Integrating Scientific Method and Metaphysics

[electroBeam]

Integrating the scientific method, and using it as a tool rather than a belief system in conjunction with meditation ( metaphysical method) isn't practiced in society.

So the question is, who is practicing these 2 things? Who is putting science in the appropriate context? And what are some resources for stretching your mind and changing your perspective in life to use these things together, or to develop a scientific (university research) career that doesnt make the epistemological traps that every other university researcher is making

[SOUL]

Belief is a tool used in the scientific method, without belief there is no trusting any part of it as valid.

[Forestluv]

1 hour ago, electroBeam said:

Integrating the scientific method, and using it as a tool rather than a belief system in conjunction with meditation ( metaphysical method) isn't practiced in society.

So the question is, who is practicing these 2 things? Who is putting science in the appropriate context? And what are some resources for stretching your mind and changing your perspective in life to use these things together, or to develop a scientific (university research) career that doesnt make the epistemological traps that every other university researcher is making

I'm a university scientist/researcher that integrates science and metaphysics.

[Leo Gura]

@electroBeam That is such a thorny issue.

Very very very few people get it. It's just too tricky and self-deceptive on so many levels.

In a very real sense, most of the scientific work is just number-crunching. Very few visionary scientists exist or are even needed. For every one visionary you need 100 orthodox number-crunching chimps.

[Juan Cruz Giusto]

Ken Wilber in "The Marriage of Sense and Soul" does a great job integrating science and putting it in the right place, epistemologically speaking

[electroBeam]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@electroBeam That is such a thorny issue.

Very very very few people get it. It's just too tricky and self-deceptive on so many levels.

In a very real sense, most of the scientific work is just number-crunching. Very few visionary scientists exist or are even needed. For every one visionary you need 100 orthodox number-crunching chimps.

Yes it is rare, but spirituality is rare in general. Have you found anyone at least half getting it? Like I know of 1 quantum physcicist doing it, but thats it.

Surely there's others out there. Its so hard because spiritual people hate science and scientist hate spiritual people.

[electroBeam]

21 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

I'm a university scientist/researcher that integrates science and metaphysics.

do you mind sharing with me some of your work so i can get a sense of what you're doing, how you're convincing other scientists that theres more to life than just their assumptions and formulas, and how youre integrating the stuff you do in a unversity setting?

[SOUL]

5 minutes ago, electroBeam said:

Its so hard because spiritual people hate science and scientist hate spiritual people.

Your oversimplified generalization perspective aside it's interesting how you framed this, spiritual people "hate" a method of discovery and scientific people "hate" other people.

I think this is something that could prompt us to examine ourselves to discover if we actually "hate" people or if we even "hate" at all.

I also find it interesting to note that both the scientific method and spirituality are methods of discovery.

[Staples]

I posted a similar question here with some good responses (before we collectively devolved into anti-materialists) if you didn't see it; 

 

[Dragallur]

On 30. 1. 2018 at 0:29 PM, Leo Gura said:

In a very real sense, most of the scientific work is just number-crunching. Very few visionary scientists exist or are even needed. For every one visionary you need 100 orthodox number-crunching chimps.

Well that is also because science already did so much work that you need huge teams of scientists to continue just a little bit and only the best of the best of the best (and luckiest) will get the correct idea that needs to be tested aka number crunched.

[Leo Gura]

@Dragallur I agree, except it's not about luck. It's about openmindedness and the desire to think outside the box.

Thinking for oneself is often the hardest and rarest thing in the world. No one bothers to do it.

[Faceless]

It’s no wonder people don’t think for themselves. Relying on knowledge, past experiences, and our limited capacity and rather selective nature of memory is conditioned from the beginning. Government, education, traditional values, religious values and so on. Once one sees the limits of thought and there prejudices and biases there becomes a deep rooted discontentment with its whole structure. Only when one stays with that discontent and doesn’t escape through the desire to achieve contentment of another aspect of thought is there such a thing as individual thinking or “thinking for onseself”. It’s only when through this IMMOVABILITY to react to thought and move in a particular direction to achieve some goal or attainment can there be a totaly different pattern of thinking which remains outside the box. Or any movement within thought being disorderly by its selectivness or assertiveness will always remain within that box.  

