On Science and Mysticism

First Published: 2023 December 5

Draft 2

What is science? The easy answer is what we were all taught in the early days of our schooling: science is the scientific method. That is, science is the process of following a rote set of instructions which begins in observation and ends in reporting a disproved¹ hypothesis. Like most easy answers, however, this answer is wrong.

Science is fundamentally a method of learning truths. More than that, science is fundamentally a method of conveying truth. An individual’s experience can be noted and generalized to the universe at large.

Why does this redefinition matter? Hopefully, this redefinition frames science not as something one does but as an experience one has.

That is, truths are not created, which I think most scientists would agree with. After all, while we may not know the exact frequency of any given molecular transition, we know that it is not dependent on observation.²

More than that, truth is not an assembly of facts, but is something broader. That is, reductionism does not work as a philosophical concept. Although we can often make successful³ models which are reductive, these always lack some fundamental element of reality.

From here, I would go so far as to claim that truth should, in fact, be capitalized as Truth. That is, science’s goal is uncovering part of Truth.

Although every philosophy and religion has its own experience of Mysticism, all definitions tend to agree on one point: a mystic is one who sees Truth. Especially in Catholic Tradition, where I am most versed, Mysticism is an experiential reality. Mystics encounter the Divine.

Now, at this point,⁴ you may be thinking that I’ve pulled some clever slights of hand to make science into a religion. That is not my goal.⁵ Instead, my goal is to draw a connection between two fundamentally different methods of understanding reality.

Many philosophies have a metaphysics: a way of viewing reality. Scientific metaphysics can only ask, and therefore answer, questions about material reality. Christian Mystical Metaphysics can only uncover spiritual reality.⁶

Crucially, both domains believe that reality is both universal and describable. That is, the speed of light⁷ is not only constant throughout the entirety of the universe, but anyone can learn this to be true. In a slightly more abstract analogy, differentiation, once discovered by Newton and Liebniz⁸, can now be taught to students around the world. Similarly, mystics in the Church have taught us spiritual truths that we can know, even without having experienced them ourselves.

I know that there’s more to say on this topic, but at five thousand words, I think that I’ve exhausted my well on this topic for the day. I’ll hopefully revisit this again.⁹

Daily Reflection:

• Hobbies:

  • Did I embroider today? I again forgot this in my car, which is fine.

  • Did I play guitar today? I did! I tuned it down to DADGAD last night, and it turns out that my voice is approximately 4 frets¹⁰ lower than I normally think of it. (Read: I started singing Oh No Not I and my voice kept breaking so I kept moving the capo lower until it felt nice)

  • Did I practice touch typing today? Oh gosh, I didn’t realize that C was supposed to be typed with my middle finger, so it’s very hard for me to start learning the letter. Oh well.

• Reading

  • Have I made progress on my Currently Reading Shelf? I finished one of the books on it! It was a weekly newsletter going through Screwtape Letters, but it finished this week. I should really get through Dracula Daily, because I’m about 2 months behind on it.

  • Did I read the book on craft? It’s in my backpack, so I should try to read it at least a little before bed.

  • Have I read the library books? I returned one of them, because I found the music in it that I cared about. So that counts kind of, for all that I do plan to read the other book sometime soon. Maybe tomorrow morning? Probably not, but who can say?

• Writing

  • Did I write a sonnet? I will have by the time this posts.

  • Did I revise a sonnet? I learned how to revise one, at least. Apparently I should “see if the sonnet says what I want it to say, and if it doesn’t, then I make it say that”, which is relatively helpful.

  • Did I blog? Look at this wow. I even thought about it.

  • Did I write ahead on Jeb? I finished tomorrow’s chapter today, which is fun. I’d like to write a little of Friday’s chapter as well, but we’ll see.

  • Letter to friends? Nope!

  • Paper? I replotted the better data, and it does look better, which is really nice. Now I’m just confused about how distortion constants work.¹¹

• Wellness

  • How well did I pray? Terribly.

  • Did I clean my space? For a little bit!

  • Did I spend my time well? Eh, or so.

  • Did I stretch? Not a ton, but a little.

