“Pray,
oblige me, by removing to this other bench, and I venture to assure you the
proper light and shadow will transform the spectacle into quite another thing.”
-
Nathaniel
Hawthorne
Main Street
“The spiritual world is nowhere but here,
wherever ‘here’ refers to.” (9)
-
Robert Solomon
Spiritual
for the Skeptic (2000)
Having
become an amateur science enthusiast over the last 15 years, I have come to see
that science produces narratives of a certain kind; experiments, research, and
exploration, as well as essays and books elucidating devout thinking about the
results of experiment, research and discoveries—can all be narrative and can inspire stores. Yet these stories are different from those
told by poets and the writers of fiction.
What
is the difference between ‘fictional’ and ‘scientific’ stories?
Fictional
stories – those resulting from an imaginative, creative act of narrative
formation – are usually grounded in the author’s experience – imaginative-experience
as well as lived-experience – though they may also be anchored in research into
various topics dealt with in the story (e.g., an historical novel must know
enough about a particular time and place to make it believable – for anyone
familiar with history – as well as worth reading). The key aspect of fictional stories, however, is
that they are always imagined into
existence, more or less. They are more
than the presentation of a researched account. They are not about 'what happened' or 'could happen' in our collective lived timespace experience. Rather, fictional tales present us with 'happenings' that show us things parallel to, in contradistiction to or beyond, things that have actually happened or that we experience.
The
truth of a fictional story arises primarily from its internal coherence and
then – secondarily – from how well it reflects life. “That’s true,” we say of a work of fiction, a
poem or film because of what it says about human existence and the choices we
have to make in the course of living life, not usually because of how well its
‘facts’ match up with the ‘facts’ of either our lived reality or the objective reality beyond our subjectivity and our intersubjective existence. The truth of fiction comes from the narrative
itself, and the world it constructs; it becomes a parallel to life-as-lived and
elucidates our situation as mortal beings in an often precarious universe.
Scientific
stories, on the other hand, result from the assimilation and comprehension of
the results of research, discovery and experiment. When the results of the scientific investigation
and exploration of Earth & Cosmos inspire the telling of stories, the narrative
that results is dependent upon the data that underlies it at every point, and
must correspond to the research that founds it, changing when new data arises. It results in a nonfiction narrative. There
are no final stories where science is concerned; there is only the best stories
that can be told at the moment. The
imagination’s role in scientific stories is constructive – just as it is in
fictional storytelling – always striving to make the story agree with the data about
what is known.
The
truth of a scientific story depends primarily on its correspondence to what is
known about the objective world in which we all find ourselves, whether we are
aware of it or not. A “true” account of
scientific discoveries must be as free from ideological bias as possible. It must present “the facts and nothing but
the facts,” as the old expression goes; especially when it couches these
‘facts’ in a narrative—they must be accurately re-presented in the account. A scientific story must also be internally
consistent – like a fictional story – but its truth arises primarily from its
correspondence with what is actually known about the universe as ourselves as a
part of the universe.
Both
of these kinds of story may change, but for different reasons. Fictional stories change mainly due to a new
need, either in the author or in the audience.
Scientific stories change mainly because of a change in understanding of
the phenomena being studied; owing to new research results and discoveries in
the field. A scientific storyteller may
also, of course, alter the narrative or its mode to suit an audience (perceived
or intended), yet the primary responsibility of this storyteller is to make
sure that the story is aligned with the research; with what is known at this
point in the process of discovery and reflection on those discoveries.
Science
and Literature both reveal the Given; and so the stories told in each realm have a common ground—yet differing approaches.
Science reveals the Given in quantitative, empirical and objective ways. Literature reveals the Given in qualitative,
experiential and poetic ways, while always having some degree of correspondence
to the objective dimensions of our world in the background. Thus, science and literature both talk of the
Given, each in their own way; and these discourses can be complementary.
