Hooks for hanging
Ursula Goodenough is a world-renowned cell biologist and author of The Sacred Depths of Nature, which I’m presently reading. It’s organized like a devotional, with short chapters narrating evolutionary theory, cosmology, microbiology, and reflections concluding each piece. In her introduction, Goodenough talks about people who have enjoyed her book but found that while they understood the concepts as they read, they found themselves at a loss when they wanted to explain them. These were individuals with little to no background in the sciences, with no “hooks” to hang ideas upon.
I’m finding myself in this position as I read–this lack of hooks is part of my motivation for delving into evolutionary theory and modern science recently. In all-too typical liberal arts major fashion, I thought I could bypass the nuts and bolts and simply theorize about our reflection on the world.
That approach doesn’t work.
We all use hooks in building more complex conceptions of the world, or any system, really. At work, I program using Java and VBA. While the syntax in each language is different, both use very similar structures. If I don’t understand IF-THEN, or what a DO-LOOP is, I’m going to be limited to cobbling together ad hoc code.
Likewise in science, I’m stunted without understanding the mechanisms by which life reproduces itself (set aside, for a moment, the truth of evolutionary theory as a superstructure). If I don’t have a basic grasp of how DNA operates, I’ll be limited in ethical theories about eugenics, for example.
All of this reflection about mental furniture has made me wonder what framework was in place beforehand. There are intuitions we have (more or less shared) about the way the world works on a very macroscopic level, which is called “folk psychology” when talking about human intentions or “folk physics” when talking about the interactions of objects.
The problem is that while these folk pictures of the world get us pretty far–I can generally interpret other people’s actions and navigate my car with a basic grasp of momentum and friction–they don’t always hold up under critical reflection. If I want to do more than just “get along” (like build a space shuttle or understand the way human brains work), I need a more detailed picture.
And here is where I wonder about the role of religion. In what way are religious stories like folk intuitions about the world, and in what way are these hooks useful for building up a critical conception of reality? For example, the Buddhist concept of dukkha, loosely “suffering”, is a hook upon which a more complex system is built, which addresses the causes of suffering, its solutions, and along the way a whole host of other minutiae. In Christianity, the hooks may be stories, like the Fall, the Exodus, the Crucifixion. Systematic and biblical theology arise out of these hooks, and when Christians are faced with an event in their life, they have these basic concepts as a means of interpretation.
Do they hold up to critical engagement? And what kind of “engagement” could possibly determine whether they are sufficient or not? (Notice this begs all kinds of questions about what the hooks are sufficient for.) I don’t think anyone will argue that Buddhism or Christianity prevent their adherents from navigating the world successfully, in terms of interacting with humans and driving their cars. But what if this is only a fortunate accident? Is it possible that we navigate in spite of our beliefs, not because of them?
This brings us back, as always, to the problem of how our beliefs “line up with”, “correspond to”, etc. the world. Is this even a legitimate worry, that they may not be hitting the mark (whatever that mark is)? We’re doing okay, aren’t we?
Well, aren’t we?