CH. FOUR: SCIENCE, THE CRITICAL MIND AND DISSENT

Constant need for fresh, unbiassed minds to develop science - not just per se - but within an universal and inclusive understanding. Scientists unempirically deny even the possibility of certain experiences and well-founded beliefs of millions of people.

Science in its proper place: Most science does not prove its theories, but tries to disprove theories (eg. Popper). Scepticism, though useful, cannot reach positively outward, which makes genuine openness the exception. The desired image of science built on unshakeable knowledge is untenable: doubtful holes and widening abysses arise as more is observed (egs. theories of Earth's geological evolution, paleontology, biological evolution, truncated view of early humanity, history of ancient civilisations and religions. The 'objective' methodology with an inherent 'anti-rational' bias eliminates in advance much valuable data.

Lay vs. scientific ignorance and ignoring human error: The capacity to reason intelligently and on a broad base not evenly distributed - making 'commonly informed opinion' questionable. Prominent examples of laymen understanding the real import of technology better than the mainstream scientific community, such as nuclear power, environmental hazard etc. Well-organised scientific fraudulence: some major examples noted. Major 'human error' plus misinformation and direct untruths by scientists involved in weapons, energy, chemical & bio industries have undermined public trust. Suppression and persecution of genuine science (some famous egs. Semmelweiss, Faraday, the Wright brothers, Roentgen, Edison, Bell, Einstein, Pauling...)

CH. SIX: SCIENTIFIC FREEDOM & GROUP INTERESTS

Freedom' to research whatever scientists see as worthwhile a part of academic ideology, ostensibly being in the best interests of the public. This is questionable. Science no longer a preoccupation mainly of intellectual aristocrat but part and parcel of national economy. Scientific research is a social institution, subject to pressures of all kinds. Decisions of research investment implying social choices made by a scientific social elite virtually beyond proper democratic control.

Science as a neutral collective enterprise: In many cases the results of scietific disciplines come to be used by those who best can profit from them - usually large institutions, corporations, government etc., which also need standardised mass social, economic and political information. Further, privately financed science and military science is kept secret. The form of the research results are usually so technical that only researchers, bureaucrats and planners can use and apply it, not individuals or small group interests. (Egs.) Ill effects on type and quality of social and psychological knowledge by the Ford Foundation's massive post-war investment in behaviourism as a means to 'social engineering' or greater social control. Positive signs that intelligent public opinion (including breakaway scientists) is at last influencing some of the orientations of researchers. Sometimes public opinion is rooted in common experiences denied or minimalised by science. Science as collectivity now protects own interests like a general trades union. A scientifically trained mind has increasingly become the chief key to many professions. Mastery of language and subtle rhetoric and braininess are nowadays also a hallmark of careerists and fraudsters.

Ideology and exploitative science: The world has now largely learned how enormously destructive absolutised ideas and rigid ideology can be. But corporative capitalism, the free-market and privatisation ideology is so pervasive now as to seem the natural state of affairs, with many consequences for science including exploitation of nature and humankind, support for developments that are (or will be) unwanted by the public and may well threaten the common interest (eg. genetically manipulated foodstuffs, animals, humans). Politics and science in 'unholy alliance'. Science promulgated as an intellectual panacea & a substitute for religion makes it part of the march of world-wide corporative 'economic imperialism' and the peripheralisation of values and the quality of life.

Ethical decisions: by scientists or society? Scientists are players not referees, fans not passive watchers. All facts are selective and are also interpreted according to purposes - which 'subjective' elements and interests are not fully eliminable. Science does not advance in accordance with what is to the common good but unpredictable. Rapid 'progress' often causes unwanted upheavals for society as a whole, but may favour ambitious researchers, patent- and profit-hungry corporations or war machines. No such thing as scientific expertise exists in moral matters...but moral responsibility is still there to face up to. Each 'truth' of science can be as a twin-edged knife either to destroy or heal. A lab. or an individual is often the only agent who has responsibility for a discovery. Such responsibility was heavily felt after the event, by Einstein, Oppenheimer etc. So what of the Pandora's box of genetics and its uncertain future? On long-term consequences of such rapid changes for eco-systems, the body's immune system etc.

A conflict of truth and care: Scientific 'love of truth' limits love to intellectual-practical concerns. The human value 'love' means universal respect, sympathy and care for all persons, living beings and nature. The sciences have neglected and eschewed the investigation of such 'love', both as a value and as a psychological, social, cultural reality. Also the human value non-violence, an ideal found in all cultures, however violent their own environments, is becoming an international norm for all behaviour. Science must integrate these values thoroughly into its intellectual, moral and practical basis.

