MONISM, SCIENCE & DARWINISM

Philosophically (epistemologically) speaking, the causal ideal of science is ‘monism’ (everything in nature has one and the same source) — because the dualist alternative in which spirit (religion) is seen to have one source and matter (natural law) another, leads immediately to an unscientific causal contradiction.

There are, however, two possible monisms, only one of which can be true. For an epistemological ‘monism of Mind’ all primary causes in nature are spiritual (mental), whereas for a ‘monism of matter’ all primary causes in nature are physical (mechanical?), and needless to say these two world-views are totally incompatible (antithetical). The question that must be answered, in order to determine which of them is true, is: Which came first in the history of the universe, Mind or matter, or alternatively: which one created the other?

The same question restated is: Does nature have a spiritual ‘inside’ or does she not? And by ‘inside’ is meant down to the smallest atom (Bell’s Theorem) but more especially within every living entity, which if it were true would immediately invalidate Darwin’s entire theory.

There is no ‘third monism’ (the law of the excluded middle here applies). Between them only a Cartesian or related kind of dualism is possible (but highly improbable) one in which mind and matter appear simultaneously but without one having created the other. Natural law (science), is then seen to somehow combine itself with miraculous causation (religion). Monadism [0], for example, sometimes offered by religious thinkers as a neutral monism, is actually only a dualism in disguise. Which, as Owen Barfield would have it, is like: “…two entire strangers that have somehow gotten into bed together…”

A ‘science of origins,’ therefore, whether cosmological or biological, must be based either upon a ‘monism of Mind’ or upon a ‘monism of matter — because science cannot be based upon an openly contradictory dualism. But neither can it be based upon a concealed dualism, which is to say, upon a claimed monism, which upon closer scrutiny reveals itself to be merely a hidden dualism. This means that neither monism can borrow any part of a causal explanation from its opposite, without that it ceases to be monist and becomes a hidden dualism instead.

Which of the two possible monisms then is the true one? This is an epistemological question that should be decided upon a basis of direct experience, and not upon prior assumptions or metaphysical speculation of any kind. Is this even possible? My answer will be yes, but I will leave the details until later, first let us be clear about the logical quagmire into which Darwin’s theory leads us.

Darwinism
Darwinism is the currently dominant science of biological origins. It is grounded upon a material or ‘mechanical’ monism, but immediately here we run into a contradiction. The first to attribute the concept of ‘mechanism’ to nature was Descartes, who used it only in a dualist context with God the Designer as the source of all ‘mechanical’ design in nature.

BUT FOR DARWINISM, AND FOR A ‘MATERIAL MONISM’ ‘GOD IS AN UNNECESSARY HYPOTHESIS’.

SO WHY DID WE CONTINUE TO USE THE GOD DEPENDENT CONCEPT OF ‘MECHANISM’?

The answer is that without this concept a material monism is a totally unworkable (unbelievable) world-view, but that by continuing to use it we have ‘borrowed’ an explanatory element from the opposite monism, the one that we should be at pains to avoid at all cost.

This means, undeniably, that both materialism and Darwinism are merely disguised forms of dualism, and are, therefore, unscientific, because science must always be genuinely monist.

The fact that it is human creativity that for the most part the concept ‘mechanism’ draws to our attention, when combined with the absurdity of the notion that we created the natural world, means that the inferred mechanistic creativity without which Darwin’s argument is woven, still unconsciously belongs to God, not to man. Which ironically also means that Darwinism itself is actually based upon ‘Intelligent Design,’ but not honestly so — instead it wants to ‘have its cake and eat it too,’ the unacknowledged desire for which is the mother of all errors in logic.

If Darwinism is not a monist theory at all, but is based upon a hidden dualism, then as such it cannot be genuine science. The often-repeated claim that it is based upon empirical observation then counts for nothing at all, because if it did not have the concept ‘mechanism’ to aid it in interpreting these empirical observations they would all become meaningless.

Consequences
That the word ‘mechanism,’ now deprived of its Designer God, has become a dictionary-sanctioned synonym for scientific materialism, and has in its wake has allowed all kinds of intentional and volitional metaphors to be used in supposedly justifying Darwinism, and has, therefore, imbued the theory with what amounts to a vast assortment of mental causes where there should only be physical causes.

In short, Darwin’s theory (not evolution itself) is a logical abomination, possessing no philosophical validity whatsoever, and no scientific validity either, because all of the empirical so-called evidence supporting it is entirely dependent upon the ‘mechanistic’ interpretation that has been and is being placed upon it.

If nature does have a spiritual ‘inside’ then it is this that accounts for all of her vast creativity, not the verbal folly that the theory has used from the outset as a totally invalid substitute for that same spiritual inside.

So while it may have had historical justification, in helping to emancipate science from dogmatic religion, it has now ceased to serve that purpose and instead opposes the development of a science based upon a true monism, i.e. upon “a monism of thought”.

Which Came First?
This then brings me back to my starting question. Did Mind or matter come first in the history of the universe? And how are we to answer this question experientially, and without resorting to metaphysical speculation?

It has long been held that a science based only upon sense perception would allow us to answer it, but this can now be seen to have failed miserably (see John Horgan’s The Undiscovered Mind, and numerous other recent works, together with Noam Chomsky’s clear admission to that effect). The reason for this being simply that where knowledge is concerned thinking comes before sense perception.

Steiner’s contention that “I think, but the world also thinks in me.” Is the key observation here, together with the two logically undeniable facts cited by him, and which may be paraphrased as follows:

1. “Thinking can be explained by nothing other than itself, because it is always thinking that does the explaining” (Bo Dahlin).
2. Thinking creates the concepts ‘subject’ and ‘object’ just as it does all other concepts (i.e. it exists prior to these concepts).

These two points critically establish what may be termed the ‘self-sufficiency of thought’ and if carefully followed through, as Steiner does in the first five chapters of his work The Philosophy of Freedom, they tell us that Mind came first in the history of the universe, and that all of matter is the creative by-product of Mind — and not the other way around.

Darwinism was and is science’s attempt to deny this in the organic realm, and the reason that the theory does not and cannot work, is that its underlying premises are quite simply untrue. When asked why he placed such a strong reliance on Steiner, Owen Barfield answered: “If I am wandering in a parched desert, do I complain that water only flows from one spring?”

The parched desert, of course, is modern scientific materialism, and now that quantum physics has undermined material determinism, it is Darwinism, not physics, that has become materialism’s principal source of support.

Within the anthroposophical movement itself, however, there is still great confusion over this entire issue, in part at least because of Steiner’s seeming support for the thought of Ernst Haeckel, which is especially evident in his essay ‘Haeckel and his Opponents.’

It would seem ironic indeed that Steiner, in his brilliant epistemology, should so roundly defeat materialism only to have come back to life again through his friendship with Ernst Haeckel, who was without doubt a ‘mechanical’ monist.

What karmic mysteries lie behind this friendship it is difficult to know, perhaps in Steiner’s day it was simply too early for Darwinism to be directly challenged as to the validity of its internal logic, even though that challenge is everywhere implicit in anthroposophy itself, but I must openly and clearly suggest that this is no longer the case today.

Don