Finished Stuart Kauffman's Reinventing the Sacred. It's a dud. Full of interesting ideas, yes, even very exciting ones. But anticlimax doesn't begin to describe the whimper with which it ends. Hard-hitting technical argument here gives way to warmed-over enlightenment banalities. Here's a representative passage from his concluding chapter:
What's disappointing here, besides the purple prose and the banality of its politician-like promises, is how little thought he's put into this part of his argument: he's entitled to be saying much more interesting things here. The book starts with physics, moves to biology, evolution, economy and eventually consciousness and mind. The point at every point is that reductionism doesn't work - physics cannot predict the emergent phenomena in biology, which are thus partially lawless. The universe is one of "ceaseless creativity" (though by creativity Kauffman often means no more than unprecedented novelty, not the same thing), and our challenge is to "live forward into mystery." Of course we are part of that "creativity" too. The biosphere (life in all its forms) as well as all of human consciousness and cultural experience - are "emergent," which means more than that they cannot be explained reductively, but that they are real: his argument is not just epistemological but ontological (a transition I confess I don't follow).
Kauffman thinks this is good news indeed. It should heal the rift between the "two cultures" - science is no threat to the humanities, since cultural phenomena are emergent. And as humans it is in fact imperative that we realize that reason alone is not enough for us. Kauffman mentions Jung in passing here, Frans de Waal on instinctive fairness in chimpanzees, and the instinctive care of a young mother for her son, but there's no real argument, just grand gestures. I sense that Kauffman hit a deadline, or decided he isn't the one to work out this part of his argument.
The conclusion is, in fact, not just unresearched and unthought-through, it is a cop-out. Specifically, Kauffman's own argument would suggest that claiming that humans "invented gods" is a misleading formulation, if it is to imply that gods are not real. Are not gods emergent - in the sense that one couldn't have predicted that and how human beings have imagined them? And aren't these human imaginings responses to (indeed contributions to) something real, the endlessly repeated "ceaseless creativity" which "should be God enough for us"? Shouldn't Kauffman be saying something like William James, who - while not a believer - concluded that "God is real because he has real effects"?
(In fact, I'm going to write to him - why not? - and ask if he's read any American pragmatists on religion; the Dewey of A common faith should be a hero for Kauffman.)
By letting religion just be something made up (in the pre-emergent sense he has supposedly refuted), he robs the concepts of "God" and "sacred" of the force he wants from them. And by not spelling out any way in which human "meanings" (including the True, the Beautiful and the Good) are more than contingencies of culture - restricted to the human world - he leaves them as weak as before to the attacks of scientific "facts." Again, he not only could have done better but should have: beyond the cop-out on religion, the de Waal reference should have been not a paragraph (without even a reference) but a whole chapter on what an ethics that doesn't presuppose human natures and social arrangements would look like, an ethics which can be understood (and indeed understands itself) as part of the wondrous complexity, order, contingency, and open-endedness of our world. (Not just ethics; the above pic is bonobo art.) The first half of the book seemed headed straight for such an argument, and I'd still like to see what it would look like.
If we call the creativity of the universe, biosphere, and humanity God, we are claiming some aspects of these for ourselves as sacred. And we are doing so knowing that the abiotic universe is uncaring, that terrible things happen to good people, and that we do evil. If it may be wise to call the creativity in the universe, biosphere, and humanity God, we cannot know how this symbol and we will evolve as we live with it. This God may become precious to us in ways we cannot foresee. If we must live our lives forward, only partially knowing, with faith 
and courage as an injunction, this God may call to us as we step into mystery. The long history of life [/] has given us tools to live in the face of mystery, tools that we only partially know we have, gifts of the creativity that we can now call God.
We can find common ground across our di- verse traditions, religious and cultural, and come together toward a global civilization, rejoice in the creativity in our universe, our shared biosphere, and the civilizations we have created and will continue to co-create. We can find common ground as we seek a new understanding of humanity. Such a quest can serve to bring meaning, community, solace, reverence, spirituality, tolerance, and generosity to all of us. This is the task of generations, for it can be the next stage in the cultural, moral, and spiritual evolution of humanity. For the first time we have the means to communicate and choose. Can we know what we will create together if we embark on such a discussion and quest? Of course not. How wonderful though - we have to invent it together. ...
