We all know that science and philosophy begin in wonder. I wonder: is there anything else we can say about wonder that hasn’t been said before? Something more than we might find in a fortune cookie, greeting card, or office poster?
This is a helpful way of putting it: “when you start to wonder about something,” says Lonergan, "You are giving the flow of experience an orientation toward understanding.”
All animals have a flow of experience, but only human beings consciously will this flow in the “direction” of “understanding.” Nor just understanding this or that, but literally everything. To engage in philosophy is to aim wonder at O, and let it fly.
Higher mammals do try to understand, but only those things connected to instinct. You can get your dog to wonder which hand is holding the treat, but not which painting is aesthetically superior, which artist more profound, and where does art come from, anyway? Oh, and by the way, can I buy some pot from you?
Even if dogs do wonder, they don’t wonder about wonder. Nor do they understand understanding or have insight into insight.
But is this capacity of ours important, or just an accident of evolution, a side effect of something else that is “important,” i.e., reproductive fitness?
Well, supposing it isn’t important, we could never know that, because it would presuppose an ability to know what is important, and this is ruled out by the initial reduction of importance to reproductive fitness.
In short, we have a problem of ontological circularity, and on two levels: first, how does one escape one’s genetic program, and second, how does one escape one’s ideological matrix?
How we vaulted up and out of instinct is admittedly vague. Or, it is incredibly specific -- for example, as described in Genesis. Is that description credible? No, not in the details, if taken literally.
But that’s not how ancients thought about things. Rather, it is sufficient if you take away the lesson that the human soul does not and cannot come about in the usual way, especially by any purely materialistic means. That’s just a nonstarter, a simplification so crude that one would have to be tenured in order to believe it. If you'll buy that, I have a degree in gender studies I'd like to sell you.
Anyway, our flow of experience is not a geyser that shoots straight up but a river that flows forward.
Well, it’s a geyser too, but that would go to a different subject, to mysticism and contemplation, i.e., raja Christianity (or yoga) as opposed to jñāna Christianity.
Backing up a bit and maybe even tugging at my collar, I accept the yogic distinction of paths to the divine, which are easily translighted into Christian terms. One doesn’t have to practice yoga per se to appreciate these different approaches, i.e., wisdom, contemplation, service, devotion, etc. Each of them is present in all of them anyway, since God is fractal (e.g., each Person of the Trinity has everything "possessed" by the others).
For example, I will tweak the following passage by Prof. Wiki on jñāna yoga into purely Christian terms:
Jnana is knowledge, which refers to any cognitive event that is correct and true over time. It particularly refers to knowledge inseparable from the total experience of its object, especially about reality or supreme being. In Christianity, it is knowledge which sets one free, or facilitates liberation from sin, wherein one knows the unity of self with Christ, the second Person of the Trinity.
One final point before we wrap up this lecture. As we know, certain cosmic conditions are necessary in order to know anything about anything. One of them is that this particular moment of time must somehow be relevant to all moments of time, i.e., all times and places, ultimately to the entire cosmos and beyond. This goes to the ultimate telos of the flow of experience referenced above.
In other words, this little window into eternity must literally be a… window into eternity. To wonder is to look out this window -- whether we look forward (science) or above (religion).
No comments:
Post a Comment