Social control through science: Comte's science-based positivism and a ruling 'scientific priesthood'. The remnants of this ideology still around: control of individuals and society - a dream of totalitarians and some elitist intellectuals. Developments in social science funding after 2nd W.W. towards social planning and control. It is more manipulative than democratic, it questions the insight, integrity, opinions and independence of the individual citizen. Science seen as one spearhead of a new repressive colonisation by the rich countries through technological development and foreign aid/advice/pressure to alter crops, agriculture & hence culture etc. without the knowledge or consent of the deprived masses so affected

Scientific wastefulness and wasted opportunity: Science abets contacting aliens, travelling to other planets, sending up vehicles and probes at the cost of entire budgets of poor nations and even the absurd & wasteful fallacy of populating the planets/even stars! Most of the space industry - a throw-off of the Cold War - is a needless white elephant on the back of humanity. Meanwhile, 750 million are victims of hunger and malnutrition, there are around 200 million bond-slaves, over 10% being children.

CH. SEVEN:SCIENCE AND THE DEMISE OF PHILOSOPHY

The original spirit that drove philosophy and science & its condition today. Human experience too easily hypostatised in philosophical concepts. The role of language in conception and linguistic analysis.

The abandonment of critical thinking: Philosophy advances in the arts of analysis, linguistics and logic but no longer shows authoritative leadership in forwarding the ideals of human and social values or in dealing with the great 'first and last' questions. Academic philosophers helplessly observe the dissolution of values and spiritual culture. The demise of philosophy through professionalisation, 'the academic syndrome' described.

The meta-crisis of the separate sciences. Old warnings from Whitehead & Joad: 'progress of science has been accompanied by the retrogression of man'. Positivism from Comte onwards has suppressed deeper philosophical thought about the sciences, despite Wittgenstein's systematic destruction of positivism. Logical empiricism adequate only within the premises of science, as methodologism. Lacking in any clear supra-empirical principles, each science should have its corresponding 'meta-science' embracing epistemology, ethics and its sociology of knowledge as critical control. Most natural scientists exhibit ignorance or misunderstanding of philosophical principles and reduced self-awareness - the spiritual vacuum now at the limits of the materialistic world-view. Present-day philosophy of science largely geared to science (as a handmaiden - Russell), a passive monitor that avoids any radical critical role. "wretched effects that the worship of science and the scientific method has had upon our whole culture" (Wittgenstein).

Preconception, certainty and reservation:Science is past-oriented, hence allows only predictions of likelihood, never certainty: the empirical 'wait and see' attitude. Unavoidability of inital preconceptions (i.e. guiding fore-conceptions) & tendency to too rigid preconceptions lead to wrong prejudgements esp. on questions not in current research focus. Backbone of scientific enquiry should be the attitude of reservation of judgement. Common sense philosophy, daily life and science. Starting from common sense & naturalism, science arrives back at a contrary conclusion: reality is other than & more than our senses tell us. The predominant role of reason in both science and all understanding undervalued (eg. Einstein's breakthrough & its lesson). Observation cannot prove/disprove the truths of 'genuine philosophy', which deals less with facts or theories than with insights arising in very wide-ranging forms of understanding, both practical and ethical-spiritual.

Scientistic certainty or intellectual tolerance?: Need of increased vigilance to ensure tolerant attitude by scientists towards others' views. Among researchers, even minor admissions of error seldom made, even under public scrutiny. Planck's view that theories die only when their supporters die and a new generation grows up familiar with the new view. 'Differing versions of the truth' - solipsism & relativism: incompatible versions of the cosmos, human life etc. Truth, not limited to fact alone, involves values, giving yet clearer grounds for tolerance. Wholly oriented towards investigating and changing the material world, science mistakenly rejects anything related to practical self-discovery or spiritual truth. Aggressive critical attacks by 'scientists' - eg. against any religious faith - not in spirit of tolerance. Advanced forms of philosophy of science and meta-science can help regulate and draw up the actual limitations of science in each field of research. Philosophy in the original spirit of love of wisdom exists peripherally as holistic understanding, beyond the technical, logico-rational mentality. Self-knowledge only receives academic lip-service, if that.'Self' and 'soul' seen as vague terms, lacking reference etc., but what is not seen (the mind etc.) is actually decisive in human affairs.

