inside and outside are lovers, we know a love that cannot fail, a love that is both ocean and sail.

Once again poetry has me by the jugular, and I don’t mind at all. There’s a part in The Fountain (see my review in my January 2007 Newsletter) when the Mayan priest kneels, leans back his head, and bares his throat, inviting the transfigured conquistador to cut it, so that he can be one with the Sacred. It wasn’t just a romanticized primitive moment, but rather a full-blooded signifier of extraordinary awe and sacrifice, the sort of sacrifice through which we die into a deeper Life.

Taking in a scene like this, really feeling and absorbing it, making it our own until it’s not so much ours as it is us, generates a wondrously sobering and illuminating leap through various hoops of mind, until there’s no everyday mind left, no mapmaker, no supplier of meaning, nothing but What-Really-Matters.

My sentences are erasing themselves almost as fast I type them. They look back and see nothing. I look back and see everything. All of it is there, both outside and inside me, for all of it was necessary to bring “me” into being, even though it did not all arise just to bring me into being, except in the narcissistic outback of my egoity.

Yes, I matter, but no more than you. Of course, my mind disagrees, but that’s its nature. Matter keeps arising, keeps passing, and through it I live, we live, whatever we may be.

I’m tempted to look back at the beginning of this essay, but don’t dare, not because I’ll be turned to stone, and not because my beloved will die, but because this wild flow, this unkempt opening and spilling, is more me than the me writing this, which amounts to nothing more than me letting what I’m writing outwrite me.

Now inside and outside have traded places, and no one’s making a fuss about it. What is most deeply within contains all that is outside it. Reality’s Möbius nature — one infinite surface of infinite depth — takes all the mappings of inside and outside, interiority and exteriority, higher and lower, horizontality and verticality, and makes light of it.

There is, however, no leveling or flattening of differences here, no homogenizing of distinctions, no cosmic rolling pin turning it all into one gigantic plain, like some ultra-great pizza awaiting its toppings and corresponding appetites.

Matter matters. But what is matter? Solid stuff? Concretized mind? A torte of atomic and subatomic particles/waves/potentialities, dense and elusive and intricate enough to make our mind lick its lips?

Matter is dense, but its density vanishes as we get closer and closer to it. Get really close to matter, and what you will see is gravity and light in endless embrace, creating in their wake something that keeps evolving to — and perhaps also beyond — the point of knowing that it is evolving.

We are not only that something, but also something more, something that cannot be imagined, something that is neither inside nor outside.

Tags: Robert Augustus Masters, What Matters About Matter, Integral, Philosophy, physics, mind, body, spirit, spirituality