The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.” - Stephen W. Hawking

"It is a common illusion to believe that all we know today is all we ever can know. Nothing is more vulnerable than scientific theory, which is an ephemeral attempt to explain facts not an everlasting truth."
-Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols

At present, the orthodox approach to science is given by the mechanistic theory of life: Living organisms are regarded as nothing more than complex machines governed by the laws of physics and chemistry. The main reason why most biologists continue to adhere to this is that it works. It provides a framework of thought within which questions can be asked and answered. This approach of science has been present for about the last hundred years and assumes a basic ability to understand the world and its phenomena in its totality. This is a linear and rational view of life.  

However, Loren Eisely, the great philosopher of natural history, states in his book The Immense Journey, , “If anything, the growing list of catalysts, hormones, plasma genes, and other hobgoblins recently discovered in the workings of Life only serve to underline the complexity of its existence.” Eisely quotes the German biologist Von Bertalanff as saying, "The physical-chemical organization of the simplest cell is far beyond our capacity." Eisely concludes, "When it was revealed that even the supposedly simple amoebae was a complex, self-operating chemical factory, the notion that it was a simple blob turned out to be a monstrous caricature of the truth."
Yet the rational approach starts from the idea that everything is explainable and that mystery is the enemy. It seems science prefers pejorative and even wrong answers rather than admitting its own lack of understanding.  Molecular biologists call ninety-seven percent of our DNA “junk DNA.”  In The Cosmic Serpent, author Jeremy Narby says that this “reveals not only its degree of ignorance, but the extent to which it is prepared to belittle the unknown . . .  It would have been just as easy to call it mystery DNA, for instance.”

With the failure of many efforts, science has been left in a position of having to postulate theories of life’s long origins it cannot demonstrate. After dismissing theology, science finds itself in the position of having to create a mythology of its own (of inert amino acids sparked in a soupy pond of potentials) to assure that what cannot be proven to take place today had in fact taken place in some primeval past (Eisely, 1957).

Another problem with the mechanistic model in biology (the science of life) is that it fails to understand how evolution can be epigenetic.  Evolutionary theory cannot explain how new structures all of a sudden appear when they were not present at the beginning of development (Sheldrake, 1995). Despite this and seemingly other unanswerable questions like intelligence, generation, and regulation, the mechanistic approach persists.
Now  new  knowledge and theories, are seeing distinct patterns in how the evolving, mindless, goal-directed behavior attributed to genetic programs is remarkably similar to what vitalists say are teleological in nature. Teleology is an Aristotelian term that means nature has a destiny that it is fulfilling.

It is probably true that old scientists don't change; they simply rust away. The old ways of separation and isolation in the various scientific fields like physics, medicine, math, astronomy are being replaced by new ways of more holistic integration.  James Gleick, the author of Chaos, wrote in 1987 that "fifteen years ago science was headed for a crisis of increasing specialization.” He declared, "Scientists took it for granted that the complex system made up of billions of components must also be different.” Studies were getting more and more isolated and more dead ends were and are being reached.

   Dramatically, specialization has reversed. Now there is a sense that some leading-edge thinkers in all areas of study are "turning back a trend in science toward a reductionism . . . and believe they are looking for the whole." (Gleick, 1987)  The well-known physicist David Bohm said everything in the universe merges and unites into one great event he calls the holomovement. The holomovement is an infinite spectrum of implicate order, an unbroken and undivided totality (New Frontier Magazine, 1993).
      What is happening is called a shift in paradigms. A paradigm is a framework of thought (from the Greek word paradigma for pattern). A paradigm is a scheme for understanding and explaining certain aspects of reality.  In 1962 Thomas Kuhn, a science historian and philosopher, wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In it he said that paradigm shifts "are nearly always received with coolness, even mockery and hostility. Discoveries are attacked as heresy, as in Copernicus, Galileo, and Pasteur. The idea may appear bizarre at first because the discovery made an intuitive leap and may not have all the details in place yet."  Kuhn points out that those who worked fruitfully in the old view are emotionally and habitually attached to it. They usually go to their graves with their faith unshaken. Even when confronted with overwhelming evidence, they stubbornly stick with the wrong but familiar.

“If you see the world around you as a collection of objects for you to manipulate and exploit, you will inevitably destroy the world while attempting to control it. Not only that, but by perceiving the world as lifeless, you rob yourself of the richness, beauty, and wisdom to be found by participating in its larger design . . . .  If you objectify other living things, then you are committing yourself to a totally materialistic universe ⎯ which is not even consistent with the findings of modern physics.” - Vine Deloria, a Professor in the Center of Native American Studies at the University of Colorado and a Lakota Sioux, interview in Sun Magazine.