CH. EIGHT: SCIENTIFIC CONFUSION ABOUT CAUSES

On causes as explanation of human life, the cosmos and its meaning/purpose. Ethical 'causation', the effect of words & deeds and the little-known, misunderstood but highly sophisticated Vedantic doctrine of karma, or truly 'universal causation'.

Causal description or explanation?: The 'every event has a cause' principle. Aristotle's 'nothing in nature is in vain' not upheld by modern biology, which rejects purposiveness in favour of chance. The teleological viewpoint on morphology (eg. Rupert Sheldrake). Stating a cause scientifically is only describing a series of observed events. Scientific experiment is no more than a method of testing which descriptions (generalised as 'hypotheses') are based on accurate observations. Science's abstract/concise theories only compress into formulae many descriptions of physical events. Science describes how, not why, things are so. But there must be a reason 'why' we understand in terms of meaning, purpose and motive. Reason not given by observation alone. 'Causes' without explanation. (egs. creation, inertia, ensoulment & many more). Cause as an inherent power. 'Causal analysis' useful as such but useless for synthesis (i.e. wider integrated, understanding).

The problem of causal multiplicity: The idea of a single cause for each event is very problematical. Consider the complexity of a large eco-system with mutual dependencies and multiple factors. Or of a human decision (eg. Chamberlain's declaration of war). Can one single cause reasonably be isolated, or are many factors taken into account? Linear-temporal vs. multiple causation. Weakness of views from Hume to Russell. Holistic understanding - relation part-whole - as the solution.

Limits to scientific explanation exemplified:All scientific explanations end somewhere: deepest question of 'how' existence, energy and causal connections came into being and what sustains them beyond all material explanation. It is 'beyond science'. Renaming 'creation' the 'actualisation of possibilities' etc. is but empty words. A shortlist of 27 common physical, biological and other phenomena that cannot be fully understood by empirical methods. Physical science plans a huge multiplication of its efforts, because ignorance of even the physical world is still great. The vitiating principle of life itself remains a phenomenon beyond physical observation, an impenetrable mystery. Agnostics and atheists who see no purpose in creation speak of 'the mind of God'!

Chance events & free will vs. cause: The unique/unrepeatable event is unavoidable & has super-ordinate role in human affairs society, history etc. (egs. of individual unpredictability, from atoms to humans & politics). We have a 'will of our own' & can often defy many a prediction & act independently of known or conceived general laws of behaviour. Known physical laws explain little about human life. 'Free will' & its effects: new ideas, voluntary acts, unpredictable 'fashion' & social changes, subjective motives or purposes. Consequent failure in prediction (eg. innovation, events, trends etc.) Both theses of causality and indeterminacy are incontestable. Any idea of free will - however limited - sets limits on what science can know or predict. God indeed can and does 'play dice' in giving us a measure of free will, yet the outcome as a whole can still be under 'full control'. Paul Davies on Einstein's view of quantum physics; Einstein on what leads to a happy, dignified life.

Chaos theory and causality:Chance or chaos has to exist for laws to arise, as is becoming recognised through observations of chaos theory (brief summary). A self-contradictory term? Disorder evident in events on various levels in nature, society, history. No order without preceeding disorder. Can events/acts be a break with order/laws? Non-causality and indeterminacy in physics.

Random selection and probability: Uncaused events. (eg. evenness in 'random distributions' - eg. craters on Venus). Law of chance and/or 'breaking the bank'. Coincidence and/or 'synchronicity': an exception to the laws of classical physics/break with universal causation? Randomness as a function of the perceiver's 'position' - only omniscience could eliminate all apparent randomness or chance.

Statistical theory and causation: Statistical correlations are only a possible indicator - not proof of causal connections (old, neglected law of logic). The massive increase in statistical social studies without equiv. increase in knowledge of causes-motives and effects-results. Statistics' helps discover general trends, but the danger of 'conflation of facts' through wrong questions and interpretations (eg. all persons on average have one breast and one testicle). Coincidence, when particularly meaningful, is 'synchronicity': implying no physical causal relation between the two events, but some form of subtle relationship.

