by Don Cruse

Prior to the age of science, in the Christian era, there all but universally existed what can best be described as a non-critical Monism of faith. According to this Monism all causes were ultimately spiritual causes and matter was considered to be a lesser, secondary reality. With the advent of the age of science, however, all this began to change, because science sought to understand the physical world and therefore undertook a critical search for what was considered to be physical and not spiritual causation: a search based upon sense experience rather than religious tradition or speculation. This change, which we especially associate with the work of Newton and Galileo, caused us to take the physical world seriously as never before.

Two conflicting causal world-views then stood in need of reconciliation, and this was initially attempted by Rene Descartes (1596-1650) who argued for a philosophical Dualism in which reality was seen to possess two logically-incompatible dimensions. The upper realm of Mind or spirit, wherein causes worked downwards out of heaven, stood in conflict with the lower realm wherein causes were seen to work upwards out of matter, and later out of the atomic and sub-atomic realms. Because the causal logic of the upper and lower realms was incompatible, however, a total disjunction existed between them at the point where the two logics met, a fact which has since haunted philosophical enquiry. Most if not all idealist philosophies, including the works of Kant, Schopenhauer, Fichte and Hegel, are dualist where their causal logic is concerned, because like religion they harbour a metaphysical content, i.e. knowledge claims which ultimately cannot be tested by experience.

Despite the problem of logical incompatibility, the dualist view has survived and become enormously influential. It has allowed the lower realm of science and knowledge to co-exist, albeit uneasily, with the higher realm of religion, faith and metaphysics. The content of the realm of religion and faith is inherently diverse, including as it must all the teachings of all the world's many religions. In the modern world this has doubtless helped to teach mankind the value of tolerance. Nevertheless, it is clear that all of the claims made concerning spiritual, religious and metaphysical reality cannot be true, which has led some modern thinkers to claim that none of them are. Science, as it has developed from the work of Newton and Galileo, is not in itself the outcome of a philosophic Dualism, but rather of a critical Monism concerned not with faith and metaphysics but with verifiable knowledge - a Monism of Matter that we have come to call reductionism or materialism.

A critical Monism, because of its concern with verifiable truth, is not a tolerant philosophy. Its intolerance is well demonstrated in the work of the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who asserts in one of his "Unpopular Essays" entitled 'An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish' that it is easy to convince people today (i.e. Dualism has made this possible) of the notion that there are two kinds of truths: "Sunday truths" and "weekday truths." On weekdays, he claimed, you put the kettle on the stove to boil, whereas on Sundays you put it in the refrigerator. Russell, who described himself as "a passionate skeptic," was a convinced scientific materialist. For him all Sunday truths were simply irrational nonsense, and scientists who attended church on Sunday were not merely being inconsistent, but were required, in his view, to "check their brains at the door." A monist cannot accept the two-world theory espoused by Cartesian Dualism with its inherent but largely ignored logical contradiction, and he or she must, like Russell, passionately reject the notion of two equally valid but contradictory kinds of truth. The intolerance toward Dualism contained in scientific materialism results from this rejection; the critical monist insists that only scientific enquiry, based ultimately upon experience, can lead us to the truth. The primary motivation of all scientists is the discovery of truth, and while some may doubt the truth of materialism itself, unquestionably it has played a crucial role in overcoming the largely non-critical Monism of faith mentioned at the outset.

There are, however, two possible critical monisms: a Monism of Matter or scientific materialism being one, and the other a less well-known but fully viable Monism of Mind or thought, such as we find implicit in the scientific works of the great German poet/scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the philosophy of Bishop George Berkeley. These two forms of Monism are of necessity logically intolerant of each other - which is to say they are mutually exclusive antithetical word-views, so that in the direction of its causal logic only one of them can be true. Both can lay claim to experiential truth, but the way in which that experience is interpreted depends often on the assumed direction of causal logic. Sometimes, this means that the same facts will have an entirely different interpretation.

