Thanks Anthony, that's clear!
I will share what I think based on my current understanding of the whole matter.
Anthony66 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 30, 2022 5:37 am
As someone who has been involved in the creation "science" wars, I'm very sensitive to the use of the term.
Yes, I understand that. Two comments come to mind here:
1) As ScottRoberts and Wayfarer have pointed out, ‘science’ in the expression ‘spiritual science’ should be read as ‘sound knowledge based on rational, methodical inquiry’ (as opposed to divination) rather than as ‘working under the methods and protocols of present-day academic scientific research’. For anyone born and raised in a neo-latin language like me, this is easier, as the word for science is literally a subsection of the word for knowledge. In English, the words ‘science’ and ‘knowledge’ don’t exhibit any connection and it’s a bit less intuitive. So it's important to ease the rigid contours of the various concepts we use and remain flexible, even if we would so gladly rely on some solid and fixed reference points.
2) You often say “as a former evangelical Christian...”. It’s normal to refer to one’s past formative experiences, I do that too. Nonetheless, it makes me think that the goal of spiritual development is to eventually come to a point where our thinking is disentangled from all that. Thinking has to aspire to become soul-free and sense-free. We want to let go of all the ‘certified identities’ of our past that still push on our present freedom, as we are often reminded here. And sometimes we get attached to past identitites even if we have rejected them now.
Such thinking neutrality might be impossible for the time being, but for me it’s still useful to make a mental note that I am producing all my current expressions from a biased position which equanimity and sense-neutrality are imperfect, and that I want to transcend. (Incidentally, what a ‘neat’ approach to knowledge! One that ‘objective’ science doesn’t even imagine to strive for, when its practice is all but free from philosophical standpoints, as Wayfarer has confirmed above. We think of scientific research as neutral and objective, but that’s, to a major extent, social conditioning).
Coming to your two points of discomfort:
Anthony66 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 30, 2022 5:37 am
If the qualifier [spiritual] is used as a way of special pleading an exemption from one of the requirements of science then I'm quite uncomfortable.
Spirit is both the domain of inquiry and the tool. That’s why some special attention is required in approaching spiritual science. That’s also what made ScottRoberts say that all sciences/domains of knowledge involve thinking
about the domain, but because spiritual science “
is thinking about thinking, I think it should be considered as being on a different plane, though whether one says higher, or prior, or lower (as in foundational) is a matter of taste.” Which leaves us in a little scary position, where the ship we are using for navigation is one with the ocean we are navigating. Certainly we would be more comfortable clinging to external references and concepts, like “the requirements of science”, trying to guard against making the same ‘mistakes’ of the past. It’s difficult to trust our own abilities, so we try to carefully move along whatever seemingly solid foundation we can find - science and evidence - to guide every little step and check if it’s legit or not.
An image that has come to mind to illustrate why spiritual science is on a different plane, and why there’s no special pleading in that, is this. Imagine you are moving along the paths of a park, or playground, sitting on a self-driving little cart, like a golf cart. You are wearing a pair of fully covering sunglasses. The glasses cover all your visual field and are completely dark and opaque. You couldn’t see anything through the glasses, if it wasn’t for two small holes, one in front of each eye. The holes are so small that the only impression you get through them is small dots of color. A light green dot appears when there’s grass in front of your face, and a blue dot when your head is turned towards the lake, and so on. Let’s say the only thing you know about your current experience is this visual experience. For some reason, you have forgotten that you are moving on a cart, and you have no idea what’s out there and where you are. You only know the bright colored dots appearing through the holes of your glasses, and that the colors change continuously. But you are determined to understand your environment with scientific method. You decide to rigorously collect evidence. You want to discover more or these dots, and see if by any chance they change with some regularity and why. Is there any scientific law that can be inferred behind this perpetually changing colors? So you make an experiment. You look steadily in one direction for a given time, and observe and note the colors you see at regular intervals, maybe every second. Then you repeat in various directions. You don't realize it, but the cart is turning and turning along the paths, and colors change continuously, so no observable pattern emerges. So you say: I monitored reality in steady states, but color appearance has no regularity to it whatsoever. I have now collected sufficient evidence to conclude that one fundamental law of reality is color chaos. Across all reality, color must have this property of perpetually random variability. That’s the evidence.
But if you are lucky, here comes a spiritual scientist to you and tells you: “Anthony, this is actually not accurate. Out there, there is indeed some color consistency to what you are observing. I can tell you there’s a lake that’s always within the blue-gray tones, there’s grass that’s always light green, and even an ice-cream stand that is reliably pink. There is even a wood that lawfully appears within the dark green scale, always. You don’t have to believe me, just please follow my instructions. I’ll explain. You are actually wearing immersive glasses, let me show you how to take them off. And can you feel that you are constantly moving around on a little cart? I’ll show you that too, and how to integrate that, so you’ll see by yourself that there’s actually no color chaos. Shall we do it?”
To which we might be tempted to answer: “Wait, do you have evidence for your fantastical claims? How do you know that color is not random? Please provide some scientific evidence. Please observe and notice color patterns for yourself objectively, here's the protocol and best practices for color observation experiments. We are not scientists, but this is certainly a great protocol. Otherwise someone would have told us. Do that, then make a report. We can arrange peer reviewing of your report when you’re done. And we are open minded, maybe you are right, and maybe we haven’t observed long enough, or carefully enough, or often enough. So we are interested, but please justify your claims scientifically. No spiritual special pleading will be tolerated.”
So... As in this illustration, spiritual science does account for all existing evidence, but one can only realize that for oneself after following the instructions on how to ditch the glasses and how to become aware of the cart. However, the way to do it is obviously not to collect more color evidence through the little holes! It would not make any sense.
As Steiner says in Knowledge of the Higher worlds, speaking of some results of initiation:
Steiner wrote:These, then, are the gifts which the student owes to his development at this stage: insight into his higher self; insight into the doctrine of the incarnation of this higher being in a lower; insight into the laws by which life in the physical world is regulated according to its spiritual connections, that is, the law of karma; and finally, insight into the existence of the great initiates.
Thus it is said of a student who has reached this stage, that all doubt has vanished from him. His former faith, based on reason and sound thoughts, is now replaced by knowledge and insight which nothing can undermine.
When we are still wearing the glasses, some level of reasoned faith is necessary indeed. This is not blind belief, but a positive disposition, based on reason and sound thoughts, based on the progressive insights and results we get along the way too. In this sense the science of spirit/thinking is scientific: it’s not dreamt, or conjured up, but fact-based. However the first person direct, full understanding of those facts, only will come after we have taken off the sunglasses. Only then will we see the big picture - in the metaphor, the playground and the real nature of the color dots. But this is not an instant happening like taking off a pair of sunglasses is. It requires effort and application. In this sense only, a faithful, reasoned (scientific/study-based) positive disposition and willingness to put in the effort is required. I hope this also addresses the second point of discomfort, about the gifts of spiritual development being hidden behind an impenetrable wall.