Knowledge and cosmic order: On the assumption that cosmos has some given structure/form vs. thesis that creation can be thought thus, or even otherwise conceived. History of ideas shows 'being' as not adequately definable once and for all by any means (as the structure of matter, the composition of the human being) whether by dualistic, monistic or intermediate ontologies. Whenever any (assumed) dualistically-based premises are made absolute for understanding reality, insolvable problems arise (egs. Marxism, psychoanalysis, physicalism, logical positivism etc,). Much longer time-spans than in the 'immediate' cause-effect relationship can be at work over whole lifetimes and through historical changes. The comprehensive, universal understanding in the law of action-reaction (karma) conforms to physics, but also to all being, incl. at the mental, ethical, social and spiritual levels. Ones' assumptions define the scope of possible results; different kinds are functional for different spheres of life. My thesis: no 'fully comprehensible' order exists: which allows for the awkward fact of chance or accident.

Causation, past orientation and teleology - summary:A more understandable theory than that of universal causation would be 'every isolated physical event is caused, while every intentionally-chosen act is uncaused'. This makes causation less than universal, but it depends on the thesis of human voluntary actions. Past-orientation vs. teleological causation. (Eg. drug-delinquency). Causality as 'past-push' and 'future-pull' - development as moving towards fulfillment (of a lack) and completion etc. The unprecedentedly new event. The mind's freedom to conceive? Causality compared to the law of karma.

CH. NINE: WHERE SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION FALLS SHORT

Strict test of scientific validity: repeatable observation - (evt. controlled conditions), demonstrability, sense organ reductionism. Sense empiricism as guiding philosophy inadequate: its basic paradoxes, physiological paradox & now proven effect of language of unborn children and 'innate ideas' plus ethical judgements & 'inner senses' not being observables. Science studies 'appearance', not witnessing being (analogy: the African tribe that mistook the screen for the film). Consciousness, the essence of human 'observing' subjects, is systematically 'overlooked' and 'objectivised'.

Chance and cumulative universal knowledge: Key idea of chaos theory: eg. decisive 'chance events' in warfare, society, nature etc. Same accidental principle at work in the 'growth' of science. J. Gleick on chaotic development in science. A major limitation of science: science planning not able to control its own direction. No long-heralded physicalistic 'theory of everything' can counter increasing number of unexplored subjects, unsolved paradoxes or even unforseen consequences of theories.

Science, the unknown and unknowable: Max Weber -'only a finite portion of the infinite multiplicity confronting us immediate concrete situations constitutes the object of scientific investigation'. (DIAGRAM) Four classes of knowing/unknowing: 1) what is unreflectively assumed or believed: 2) knowledge as established scientific theory and fact 3) evidence rejected as non-existant, irrelevant or not worth knowing 4) all that is unknown, excluding whatever is unknowable in practice and in principle.

The protean multiplication of scientific information: No-one can have a complete overview of every theory and sub-theory, or all empirical details but a genuine general overview is attainable. The speed of expansion on many frontiers does not favour the frequent narrow professional specialisation. Evaluating the scope and progress of any natural or human science through independence of thought and judgement. Over-production and congestion of analytic information to saturation point weakens critical thinking. Though empirical knowledge increases and expands, the less scientists tend to understand holistically.

Scientific prediction or prophesy? Success and popularity of scientific thinking due to its predictive calculations, yet Popper denies validity of all prediction. 'Crystal-ball gazing' on future applications etc. seldom appear to lead to the said results. Ignoring the misuses and the many cases of redundancy due to miscalculation, wrong hypotheses, errors and professional semi-hoaxes.

Some predictions science cannot make with accuracy: Sciences cannot predict the vast majority of large natural events or most of what occurs in the human or social sphere. Six general areas of examples listed, both fully unpredictables and as-yet-unpredictables. Medical science has instilled the false belief that precious little baffles it, then dashes hopes. Sufferers who don't benefit from continual advances. Doubtful medical research priorities. The previously unimagined extent of malpractice: misdiagnosis, mistreatment, a wide range of illnesses and disabilities seldom identified/recognised.

Self-adjustment to experience? Experience of the past must be transcended. The human as self-adjusting system depends on experience. By evolution, wrong information is slowly rejected by organisms through trial and error, also by most complex known systems: the human CNS & brain. False ideas only eliminated if not guided and interpreted through limiting orthodoxies (eg.misplaced scientism). The human mind and spirit a new evolutionary phase & challenge: to respect, understand and love all.

CH. TEN: SCIENCE AND HUMAN SUBJECTS

Dilemma of much social science: empirical methods modelled on naturalistic science distort the nature of psycho-physical-social-spiritual entities (i.e. human beings). Historical developments in human studies from Renaissance. Judging by the moral collapse, mental & social problems etc. today, understanding of human nature requisite to solving the chief human problems has not advanced much since 'human sciences' became institutionalised.