Scientific
and fictional stories surround and embed us; integrate us into—our subjective
and inter-subjective realities. As a way
of exploring this further, let me tell you a about a wonderful afternoon a few
years ago when, while sitting on the porch reading George Elliot’s The Mill on the Floss, I was blessed
with an impromptu and quite unexpected conversation with five interlocutors—
There
was a small flowerbed in front of our house, and one day when I was sitting
outside reading on a cool, clear-skied afternoon, a man stopped in his saunter
to look at the Cone Flowers, the Oswego Teas and all of the Jacob’s Ladders
twining themselves in and out and around the other denizens of the small garden. He said he was always struck by the
interaction of the various organisms in a small niche, how one species relates
to another, and how they each (a) depend upon one another and (b) compete with
one another for resources. He pointed
out various insects crawling about and others – bees and then a hummingbird – flying around and interacting with the flowers in different ways. He pointed out
the tracks of a rabbit and a couple of chipmunks that had recently.
The
man – a biologist as it turned out – and I talked about how planting certain
flowers in the same bed creates a certain micro-environment, with its own unique
character and community of users (bugs, beetles, rodents, etc), who feed upon,
fertilize and even protect the garden).
He noted how the insects that use and benefit from_ and also prey upon_
the flowerbed, form a ‘biotic community.’
And then we went deeper and talked about plant physiology,
cells, photosynthesis, and so on—what makes a plant an plant.
A
young boy and his mother were then passing by and heard some our discussion. They stopped and the woman -- who was obviously appreciating the flowers -- offered a story
of her own. She told me how the plot of
ground where the flowerbed is now growing used to be full of evergreen shrubs,
and how a previous owner of the house tore out the shrubs, but never planted
much, and then how she has watched as I have created this flowerbed over a
period of years. She said she liked how
‘wild’ the flowerbed looked, and yet how it was obviously ‘ordered’. I said “yes, I try to plant in such a way
that there is initial order, and then let things grow in their own ways” – and
that “I am always amazed at what finally comes out of the intent to order
things in Nature.” Hers was an
historical account of the flowerbed, based on memory and recollection of ‘how
things used to be’ – and it complemented the scientific ‘story’ the biologist and
I had been telling.
The
young boy, we then noticed, was fascinated with something in the flowerbed, and
when we asked him what he saw, he said the bed was home to a troop of faeries
and that they were trying to build ramparts (the twining Jacob’s Ladders, we
suspected, were these imagined defenses) against a Dragon, which – he said with
confidence – lived “within the mountain” (represented by the porch foundation wall). He pointed to three or four sandstones that I
had arranged along the porch wall (to keep skunks out from under the porch and
where the chipmunks had managed to create an entrance for their own abode) – as the
“door” of the Dragon’s Lair.
“Very
interesting,” the scientist said, and we all smiled appreciatively at the imagined world the
boy was creating. “A totally valid way
of seeing the flower garden,” he said, pleasantly amused by the contrast
between our conversation and the boy’s imaginings. When we asked the boy to elaborate his story
even further, we could tell it still was unfolding in his head as he spoke. he created new denizens of the green world of the Garden, one after another, and was continued to examine the flowers and the 'architecture' the plants created,
No
one of these stories cancels the others out; each approaches the flowerbed from
a different hermeneutic standpoint. Science,
fantasy and history each add something to our understanding of the Given; the
flowerbed as it is at this moment. The flowerbed
is just ‘there,’ it is the x with which each interpreter engaged. Each of these interpretations co-exists with the others. The scientist and the
mother deal more with what is objectively given than does the boy, perhaps, yet even he
is responding to the external, perceived reality of flowerbed and is inspired
at the moment to overlay a fictional story upon it. This is a more 'literary' approach and is the common arche of all artistic endeavor. The mother’s approach is more ‘scientific’ to
the extent that it relies upon knowledge – facts about the history of the
flowerbed that either could or could not be verified. At the point the story is told, it is unknown
whether the mother’s account is factual or fictional; indeed—did she make up
this story on the spur of the moment for some undisclosed or perhaps subconscious reason on her part? Yet I know she was basically correct; though
that knowledge itself does not completely move the story from the category
of ‘anecdote’ to ‘historical account.’
Now,
another man who had been walking by, and -- having stopped to listen to our conversation -- asked if he
could add to the story of the flowerbed? We said, “Of course!” The man identified
himself as Christian, and talked about our human stewardship over Nature;
granted to us by God—and said how a well arranged Garden is like a well-ordered
soul. It is also a symbol of God’s
Creation as it should be. The Flower Garden – Nature arranged by human
artifice – is like what Nature is like as God’s Creation.