  • Did I exercise? I did! I did the minimal amount I’m doing on days with no other exercise.¹²

  • Water? I tried! Water didn’t taste so good

Draft 1.9, things that I cut from the essay as I wrote it, without context, because I think it’s a fun kind of blackout poem like this

Modern philosophy¹³ describes truth as fundamentally a linguistic phenomenon. That is, we create truth by setting definitions.

More than that, though, truths do not need to be assembled, which may be a slightly larger claim. That is, while much of science, especially the fundamental work I do, relies mostly on reducing the error between prediction and observation, that is not the science that non-scientists mean. What they think of, and what I think every scientist truly wishes they did¹⁴ is the science that we read about,

As someone who has spent years studying quantum mechanics, one thing that I have learned is just how

These two domains intersect most cleanly in the human person. There are a number of ways to describe the way that we have souls, like angels, and bodies, like apes.

That is, just as the speed of light¹⁵ is not dependent on where in the universe we are, Salvation is not.¹⁶

In both domains, however, reality is assumed to be universal. That is, just as the speed of light¹⁷ is not dependent on where in the universe we are, the nature of G-d is not dependent on where or when we are. Crucially, as well, truth is transmissible in both domains.

Draft 1.7, Find a way to start the post

Knowledge, like a virus, spreads.

No, too evocative.¹⁸

To study, one must first accept starting presuppositions.

Too pretentious.

Prometheus brought fire to man. Once gifted, man was able to reproduce this flame endlessly, and today nearly everyone over a young age can create fire of their own.

Maybe? Feels a little too anecdotal for me.

To be first is to break new ground and pave a new path. To be second is to follow.

Eh.

What is science? The easy answer, and the one that I, like so many others, learned in my schooling, is a six part process. It begins with an observation¹⁹, which prompts a question: the hypothesis.²⁰ Once a literature review shows that the question has not been answered, an experiment can be designed which can disprove the hypothesis. Should a hypothesis fail to be broken, it can be presumed true, and then reported to the world.

Ehhh too bogged down, especially since I don’t really care about the scientific method.

What is science? The easy answer, of course, is what we were all taught in science class: science is the scientific method. That is, science is the process of learning knowledge via rigid and rote steps, where observations lead to questions lead to disproven hypotheses.

That definition, of course, does not hold for a lot of what scientists do. What I do, for instance, does not have a hypothesis, except at the most basic level. My goal is simply measurement, which allows us to ask other questions.

That misses the thread, let’s try to go “you might think science is scientific method, in fact, science is about transmission of reality” ope there we go

that’s what I need

What is science? Like many, my first answer to that question came from science class: science is the scientific method. That is, science is following a rigid set of steps to go from an observation to a disproved hypothesis. However, like most first answers, this answer doesn’t work.

Science, at its core, is about transferring knowledge from the few to the many. It is often remarked that the difference between messing around and science is how well you keep notes.

Nope that still lost the thread.

What is science? The easy answer is what we were all taught in our science classes: science is the scientific method. That is, science is following rote steps which begin with an observation about reality and end in a disproved hypothesis. Like most easy answers, however, that is wrong.

Science, at its core, is a method of describing reality.²¹

Science, at its core, is a method of uncovering truths.

Hmm, is it truths, truth, or Truth? Each of those has a slightly different flavor. I think that I’ll go with “truth”

Is it uncover, discover, or create? I think I like uncover, because it has implications of illumination which is always fun.

Science is a method to uncover truth. At its core, science²² is a fundamentally social discipline.²³

Science is fundamentally a method to uncover truth. More than that, however, it is a method to convey truth.²⁴ An individual’s experience can be generalized into universal reality.

What is mysticism? The easy answer is a religious practice of experiencing communion with the Divine.

Ok yeah, let’s see if we can’t go from there. I’ll stop wordsmithing at the end of each word from now on.

What is mysticism? Mysticism is fundamentally a method of uncovering truth. As a Catholic, who knows that our mission is to bring the whole of Creation to the Almighty, Mysticism also carries with it the goal of conveying Truth to the world. No ok this is bad. I know I said no more drafting, but that was a lie. This gets moved down.

Draft 1.5, Musing about how to begin the post

Right now I feel like there’s a couple of ways that I could begin this musing.²⁵

1. I could start how I did, musing on this musing’s genesis and its placement in the broader scope of me developing as a writer. It’s my month of craft, which does mean that there’s something to be said for doing so, but I don’t know if I really like that, especially given where I want to go.