The Monism of Mind espoused by Goethe, in the direction of its causal logic, contradicts the Monism of Matter that has followed from the work of Newton and Galileo. This fact is clearly evident in Goethe's work opposing Newton's colour theory, which led the physicist Werner Heisenberg, father of the principle of uncertainty in physics, to express his own dissatisfaction with materialism in these words:

Goethe's colour theory, and his timeless study on the Metamorphosis of Plants, are works which stand in the highest traditions of critical enquiry, but they do not assume that the explanations being sought entail physical causation; rather, they allow experience to speak without any such presupposition. A Monism of Mind results from Goethe's work, although he did not start from that assumption.

The "warning voices" which Heisenberg tells us are "counseling us to turn back," are in fact suggesting that materialistic science may have had it wrong from the outset, and that undoing the deep-seated damage wrought by materialism will take nothing less than a reversal in the direction of causal logic in science. This possibility can only have far-reaching consequences for the idea of empirical investigation, because if such a reversal will help us to "save the immediate truth of the sense impression" (as Helmholtz suggests), then sense experience must have been wrongly defined from the outset. We need to revise the concept of experience without starting from the assumptions that accompany a Monism of Matter.

Materialism has superficially in its favour the fact that we are all material beings living in a material world, but this potentially deceiving fact can easily lead to uncritical assumptions, from which a fallacy in the direction of causal logic could arise. Science is often defined as "critical causal enquiry," so let us briefly investigate the two possible directions of causal logic, and some of their ramifications.

So complete is the logical exclusion of the two monisms that if a proponent of either were to grant even a scintilla of reality to its opposite counterpart they would instantly create a Dualism, which must then invalidate their claim to be representing a critical Monism. This then becomes not a question of tolerance in the dualist sense, but of simple rationality. Once we have rejected Dualism, we also have abjured causal contradiction, and our feet are set on a far less forgiving path in causal logic. As we have seen, both critical monisms are scientific in nature and as such they must insist on the rigorous application of logic to all of their findings, so that where causal logic is concerned neither can grant the other any degree of reality whatever. As the American geneticist Richard Lewontin puts it, in specific reference to Darwinism, "our materialism is absolute....we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door."

Either Monism, therefore, has the capacity to overwhelm a scientist's dedication to the truth, because being true to one's chosen Monism can mean being false to reality. A Monism of Matter must deny to consciousness any reality other than it being the product of a physically stimulated organism. If the truth is otherwise, however, a science which subscribes to a Monism of Matter a priori will either not discover it or never acknowledge it. Similarly, a Monism of Mind or thought must deny the view that matter is the prime mover and assert that consciousness is the primary creative force in the universe, not just occasionally but always, i.e. beginning in the deepest reaches of matter.

Because of the "all or nothing" character of monist logic, a scientist's dedication to truth would normally disallow an a priori choice of such importance. An a priori choice of this kind is not unlike joining a political party; one becomes more dedicated to the preservation of one's chosen Monism than to the discovery of truth. Until now, however, history has made that choice for us. Goethe was able to avoid this prejudice by letting his experiences speak without inserting a judgment based on an assumed Monism of Matter, but in this he was almost alone among his contemporaries. It was not at first clear, even to him, that this ability to suspend judgment set him far apart from the scientific mainstream and ultimately led to a critical Monism of Mind. He did not regard himself as a philosopher, and when as a scientist he took issue with the unspoken materialistic assumptions in Newton's colour theory, he did so because he found them deeply contrary to his own experience.

It is now widely admitted in both science and philosophy that materialism cannot explain consciousness, with the result that scientists today are confronted as never before with the need either to turn back to Dualism, which accomplishes little for critical thought, or to abandon a Monism of Matter in favour of a Monism of Mind. However, truth is not well served if this choice is made a priori, because it then leads to a mere standoff between logical opposites and between people who will not consider the opposite Monism. There needs to be an experiential content behind such a decision, otherwise this conflict will never be resolved. A radically new definition of experience is required to support a Monism of Mind. This definition arises most clearly from the works of Goethe and Rudolf Steiner.

By far the most thorough and complete treatment of a viable Monism of Mind is to be found in the vast works of the Austrian seer/scientist/philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), editor of Goethe's scientific works. Steiner's very thorough epistemological arguments are not the result of an intellectual theorizing, but of critical introspective experiences which led to a theory of knowledge completely redefining the concept of experience. Like Goethe's science, Steiner's works stand alone but are invaluable to anyone wishing to explore the critical basis for a Monism of thought.

