Although we still spend most of our time profitably engaged with our immediate concerns, most everyone is aware that a pervasive anxiety continues to cloud our modern horizons. Even the ending of the cold war and our new commitments to protecting our planet have done little to relieve a general sense of crisis.
Perhaps closer to the source of our concerns is our rather sudden apparent loss of a vision for the future. Until quite recently scientific modernism and its vision of unlimited material progress for all of us provided a common basis of mutual understanding and confidence in the future.
Reexamining science from an historical perspective might shed some light on the origins of our present predicament. A reconsideration of that history suggests an alternative to the vision of scientific modernism. In what follows I only give the barest outline of this vision which may allow us to look beyond our present condition.
Those early visionaries who unlocked the door of science could hardly have imagined the marvels of technology and cosmology that we now almost take for granted. It started out as a very limited vision, and however much we might wish otherwise, those same logical limits still remain in place. At some point in time we were destined to reach those limits. That we may already effectively have done so may explain the present crisis of science. Even if unforeseeable breakthroughs remain, the ultimate fate of science is sealed in the logic of its origins.
Our new vision must begin from where their vision left off. Because of its overwhelming successes, it is easy to grant a superhuman status to its perfectly human origins. Yet clearly there was a political fiat. The Church will continue to reign supreme on spiritual matters, and we scientists will henceforth confine our attentions to a strictly defined material realm. What a felicitous arbitration, at least for us scientists, at least until now.
If, indeed, reality cannot be so divided, where does that leave us now? Well, we cannot, nor should not take back our history. Its simple logic could only be repeated. We are simply and unavoidably left with a breathtaking alternative. All of human experience and knowledge is ultimately of the spirit and for the spirit.
Long before science was ever imagined, this alternative provided the foundation of human wisdom, trust and confidence. This simple truth has withstood and been renewed in every trial that humans can be made to endure. Only in times complacency are we able to forget our true nature. In what flight of hubris can science imagine that it has closed this door to a higher rationality.
Out of the remembrance of the true nature of reality we can make everything or we can make nothing, it is entirely up to us. In truth, mind is what exists. We could never know otherwise, and what would be the point of pretending otherwise? The reason that mind does not overcome matter is that it is not there to be overcome in the first place.
Thus for the purpose of understanding human history and destiny, we can to a first approximation just consider human intelligence and cosmic intelligence. Between these two there is a simple and natural dynamic. The creative cosmic spirit renews and recreates itself by sacrificially pouring itself into the microcosmic seeds of its creation. Those 'seeds' have become us creatures.
The history of human consciousness has been one extended journey to the outer limits of our spiritual envelope. Scientific modernism and our reaching for the stars was the final and spectacular leap of our cosmic journey into the construct of materiality. As we come to recognize the completion of that process, we will be spirit bound and on the rebound. The return phase of our journey is very likely to be more swift than the outward portion.
This is the barest outline of an immaterial cosmology. It is a first approximation to a postmodern rationality. But before we can decide exactly what to do about our present situation in this cosmos we must spend some time to accustom ourselves to it. That process of deliberation can begin anytime. Who would like to calculate the probable risk of procrastination? For me to be of assistance, there will need to be a minimal degree of institutional toleration of my efforts. It is to that end that I am presently engaged.