 This can be applicable to scientific observation and in our daily life as human beings with everyday psychological problems. In fact this where freedom from the self/thought begins. Only when there is total discontentment with the whole of thought/self and one remains with that discontentment can there be the action of negation of everything that remains in that box. Therefore a totaly new, original, creative pattern of perception can act on the whole of thought which brings about a totaly different pattern and quality of thinking. 

May seem very unusual and confusing, and words can make this complicated but if one goes deep enough they will in see what’s being said. 

Edited February 2, 2018 by Faceless

[Faceless]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Thinking for oneself is often the hardest and rarest thing in the world. No one bothers to do it.

 

[Forestluv]

On 1/30/2018 at 6:29 AM, Leo Gura said:

@electroBeam In a very real sense, most of the scientific work is just number-crunching. Very few visionary scientists exist or are even needed. For every one visionary you need 100 orthodox number-crunching chimps.

 

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Dragallur I agree, except it's not about luck. It's about openmindedness and the desire to think outside the box.

Thinking for oneself is often the hardest and rarest thing in the world. No one bothers to do it.

IME as a cellular biologist/geneticist, I wouldn't say "most" is number crunching. While that type of data analysis takes up a lot of space, there is also space for conceptualizing, integrating relationships and creating new models. Yet, I would still say there is a scientific box with sturdy walls.

Psychedelics were the only tool that poked holes in my walls of science. Once those holes were large enough, I could peer through and recognize inter-relatedness. A new role model for a higher self emerged: Leonardo Da Vinci.  

I consider Da Vinci to be of extraordinary intelligence. I find it difficult to understand and describe how integrated and holistic his mind/consciousness was. He wasn't just a biologist, geologist, engineer, inventor, philosopher or artist. He was none of those, yet all of those. He didn't compartmentalize, he was holistic. This morning in my neuroscience class, I spoke about Da Vinci's life and mind. 

I asked my students "What might Da Vinci be doing in today's world"? My favorite answer was artificial intelligence. Here is an opportunity to integrate engineering, machine, biology, philosophy, metaphysics, creation and art. An opportunity for inquiry and exploration into the inter-relatedness and integration of material circuitry and emergent properties. To be open-minded and allow the surfacing of novel ideas about intelligence, emotions and states of consciousness we currently don't know exist. It seems scientists remain in their own camps of engineering, computer science or neuroscience - restricted to their own scientific journals and conferences.  Although there is some collaboration between camps and willingness to step outside their box, I don't see anyone without a box - like Da Vinci.

[Leo Gura]

15 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

Psychedelics were the only tool that poked holes in my walls of science.

Really?

Why haven't you been able to use rationality itself to reveal the limits of rationality?

The scientific paradigm does not even make sense to itself. You just gotta dig a little into it and the whole thing is seen to be house of cards.

Matter?? Energy?? Molecules?? Quarks?? Time?? Space?? Reality?? Existence? Life?? Knowledge?? Physicality?? Objectivity?? Evolution?? Intelligence??

What are all these things??

Nobody knows. Yet the show keeps on running as if everything was settled.

The scientific paradigm unravels like a poorly-knitted sweater. If you want to be a scientist the key is: pretend like it isn't.

P.S. Of course with all that said, science can still be redeemed.

[Ibn Sina]

I think that it is not possible to really combine science and metaphysics because of the fundamental differences between  not only the methods but also the nature of these disciplines.

Let's consider physics with metaphysics for example. Physics is about matter while metaphysics is about  1 step above the matter, that which gives rise to the matter, the structure of reality itself. The advancement in physics is made by- mathematics, experimentation, developing a mathematical or physical model and matching that model with reality. For e.g- Einstein sat at his desk alone in his room, wrapped his head around the cosmos , and developed his theory of relativity and his theory predicted that when we take the picture of a  solar eclipse,  light will slightly bend and the stars around will move away by so and so angstrom distance and lo and behold that is exactly what happened.

Another,  it is 1916 Einstein sat at his desk alone in his room, wrapped his head around the cosmos developed his theory of relativity and his theory predicted the existence of gravitational waves and he wrote  the equation that described this wave. 100 years later, baam physicists detect this wave and it exactly fits equation that Einstein had predicted. The wave that is plotted from Einstein's equation, and the wave that came  from a galaxy far away and detected by physicists, was 100% identical.

