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I hope this does not seem out of place here. I enjoyed it.
Lonnie.
The Blackfoot Scientists are alien observers, because they often communicate in divers ways with
the 4th dimensional reality of the encompassing universe of the terrestrial scientists manouvering about in 3D.
The Blackfoot Indians, and as they were before 'acclimitisation' and 'integration' into 3-dimensional reality;
represented a highly advanced society in which technological progress was in harmony with their spiritual and mental development.
The Blackfoot Indians understood he nature of the EMMR, which they KNEW as the encompassing spirit of consciousness of all
the worlds.
Thanks Lonnie for a most pertinent sharing of the 'perennial sentient thought'.
Tony B. Khaibit
Blackfoot Physics and European Minds by F. David Peat
Abstract:
Western
science and 'European consciousness' is contrasted with that
of Indigenous and traditional peoples. The metaphysics
of the
Blackfoot of North America and this vision of an animate world is
examined. It is argued that something similar
existed in Europe of
the early middle-ages but that the secularization of space, time and
matter paved the way for
the development of science. A new science
may be possible which combines the current power of abstraction and
analysis
with an 'impersonal subjectivity'.
Introduction:
European consciousness dominates the world.
As we move towards the
next millennium will this continue to be the case? In this article I
explore a radically
different world-view, that of the Blackfoot of
North America, and ask if their approach to society and the natural
world has anything of significance to teach us.
Indeed, can the study of alternative ways of thinking give rise
to a
creative response within own consciousness?
The initial statement of this article requires amplification
and
qualification. By 'European consciousness' I do not mean something
confined to a specific geographical
location but, rather, a way of
thinking and behaving that, while it did happen to develop within
Europe, now has
an influence across much of the globe. Its seeds were
already present in the middle ages and its flowering resulted in
the
secularizing of time and of space, the rise of science and the
proliferation of technology. It transformed a
society that had
previously existed on trade and barter into the major force for
expansion and progress that now
dominates the world.
One of the most dramatic products of the Western mind has been its
particular approach
to science, a discipline that, along with its
associated technology, is by no means as objective, neutral and value
free as we once believed. Western science expresses an entire
metaphysics about the way we relate to the world, society
and
ourselves. Western science has its triumph yet we are now aware of
the hubris connected to its success. To take
one example, our
technology acts somewhat like a virus which, when it enters a
society, transforms its entire structure.
Export a sack of seed, a
bag of fertilizer or a canister of pesticide to the Third World and
one transforms an entire
way of life that may have survived, largely
unchanged, for hundreds or even thousands of years.
An Animate
World:
In recent years I have often heard the boast that, for the first time
in human history, we all share
the same story of creation and that
today children all over the world are being taught the same facts
about nature.
Western science has become the yardstick of truth and,
measured against it, the stories and traditions that have sustained
ancient cultures are dismissed as myths, superstitions and old wives
tales.
But, measured on the scale of
the world's civilizations,
this 'European mind' is comparatively young and its' science a mere
infant.
Go back a millennium and time was experienced as a cycle of
renewal. The seasons, the rhythms of daily life and the church's
calendar were all in harmony. Space was united with time and its
interior was as rich as the yoke of an egg. Aristotle's
natural
philosophy taught that each body has its natural place; medieval
society was a world in which each person
was in his or her proper
place. Our modern notions of the rights of the individual were far
less important than
the well being of society as a whole.
In such a world everything was alive; rocks, rivers and trees.
Nature
was constantly at work and it fell to human beings to act as
her midwife. Metals grew in the womb of the earth and the
sacred work
of the miner and blacksmith brought this labour to completion. In
many ways the reality of this world
was far larger than the
scientific reality we inhabit today.
For a variety of reasons European consciousness
began to change.
Time, the theologians had argued, belongs to God but now it became
secularized though the
practice of usury. Banking is about buying
time and setting time aside. Inevitably a secularized time led to our
modern
obsession with growth and progress, prediction and control.
In the twelfth century Aquinas denied that the artifex
(miner,
blacksmith, sculptor, etc.) is the assistant to nature for, he
claimed, while the form of matter may be
altered, its essence is
untouched. The crafts and arts of humankind had been reduced to the
superficial transformation
of mere appearance.
In 1438 another influence was added to the developing European mind.
With Byzantium under
threat from the expansion of the Ottoman empire
its Emperor, John Paleologus, along with seven hundred advisors,
traveled
to Florence in an attempt to gain Pope Eugenius IV's
military support. In exchange he offered a resolution of the
theological differences between the two churches. The result was that
for a time Florence was filled with neo-Platonism
and its influence,
at the height of the Renaissance, cannot be underestimated.
