Myth of origins: Ursula Goodenough
Although to some degree, human beings live their lives moment-by-moment, we have a reflective ability that requires some overarching story about where we’ve been and where we’re going. This narrative influences the interpretation of everyday “facts”[1] like mortality, love, beauty, work, and so on. In the writings of Ursula Goodenough, I’ve found a thinker who has an appreciation for the scientific exploration of these things, but without neglecting the value human beings place upon them.
The combination of facts and values in narrative form results in a myth, and for this reason I can talk about the evolutionary myth without being pejorative. Further, we’re constantly reconstructing just what happened in the last billion or so years. This myth is one which has a larger structure (change from one form of organism to another through selection pressures and time) but whose details are open to adjustment.
Reduction and Explanation
Cell biologist Ursula Goodenough talks about the implications of this origin story for our human lives in her book, The Sacred Depths of Nature. While she’s fully conversant with the mechanics of biochemistry and the emergence of life from non-life building blocks, she refuses the lure of reductionism. A Mozart sonata can be explained by music notes, math, and the physics of atoms forming matter that vibrates as keys strike metal strings. But the experience of hearing the sonata is “another way of experiencing the whole and indeed, the only way to have a full understanding of what the sonata entails…” (34).
Still, doesn’t explaining the origins of human life, in all of its beauty and richness, by mindless evolutionary mechanisms, rob us of meaning, or reduce us to chemistry and physics? Even if we can agree that the experience of life is somehow different than its explanation, doesn’t the explanation hold power over how we interpret our experience?
Goodenough quotes William James at this point: “At bottom, the whole concern of religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe.” She says that “As a religious naturalist I say ‘What Is, Is’ with the same bowing of the head, the same bending of the knee” as a religious believer would assent to their god’s will.
There is still that pesky Anthropic Principle, the odd reality that our earth is “just right” for life to emerge and for us, in our specific form, to have occurred. But in saying What Is, Is, we “covenant with mystery” (Goodenough’s phrase). Even the facts may not be what we would like–there seems to be no compelling reason for us to posit a meaning-giving-god, they are what they are. And so we can marvel at the “miracle” of life from non-life, even if it is explainable in mechanistic terms.
Mystery and Immanence
Goodenough does, throughout her book, explain human life in terms of biochemistry. Yet she never stops there, content that all has been said. There is the problem of awareness, that nebulous thing which humans have, apes seem to share to some extent, and of which “lower forms” seem to have only foreshadowing traces. We can tell the story of consciousness, from the responses of photoreceptors all the way to the human brain. There is much more to learn, but even if we could explain consciousness, there would still remain the sense of Immanence: “we are comprehended by something much larger, much deeper, more valuable, and more enduring than ourselves and the finite universe.”
I tend to think that this is a result of the unique ability of human beings to be aware of their smallness in the vastness of the world, and not a pointer to a (vertically) transcendent being. Some of my most “spiritual” moments occurred in the vastness of nature–at the junction of the ocean and the beach, the top of a mountain, the edge of a dock in Annapolis. I was overwhelmed with “horizontal transcendence”–my small place in reality.
This transcendence brings me gratitude, a thankfulness to the circumstances (the wider Anthropic Principle and the smaller ones, such as my parents meeting and the specific biochemistry that generated me, not someone else). As well, I have within me a pressure to continue–even though I know that in aeons, the sun will flame out and our species will die. It may not be logically defensible, but it is a deep inclination which I honor. With Goodenough, I find values in nature that are congruous with my theist friends–gratitude, reverence, awe, curiousity. There may be evolutionary explanations for their emergence, but at some point, I must lay aside my philosophical tools and submit to the mystery of What Is, Is.
Orienting Narratives
Goodenough closes The Sacred Depths of Nature by discussing the Epic of Evolution and its usefulness in our modern era as an orienting narrative. I was, until this past year, shamefully ignorant about this amazing myth, woven from scientific exploration and rational connections.[2] I’ll end my essay with Goodenough’s quotation, since it leads into the next thinker who has inspired my personal journey towards a unified conception of the world: Martha Nussbaum.
Goodenough closes by discussing the Epic of Evolution and its usefulness in our modern era as an orienting narrative. I was, until this past year, shamefully ignorant about this amazing myth, woven from scientific exploration and rational connections.[2] I’ll end my essay with Goodenough’s quotation, since it leads into the next thinker who has inspired my personal journey towards a unified conception of the world: Martha Nussbaum.
“Humans need stories–grand, compelling stories–that help to orient us in our lives and in the cosmos. The Epic of Evolution is such a story, beautifully suited to anchor our search for planetary consensus, telling us of our nature, our place, our context. Moreover, responses to this story–what we are calling religious naturalism–can yield deep and abiding spiritual experiences. And then, after that, we need other stories as well, human-centered stories, a mythos that embodies our ideals and our passions. This mythos comes to us, often in experiences called revelation, from the sages and the artists of past and present times” (174).
[1]I say “facts” because while the fact-value dichotomy has been a precious creed in philosophy, Hilary Putnam argues that this it a false one. What counts as a “fact” depends upon prior values, such as truth. I’m not going to get into the technical aspects of this debate (which I am just dipping my toes into). And I recognize that to call “love” and “beauty” facts may be stretching it–although these are elements of our human experience.
[2]Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, along Stephen Gould’s essays (I know, I know, contradictions!) and the websites of PZ Myers and Ed Brayton are largely responsible for my ad hoc education in this area–an education which is still woefully incomplete and is ongoing.
More links to Ursula Goodenough: an interview with Beliefnet, a bibliography and summary of her articles in Zygon, a journal of science and religion.
Image: Paul Cezanne’s “Chateau”
March 18th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
I think we have been continually conditioned in this society that there’s always a ready made explanation for all of society’s ills. If we have a medical issue, then we can count on science to resolve it. If there’s a economic problem, there is always someone around with an easy answer.
To an extent, this is due to an American Myth that we perpetuate that no problem that arises cannot be solved by good old ingenuity.
But that leaves faith out of the picture. I believe in God. I am a theist. And as I have gotten older, I have ceased to feel the compulsion to have everything explained and wrapped up into neat little concise statements. It feels good, but there’s a great deal about humanity that exists in contradiction, hypocrisy, and paradox.
It’s been tough for me to recognize that there will be things about humanity and life that I will not ever discover because I am not God. But I’m learning to be okay with, as James Thurber pointed out, knowing some of the questions than all the answers.