The uniqueness of human actions: Problem of finding general laws that apply to historical change: paradox of ahistorical theory. Hypothetico-deductive method isolates only a few features of the unrepeatable historical situation. 'Nomothetic' vs. 'ideographic' distinction in social science blurs line between explanation from universally-verifiable laws and interpretative understanding. 'Nomothetic' social science not holistic. The 'ideographic' approach, with interpretation and understanding, directly opposite to generalising of abstraction from the concrete context of life, the individual situation etc. Holistic understanding defined.

The futility of prediction in social science: The crucial test of prediction from empirical generalisation in natural science not possible in the study of man or society, neither can 'under known conditions' apply. On the cause-effect or stimulus-response model vs. voluntary action and interaction. Many major or unprecedented changes in attitudes, beliefs and behaviour means in principle no reliable continuance of existing trends. Analogy: one would not drive a car exclusively by aid of the rear mirror, though evaluations of future possibilities are necessary in guiding individual development, socialisation, educational influence, policy-making and political planning, they are informed guesses at best, not 'scientific' predictions.

'Hard' and 'soft' social science: Human beings not mere natural physical phenomena! Regularities and correspondences in social studies without noteworthy reliability. The less trivial generalisations about society/individuals are, the lower likelihood of their holding true.

The analytical fallacy and compartmentalisation: Splitting large problems into small manageable units & handling them piecemeal loses the holistic picture. Re-synthesis mostly fails. Human studies need to reoriente away from causal explanation biasses towards holistic understanding. Sub-division of the humanities into largely self-insulating & often analytical disciplines tends to fragment human beings' integral wholeness. 'Impersonal' dissection of the personality vs. holistic insight as personal psychology. Self-understanding as the sine qua non of good social scientists, especially psychologists, requires disciplined involvement. Only through intelligent application of positive values, both in theory and practice, is psychology a dynamic force for good.

The attempt to quantify human qualities: The ills and confusions of misplaced quantification, esp. in psychology. The fallacy of quantifying qualities, the alienating tendency. The consumers of numbers are large institutions, multinationals, the state, but such info. is useless to most people - hence democracy weakened. Mind primarily studied 'scientifically' from outward physical appearances (i.e. extrospectively) and normal, sensible ways of understanding people are excluded as fallible. Hard data means statistical 'multi-variable analysis' and factors isolated from their context and treated only in the researcher's own frame of reference. The 'meaning' of any act, word or thought is a quality, not meaningfully to be measured as with physical objects. Generally, quantification of behaviour and interaction distorts understanding, and produces some particularly abstruse and alienated opinions.

Objective data, subjective and shared meaning: Physical data alone insufficient to build psychology, because of the intrinsically subjective or personal meaning of behaviour. Sociology likewise relies overwhelmingly on interpretation. The reasons for this stated at length and systematically under:- 1) Human subjects are not only objects. 2) Human reactions to scientists are conscious acts, not caused events. 3) The fact of volition which obviates full predictability of human actions. Only models of holistic understanding adequate.

Wider observational methods in human science: Scientific methods today, however, do not usually allow the validity of what comes from the inner sources of information, even though everyone relies on them in some ways all the time. Empiricism in the most whole or true sense therefore requires that what the 'inner senses' provide are also observables, the crucial ones being recognition of meaning, or 'understanding'. Meaning as such is intrinsically unquantifiable, though arbitrary methods do make it appear so. Adopting natural scientific quantificatory methods for the prestige of apparent 'exactitude', aided by modern use of computers and needs for figures of all bureaucracies.

Analytical fragmentation of the human as a person: On rejecting personal experience as an unreliable 'subjective' basis: then deducing factors influencing behaviour by (statistical) measurements of elements abstracted from the whole, the sphere of human action is reduced to coordinates & factors. Reductionism in psychology. The events and acts of human life are many-layered and amount to much more than a generalised cumulation of observable facts. Individuals not analysable like chemical composites: this also ignores the shifting time-bound social context in which people act and interact and ignores values and human qualities. Note on Freud's different kind of 'analysis'.

Understanding and integrated personality: The nature of human life is lost to view by methods of most official research. Something akin to a biographic understanding of individual life and life-view, social behaviour etc. must preceed most generalisation. What characterises and develops character, integrity, selflessness, universal outlook etc. is lost to social science.