In the thirteenth century William
of Auvergne could write 'When you
consider the order and magnificence of the universe ... you will find
it like
a most beautiful canticle ... and the wonders and varieties
of its creatures to be a symphony of joy and harmony to the
very
essence. ... The goodness of a substance, and its beauty are the same
thing'. Likewise Abbot Sugar supervised
the rebuilding of the abbey
church of St. Denis in order to make the divine manifest within
bronze, stone, stained
glass, precious metals and jewels.(Ref.1) Now,
in the Renaissance, artists were directing their gaze away from the
natural world into one of ideal forms.
Within this melting pot of ideas matter and spirit became fragmented
one from the other and a participatory reality was transformed into
scientific objectivity. For me the exemplar of
this change of
consciousness is linear perspective which developed in the earlier
part of the Renaissance. Siena
is referred to by Italians as a
feminine city. Within the paintings of its school time and space are
united. The
various events of a saint's life are presented in total,
like a superimposed comic strip; and while depth in space
is
certainly indicated it is still possible to see an object from a
multiplicity of viewpoints. But, as the Renaissance
developed in the
more masculine city of Florence, time was abstracted from space and
painting was left with the
single viewpoint, a frozen world seen
though a window. With the device of perspective one longer enters
into to
painting but views it with an objective eye. Mirroring the
metaphysics of the period, nature has been projected away
from us and
the world is experienced as something external.
The mathematical basis of perspective is called
Projective Geometry.
This term says it all. One no longer engages directly with an object
in its natural, essential
form, as something that can be explored and
touched, instead it becomes a surface that must be distorted to fit
the
global logic of mathematical perspective. The rich
individualistic inscape of the natural world had given way to a
uniform perspectival grid of logic and reason.
How well perspective parallels a science in which nature obeys
laws
that are, in some metaphysical sense, external to matter's essence.
As Bacon argued, these laws are to
be discovered by placing nature on
the rack, another sort of grid, and tormenting her to reveal her
secrets. Descartes
and Newton cannot be held responsible for our
modern world, the seeds of its consciousness were sown long before.
It is only as we reach our own modern age that the perspectival
vision of science has been shaken by, for example,
quantum theory.
Yet artists are always the antennae of society and the foreshocks
could be felt when Cezanne restored
touch to painting and, in the
process, activated time and multiplicity of viewpoint. Never
interested in projection
Cezanne entered directly into nature, and
nature entered into him. 'The Landscape becomes reflective, human and
thinks itself though me.' he wrote, 'I make it an object, let it
project itself and endure within my painting....I
become the
subjective consciousness of the landscape, and my painting becomes
its objective consciousness.'
(2.)
The Modern Mind:
The European mind, along with its material and conceptual products,
exerts
a powerful seductive force on all of us. It would be extremely
difficult to live without the products of such a consciousness,
nor
would most of us we wish to - at least not in an entirely radical
fashion. Many have already written of the
shadow side to this power;
intensive farming, high technology medicine, rapid communications and
so on. My own interest
in somewhat different. It is to ask if an
earlier richness together with a sense of harmony and a balance can
be
restored to the European mind. It is to ask if an ethical and
moral dimension can be added to our science and technology
and if
supposed objectivity can be tempered through participation.
Is our world destined towards increasing
uniformity or can we
accommodate alternative view points and metaphysics, each enriching
the other? The arts have
always been eager for such enrichment,
Debussy drew upon Balanese music, Picasso on African masks, and a
director
like Peter Brooke has explored the world's theatrical
traditions. When used in a creative and respectful way these
are not
acts of cultural appropriation but of cultural renewal. Is something
similar possible within our science?
At this point is could be objected that, unlike the arts, science is
objective and, from a cultural point of
view, value-free. It is for
this reason, it is said, that Indigenous and marginalized cultures
cannot really co-exist
beside industrialized nations and are doomed
to extinction. I don't believe this is true. Traditional cultures
have enormous power and may, in the end, act to transform or renew
our own technological society.
An Alternative
Vision:
My test case is that of the Blackfoot people, a nation who once
occupied an area of the North American
plains east of the Rocky
Mountains but now today live in reserves in Montana, U.S. and
reservations in Alberta,
Canada. By tradition they were hunters of
buffalo; traveling with their tepis in the summer and wintering along
river
banks. Their language is a member of the great Algonquin family
which runs from the Cheyenne in the central US plains
though the
Blackfoot and up into northern Canada with Ojibwaj and Cree finally
into the Naskapi of Labrador.
My encounter, as a representative of Western science, with the
Blackfoot was neither systematic nor anthropological
(Ref.3). It was
more an ongoing friendship and a series of discussions about our
respective world-views. In turn
this led to a number of circles in
which Western scientists sat with Blackfoot and other Native American
Elders.
The Blackfoot have weathered the extermination of the buffalo and the
appropriation of their lands. Anyone past
middle age would have
experienced the residential schools in which children's heads were
shaved, clothing burned,
and a prohibition placed upon speaking their
mother tongue or praying according to their tradition - physical and
sexual abuse was also far from uncommon.
