The nonscientists, the poets, the religious, the artists, and ordinary people in general may have a point in their fear, and even hatred of what they see as science. They often feel it to be a threat to everything that they hold marvelous and sacred, to everything beautiful, sublime, valuable, and awe-inspiring. They sometimes see it as a contaminator, a spoiler, a reducer, that makes life bleak and mechanical, robs it of color and joy, and imposes on it a spurious certainty. Look into the mind of the average high school student and this is the picture you see (54). The girls will often shudder at the thought of marrying a scientist, as if he were some sort of respectable monster. Even when we resolve some of the misinterpretations in the layman's mind, such as his confounding the scientist with the technologist, his inability to differentiate between the "revolution scientist" and the "normal scientist" or between the physical and the social sciences, some justified complaint is left. This "need to desacralize as a defense" has, so far as I know, not been discussed by the scientists themselves.
Briefly put, it appears to me that science and everything scientific can be and often is used as a tool in the service of a distorted, narrowed, humorless, de-eroticized, de-emotionalized, desacralized and desanctified Weltanschauung . This desacralization can be used as a defense against being flooded by emotion, especially the emotions of humility, reverence, mystery, wonder, and awe (18, 48).
I think I can best make my meaning clear by an example from my experiences thirty years ago in medical school. I didn't consciously realize it then, but in retrospect it seems clear that our professors were almost deliberately trying to harden us, to teach us to confront death, pain, and disease in a "cool", unemotional manner. The first operation I ever saw was almost a representative example of the effort to desacralize, i.e., to remove the sense of awe, privacy, fear, and shyness before the sacred and of humility before the tremendous. A woman's breast was to be amputated with an electrical scalpel that cut by burning through. As a delicious aroma of grilling steak filled the air, the surgeon made carelessly "cool" and casual remarks about the pattern of his cutting, paying no attention to the freshmen rushing out in distress, and finally tossing this object through the air onto the counter where it landed with a plop. It had changed from a sacred object to a discarded lump of fat. There were, of course, no tears, prayers, rituals, or ceremonies of any kind, as there would certainly have been in most preliterate societies (18). This was all handled in a purely technological fashion - emotionless, calm, even with a slight tinge of swagger.
The atmosphere was about the same when I was introduced - or rathern o t introduced - to the dead man I was to dissect. I had to find out for myself what his name was and that he had been a lumberman and was killed in a fight. And I had to learn to treat him as everyone else did, not as a dead person but without ceremony, as a "cadaver". So also for the several beautiful dogs I had to kill in my physiology classes when we had finished with our demonstrations and experiments.
The new medics themselves tried to make their deep feelings manageable and controllable by suppressing their fears, their compassion, their tender feelings, their awe before stark life and death, their tears as they all identified with the frightened patients. Since they were young men, they did it in adolescent ways, e.g., getting photographed while seated on a cadaver and eating a sandwich, casually pulling a human hand out of a brief case at the restaurant table, making standard medic jokes about the private recesses of the body, etc.
This counterphobic toughness, casualness, unemotionality and profaning (covering over their opposites) was apparently thought to be necessary, since tender emotions might interfere with the objectivity and fearlessness of the physician. (I myself have often wondered if this desacralizing and desanctifying was really necessary. It is at least possible that a more priestly and less engineerlike attitude might improve medical training - or at least not drive out the "softer" candidates. [14-2] Also we must now take issue with the implied assumption that emotion must be an enemy of truth and objectivity. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it is not).
There are many other situations in which desacralizing can be seen more clearly as a defense. We are all acquainted with people who can't stand intimacy, honesty, defenselessness, those who get uneasy with close friendship, who can't love or be loved. Running away from this disturbing intimacy or beauty is a usual solution, or it can be "distanced", i.e., held at arm's length. Or finally it can be gutted, deprived of its disturbing quality, denatured. For instance, innocence can be redefined as stupidity, honesty can be called gullibility, candor becomes lack of common sense, and generosity is labeled soft-headedness. The former disturbs; the latter does not and can be dealt with. (Remember that there really is no way of "dealing with" great beauty or blinding truth or perfection - or with any of the ultimate Being-values; all we can do is contemplate, be delighted, be "amused", adore, etc.)
In an ongoing investigation of what I am calling "counter-values" (the fear or hatred of truth, goodness, beauty, perfection, order, aliveness, uniqueness, and the other Being-values), I am finding in general that these highest values tend to make the person more conscious of everything in himself that is the opposite of these values. Many young men feel more comfortable with a girl who isn't too pretty. The beautiful girl is apt to make him feel sloppy, gawky, stupid, unworthy, as if he were in the presence of some kind of royalty or deity. Desacralization can be a defense against this battering of self-esteem shaky enough to need defending.
