How to judge a "science of the soul"

Quite a few mystical, meditational, and spiritual entities (organizations or individuals) claim to teach a science of the soul. See, for example, here, here, here, and here.

My previous post about the scientific method stimulated some pondering: how would a science of the soul go about trying to discover what, if anything, lies beyond the physical human brain and material universe?

I'm assuming that "soul" refers to something metaphysical.

If not, then it doesn't make sense to speak of a science of the soul, because plain "science" would be sufficient -- plenty of researchers already are delving into how our minds work, including how meditation practices affect neurological functioning.

I like the idea of applying the scientific method to spirituality, perhaps better termed personal consciousness research, because "spiritual" is a word that has lost most of its meaning for me.

Yet based on my experience of more than thirty years with an organization that termed itself a science of the soul, I've come to realize that the scientific method typically gets short shrift in metaphysical pursuits.

Sure, the word "science" gets used a lot by gurus, teachers, authors, disciples, and others who consider that their approach to spirituality is far different from that followed by traditional religions.

Let's consider, though, what a genuine science of the soul would look like if it adhered to the scientific method as shown in this diagram.

What's most striking is the circularity of scientific investigations. Theories are continually revised as experiments and observations confirm or disconfirm predictions implied by a theory.

So if someone is engaged in a science of the soul, almost certainly he or she is going to be saying, "Interesting, I didn't know that before," a lot.

Ideas about any possible metaphysical reality are going to keep changing as direct experience replaces abstract beliefs. Conceptions that once seemed to be reasonable hypotheses will be discarded as experiments fail to confirm them, while other theories arise as better candidates for explaining the cosmos.

This is the nature of the scientific method: continual refining of what is considered to be true. Yet most so-called sciences of the soul aren't really open to having their core belief system modified.

This shows that they aren't genuinely scientific, because given the marked differences between the various science of the soul teachings, it is difficult to see how they all could be in touch with objective metaphysical truth.

Somebody -- and maybe everybody -- has got to be wrong. Yet how often do we hear a spiritual teacher or leader say about a central tenet, "I don't consider this to be true any more."

In a recent issue of The New Yorker I've been reading an article by Elizabeth Kolbert, "The Sixth Extinction?" Tag line: There have been five great die-offs in history. This time, the cataclysm is us.

Geologist Walter Alvarez and his colleagues proposed in 1980 "that a six-mile-wide asteroid had slammed into the earth, killing off not only the forams but the dinosaurs and all the other organisms that went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous."

This went against the prevailing scientific understanding of how species became extinct and was met with a lot of skepticism. Kolbert says that evidence kept accumulating in favor of Alvarez' theory over the next decade.

"Those eleven years seemed long at the time, but looking back they seem very brief," Walter Alvarez told me. "Just think about it for a moment. Here you have a challenge to a uniformitarian viewpoint that basically every geologist and paleontologist had been trained in, as had their professors and their professors' professors, all the way back to Lyell. And what you saw was people looking at the evidence. And they gradually did come to change their minds."

Beautiful. This is a big part of why I love science. Scientists change their minds! Gurus, prophets, masters, sages, Popes, and such...hardly ever.

Here's another thing, though, about a science of the soul: it can't be a communal exercise, because there is no way to tell whether another person knows anything metaphysical (see here and here). 

So the plural language at the end of the preceding quotation -- "people," "minds" -- is going to have to be "person" and "mind." Namely, you or me, if we're science of the soul practitioners.

Theoretically, I suppose it'd be possible for someone to delve into the question of what might exist apart from the physical and never change his or her mind. But it's difficult to imagine how this could be the case, since experience of a metaphysical reality is going to be much different from a mere conception of it, even if the conception is correct.

Which is my main point: if you're not continually changing your mind about what is true, and what isn't, then you're not engaged in a science of the soul.

On the other hand, if you are, "I was wrong" will be your frequent mantra.

Comments

[Jen]

Brian,

Thanks for your clear observations on “how would a science of the soul go about trying to discover what, if anything, lies beyond the physical human brain and material universe?”