CH. ELEVEN: VALUES AND UNDERSTANDING IN HUMAN STUDIES

On values mistakenly seen as extra-scientific: What is the value of science itself? Only relevance of human sciences is if they improve life. Empirical science is nonetheless value-oriented in respect of social, political and ethical questions, but the value of their own contributions vary. Value-neutrality is important in certain research phases (eg. establishing fact, describing conflict), but if absolutised it becomes self-defeating. Researches either positively advance human values or undermine them. Values rather than social facts are the key to understanding most human action. Merely describing values cannot avoid favouring some against others. Stating and even prescribing one's own positive values is essential. Value-judgement defined.

Self-legitimisation and prophesy fulfillment: Social theories themselves tend toward producing conditions conforming to the theory (self-fulfilment through theory working on praxis). 'As one thinks, so one becomes' is imprecise, but it contains the same insight. Egs. fatalism leads to fatalist behaviour, traffic predictions tend to produce roads hence more traffic, revolutionary theory produces revolution etc. Evolutionary theory's past-oriented, animal focussed view is foreshortened & tends to reinforce animality. 'Spiritual science' looks ahead and accents human qualities and control of tendencies etc. Moral questions in theory-development, direction of interest & choice of research strategy.

Moral discrimination: The overruling principle in all science should be practical-moral discrimination. The human faculty of discrimination or conscience. On the empirical question of an inherent ability to know right from wrong vs. environmental factors, pleasure and pain, reward and punishment, force of habit, tradition, & previous experience. Psychopaths & sociopaths conscienceless? Values vs. anti-values.

Meaningful purpose and universal human values: Human studies would surely aim to help people to realise the positive values in their practical lives, in social institutions and in effectively eliminating negative traits. Norms or values expressed in social research should be tested both rationally & also practically, as in trial-and-error 'action' research. Values universally held in esteem & are empirical part of the human life. A basic common human value system is traceable in human historical evolution - and its counterpart (anti-values) seen as aberrations.

CH. TWELVE: SCIENCE AND THE SPIRIT

The problem of the spirit for science: The 'psyche' dilemma in psychology. The behavioural and physicalistic tendency is to see the human being nothing more than an advanced animal, just a psycho-physical entity and not an individual person is demeaning and ideologically biassed against most cultures and belief systems. Egs. of our daily 'non-physical' experience.

Worldly knowledge and spirituality: Atheism among the intelligensia, the planners and the politicians. Self-knowledge and the universities. Signs of a rapprochement in science vs. religion debate (eg. P. Fenwick). Philosophers and non-physical reality. Consensus of many past philosophers on a supra-sensory dimension. Science shows micro- and macro-physical spheres to be quite other than long perceived, but mostly rejects possibility of spirit. Scientia vs. sapientia.

Consciousness, temporality and formlessness: Consciousness as an 'unprovable hypothesis'? Claim that it exists as 'totally unscientific'? (inc. Fenwick's view). Consciousness as time-ordering, distinguishing past/present/future in all representations. Reasons given (Einstein) and refutation. A brief but precise phenomenology of consciousness. C. has never proven 'reducible' to any physical constituents. The formless nature of consciousness itself, as distinct from possible 'forms' or contents of the mind. Various consequences of this.

Subjectivity and consciousness: On the classic mind/matter or soul/body schizma. Weakness of Fritjof Capra's aims. Is a 'science of the subjective' feasible? Public or individual investigation? Inward discovery and self-realisation, though mentally untransferrable and beyond experience of non-seekers, is observably expressed in some behaviour. Best approach is to study teachings of those who do know & act accordingly.

The inner reality: On what it consists in & the limits of physics. Subjectivity cannot fully objectify itself, due to continuous transcendence of the past in the present. The meaning of turning vision inwards towards the self. The irreducible inner source: consciousness and 'the heart'. Human will as causative, so right and wrong known only inwardly by conscience. Inquiry, controlled scepticism and 'insight'. Inner certainty in self-evidence as in maths, logic etc. extended to self-realisation. Psychological reasons why scientists seldom accept a 'supernatural' order. Obstacles to investigating the 'inner world': prerequisites of seeking, some initial faith, intellectual humility etc. On faith-inducing experience of many kinds; also induced by personal loss, suffering, conscious self-sacrifice etc. Para-normal and spiritual phenomena.

Science and God ': Doubts about supra-human intelligence at work in the material world. Science and God. Intellectual and scientific thought rational and discursive but often unintuitive. Observing the soul, the spirit and beyond? Einstein's oft-quoted belief in God not based on sensory observation. Personal experience & spiritual practice the only sure test.