Just as obvious and just as well known to the clinician is the inability of some men to have sexual intercourse with a good or beautiful woman unless they degrade her first - or at least make her not a goddess. It is difficult for the man who identifies his role in the sexual act with a dirty act of intrusion or of domination to do this to a goddess or madonna or priestess - to a sacred, awesome mother. So he must drag her down from her pedestal above the world into the world of dirty human beings by making himself master, perhaps in a gratuitously sadistic way, or by reminding himself that she defecates and sweats and urinates or that she can be bought, etc. Then he need no longer respect her; he is freed from feeling awed, tender, worshipful, profane, or unworthy, from feeling clumsy and inadequate like a frightened little boy.
Less studied by the dynamic psychologists but probably as frequent a phenomenon is the symbolic castration of the male by his female. Certainly this is known to occur widely in our society at least, but it is usually given either a straight sociological or else a straight Freudian explanation. Quite as probable, I think, is the possibility that "castration" may also be for the sake of desacralizing and desanctifying the male, that Xanthippe is also fighting against being flooded and overwhelmed by her great respect for and awe of her Socrates.
Also what frequently passes for "explanation" is not so much an effort to understand or to communicate understanding or to enrich it as it is an effort to abort awe, marvel, and wonder. The child who is thrilled by a rainbow may be told in a slightly scornful and debunking way, "Oh, that's only the scattering of white light into colors by droplets acting like prisms". This can be a devaluation of the experience in a sort of one-upmanship that laughs at the child and his na?vet?. And it can have the effect of aborting the experience so that it is less likely to come again or to be openly expressed or to be taken seriously. It can have the effect of taking the awe and wonder out of life. I have found this to be true for peak-experiences. They are easily and often "explained away" rather than really explained. One friend of mine, during post-surgical relief and contemplation, had a great illumination in the classical style, profound and shaking. When I got over being impressed with his revelation, I bethought myself of the wonderful research possibilities that this experience opened up. I asked the surgeon if other patients had such visions after surgery. He said casually, "Oh, yes! Demerol, you know."
Of course such "explanations" explain nothing about the content of the experience itself any more than a trigger explains the effects of an explosion. And then these explanations that achieve nothing must themselves be understood and explained.
So also for the reductive effort and the "nothing but" attitude, e.g.: "A human being is really nothing but $24 worth of chemicals"; "A kiss is the juxtaposing of the upper ends of two gastrointestinal tracts"; "A man is what he eats"; "Love is the overestimation of the differences between your girl and all other girls". I've chosen these adolescent-boy examples deliberately because this is where I believe the use of desacralization as a defense is at its height. These boys trying to be tough or "cool" or "grown-up" typically have to fight their awe, humility, love, tenderness, and compassion, their sense of miracle and marvel. They do this by dragging the "high" down to the "low", where they feel that they themselves are. These "idealistic" youngsters keep busily fighting against their impulses to do homage by trying to desacralize and profane everything, as "normal" adults do.
The general-atomistic techniques of dissection, etc. may also be used for this same purpose. One can avoid feeling stunned, unworthy, or ignorant before, let us say, a beautiful flower or insect or poem simply by taking it apart and feeling masterful again. So also for classifying, taxonomizing, categorizing, rubricizing in general. These, too, are ways of making awesome things mundane, secular, manageable, everyday. Any form of abstracting that avoids a comprehensive wholeness may serve this same purpose.
So the question must be asked: is it in the intrinsic nature of science or knowledge that it must desacralize? Or is it possible to include in the realm of reality the mysterious, the awe-inspiring, the B-humorous (44), the emotionally shaking, the beautiful, the sacred? And if they be conceded to exist, how can we get to know them?
Laymen are often wrong when they feel that the scientist is necessarily desacralizing life. They misunderstand the attitude with which the best scientists approach their work. The "unitive" aspect of this attitude (perceiving simultaneously the sacred and the profane) is too easily overlooked, especially since most scientists are shy about expressing it.
The truth is that the really good scientist often does approach his work with love, devotion, and self-abnegation, as if he were entering into a holy of holies. His self-forgetfulness can certainly be called a transcendence of the ego. His absolute morality of honesty and total truth can certainly be called a "religious" attitude, and his occasional thrill or peak-experience, the occasional shudder of awe, of humility and smallness before the great mysteries he deals with - all these can be called sacred (18, 48). This does not happen often, but it does happen and sometimes under circumstances difficult for the layman to identify.
It is easy to elicit such secret attitudes from some scientists, if only you assume that they exist and take them seriously. If science could discard this unnecessary "taboo on tenderness", it would be less misunderstood and within its own precincts would find less need for desacralizing and making merely profane.