The apparent contradictions of the old paradigm that have locked the present world into its limited, decaying attitude was established by three people. The first was Rene Descartes, who in the 1600s formulated the idea that the intellect could accurately determine the truth about the world. He said, “I think therefore I am.” This began what has been called the Age of Reason, which placed the rational mind as the primary tool for knowing the world.
In the 1700s Newton, building on Cartesian precepts, developed the laws of motion and seemingly reduced nature to mathematics and observable analysis. This created a belief in a universe which functioned like a machine, as in the working of a well-tuned clock. Then in the 1800s came a man, literally lying now at the feet of Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey. He is the person whose theories are of primary concern in this article. Sir Charles Darwin and his ideas of natural selection and evolution hammered the nails into any alternative intelligent approach to the development of life. As the result of Darwin's theories, life would be labeled from here on as chance and circumstance. With the help of his friend and so-called "bulldog" Thomas Huxley, materialism was solidified in the halls of Western scientific community, and any conflicting thinking to Darwin was labeled dogmatic, primitive, or superstitious. Huxley said science was the study of only observable phenomena.  Darwin, who was perhaps a little more reluctant to state his beliefs publicly, but whose idea held a far greater impact, said, "To avoid stating how far I believe in materialism, I say only that emotions instructs degrees of talent, which are hereditary and are so because the brain of child resembles the parents’ stock.” (Gould, 1977)
      It is through the work of these three great men that the mechanistic model of the world was based on and still thrives upon.

  “Yesterday the universe was a machine. Today it’s a hologram. Who knows what intellectual rattle we will shake at tomorrow’s world?” ⎯ RD Lang.

Quantum theory and the behavior of subatomic particles that act contrary to the Newtonian understanding of time and motion show us that our understanding of a mechanistic science needs to be re-evaluated.
     Kuhn, in speaking about the new paradigm, said that “It unfolds a larger perspective, which includes the old as partial truth but transforms that knowledge into startling new theories by reconciling apparent contradictions.” A paradigm involves something that was there all along but eluded perception because of a lack of orientation. In the old view are found things that are overlooked because they defy the current explanation.
In the established mechanistic view we can see, even in the personal experience of the men mentioned above, elements of a greater awareness that were not acknowledged publicly. They suggest an inkling of "something that had been there all along.” For instance, Descartes’ idea of the rational mind came to him in a dream of an angelic presence that appeared and spoke to him. Newton, after setting forth the laws of gravity and motions, spent the last 30 years of his life devoted to the study of astrology, alchemy, and mysticism. He wrote, "God could vary the laws of the nature and create worlds of several sorts in many parts of the universe."

Darwin, however, was never anything more than a staunch rationalist, but he was provoked to publish his theories on natural selection when a young naturalist named Alfred Wallace was about to deliver a similar theory to the British scientific community. Wallace and Darwin decided to present their papers jointly at the same conference. However, years later, after originally agreeing with Darwin on the laws of chance mutation, Wallace asked, "How, then, was an organ developed so far beyond the needs of its possessor . . . the brain." He eventually challenged Darwin's whole position of natural selection when he insisted that math and musical abilities could not be explained on the basis of natural selection and the struggle for existence. “Something else," he contended, "some unknown spiritual development, must have been at work in the collaboration of the human brain."  Darwin's simple reply to Wallace was, "I differ grievously from you and am very sorry for it." Slowly Wallace's challenge was forgotten and a great complacency settled down upon the scientific world, and Wallace was mostly forgotten (Eisely, 1957). Like Kuhn stated, we can see here that in the foundations of mechanism lies the working of a greater perspective. Descartes was a visionary, Newton a mystic, and Darwin provoked by a spiritualist.

"Biology is the study of the larger organism, whereas physics is the study of smaller organisms." - Alfred Whitehead

Basically, mechanism sees the world as a machine, a ticking clock that is winding down. Life is an anomaly in the universe, "a glorious accident," a term coined by neo-Darwinist Stephen Gould, who refers to consciousness as merely a “trick of swollen neurology.” (Pollack, 2000)
     The new paradigm, however, is really a resurrection of the old view of vitalism that says life defies material explanation. It recognizes life as an intimate part of creation, a natural extension of a mysterious inception that has now brought creation to contemplate itself. This has been called wholism. Fractals, holograms, complexity, and chaos theory are ways of explaining our interconnectedness. There appear to be organized hierarchical systems which at each level of complexity possess properties exhibited by their parts in isolation. At each level, the whole is more than the sum of its parts and yet each part contains the whole.
For instance, it appears that when matter organizes into cells and organisms, it develops properties of life that are not based simply or directly on physics and chemistry. This is a radical shift from the old paradigm, which views life and the universe as a machine, to that which sees the world as an organism, a single, whole, living being (Smith, 1989).

 Life is not a matter of survival but is predicated on a deeper unknown essence, motivated by complexity and a growing awareness of self and others. It seems to be in the nature of evolution to progress towards a self-reflective quality. The universe has not just created life but intricate, intelligent life. Humanity is evolution's perception of itself being able to perceive the truth of its own progress.


References

Eisely, L. (1957). The Immense Journey. New York: Vintage Books.
Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos. New York: Viking Penguin.
Gould, S. J. (1977). Ever Since Darwin. New York: W.W. Norton.
Jensen, D. (2000, July 6). An Interview With Vine Deloria. The Sun Magazine. Retrieved May 29, 2001 from the World Wide Web http://www.thesunmagazine.org/buffalo.html
Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Narby, J. (1998). The Cosmic Serpent – DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. New York: J. P. Tarcher.
New Frontier Magazine (1993, August & September). David Bohm Interview. Asheville, NC: Sw. Virato, Publisher.
Pollack, R. (2000). The Faith of Biology. New York: Columbia University Press.
Sheldrake, R. (1995). The New Science of Life. Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, Inc.
Smith, J. M. (1989). The Problems of Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


(Next part -Upsetting Neo-Darwinism)