2. I could begin as most essays recommend, by clearly stating my hypothesis. That has the benefit of being up front, at the cost of me not having the rest of the musing to explore what I mean to say first. Then again, I’m at well over two thousand words of thinking about it, so that shouldn’t really be an issue either way.

3. I could begin as second-level essayists recommend, and start with a metaphor or anecdote, such as the way that benzene’s structure was first hypothesized, or the way that the sewing machine was²⁶ invented. I could ideally weave that with an anecdote about some mystic, for all that I don’t know if I know any of their stories well enough.

4. I could explain mysticism or science as though describing the other, or describe both using the same words. That could be fun, for all that I know that it will also be difficult to do.

As often happens when I enumerate²⁷ my options, one seems most exciting, and that tends to be where my ability to generate new ideas stops. I’m going to try to describe the two methods of inquiry without distinguishing the two.

From there, I guess that I could start going into like how both work when they differ? I’m not really sure where, if ever the two actually diverge, but I’m sure that it’s somewhere. What else did I do in the first draft?

Oop, it kind of seems like that’s as far as I got in the first draft of this musing. Such a shame, but I wonder if the second draft might give me more inspiration once I have typed something slightly²⁸ more coherent.

Draft 1

Nearly every book on writing I’ve ever read²⁹ gives a lot of the same advice.³⁰ Chief among them is to always have a small notebook with you to note down ideas as they arise. I’ve never really been a fan of holding a pen and pad of paper, but I do live in the twenty first century. I have another option.

And so, every so often I’ll open my notes app and type down a phrase that suddenly strikes me, or I’ll open my voice memos and sing something.³¹ Most of the time, I forget to ever look at them again, and the few times that I remember, I either forgot the context of a phrase or no longer find it striking. Every so often, though, I find something that strikes me even weeks later.

Today, I’d like to muse about one of those. This past Saturday, for some reason, I was struck by the connection of science and mysticism. A quick³² search doesn’t show that the field is full of people putting forth their explanations, so I’m going to do my best to try.³³

The first paper I found³⁴ seems to be discussing the concept of mysticism as a claim of inherent validity of a certain belief, at least in the first few pages. Since I don’t need to worry³⁵ about considering whether mystics from other faith traditions are touching on the actual Truth, I don’t know how useful this article is going to be. However, it’s only 20 pages, and is probably worth at least a skim right now. As I get further into the article, it seems like the sort of article I generally love, where we dive deeply into the semantics of individual words. That being said, it’s the sort of article I love reading with a group, where someone else has already done a deep dive to distill a lot of the useful information out.³⁶ I’ll have to reread this article later, but it is absolutely not related to what I want to discuss today. It’s a fascinating dive into the way that we can, without acknowledging certain truths as better than others, make sense of disparate mystical experiences and scientific theories.

The second paper³⁷ explicitly focuses on Eastern Religion, and so is not relevant to my discussion here. I’ll probably read it too, since I’m curious what it has to say, but that’s probably a problem for next year me.

Now, because I am aware that I am incredibly easy to prime³⁸, I’m currently thinking about definitions. What is mysticism, and what do I mean here by science?

As with all people, I find that the methods I use to approach the world change as I continue to grow and live. I had a very long period where my preferred analytical technique was constructing definitions. If something cannot be rigorously defined, the logic goes, it is not a meaningful category.

Of course, this implicitly binaries the world. Defining music, for instance, is not something that can be satisfactorily done.³⁹ Much of life, as it turns out, exists in the hazy in betweens that are not clearly labeled and defined. Nonetheless, it’s useful to have an idea what I’m talking about, if only to aid in shared meaning.

When I speak of science, I am not referring to the scientific method⁴⁰ that I and so many are taught is fundamental to the life of a scientist. As a professional scientist, very little of what I do fits neatly into those boxes, and yet I do not believe that the way that I do science is lesser for it. A fundamental part of science is simply observation and measurement.

However, I am also not really speaking about the rote parts of science. Instead, what I’m probing at is the way that so many scientific discoveries⁴¹ are described. The discovery of the shape of benzene, for instance, is described as coming to the scientist in a dream.⁴² There is a joke I’ve heard a few times talking about how the great discoveries in science take place when sleeping, and the great discoveries in mathematics take place when sleep is removed. As I think about it, both versions are actually helpful for my thinking about mysticism.

