Consilience

I am reading Edmund Wilson's Consilience. Consilience is a pretty good word to describe the contemporary convergence of scientific disciplines. Teilhard's beloved discipline of Geology or Wilson's beloved Entomology at some level cohere---that is to say that an understanding of the history of rocks is required for a full understanding of the flying ant. Further, consilience means that at an ever-increasing rate contemporarily, that any particular phenomenon under inquiry is contiguous to some other particular entity under inquiry and even more, that the subset of all of these inquiries is converging or merging into a single coherent inquiry.

Teilhard speaks of 'coherence' which is a) the possibility condition of consilience and b)the grasp or understanding of coherence. I am not making an official review of Wilson's book, but allowing it to act as a springboard to some reflection upon science, knowing and understanding.

The Scripture speaks of Christ as "in Him all things cohere." You will find this inone of Paul's Letters (Colossians, I believe). Paul is also reported to have spoken these words in the Acts of the Apostles: "In Whom we live, move and have a our being." Coherence, hence possibly, consilience?

Wilson claims to be an atheist---but I accept the same understanding of consilience, and yet, I also accept divinity. I really do not think there is a great deal of intellectual difference between so-called believers and unbelievers. After all, we pay the same taxes! And besides almost every intellectual effort to abstractly define 'God' dissolves into logical absurdity. My faith reveals divinity and allows me not to overly concretize or conceptualize 'God'. Like Aquinas I agree that God is not knowing what he is.

All I know is that if you glimpse Teilhard's vision, it requires a new understanding of the Classically Theistic Deity. Exactly what moves into its place---an implicate process---is unclear. The term 'panentheism' has been used by Hartshorne and Reese, in their excellent work Philosophers Speak of God. This term is also reserved for Whitehead's view of deity---panentheism. In my opinion, words like 'theism' and 'panentheism' once more commit the error of abstract conceptualization when divinity is immediately grasped in the perception of a coherence, if I may so roughly speak---Blake says it better: to see the world in a grain of sand.

And it is this synthesis and coherence which underlies the consilience Wilson speaks of. It is a beautiful act of understanding when we open our eyes and see the phenomena of nature unfold--such as the leaping chipmunk, and lighning bolt. Truth is seen and there is nothing left over, truth is linked to these initial acts of understanding and acceptance.

Acceptance and acquiescence are key terms which in my view link 'love' and true understanding.
Love is what happens when we open our eyes and see the things in truth, and accept their being as exactly what they are and present themselves to be. Here is faith which allows me to acquiesce at my own liesure. A renowned scientist such as Wilson plays the game longer! The man or woman of faith says "A rose is a rose is a rose..." and they speak well. Their faith allows them to accept the rose as it is without the need for major intellectual inquiry. A scientist on the other hand, presses her inquiry into the nature and true being of the flower, and can press on in this manner in an unlimited sense, continuing to ask of the rose: "What are you?" And "Why are you?"

The horizon of inquiry continues to unfold in scientific inquiry---infinitesimally---to use Descartes ' term. At any point along the inquiry the proceeding may come to a halt when the inquirer ceases the interrogative mode and accepts the account being offered---that is the completely "subjective" acquiescence which accepts the evidence of the phenomenon as true logos. All that is "over and against" the subject side---i.e., the object---the "world" if you will, all that coheres is accepted, there is an affirmation, a yes, that is at the root of this act of understanding. The source of positivity is love. To reiterate: to love means to accept the world as it manifests---having undergone a fusion. Let it be, the Lord's prayer "thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven" reveals coherence again! However, to be honest, the Lord's words do not entail a bifurcated universe such as Classical Theism posits in Transcendence. When there is acquiescence in loving, this allows that Thy Will be Done. This fusion is at the heart of the prayer and its self-referentiality. To pray is to acquiesce, to acquiesce is to accept, to accept manifests 'Thy Will' concretely via prayer! :)

Love is a term that when spoken, reveals the point at which coherence 'coheres' and moreover it indicates that this is a specifically anthropic act, and finally this discussion bypasses the theism/atheism debate. My feeling is that I accept the entire world that atheism presents with nothing left over, the only difference being that in my act of faith, I accept that phenomena are truthfull, at least in possibility. There is this paradox---if there is even but a speck of truth then truth exists and if truth exists, faith is answered and the rest follows. The "religion" of the future will (perhaps) not place so much stake on a personal act of the acceptance of mystery, as it will depend on a proper grasping of the the way things really are, nature itself understood as all that comes into being, stands there and passes away, including the totality of the phenomenal process (including the grasper and that which is grasped). A human act of letting things be, saying yes, and loving the entire universe, above all in its particular manifestations is the ethic, the metaphysic, the theology, the psychology and so on of the future religion, if it is to be in Saint Augustine's expression vera religione---"true" religion. Yes, for Teilhard this is Jesus Christ, but it is also Edmund Wilson's Consilience.

One more thought: Teilhard uses the term 'research" in conjunction with "love" and perhaps this sounds odd to Harvard scientists today, and yet, you will find in Wilson, this great teacher and scholar, a kind of passionate love for ants! And he wants to grasp, to fully understand the truths of entomology. In Teilhard's sense of 'research', Wilson manifests love and a great deal more about true religion because consilience implies coherence and this is based upon truth. True religion, in short, is centered on that which is true! Curiously enough, the same thing can be said about true science.

Remarks on Teilhard Readings

Cuenot's biography.
Delfgaauw's Teilhard and Evolution.
Professor Wildiers' introduction.
Letters from a Soldier-Priest
Let Me Explain
Toward the Future