January 4, 2008 – 2:33 pm
Illumined Heart
Alchemical Studies Chap 1 s4: "An ancient adept has said: If the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way. This Chinese saying, unfortunately only too true, stands in sharp contrast to our belief in the “right” method irrespective of the man who applies it. In reality everything depends on the man and little or nothing on the method."
This quote shows something about Jung’s fundamental stance towards science and the material world in contrast to the inner world of the subconscious. While investigating the history of science, its philosophy, and methodology from the 1700’s to the present, I’ve found fundamental polarities in science that don’t appear to be understood very well by the majority of commentators I’ve read. These confusions center about the role of the observer in observing phenomena.
Saying it as simply as possible, I consider science to be the quantifying of phenomena while technology is the method of using the quantified phenomena.
Quantifying phenomena gives us the means to manipulate phenomena as materials for whatever we want to sculpt them into. The ability to sculpt materials and energies for a variety of uses is heady fare indeed. With almost infinite novelty possible we become addicted to what we can do with our tools in transforming matter. However, this addiction like all addictions leads eventually to withdrawal. Something is missing in the process of becoming addicted to technology. Jung calls that something spirit. I also call it creative life.
Going overboard in its ability to manipulate matter the human intellect has come to believe it can also manipulate life itself just as it can manipulate matter. Witness the many tracts since the 19th century till the recent present where life is described as just another physical material process–something mechanical, the brain is described as a biological computer and consciousness is thought to be a non-existent chimera.
In my opinion there is nothing wrong with these views per se except they’re offered in aggressive ways as the dominant doxology. The specific errors these views represent are legion but essentially they boil down to the fact many people have forgotten the transformative power in life in favor of transforming matter.
s7: "Only in the course of the nineteenth century, when spirit began to degenerate into intellect, did a reaction set in against the unbearable dominance of intellectualism, and this led to the unpardonable mistake of confusing intellect with spirit and blaming the latter for the misdeeds of the former. The intellect does indeed do harm to the soul when it dares to possess itself of the heritage of the spirit."
In the above quote Jung is clearly stating that spirit became increasingly invisible with the development of the human intellect. This had real costs associated with it. People’s lives became increasingly mechanical in nature. After all quantifying phenomena gains us a hold on the world but some phenomena cannot be quantified. Living phenomena cannot be quantified because the observer cannot quantify themselves. The observer can however quantify the phenomena belonging to the observer, like the observer’s body, etc. The observer can observe their thoughts, sensations, feelings, actions and desires, but they can’t manipulate what makes them creative intelligent life, they can only manipulate the matter related to life.
In my view science has failed spectacularly in defining the relationship of creative life or the spirit to matter. So it has chosen to ignore spirit and focus on what it does best—measuring things. The Greek philosopher Protagoras who was greatly admired by Socrates (and one might guess Plato) said that man is the measure of all things. This is very profound but with contemporary science the dictum has changed to—man is the measurer of all things.
Physical science records the affects of spirit but can’t formally come to grips with spirit. This task is left to psychology, but not just any psychology will do. It has to be a psychology that penetrates analytically into creative life (but only on its own terms) as much as or more than it measures brain activity or the results of pharmacology. It has to be a phenomenological psychology which also accurately and comprehensively takes into account human history, religions, cultural differences, and philosophical views. To my mind Jung was the right man with the right means for the job.