Another woman -- a friend who had come to visit me, having arrived at the same time as the first woman, now offered her own counter-story to this last account!
“Rather,” she said, “the Earth is the body of the Goddess, and the
flowerbed is a crossroads between our ability to create and the presence of
Goddess in the flowers, insects and the very soil itself.” She told us how she relishes the interactions
between the elements – as does the Christian and the scientist – and spoke poetically of the
‘matrix’ that is life!
Each
of these two religion-based stories also represents a particular hermeneutic angle
on the flowerbed, couched in metaphorical, allegorical and symbolic traditions
of understanding that – like the boy’s fantasy tale – are overlaid upon the
Given and interfaced with it at various levels. Both my friend and the Christian were obviously aware of the findings of science, given the elaborations they made upon their interpretations over the next few minutes, and neither of them necessarily disagreed with the views of the biologist. Yet these stories help us less in understanding the objective dimension of the flowerbed; the Given per se—but rather illuminate the Given interpreted as a template or
touchstone for a fictional belief system.
These
latter two stories – like the boy’s story – are “true” as fictional accounts of
an x, and they are valid responses so long as they don’t attempt to make
themselves out to be an ‘empirical’ account of the physical nature of the
flowerbed. Religion, at one level,
presents the accumulation of traditions of interpretation about our experiences
in life and what it means to be human. A
religion is a symbolic, metaphorical and allegorical construct, paralleling
experiential reality, and is an attempt – in a fictional, narrative mode – to
“explain” the life it parallels and in which it strives to engage. Seen
from this angle, a religion can be just as “true” as any other fictional narrative,
so long as it doesn’t pretend that its narrative is an objective explanation of the
Given; of the physical world itself.
Each
of these five stories ‘explain’ the world in a particular way. The crucial thing is not to confuse the narrative
modes, their grounding and their method with one another. Does any one of these stories take precedence
over the others? Only if you prioritize
what you want to learn regarding the Garden.
For the boy and for the religious visitants to the flowerbed, their
fictional stories inform their lives and hopefully allow them to live more
fully; to become more realized as individuals in a particular community within
the large global human community. One
would hope that they do understand that ‘behind’ or ‘below’ their fictional
mode of interaction with the flowerbed, there is an objective story -- constructed through the revelations of science -- that everyone on the planet can share in common, regardless of our fictional
hermeneutics.
For
the scientist – with his biological account – and the mother – with her
historical account – their non-fictional engagement with the flowerbed and the stories that may arise from that engagement may also
promote well-being and encourage the living of life to the fullest. Science provides us with an Epic Account of
the Earth & Cosmos that inspires wonder and promotes awe. Cosmology and Evolution constitute a Big
Story; one more-than-roomy-enough for us to inhabit and find fulfillment in. In the end, a scientific and historical
account of the objective dimension of our existence may be enough to promote
well-being. Only time will tell.
Yet
I also find fictional interpretations and engagements with life’s ongoing
adventure to be inspiring and fructifying of my own self-realization, whether
these stories come from the literary or mythological traditions of our
species. So I would never deny the tellers of fictional stories their
constructions! Fantasy, imaginative
construction of alternate worlds and the creative re-imagining of our lives are
all part of what makes us human, and these abilities constitute in many ways a
survival technique. When faced with a
crisis or a life-changing opportunity, we have the ability to re-imagine
ourselves and creatively work through our circumstances and our choices. Fictional narratives are one extension of
this unique ability our species possesses.
Literature
and religion – especially its mythology – are cultural universals; there is no human culture without stories and no society without grounding myths, whether religious or secular. The truth of religion and fiction can be found
in how they help us deal with life’s vicissitudes and vagaries, giving us a
chance to negotiate both the rapids and the calm waters of our lives.
So long as these stories are not mistaken for an objective account of
the Earth & Cosmos, they can be healthy responses to life. Scientific and fictional stories are
different in their referents and in the material from which they are
constructed, but they can both be true in their own way.
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