A Dawning Age of Unreason?

This article by The Baltimore Sun editorial page associate editor Will Englund is a good place to start an inquiry into today's doubt-vs.-certainty wars in America. Englund's thesis is that we Americans are entering "A Dawning Age of Unreason." By that he means that science and technology, the fruits of an earlier Age of Reason, are being demoted in favor of a religiosity characterized by a "certainty" and a concomitant "lack of curiosity."

Why, he asks, is this happening? One reason is that, until recently, Americans could tinker with their technology: take it apart, see how it works, "squirt a little oil here and there." Now, no:

Our technology isn't approachable anymore, so the mind is free to cast about for explanations. God's will? Intelligent design? Voodoo? Why not?

Ergo, the opaqueness of our latest technological marvels has ironically set us up for an anti-technology, anti-science, anti-reason outlook. Can that be right?

Maybe. But, indicates Englund, there may also be deeper (ahem) reasons for it. Such as Auschwitz, the "logical conclusion" of a "line of thinking" that "said that humans could be bred like peas or hogs to produce a better specimen." Or such as Hiroshima,
the payoff of a scientific line of inquiry that "said that energy and mass are related."

It seems to me that one can lay the blame for all this yet deeper. In another blog of mine, my Tai Chi Journal, I posted this article and this one which contrast Taoist philosophy with what we in the West inherit from Plato. The crux of the matter seems to be this: Plato, intolerant of the imperfection and consequent imperfect knowability of all objects in this material world, posited the existence, if only on a higher metaphysical plane, of Ideas or Forms that were pure in their perfection and in their attendant knowability.

That notion of perfect knowability later got incorporated, as neo-Platonism, in Christian thought. If now we (in St. Paul's words) "see through a glass, darkly," we can expect in heaven to see God "face to face." For Paul, this equated to saying, "Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." In other words, my (or our) faith today is redeemable for certainty in the hereafter.

It seems to me that today's religious conservatives are impatient for certainty in the here and now.

And even some scientists are poisoned by this tendency to assert certainty where none can be found. Witness those who talk as if the theory of evolution were a "fact."

Oh, I believe in Darwinian evolution, as far as it goes. Subject to the proviso that as a theory it's not "finalized" — new concepts are constantly being added, such as punctuated equilibrium and complexity theory — I think of it as the only theory which makes sense scientifically.

Why do I short-shrift "creationism," or the recent talk of "intelligent design"? They fall prey to a common mistake, one which, writer Englund says in his article, Christian fundamentalists have shared (oddly) with the erstwhile Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union: "adherence to tenets that were a matter of faith and could not be proved wrong by any amount of evidence."

But Darwinian evolution theory only goes so far. It's not actually atheistic, as many of its opponents claim. Rather, it's agnostic. It simply can't settle doubts about certain things, like exactly how life on earth began, much less why.

Yes, I'm aware that such "why" questions — questions of "purpose" and "meaning" in the universe — have been called "meaningless" by some, simply because the questions cannot be decided by any form of scientific inquiry.

On the other hand, I'm not immune to asking them.

And then, after I've asked them and come up with some sort of personally satisfying answer, upon further consideration I typically find I start to doubt the answer — and eventually the possibility of ever coming up with a once-and-for-all solution to the problem of "purpose" and "meaning."

It's then that the Taoist in me comes to the fore — which, as I've indicated, leads me to question Plato's (and St. Paul's) basic assumption that there is some higher Form or Presence which infuses the world with some (albeit imperfect and through-a-glass-darkly) measure of intelligibility.

This does not, however, necessarily mean we should not use science to mine whatever intelligibility we can out of our unruly and imperfect worldly situation. But nor should we get so caught up in doing our science that we forget (in the words of the Tao Te Ching):

The way that can be spoken of
Is not the constant way;
The name that can be named
Is not the constant name.

We would do well, in other words, to cultivate doubt, even as we hunt for certainty.