I have argued elsewhere, supported I believe by the work of the late Michael Polanyi, that in the wake of Descartes' mechanistic philosophy, when his Dualism first began to be supplanted by a critical Monism of Matter, there occurred an unconscious misappropriation of the word 'mechanism' which allowed the language of design to remain attached to the new Monism. Hence, even after God the Designer had been vanquished, His ghost still remained in the word 'machine,' which gradually became a synonym for Designer-less materialism.

It was, I have argued, this misappropriation that caused a Monism of Matter to appear credible when otherwise it would not have been. From the very outset the Darwinian argument would not have been possible if the workings of the human mind in mechanistic imagery and intentional idioms had not been unconsciously substituted for the workings of the Divine mind, the existence of which the theory seeks to deny. If one deletes from the Darwinian argument those linguistic elements which derive their entire meaning from human creativity, one finds that one is left with no viable argument whatsoever. The unconscious substitution of human creativity for Divine creativity causes a Monism of Matter to at first appear viable, but what really results is a Dualism (with its contradictions now hidden) masquerading as a Monism. This fact - and it will prove, I suspect, an unavoidable fact - helps to account for Darwin's own profound unease when contemplating in letters to friends the wider consequences of his theory. He was, as were so many scientists in his day, a philosophical dualist trying to embrace a Monism of Matter, but without total success.

Both critical monisms claim that in course of time science will make beliefs based upon faith unnecessary - but for very different reasons. Scientific materialism argues that there is no such thing as spirit, or a spiritual realm, so that the content of spiritual or religious thought must, from the outset, have been a superstitious mistake. A Monism of Mind, however, strongly asserts that spirit and spiritual realities do exist, but that they are not, or rather should not be, the subject of blind or authoritarian belief. A Monism of Mind insists that once the true nature of human cognitive activity is understood, it will lead to a redefinition of the concept of experience in which the role of thought as a self-confirming, spiritual activity becomes paramount; it will then become clear to critical thinkers that spiritual realities are just as accessible to knowledge as are material realities.

Newton's contribution, according to Noam Chomsky, was no less problematic, because his concept of gravity had introduced an imponderable or "occult" element into the mechanical philosophy of his day, which embodied a Monism of Matter in its purest form. Newton realized what he had done and tried to overcome it, but, as Chomsky states, without success. He had introduced action at a distance across the vacuum of space, into a world view which had assumed the need for direct contact between bodies for them to influence each other. One might claim, therefore, as Chomsky does, that a coherent Monism of Matter ceased to exist after Newton. The assumptions underlying it, however, that matter is primary and mind merely its secondary by-product, have continued to shape and order the direction of scientific and philosophic enquiry, although with ever growing doubts concerning the character and far-reaching effects of scientific knowledge, and a sense in the world at large that science may have lost its way. The claims made by John Horgan in his book The End of Science, to the effect that nearly everything that is knowable has now been discovered, may therefore reflect, not as he suggests the imminent end of scientific enquiry, but the end of the usefulness to mankind of a science based for centuries upon a false causal logic.

A Monism of Mind or thought restores, through the reversal of its causal logic, the certainty to sense perception denied by Galileo. It achieves this by focusing our attention on the activity that first makes sense perception meaningful, i.e. on thinking and the immediate experience of thought. Contrary to what many assume, the claim that consciousness is the primary reality does not deny the reality of sense perception. That the sense world, starting at the atomic level, is seen as the product of a higher non-physical (spiritual) Consciousness, does not mean that it lacks reality; it only means that it is a derived reality, behind which stands the activity of a universal Mind, within which, in ever growing independence, we find the human mind.

This is what Helmholtz meant when he observed that Goethe strove to "save the immediate truth of sense impressions." A Monism of Mind offers critical thought an approach to science that meets our deepest yearnings for a knowledge that does not exploit nature, and for a genuine critical theory of knowledge. The dead end reached by a Monism of Matter, in both epistemology and scientific enquiry, does not take these critical issues into account.