We can also learn much from self-actualizing, highly healthy people. They have higher ceilings. They can see further. And they can see in a more inclusive and integrating way. They teach us that there is no real opposition between caution and courage, between action and contemplation, between vigor and speculation, between tough-mindedness and tender-mindedness, between seriousness and (Olympian) humor. These are all human qualities, and they are all useful in science. In these people there is no need to deny reality to experiences of transcendence or to regard such experiences as "unscientific" or anti-intellectual. That is, such people feel no need to deny their deeper feelings. Indeed, it is my impression that, if anything, they tend rather to enjoy such experiences.
Another kind of criticism of official science and scientists comes from their tendency to place too great faith in their abstractions and to be too certain of them. In this way they also are likely to lose their sense of humor, their skepticism, their humility, and that becoming consciousness of deeper ignorance that forbids hubris . This criticism is especially apt in the psychological and social sciences. It is certainly true that physical scientists can plume themselves on their remarkable achievements and their mastery of objects and inanimate nature. But what have psychologists to be proud of? How much do they really know that is helpful to human concerns? Orthodox science has been a failure in all the human and social realms [14-3]. (I pass by the question of the so-called "success" that results in atom bombs that are then given into the charge of psychologically and socially primitive individuals and societies. Is it not dangerous for the right arm of science to grow to giant proportions while the left arm lags so far behind in its growth?)
If I am right, it would certainly be wise and gracious of scientists - it would even be "scientific" in the truest sense - if they denied themselves the pleasures of "methodolatry", i.e., if they refused to become arrogant, blustering, and smug. The graces that would save them are rather such traits as modesty, the ability to laugh at themselves, to live with ambiguity, the constant awareness of the possibility of multiple theories for any set of facts, the acute consciousness of the intrinsic limits of language and of abstraction and of science itself, acknowledgement of the primacy of experiences, of facts, of description over all theories, a fear of living too long in the thin upper air of theories before coming back to the earthy facts. Finally I would add that experiential knowledge of the unconscious and preconscious determinants of one's own scientific work is the greatest humility producer of all.
A revealing comparison may be made with the tendency of most authoritarian characters to be unable to wait and hold judgment in abeyance. It is the widespread clinical impression - the experimental data are still ambiguous - that they just can't stand waiting. It makes them tense and anxious. And they tend to leap prematurely to a conclusion, any conclusion, rather than remain in this, for them, state of emotional purgatory. Not only this, but once they are committed to a conclusion, they also tend to hang on to it too long, even in the face of contradictory information.
The more sagacious and Olympian, the more amused and ironic contemplator is aware that theories in science have been far more temporary than they expected to be, and they may therefore feel that it is just as silly to be totally "loyal" to the laws of Newton as to the house of the Hohenzollerns.
This more tentative attitude can be based firmly on empirical grounds. If one remains close to the world of concrete facts, it is impossible to deny their multiplicity, their contradictions, their ambiguity. One becomes aware of the relativity of our knowledge of this world of facts, relativity to the century, the culture, the class and caste, the personal character of the observer. It is so easy to feel certain and yet to be mistaken. [14-4]
To sail into the teeth of such opposing forces, especially when one is aware of them, is itself a sign of courage and even nobility. It should make scientists feel fortunate, pleased with their lives, that they have sworn devotion to the eternal questions that are certainly worthy of the highest human efforts.
One way in which it is possible to be empirical, to work at advancing knowledge, to value this knowledge greatly, and yet also to be realistic about the paucity and unreliability of human knowledge is to be detached about it, godlike, skeptically amused and affectionate, ironical, tolerant, and wondering. Laughing (in the right way) is one good way of handling an insoluble problem and of simultaneously retaining the strength to keep working at it. A sense of humor can be an excellent solution to the existential problem of being humble and yet also being proud, arrogant, and strong (enough to work at great tasks). In this way we can simultaneously be aware of what we know about rockets and antibiotics and what we don't know about war and peace, prejudice, or greed.
These are all forms of contemplation of the confusion of what exists and are the mild enjoyments that permit us to go on trying persistently to unravel the confusion a little more without losing heart. One can love science even though it is not perfect, just as one can love one's wife even though she is not perfect. And, fortunately, for just a moment and as an unexpected and undeserved reward they sometimes do become perfect and take our breath away.
Such an attitude helps to transcend certain other problems. One important one is the covert identification of a science with completed knowledge. It has been my experience to hear psychologists sneered at by physicists, for example, because they don't know much and because what they do know is not highly abstracted and mathematized. "Do you call that a science?" they ask, with the implication that science is knowing rather than questioning. Thus the rear-echelon soldier sneers at the front-light fighter for being dirty, and the inheritor of wealth sneers at the sweaty one who is earning it. The psychologist knows that there are two hierarchies of esteem in science (not just one). One is the hierarchy of well organized knowledge; the other is the hierarchy of importance of the questions one chooses to work with. It is the ones that choose to work with the crucial, unsolved, human questions who have taken on their shoulders the fate of mankind.
