The Only Sacred Ground
Scientific Materialism and a Sacred View of Nature Within the Framework of Complementarity
The Only Sacred Ground
Scientific Materialism and a Sacred View of Nature Within the Framework of Complementarity
Gregory N. Derry
Department of Physics
Loyola University Maryland
Apprentice House
Baltimore, Maryland
Copyright © 2014 by Gregory N. Derry
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher (except by reviewers who may quote brief passages).
First Edition
Printed in the United States of America
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-62720-020-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62720-021-9
Design by Lauren Andes
Cover illustration by Albrecht Dürer
Published by Apprentice House
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....in the great drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators.
—Niels Bohr
this is my home, this is my only home,
this is the only sacred ground that I have ever known
—David Carter
Preface
This book is an extended reflection on our ideas about nature, written by a scientist, sympathetic to and informed by science, but very definitely not a scientific treatise. The approach adopted here is a transdisciplinary approach that draws on and respects a host of disciplines (philosophy, history, biology, theology, cultural studies, religious studies, and my own field of physics, among others) in an integrative manner. I do not pretend to have genuine mastery of all these areas, but I think it’s important for some people to make the attempt at transdisciplinarity lest the increasing fragmentation of our knowledge, our culture, and our personhood becomes oppressive. I apologize for any mistakes or oversimplifications I may have made, but I don’t apologize for making the attempt to integrate a large amount of material from a wide array of disciplines into a coherent synthesis.
Although I became quite interested in the literature on science/religion relationships while writing this, and although I consider the present work to be a contribution to that literature, this book is not a generic book on science and religion. Instead, it is a more detailed look at a very specific idea (complementarity) and how this idea contributes to the solution of a specific problem (the tension between a sacred apprehension of nature and scientific materialism). The major original idea presented here, the heart of the argument, is found in chapter 8. The material preceding chapter 8 is mainly to provide sufficient context to make that chapter intelligible. The material following chapter 8 is mainly to deepen and illustrate the potential applications of the idea to various specific problems.
Here at the outset I would like to clear up two possible misconceptions. The first possible misconception is that I am somehow trying to apply quantum mechanics to religious questions. Although it is true that complementarity has its roots in quantum mechanical issues, the argument I am making here is an epistemological argument that does not employ quantum theory per se. The second possible misconception is that I am trying to devise some sort of grand system that will explain everything about nature. My goal is both more modest than this and also more practical: I am attempting to provide an additional methodological tool to analyze and think about the relevant issues.
I started this project more than eight years ago, during a sabbatical year. The project began on a surreal note, as I was sitting outside reading about Niels Bohr’s philosophy and the seventeen-year cicadas started to emerge from the ground. Before the year ended, I was locked in a battle with a stage-three lymphoma, which I ultimately survived. Writing the book has lead to a number of other interests and to my encounters with a host of interesting thinkers. The present publication of the book is a gratifying end to a long journey, and I’d like to thank Apprentice House for their decision to publish it.
I also have a number of other debts to acknowledge. First, I would like to thank the John Templeton Foundation for a grant to work on the book during my sabbatical. I would also like to thank my institution, Loyola University Maryland, for providing the sabbatical year and supporting my work. Although I have had many stimulating conversations about this work with many different people, I would particularly like to single out Nicholas von Stillfried and Kris Jargocki in this respect. I’d also especially like to thank K. Helmut Reich for a thorough reading of the entire manuscript and a huge number of constructively critical comments. Closer to home, this work has benefited immeasurably from my intellectual interactions with my wife, Paula Derry, my daughter, Rebecca Derry, and my friends Daniel Perrine, Richard Blum, and Lisa Blum. And although I have never met or talked to Jan Faye or Henry Folse, I owe both of them a great deal for their excellent Bohr scholarship, which I have exploited extensively here. Lastly, I would like to thank Tracy Grammer for allowing me to use the fragment of song lyrics by the late poetic genius Dave Carter in the epigraph; these lines gave me the inspiration for the title of the book.
Although in some ways this is an entirely intellectual work (an exercise in logical analysis, as it were), on another level it has the deeper purpose of trying to create a space for spiritual realities in the modern world in a manner consistent with reason. My hope is that someone may find reading it to be useful in their own struggles to do this in their lives.
Baltimore
October 31, 2013
1. Introduction
Each of us apprehends the world through our lived experience. Our senses and our reasoning faculties (not to mention our emotional states, memories, etc.) present us with the world as we directly know it. Is this the way the world “really is” or is there some underlying reality behind the veil? If so, is this underlying reality knowable or not? Or is there really nothing real there at all, with only our own constructions left over, to which we impute more substance than they deserve? These are perennial questions, which have been asked repeatedly for thousands of years. But in the last several hundred years, in western culture, we have had available a new tool with which to explore these issues: scientific thinking. Using this tool, we’ve learned a fantastic amount about the inner workings of nature, and science has indeed penetrated several layers behind the veil of our direct perceptions and common-sense thought patterns. Long before science as we understand it was conceived, however, humans employed ancient methods to penetrate beyond the veil of normal perception in an entirely different direction. Shamans, magi, prophets, and high priests used these methods to show their people a sacred vision of the world. This sense of the universe as sacred has existed in virtually every world culture over several millennia. In our contemporary western culture (which is dominating the world through so-called globalization), however, the picture of nature presented by science is often taken to be a severe challenge to the old sacred visions of nature. Since a scientific worldview is the dominant paradigm in our culture and people’s religious commitments are among the deepest they make, the issues at stake here are fundamental.
Science and Materialism
Science