An uncompromised Monism of Matter - one that takes consciousness to be the secondary by-product of material causes beginning in the sub-atomic realm - is a fully deterministic world-view which of necessity denies the possibility of human freedom. Yet it was this same determinism which appeared to make science possible, for it alone ensured predictability in the the events of the natural world. Dualism, however, has tried to inhabit two worlds: one in which scientific predictability holds sway, and another where a Divine consciousness is seen to be at work in an unpredictable and even capricious manner; after all, and without wanting to offend, one does not pray to a God who cannot change His, Her or Its mind.

Over three centuries ago, the work of Newton and Galileo allowed physics to become the bedrock for a deterministic Monism of Matter. With Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, however, classical physics began to undergo a metamorphosis which has led, via Heisenberg's theory of uncertainty, to the development of Quantum Mechanics. In the New Physics, as it is often called, material determinism appears somewhat mitigated, and the consciousness of the human observer is seen to play a critical role. However, physics in general is still largely thought of as adhering to a Monism of Matter, so the question arises with new urgency: which of the two Monisms is true?

American physicist Amit Goswami, in his book The Self-Aware Universe: how Consciousness Creates the Material World, offers searching insights into the "deep reality" which is increasingly seen to underlie the New Physics. He provides evidence that this is not a particulate reality, but rather the workings of a universal Mind; spiritual causes underlie what are presumed to be physical causes.

These unexpected discoveries, placed in the context of Goswami's work, and Goethe's and Steiner's observation that light and thought are analogous phenomena, suggest the possibility that physics will soon be called upon to lead the rest of science in a necessary reversal of its causal logic. This step will be potentially traumatic and will inevitably entail the final rejection of Darwinism as a theory built upon a false causal logic; but there will be no return to Creationism, which seeks only to reestablish either a Dualism or a Monism of faith. A Monism of Mind will lead to the critical realization that the universe is indeed "ensouled." Human consciousness will no longer be seen as a realm of isolated, illusory subjectivity arising from sense-stimulation, but something which arises from direct participation in a higher universal Consciousness. Physical causes will then begin to be seen as secondary phenomena behind which stand spiritual causes that are both knowable and law-abiding. This will allow the concept of Natural Law to be legitimately broadened to include the activity of vital forces manifesting as self-organizing systems and genetic codes.

Biology would then be in a position to explore the character and origin of those vital forces which a critical Monism of Mind argues are everywhere at work in the realm of the living. Just as machines continue to embody the creative ideas of their human designers, so can natural objects and processes be seen to embody in a lawful manner the creative Ideas which first brought them into existence. It is these universal Ideas, active in the world, and also in what the psychologist Carl Jung would have called our 'collective unconscious,' that a Monism of Mind or thought will show to be accessible to a genuinely critical approach to knowledge. The idea that these forces work in a capricious or miraculous manner will then be rejected.

A wealth of indications as to the history of this 'ensoulment,' representing as it must the work of a plurality of Beings, and concerning its present creative focus, are to be found in the vast published works of Rudolf Steiner, of whom the late Russell Davenport, one time Managing Editor of Fortune magazine, wrote:

Given the content of this essay there is little cause to wonder why Steiner's work has been ignored by academia. He was the twentieth century's principal exponent of a Monism of thought, and only one scintilla of its causal logic needs to be true for a Monism of Matter to be false. Similarly, if one scintilla of a Monism of Matter is true, then Steiner's Monism is false. By comparison, dualisms of any kind are tame subject matter, completely non-threatening and so much easier to handle. By far the simplest solution to such a direct conflict in causal logic was for science and philosophy to ignore Steiner, which they have done. But this tactic also places our commitment to truth in a ill light, and so cannot last.

A critical Monism of thought can only be profoundly challenging to the assumptions that underlie materialism, but it also has the power to eliminate basic contradictions from both science and philosophy; to vastly expand the range of scientific enquiry; and to restore trust in the qualitative realm of the immediate sense-perceptible. These benefits, whether taken separately or together, can only deepen and clarify our relationship as knowers to the natural world.