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COFFEEHOUSE CULTURE -- Issue 2

The pure discipline of science as we know it today emerged out of a 2000 year struggle during which it had tried to shake off its ancient links with magic and mysticism. For those two thousand years, science did not exist as a separate discipline but as a ‘limb’ of philosophy. Over the course of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, however, a new view of nature emerged. In the face of the obvious, science came to take the perverse view that nature was not an organism but a machine. And, out of the window went the ancient qualitative view of the Cosmos and in came the quantitative one we all understand. Responding to its own misconceived rationale, science closed its ranks and tightened up its administrative procedures. A new experimental method was developed that sought irrefutable answers to somewhat limited questions that were only relevant in the context of a framework of specific theories. Instead of asking ‘why’, scientists were suddenly asking ‘how?’ And that changed everything.
....At the end of this dramatic period of change, it is not too much to say that science had replaced Christianity as the focal point of European civilisation.
....If the transition point can be placed anywhere or with anyone during this explosive period it is with Sir Isaac Newton. A mysterious and mystical genius — the father of physics and an active alchemist — who defined science as we know it today, Newton was instrumental in removing the last vestiges of philosophy (or superstition, as it had long since become) from science. With the need to ask ‘why?’ removed, it was easy to believe that ‘how?’ was all that mattered.
....By that time, however, we had not only long forgotten our own intuitive ability to tune-in to the Cosmos but also lost the ability to identify those who might have managed to retain some vestige of that vital link and who might, therefore, guide us. In biting into the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden we had, indeed, gained the world but lost ourselves. For, without the ability to access the essential element common to all nature that exists within each and everyone of us, we would inevitably lose our belief in the sanctity of our part in the bigger picture.
....Without that connection, without that belief, without the help of a kindly hand to guide us towards the spiritual values that underwrite the meaning of existence, we were lost. Floundering in a morass of misconceptions and with no foundation on which to rebuild that essential connection, we were condemned to pursue the external world as if it had some meaning that would eventually explain the Cosmos. In the process, our vision of Creation has changed. What we should be seeing is a Cosmic-view but our vision has become focused on a world-view with all the limitations that implies.
....That we have become estranged from the Mother that produced and nurtured us is clear. That we can no longer identify ourselves as being part of a larger organism, no longer feel ourselves to be part of the whole of life, that we are isolated, alienated and alone is reflected in so many behavioural modes.We are the ultimate dysfunctional family -- the family of man -- and abuse is rife. One has only to look around at the devastating effects of the exploitation of the planet on which we live to appreciate just how far we have moved from any kind of understanding of where we come from and why.
....It is, however, hardly surprising that the spectre of such dissociative behaviour has risen and continues to rise.It is our heritage from history and science and is based on a world-view that is defined by external perceptions, constrained by rationality and confirmed by the exclusion of all subjective data. Without some means to change that world-view into something a little more Cosmic, we are lost.