 When it comes to metaphysics, well we have many many different traditions. The western tradition and islamic traditions inquiring about the nature of matter (which this site is not about) and the eastern traditions inquiring the nature of the self (which is spirituality 101/ phenomenology 101) . The metaphysics of Hindus ,Buddhists and Taoists basically started the entire idea of inquiry to the nature of the self, subjectivity , meditation, non-duality, awareness etc the key ideas which Leo espouses. They are not really looking at nature of matter, light, energy. To understand them, one needs a completely different mode of consciousness, a completely different state  of mind, which is never the  normal state , or the default mode of the mind. To understand them, a chemical reaction should happen, a sudden bolt of lightening when one understands EVERYTHING. It's like OH MY GOD , and that experience is as real as it gets, but outside the normal workings of the mind.  It is highly subjective, non-transmittable, As Osho puts it - " To know what Einstein discovered, you don't have to walk the entire path that Einstein trod. But to know what Buddha discovered, you have to walk the entire path from the beginning to the end all by yourself." So there you have the fundamental difference. 

Some few bridges between those 2 I have found include- Psychedelics, Neuroscience ,Neuroanatomy, Pineal gland, Mental diseases, ( but only those portions related with sense of space, time and self). 

Edited February 3, 2018 by Ibn Sina

[Leo Gura]

It's actually impossible to do science without metaphysics. Otherwise how the hell do you know what you're studying?

There's not a single concept which you hold which isn't wedded to your metaphysics.

The only question is, how aware are you of your metaphysics? And does your metaphysics acknowledge that at rock bottom everything must be infinite and groundless?

[Ibn Sina]

17 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

I consider Da Vinci to be of extraordinary intelligence. I find it difficult to understand and describe how integrated and holistic his mind/consciousness was. He wasn't just a biologist, geologist, engineer, inventor, philosopher or artist. He was none of those, yet all of those. He didn't compartmentalize, he was holistic. This morning in my neuroscience class, I spoke about Da Vinci's life and mind. 

I have not a shred doubt that Da Vinci possessed a super human intellect,  who is not only the maker of Mona Lisa but also the father of paleontology, and whose name will be recurring whenever we care to read the history of any disciplines ranging from anatomy to  geology, painting, architecture.

 However I have a slight problem with Da Vinci. If Da Vinci were to come to 21st century would he still become a  biologist, geologist, engineer, inventor, philosopher or artist? The words 'biologist' , 'engineer', 'anatomist' carry too great a weight in 21st century compared to 16th centuryPisa. The word 'engineer' of 21st century is not the same as in 16th century because of the obvious reason that engineering in 21st century is 1000 times more sophisticated then that time's. Due to general lack of sophistication in disciplines, we find many polymaths in the past. Da Vinci wasn't the only man of his kind, we have many people like Ibn Sina- doctor, mathematician, metaphysican,  chemist, physicist,  Thomas Jefferson-  philosopher, politician, botanist, engineer,  architect,Lawyer.   Goethe- Poet, Administrator, Scientist, Politician, Lawyer.Leibniz was a polymath, even Sir Isaac Newton was polymath-   mathematician, astronomer, theologian, author and physicist. 

We can't find this pattern emerging in 21st century. You cannot say similar things about Einstein for example, who was basically a physicist compared to Da Vinci's anatomist, musician, geologist,  Painter, sculptor, botanist. So should we say- Einstein was less intelligent then Da Vinci, no but the answer is the level of sophistication of physics that Einstein did roughly equates to all  ofof Da Vinci's disciplines.  Hence I think it is not feasible to  emulate him as the entire intellectual landscape has changed. This is a world of specialized professionals, the days of polymaths are long gone.

 

Edited February 3, 2018 by Ibn Sina

[Ibn Sina]

9 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

It's actually impossible to do science without metaphysics. Otherwise how the hell do you know what you're studying?

There's not a single concept which you hold which isn't wedded to your metaphysics.

The only question is, how aware are you of your metaphysics?

 

 I do think that scientific inquiry has metaphysics going on in the background, and there is metaphysical base to scientific knowledge, but what I am saying is that the methods for inquiring about these two disciplines are different. Einstein surely wasn't taking help from metaphysics to understand the nature of matter. Likewise, there is not single bit of physics in Spinoza's metaphysical magnum opus  Ethics. I don't see how one compliments the other. What we are seeing recurrently is study of physics helping to understand physics and study of metaphysics helping to understand metaphysics.