Note from Paul, October 10, 1999

Dear colleagues,

cc: Gaia Foundation, New England Complex Systems Institute

Chris has written the NECSI forum an appeal that scholars and scientists reframe from any investigations of any thing that may have a mystical nature.

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Chris wrote:

"Consider the concept of a "miracle". A miracle is an occurrence that is not part of natural law. It can't be predicted or studied; it has no causal chain leading up to it. If miracles happen in our universe, they certainly can't be the subject of scientific investigation, except possibly to study their aftereffects. ... "If something is defined to be a miracle, then it is not a suitable topic for conversation among people wearing "scientist hats."

***end quote***

I, perhaps, occupy a unique position within this debate. My childhood was deeply immersed in mysticism, and in American Indian Old Way. From this experience, and from extensive training in the texts of the worlds major religions, I know that I see from the "esoteric" point of view. My training included a deep experience with the leading English speaking "theoretical astrologers", and a period of 16 years (ages 12 - 26) as a practicing master of astrology and the I-Ching.

When I was 21, I began a five year long transition from this esoteric world and discovered what a college was, and over time discovered the strong bias, even bigoted viewpoint, that academics have towards the use of introspection as an object of investigation. I was required to hide my esoteric background, or face day to day discrimination, from the professors, and real reductions in my statute and privileges as a graduate student (at the University of North Texas).

Eventually I completed work, at University of Texas at Arlington, allowing social recognition as a PhD in mathematics.. and later as a scholar in some aspects of neuropsychology and information science.

However, the insights that my esoteric background give me are still there, not displaced by the academic scholarship.

To the suggestion that Chris formulates, and which is strongly rejected by many of us in this forum, and in the Gaia forum, I have a strong counter argument.

I feel that this is the argument that we should all use in regards to the dogma that mystical things can not be the object of scientific investigation. It is an argument I made in person last night at my house in a discussion with Ludmilla and Paul Werbos.

The argument is:

Our world is becoming increasing more complex as human systems provide greater control over a limited physical space, our Earth. As one example of the consequences of this complexity, we have a high probability that some expression of terrorism, by a small group, will take hundreds of thousands of lives in a few hours, if we allow the current poverty of intellectual understanding of social and psychological systems to continue. Also, we have reoccurring natural disasters, having consequences and antecedents of the same "complex" nature as human psychology of ecological systems. We fail to understand how to solve health care delivery systems, and continue to imprison a large number of young males for inconsequential offenses. We fail to understand how to keep a few very wealth individuals from having a large percentage of the total wealth available. We have a news institution which has walked all over the spirit of the US Constitution and a television institution that perverts and distorts human nature - without any hope of controlling these institutions. We have not even begun to address the problems of world poverty and human suffering.

We need a mature science of complex systems, and this means - for me - the extension of mathematics and logic and the common agreements on means of experimental falsification about the structured investigation of the "unobservable worlds". There are many of these unobservable worlds, and the investigation of these is not straightforward. One of these unobservable worlds is that which Jung called the unconsciousness. Another one is the beable world of quantum mechanics. Another is the ecological systems.

The appeal that scholars and scientist reframe from any investigations of any thing that may have a mystical nature, is one that damages the collective ability to respond to the needs of this complex social world and the natural phenomenon that impact us as a community.

-Paul