I agree with what you say except I’d like to comment on: “… Yet most so-called sciences of the soul aren't really open to having their core belief system modified.”

---Maybe if we see ourselves as the practitioners who are performing the experiment after starting off with the theory and having been given the basic understanding by the teacher on how to perform the experiment to test the prediction (or goal), we then through our own results and experiences modify and adjust the original hypotheses (or concepts) we were taught, as an ongoing learning process. In other words OUR core belief system is modified. We are given very basic general guidelines anyway. So we, as the practitioners constantly practice until, like the teacher who has done the experiment many times we then achieve the desired goal.

Hope I’m making sense, just trying to explain my thoughts.

[a]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8cbIWMv0rI

food for thought?

800 km is one metric measurement. it could have been 10 sheep herds
7 degrees could have been two cows (out of a total of 20 cows) i.e 1/10

An imaginary tribe if had to use this methodology would calcualte something like this and let me make more dynamic

10 sheep herds also means rich/green

1/10 also means blue

10 x 10 would translate to blue/rich/green

so the size of the earth would be rich turquise

our science is just one science
its all analogies and metaphors
it is a language.

Derrida,Geertz, and wittgenstein talk more about this

now what analogies and metaphors can you bring from the 4th dimension? (refering to the other video i posted in another post)

(Now, after watching this video on eratosthenis, who still believes tha galileo was the first to discover the earth was round? And why in our 'scientific' discourse do we persist with this myth? Did the europeans discover america or did they invade america? America was known to the people that inhabited it and to the vikings before that.)

[Roger]

Jen,

You stated,

"So we, as the practitioners constantly practice until, like the teacher who has done the experiment many times we then achieve the desired goal."

---The scientist is a practitioner? A scientist shall constantly practice, until a desired goal is acheived?
---I can see how performing the experiment, many times, is required to show the reproduceablity of the experimental procedure? This is part of the scientific method.
---What if the experiment produces an accidental result, and not the desired goal?
---Many discoveries in Science, have been by accident, not by design.
---So, what data do you have, regarding the Soul? What has your practicing produced?

Roger

[tucson]

I have seen what is true and it isn't.

[Rain]

I really like your thoughts on this one. The one thing that I think fouls up 'religions' is they do not give room for change, growth and deciding something isn't the same for 'you' that it is for the 'others'. Most religions have one agenda and want to get everybody from Point A to Point B the same way.

If there is a soul as such, then we are obviously not all the same for how it operates and what it means. A soul wouldn't be like a body organ or muscle. There wouldn't be the same exactly the same methods that would work for what it needed to exercise and grow. Well heck, even our bodies aren't all the same for their needs.

To grow 'spiritually' our personal best choice might be to skip over B and head for C but that is discouraged. Even in the beginning of studying a religion if you try to do that, the teachers don't like it (I know about this from personal experimentation).

You basically have to leave religions if you want to grow in directions they (or more likely their leader) didn't already find worked through their own circular process such as you described.

If our soul is reincarnated, then we aren't all babies starting out at the same place. We have had experiences and agendas that will differ. Parents have to take this into consideration in raising kids (if they want to be successful in the nurturing years), but religions rarely if ever do that. They are locked in and as you said don't have the freedom to move totally in a new way.

Maybe religions need to stay locked in but let people come through them on their way elsewhere. Unfortunately most people get locked in also and that's the end of any growth or experimentation and they end up following someone else's 'spiritual' path which may not be the best for them at all.

It won't happen but wouldn't it be something to see a religion that gave this freedom to grow, to change, to be willing to believe intensely and then decide no it was wrong but still let other members continue to believe. Such an organization could help people grow through learning the basics which I think is good because otherwise it is hopscotching through whatever feels good and that doesn't get soul growth but is instead searching for one emotional high after another-- and you find that in pretty much any religion I have been in or observed closely.

Anyway you have brought up good, practical things to consider in this post as well as your others in this chain of thought. I like how you think, how you took that one idea and looked for other places to use it.

