Dearest C.,
I fell asleep last night thinking about these words above, which evoked
nostalgic feelings, oddly enough, because they remind my of that period
in my life when I thought about these same issues intensely and anxiously,
because of the mystery inherent to the issues. I do still think about
these issues intensely, but now the mystery has been transmuted in my heart
and mind... it has become difficult to attach words to that aspect.
I will attempt some words: wonder provoking, wonder "full"... enchanting...
beauteous enigma, akin to Mona Lisa's smile... thrilling as the unfolding
mysteries of a lover...
Not to argue with you, but to share my views with you as a friend: I
think "the basic foundation of the Bahá'í
Faith" is LOVE. Love comes before faith. Love is the basis
of everything. But what is love? By what principles of science
and reason does a man prove the existence of love, probe the mysteries
of love, or justify the inclusion of love in his life? Why do you
seek love? Why does anyone? Is it nothing more than the perturbations
of certain molecules that we call the senses? Can science illuminate
love for us?
I am a scientist, proud of it, card-carrying, evangelical about the
importance of science and scientific education for all. But what
is science? I have never seen electrons, nor has anyone else, yet
we all have faith that they exist. We have all seen and felt their
effects, and we trust that those who painstakingly "proved" that the effects
are the result of minuscule entities with this name, knew what they were
doing. We have faith that they did not simply make up the explanations
we read. Thus we assume that when hundreds of people who constantly
bicker with each other, finally agree about something, it must be true.
We know very well that hundreds or millions of people collectively can
in fact be wrong, but we trust that when a reasonably large number of scientists
who performed a reasonably large number of experiments agree to a reasonable
interpretation of the results of their experiments (at least until they
perform the next round), it is reasonable to accept their interpretation
of what that experimental evidence means. We have faith in truth
by numbers, and truth by reasonableness.
Then again, since reason causes me to question the existence of faith,
and whether I should have any, what exactly is this thing "reason" itself?
Is it deductive logic, inference, so well understood that we create inference
engines? I think of this, when it is proposed as the sole constituent
of thinking, as "the seductive-deductive theory of mind." Because
the crisp-edged 0/1, YES/NO, hard TRUEs and hard FALSEs of pure deductive
logic is seductive--lo and behold, it makes everything precisely clear!--to
anyone who is anxious about the mysterious underbelly of mind, life, death,
and the universe. Anxiety, fear of the unknown, and other emotional
messes are neatly sidestepped by deductive logic, rendered comfortably
ineffective and irrelevant. Of course, deductive logic merely slips
the mystery into the *frame* of the problem, the "if" statement.
For any given logical setup or framework, what, exactly, belongs in the
frame, the "if" statement, and what does not? Where are the rules
for that? Who made those rules? Why? What happens if
I violate them? If there are no rules for the "if" statement, why
not? What happens if we change the "if" rules and by what criteria
would we change them?
But what I would most like to know, is how or when beautifully precise
and crisp deductive logic becomes the fuzzy estimates associated with the
words "reasonable" and "rational", both of which are certainly important
in science. In other words, what is the exact path from "reason"
to "reasonable"? How do we march precisely from the cleanliness of
"TRUE/FALSE" to the muddiness of "rational"? In the end, the latter
pair prevails in science, not the former, why is that? OK, so we
must always make do with limited resources, we must perform a reasonable
number of experiments because we can not perform an infinite number of
them, it would be irrational to try. But should we therefore possibly
declare all scientific knowledge as tentative, theoretical, "true for now",
imprecise, perhaps even not-quite-rational (since there are always the
mysterious leftovers we nervously call "error")... and do we then dare
to question how "real" the whole body of it is? We are led to question
our definition of reality... how do we define THAT precisely? Are
we reduced to having faith that reality exists? Is the brilliantly
befuddled deduction "I think, therefore I am", the whole enchilada, hot
sauce not included? Can we re-phrase that as "I think, therefore
I have faith that I am"?
"Love is the secret", my dear C., my dear seeker of truth, seeker of
order, seeker of beauty, seeker of knowledge, seeker of love. You
have seen the effects, you have the evidence before you. A reasonably
large number of people--who are also and always will be seekers--provided
their most reasonable explanations of what the evidence means to them.
With religious faith, as with scientific faith, for any one person, the
truth may be fuzzed-out over the minds of many compatriots. This
is the faith of numbers and reasonableness. "I am an XXX (replace
XXX with preferred religion, philosophy or scientific viewpoint) because
my family, friends and the people I admire are XXX, the tenets of this
faith/philosophy/viewpoint are reasonable, so I will stick with it."
While scientific faith/truth is even more (and by accepted definition)
fuzzed-out over the minds of many than is religion, I think that at times
it can be crisp and precise for a single person. I suspect most of
our breakthroughs come from this phenomenon, whereby a scientist has a
"brainstorm" or "brilliant insight" and thus simply "knows" that something
is true, then must slug through a lot of work to communicate and "prove"
it to others. Certainly many scientists have alluded to this phenomenon,
usually (but not always) carefully avoiding any reference to notions such
as "faith."
To repeat, LOVE, the same notion you used three times in your note above,
is the key. It underlies, motivates, encompasses all. I KNOW
love exists, this is not a matter of faith for me, it is crisp indeed.
Each of us chooses what we have faith in, dear C. We all have faith
in something, usually many things, and most of our faiths we would have
great difficulty dissecting analytically, scientifically, and reasonably.
Such is life. :-)
much love,
sim