Most of the definitions of science, especially those written by nonscientists, are ultimately inaccurate. Science is too often presented as a kind of functionally autonomous enterprise that cannot really make sense to the outsider. For instance, if you call it a "growing corpus of information" or a "system of concepts operationally defined", laymen might wonder why people should dedicate their lives to such unexciting ends. Such descriptions of the end products of scientific work or of science as a social institution or, for that matter, any talk of science rather than of scientists tends to leave out all the fun, the passion, the excitement, the triumph, the disappointment, the emotional and the conative, not to mention the "esthetic", the "religious", or the "philosophical" turmoil of the scientist's life. A fair parallel would be reading about the rules of chess, its history, studying individual games, etc. All this might give no answer at all to the question, "Why do people play chess?" If you know nothing about their emotions, their motivations and satisfactions, they will remain forever inscrutable, as gamblers are to nongamblers.
I believe it is possible for nonscientists to get some feeling for the scientist's life via some understanding of his goals and satisfactions, since these psychologically real satisfactions are shared to an extent by everyone.
In my investigations of peak-experiences I learned that these experiences are much more alike than the triggers that set them off. I felt much closer to women, for instance, after I discovered that they describe their moments of highest happiness in about the same way that men do, even though they are "turned on" by situations that leave men untouched. So far as the inner lives of individual scientists are concerned, these peak-experiences are much like those set off in the poets by poetry, etc. For my part, I think that I have got more "poetical" experiences from my own and others' researches than I have from poetry. I have got more "religious" experiences from reading scientific journals than I have from reading "sacred books". The thrills of creating something beautiful come to me via my experiments, my explorations, my theoretical work rather than from painting or composing music or dancing. Science can be a way of marrying with that which you love, with that which fascinates you and with whose mystery you would love to spend your life.
But to continue with the parallel, you may spend a lifetime getting to know more and more about your subject and wind up, after fifty years of learning, feeling even more overwhelmed with its mystery and solving the whole business by being amused with it. Of course, this is now an enriched and "higher" mystery and wonder, different from the blank mystification of the ignorant. The two processes seem to go on simultaneously and in parallel, i.e., knowing more and more and feeling the mystery more and more. At least this is what happens in our paragons and our sages, our best scientists, the ones who remain integrated human beings rather than becoming hemiplegic specialists. And these are the scientists who can be understood by poets and who in turn can see the poet as a kind of collaborator. Science can be the "poetry of the intellect", as L. Durrell has put it. This exploration of the secret inner life of good scientists can be a foundation for a kind of ecumenical movement that will bring together scientists, artists, "religious" people, humanists, and all other serious people.
Many people still think that scientific study or detailed knowing is the opposite and the contradiction of the sense of mystery [14-5]. But this need not be the case. Studying the mystery does not necessarily profane it. Indeed, this is the best way toward greater respect, richer understanding, and greater sacralization and sanctification at a much higher level of richness. Remember that it has always been our wisest men who were most simple, least arrogant, and most "amused."
Knowing more about trees and how they work can make them more beautiful. The tree that I look at and admire is now more a miracle because I know a little botany. If I knew still more about the details of its functioning, this knowledge could make the tree still more miraculous and beautiful. For in stance, one of the most profound esthetic experiences of my life came to me long ago in a histology class. Here I had been studying the physiology, the chemistry, and the physics of the kidney. The more I learned, the more I marveled at its beautiful and unbelievable intricacy and simplicity and its functionally perfect form. Its form followed its function far more sculpturally than anything Greenough (Form and Function: Remarks on Art [Univ. of California Press, 1947]) had ever dreamed of. The evolution of the kidney, as the comparative embryologists had learned it, was for me still another marvel so improbable that it could never have been anticipated a priori. It was at this point, after studying, learning, and knowing, that I looked at a perfectly stained slide under the microscope and had an experience of beauty so great that I remember it thirty-five years later.
This is what nonscientists don't know, and this is what scientists are too bashful to talk about publicly, at least until they grow old enough to become shameless. Science at its highest level is ultimately the organization of, the systematic pursuit of, and the enjoyment of wonder, awe, and mystery. The greatest rewards that the scientist can have are such peak-experiences and B-cognitions as these. But these experiences can equally be called religious experiences, poetic experiences, or philosophical experiences. Science can be the religion of the nonreligious, the poetry of the nonpoet, the art of the man who cannot paint, the humor of the serious man, and the lovemaking of the inhibited and shy man. Not only does science begin in wonder; it also ends in wonder.