[Jen]

Roger,

---The scientist is a practitioner? A scientist shall constantly practice, until a desired goal is acheived?

I was using the word “practitioner” in context with what Brian said in his comment above: “So the plural language at the end of the preceding quotation -- "people," "minds" -- is going to have to be "person" and "mind." Namely, you or me, if we're science of the soul practitioners.”

---What if the experiment produces an accidental result, and not the desired goal?

---Many discoveries in Science, have been by accident, not by design.

So some discoveries will be not what were quite expected… that’s okay. My take would be to keep on going, learning, changing and moving on. No point in saying “this is not what I expected so I’m giving up on the experiment”.

---So, what data do you have, regarding the Soul? What has your practicing produced?

I hope Brian doesn’t mind if I quote him again, “Here's another thing, though, about a science of the soul: it can't be a communal exercise, because there is no way to tell whether another person knows anything metaphysical”.

So, it seems the ‘science of the soul’ has to be a subjective analysis.

tucson,

You say: “I have seen what is true and it isn't.”

Maybe others have seen what is true and it is.

I will find my own ‘truth’.

[George]

I think this is not about what is true or not, rather whether the soul (or study thereof) is a science.

The first link is to the RS book centre. The books listed look fascinating, but more importantly are accurately titled “The Principles of Mysticism” and “The Practice of Mysticism” since they deal with mysticism not science.

The opening chapter "1.1 Mysticism" reads:
"Man is a conscious being, and the essence of mysticism is a transcental experience in the sphere of consciousness. It is something a person lives not a doctrine or philosophy that is studied...No amount of ...reasoning can replace true mystic experience. True mystics do not use reason as their primary means of understanding the nature of Reality..."

Science on the other hand is fundamentally based on reason. Rigorous, precise, objectively verifiable reason, which really took hold in the age of the enlightenment in western europe in the 18th century, and formed the basis for modern science. This is a different meaning of enlightenment to the mystical sense.

Many scientific theories cannot be directly experienced and are counter-intuitive to our human senses. In fact, this is where science is most useful in being able to follow the evidence to reach conclusions that pierce through accepted dogma, conditioning and limited senses.

Our natural experience of the world through our limited senses is that the earth seems intuitively flat, not a sphere.

Our natural experience and both eastern and western classical philophies have viewed water as a fundamental element of nature. Instead science understand water as a molecule comprising a precise combination of different periodic elements, which in turn consist of even more fundamental particles.

I have experienced water, but more importantly from a scientific viewpoint, water and its properties have been objectively modelled as H2O to such an accuracy that it can be chemically manipulated for various uses, ex the steam engine, which are repeatable and objectively verifiable.

I have not experienced the soul, but mystics appear to have experienced this. However, more importantly from a scientic viewpoint there is no objective evidence for the soul, not a single mathematical equation or physical model. There is no objective model as to what the soul is comprised of or how its consituent parts might be manipulated to produce repeatable applications. Nothing, nada, zip.

A soul may exist, but there is no objective evidence for it, and so no science.

Some may argue this is obvious, since science has limited means of measurement and man can never understand the uknowable, which is fine, but then don't call the study of the soul a science, which requires objective evidence and human understanding.

[Roger]

"I have experienced water, but more importantly from a scientific viewpoint, water and its properties have been objectively modelled as H2O to such an accuracy that it can be chemically manipulated for various uses, ex the steam engine, which are repeatable and objectively verifiable."

---I would like to think everyone knows H2O is the chemical inside a fire hydrant. However, how many know the chemical found on the outside? Think you know? Are you sure? For those, that don't: ...K9P......

[Roger]

Jen,

"So some discoveries will be not what were quite expected… that’s okay. My take would be to keep on going, learning, changing and moving on. No point in saying “this is not what I expected so I’m giving up on the experiment."

---Nothing wrong with that. Jen, you are an ok person.

Roger

[Jen]

Thanks Roger, I love you too.

I like to think we are all part of the same consciousness its just that we decipher our awareness in different ways.