Now, this does raise a question: what is mysticism? Adapting from Wikipedia⁴³, mysticism is a connection with greater forces. Depending on the tradition and the specific interpretation the mystic has of the tradition, it is equally a form of being taken away from themselves as becoming fully themselves for the first time. Regardless, mystics are revered in nearly every culture for the same reason: they have access to a fundamental and hidden truth about reality. By listening to mystics relay their experiences, however, the common person can see the truth of reality, if only dimly. If you’ve ever heard a top scientist or mathematician discuss their passion, it might be easy to see the connection.

I read Donald Knuth’s CV this past weekend with my brothers.⁴⁴ One striking thing that I noticed is that he wrote a piece for Organ based on the book of Revelations. Now, that in and of itself is interesting, but not necessarily pointing to anything. The fact that he also wrote a book where he analyzes Chapter 3 Verse 16 in every⁴⁵ book of the Bible. Even though that discussion came after I jotted down the note, it feels significant to the discussion.

Of course, as soon as I started to say that, I realized that I have a bias in what mystics I’m familiar with. As someone who’s taken music history⁴⁶, the mystics I’ve been exposed to in detail tend to be mystics who also had significant musical output, such as Doctor of the Church Hildegard.

Ok so other than the simple point that scientists often describe breakthroughs as though they’ve suddenly received some divine revelation, and that’s picture perfect mysticism, what am I trying to say? I think that might be it, but I no longer know if I know enough about either subject to really write a whole essay about it. I would at least want to be able to point to two stories, one of a mystic and one of a scientist, to show the parallels in the narrative. Failing that, I’m not really sure what I can do.

I suppose that I could muse on the nature of mysticism? Like how we are generally willing to accept that there are people with special knowledge, especially in quantum mechanics. Might be worth riffing on that for a little, just to see what we see.

What is mysticism? Mysticism is a term generally used to describe a religious altering of mind. Of course, as with anything else used in religious contexts, the word is used to describe wide and sometimes contradictory examples. Many better writers than I have written about the difficulties in defining religion, especially given how averse some groups are to having their beliefs labeled as religious. As such, the fundamental part of the mystic experience for me is the belief that knowledge was given to the mystic, rather than the mystic discovering the information themself.

How, then, is a scientist a mystic?⁴⁷ When looking at the world through the view of a scientist, a few things are fundamentally required to be true. First, the universe must be sensical.⁴⁸ That is, things happen for a reason, and the same starting conditions will result in the same outcome.⁴⁹ I initially was going to say that reproducible is a different condition than sensical, but I don’t know if that’s true anymore.

Second, the universe must be measurable. Russell’s teapot is an example of how science can fail to learn things.⁵⁰

Let’s compare that to the world view required to be a Catholic.⁵¹ The universe was created by an all powerful, all loving Creator, who has given us what we need to understand the world, and by extension, learn more about He who created us.⁵² Of course, there’s the nuance of Catholic, so Christ is a requisite part of the world view, and that is certainly an important aspect of how Catholics and Catholic mystics view the world. However, Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice can be somewhat derived if you start with the first proposition and then follow it with “and G-d gave authority to his Church,” for all that it’s a bit of a hand waving explanation.

Ok, let’s refocus. Both mysticism and science⁵³ require the universe to be fundamentally sensible. One fantastic secondary side effect of this assumption is the ability for knowledge to be distributed.

If knowledge is portrayed, as it so often is, as light, then each of us can be Prometheus⁵⁴, sharing the fire and light of knowledge with those around us. Fire, like knowledge, yearns to spread.⁵⁵ Taking a step back from the forced cliche, however, we do see that it resonates.

It is far easier to follow a derivation than to come to it for the first time. Calculus was something that two of the greatest minds of their generation were barely able to scratch the surface of. Now, the average college student is expected to be able to learn the sum of what took them years of study in a few scant semesters.

Similarly, many Catholics today pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, as St. Maria Faustyna Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament⁵⁶ was taught in her revelations. We are assured of the same benefits, just as we are able to do as much with Calculus as Isaac Newton⁵⁷.⁵⁸