Science and Spirituality: An Unnecessary Antimony and a Harmonious Reconciliation – 4

Volume VII, Issue 4
Author: Jugal Kishore Mukherji

Continued from Part 3

Editor’s Note: In this part, the author enumerates the most important attributes of the scientific method using which scientists often level certain charges against spirituality. The author suggests that if Science has to accept Spirituality as a partner in progress, these objections must be examined and rejected only after due consideration. He does this with the help of insights from Sri Aurobindo, one of the greatest mystics and yogis.

The Methodology of Science

Science may be defined as a nomothetico-experimental procedure that studies “the regularities observed in normal human sense-perceptions, thereby excluding the sub-normal and supra-normal experiences as well as judgments of value that imply non-sensual premises”¹.

The man of science in practising his art exercises a series of operations, e.g., (a) collecting systematic and unbiased observations with precision; (b) forming hypotheses linking up these observations; (c) testing the validity of these hypotheses by logically deducing from them the possibility of new observations and seeking for their correspondence in further experimentation; (d) alterations being made in the hypotheses and laws already posited, in case of failures in correspondence; (e) building up of a theoretical structure with specialised concepts and nomenclatures, that will confer the status of a deductive discipline to scientific knowledge already gathered; etc.

Amongst the more important attributes of scientific enterprise mention may be made of the following:

1. “Natural science is empirical, i.e. it deals only with what has been experienced or may be experienced under an appropriate setup of conditions. No other data are admissible”.²
2. “Science is a search for judgments, to which universal assent may be obtained – universal, that is, on the part of those who understand the judgments and their bases.”³
3. The generalisations of science are never considered to be final or absolute: they are liable to revision as experience enlarges.
4. The methods to be adopted in the sciences, and also their subject matter, must perforce be such as to admit of the possibility of checking the truth or otherwise of any statement made therein.
5. Repetition is one of the most potent methods of checking for correctness of any statement. “If a situation cannot be made to repeat, it is commonly regarded as of little or no scientific interest, and none of the usual scientific methods are applicable to it”.⁴
6. Acceptance of authority is never tolerated as a method in science. “No report of experimental observation or theoretical deduction is scientifically acceptable unless made in such terms that it can be repeated and confirmed by any qualified individual.”⁵
7. The two basic assumptions of science are, according to Planck, the existence of a real outer world independent of our act of knowing, and the impossibility of having any direct knowledge of this world. “This world cannot be disclosed by mere meditation and introspection;… the direct knowledge of the world claimed by the mystic… has no place in a scientific discussion.”⁶
8. No understanding is regarded to be adequate unless and until it “can correctly anticipate what will occur under every conceivable range of circumstances, whether imposed naturally or by artifice”.⁷

Now because of these and related traits of all scientific enterprise, men of science tend to level certain charges against spiritual experiences and realisations. And if Science has to accept Spirituality as a partner in progress, we must take note of these objections and dispose of them, if they are not valid, only after due consideration. And in this task, in order to bring in a certain touch of authenticity, we propose to introduce the words of Sri Aurobindo who is acknowledged by universal consent as one of the greatest mystics and thinkers.

Science against Spiritual Knowledge: Charges and their Refutation

I. Argument: Spiritual experiences are individual and have no general validity independent of the individual seeker’s supposed testimony.

Critique: This statement arises out of a complete misreading of facts as they stand. For the truth is that yogic experiences run everywhere on the same lines.

Certainly, there are, not one line, but many; for, admittedly, we are dealing with a many-sided Infinite to which there are and must be many ways of approach; but yet the broad lines are the same everywhere and the intuitions, experiences, phenomena are the same in ages and countries far apart from each other and systems practised quite independently from each other.⁸

The substance of spiritual experience, which takes place always in the inner consciousness, is identical everywhere; only when it gets translated into the external consciousness of the seeker, difference of colour comes in because of the difference of mental language.

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II. Argument: Yoga experiences are altogether personal and not validated by the common pool of normal human experiences.

Critique: Obviously it is an absurd standard of reality to assert that only what is or can easily be evident to everybody without any need of specialised training or development, is to be taken as valid, and all else that does not square with the experiences or scope of understanding of average human beings cannot be considered to be true. Such a standard of knowledge is not accepted even in the sciences themselves.

The greatest inner discoveries, the experience of self-being, the cosmic consciousness, the inner calm of the liberated spirit, the direct effect of mind upon mind, the knowledge of things by consciousness in direct contact with other consciousness or with its objects, most spiritual experiences of any value, cannot be brought before the tribunal of the common mentality which has no experience of these things and takes its own absence or incapacity of experience as a proof of their invalidity or their non-existence.

Physical truth or formulas, generalisations, discoveries founded upon physical observation can be so referred, but even there a training of capacity is needed before one can truly understand and judge; it is not every untrained mind that can follow the mathematics of relativity or other difficult scientific truths or judge of the validity either of their result or their process.

All reality, all experience must indeed, to be held as true, be capable of verification by a same or similar experience; so, in fact, all men can have a spiritual experience and can follow it out and verify it in themselves, but only when they have acquired the capacity or can follow the inner methods by which that experience and verification are made possible.⁹

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III. Argument: Since Yogic exploration does not adopt the methodology of Science, it is unscientific and its so-called findings presumably untrue.

Critique: Modern man has been led to believe that “one is either in Science or outside it, just as one is either in Paradise or in Hell!”¹⁰

Thus the term ‘unscientific’ has almost come to acquire a pejorative connotation. But what is science, after all? It is essentially a methodology devised for and successfully applied to the investigation of an arbitrarily delimited field of enquiry.

Now, Yoga also devises a methodology of its own, precise and potent in its own domain. But the methods of Yoga have to be different from those of the physical sciences, since it seeks to identify our inner being with the Reality behind the appearances and see from there the workings of Nature, while Science endeavours to make us aware of the detailed workings and through them get some indirect glimpse of the Reality.

Thus the experiences of Yoga belong to an inner domain, go according to a law of their own and have their own standards of judgment and verification other than those that Science applies in its external objective field.

Just as scientific enquiry passes beyond that of the physical senses and enters the domain of the infinite and the infinitesimal about which the senses can say nothing and test nothing….so the spiritual search passes beyond the domain of scientific or rational enquiry and it is impossible by the aid of the ordinary positive reason to test the data of spiritual experience and decide whether those things exist or not or what is their law and nature.¹¹

Subjective experiences and supraphysical realities must, by their very nature, be investigated and verified by other than the physical or sense mind, by a method of scrutiny and affirmation applicable to their own domain. And there is nothing unscientific or objectionable in it.

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Continued in Part 5

READ
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Notes

1. J.G. Bennette, The Dimensional Network of the Natural Sciences. ↩︎
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1960, Vol. VIII, p. 929. ↩︎
3. Charles Singer, “Science” in Encyclo. Brit.., Vol. XX, p. 114. ↩︎
4. P. W. Bridgman, “Scientific Methods” in McGraw Hill Encyclo. of Science and Technology, Vol. 12, p. 73. ↩︎
5. Ibid. ↩︎
6. A. d’Abro, The Rise of the New Physics, p. 15. ↩︎
7. P. W. Bridgman, “Scientific Methods” in McGraw Hill Encyclo. of Science and Technology, Vol. 12, p. 73. ↩︎
8. Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, 28: 381 ↩︎
9. Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, 22: 677 ↩︎
10. Prof. Robert Lenoble. ↩︎
11. Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, 28: 382 ↩︎

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