Can we reinvent the sacred? Think of all the gods and the God that humanity has cleaved to. ... Against all of those who do believe in a Creator God, I hold that we have always created and needed this symbol. It is we who have told our gods and God what is sacred, and our gods or God have then told us what is sacred. Is has always been us, down the millennia, talking to ourselves. Then let us talk to ourselves consciously...
and courage as an injunction, this God may call to us as we step into mystery. The long history of life [/] has given us tools to live in the face of mystery, tools that we only partially know we have, gifts of the creativity that we can now call God.We can find common ground across our di- verse traditions, religious and cultural, and come together toward a global civilization, rejoice in the creativity in our universe, our shared biosphere, and the civilizations we have created and will continue to co-create. We can find common ground as we seek a new understanding of humanity. Such a quest can serve to bring meaning, community, solace, reverence, spirituality, tolerance, and generosity to all of us. This is the task of generations, for it can be the next stage in the cultural, moral, and spiritual evolution of humanity. For the first time we have the means to communicate and choose. Can we know what we will create together if we embark on such a discussion and quest? Of course not. How wonderful though - we have to invent it together. ...
Can we reinvent the sacred? Think of all the gods and the God that humanity has cleaved to. ... Against all of those who do believe in a Creator God, I hold that we have always created and needed this symbol. It is we who have told our gods and God what is sacred, and our gods or God have then told us what is sacred. Is has always been us, down the millennia, talking to ourselves. Then let us talk to ourselves consciously...
Stuart A. Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science,
Reason, and Religion (NY: Basic Books, 2008), 285-6
Reason, and Religion (NY: Basic Books, 2008), 285-6
What's disappointing here, besides the purple prose and the banality of its politician-like promises, is how little thought he's put into this part of his argument: he's entitled to be saying much more interesting things here. The book starts with physics, moves to biology, evolution, economy and eventually consciousness and mind. The point at every point is that reductionism doesn't work - physics cannot predict the emergent phenomena in biology, which are thus partially lawless. The universe is one of "ceaseless creativity" (though by creativity Kauffman often means no more than unprecedented novelty, not the same thing), and our challenge is to "live forward into mystery." Of course we are part of that "creativity" too. The biosphere (life in all its forms) as well as all of human consciousness and cultural experience - are "emergent," which means more than that they cannot be explained reductively, but that they are real: his argument is not just epistemological but ontological (a transition I confess I don't follow).
Kauffman thinks this is good news indeed. It should heal the rift between the "two cultures" - science is no threat to the humanities, since cultural phenomena are emergent. And as humans it is in fact imperative that we realize that reason alone is not enough for us. Kauffman mentions Jung in passing here, Frans de Waal on instinctive fairness in chimpanzees, and the instinctive care of a young mother for her son, but there's no real argument, just grand gestures. I sense that Kauffman hit a deadline, or decided he isn't the one to work out this part of his argument.
The conclusion is, in fact, not just unresearched and unthought-through, it is a cop-out. Specifically, Kauffman's own argument would suggest that claiming that humans "invented gods" is a misleading formulation, if it is to imply that gods are not real. Are not gods emergent - in the sense that one couldn't have predicted that and how human beings have imagined them? And aren't these human imaginings responses to (indeed contributions to) something real, the endlessly repeated "ceaseless creativity" which "should be God enough for us"? Shouldn't Kauffman be saying something like William James, who - while not a believer - concluded that "God is real because he has real effects"?
(In fact, I'm going to write to him - why not? - and ask if he's read any American pragmatists on religion; the Dewey of A common faith should be a hero for Kauffman.)By letting religion just be something made up (in the pre-emergent sense he has supposedly refuted), he robs the concepts of "God" and "sacred" of the force he wants from them. And by not spelling out any way in which human "meanings" (including the True, the Beautiful and the Good) are more than contingencies of culture - restricted to the human world - he leaves them as weak as before to the attacks of scientific "facts." Again, he not only could have done better but should have: beyond the cop-out on religion, the de Waal reference should have been not a paragraph (without even a reference) but a whole chapter on what an ethics that doesn't presuppose human natures and social arrangements would look like, an ethics which can be understood (and indeed understands itself) as part of the wondrous complexity, order, contingency, and open-endedness of our world. (Not just ethics; the above pic is bonobo art.) The first half of the book seemed headed straight for such an argument, and I'd still like to see what it would look like.