Today the Blackfoot have exchanged their horses for cars and pickup
trucks. They live in houses instead of tepis and job hunting has
replaced the buffalo jump and buffalo wallow. Surrounded
by the
pressures of North American society they are faced with drug and
alcohol problems yet what struck me most
during my visits is the way
that the old is able to coexist with the new so that, for many
Blackfoot, their traditional
vision and metaphysics survives
untarnished. Clearly the Blackfoot have the extraordinary ability to
coexist within
two worlds. Yet they taught me that we all possess a
similar capacity and buried deep within the European mind lies
something that may be able to temper the momentum of our present
path.
We are all indigenous people, in
the sense that each of us is the
carrier of a sacred relationship to the natural world and has access
to a wider
vision of a reality long denied.
Blackfoot Reality:
What is the nature of Blackfoot reality? Certainly
it is far wider
than our own, yet firmly based within the natural world of vibrant,
living things. Once our European
world saw nature in a similar way, a
vision still present in poets like Blake, Wordsworth and Gerard
Manley Hopkins
who perceived the immanence and inscape of the world.
NEVERTHELESS OUR CONSCIOUSNESS HAS NARROWED TO THE EXTENT
THAT MATTER
IS SEPARATED FROM SPIRIT AND WE SEEK OUR REALITY IN AN IMAGINED
ELSEWHERE OF ABSTRACTIONS, PLATONIC
REALMS, MATHEMATICAL ELEGANCE,
AND PHYSICAL LAWS.
The Blackfoot know of no such fragmentation. Not only do
they speak
with rocks and trees, they are also able to converse with that which
remains invisible to us, a world
of what could be variously called
spirits, or powers, or simply energies. But these forces are not the
occupants
of a mystical or abstract domain, they remain an essential
aspect of the natural, material world. It is not so much that
the
Blackfoot live in an extended reality but that our own Western vision
had become excessively myopic.
This wider reality embraces flux, movement, change and
transformation. The creator of the land, Napi (the Old Man),
is also
its trickster, one who is constantly changing form, traversing
boundaries and upsetting preconceptions.
For example, what the West
takes as the aberration of multiple personality becomes the
acceptance that an individual
is not a fixed thing but fluid, a being
whose multiplicity is reflected in the way a person's name keeps
transforming
during their life.
How is one to maintain orientation in a universe in which everything
is caught up in the
river of transformation. How can anything be
preserved from change?
The answer lies in participation within
the flux by means of acts of
renewal.
Renewal requires an act of sacrifice and it is these sacrifices,
these actions of participation, performed each morning when the sun
rises, each year at the Sun Dance, which help to
maintain the great
circle of renewal. Thanks to these acts of renewal time, within the
flux, turns on its axis.
Seasons follow seasons. Circling time is
always the same, yet always different, always renewed.
Acts of renewal
reflect the compacts formed in ancient times;
negotiated relationships between the ancestors and the energies, or
spirits, or keepers of the land. No one believes that a pipe ceremony
actually causes the sun to rise. Rather, by renewing
their
relationships to the dynamics of nature the Blackfoot maintain a
harmonious role within the cosmos. Within
a balanced cosmos the sun
will rise and the seasons follow in their proper harmony.
Personal sacrifice, responsibility,
ceremonies and acts of renewal
therefore have nothing to do with the world of mechanical causality
but are more
to do with a relationship to a living cosmos.
Although it does not come from the Blackfoot, the story of the
rainmaker well illustrates this point:-
A rainmaker was called to a region experiencing drought. He arrived
and immediately went into the hut provided for him only to emerge
several days later as it began to rain. When he was
asked how he had
made the rain he replied that he had not caused the rain to fall.
Rather, when he arrived in the
village he discovered everything to be
in disharmony. He therefore retired to his hut in order to bring
himself
back into balance. Once balance had been restored then nature
returned to harmony and the rain fell as it naturally should.
Carl Jung chose to term this synchronicity, his 'acausal connecting
principle'.(4.) It was present earlier
in the West in the form of
Alchemy in which external material workings and internal
transformations mirror each
other. This constant movement towards
balance and harmony within the flux is the essence of the Blackfoot
world.
The Map in the Head:
An expression of the Blackfoot's relationship to a reality of rocks,
trees,
animals and energies is expressed within what many Native
Americans call 'a map in the head'. This map is a way
of knowing
where one is in relationship to the land, its history, society and
all the living beings of nature. For
the Blackfoot this map begins
with Napi's body, which is traced out in the landscape in the form of
rivers,
buttes, hills and valleys. It is also the track left by Napi
as he walked across his land. The Map in the Head is songs
sung and
the stories told around the fire at night. It is the relationship of
the Blackfoot people to their world.
The map in the head is a form of knowledge, but knowledge, for the
Blackfoot, is no mere collection of facts
but something that one
grows towards. Knowledge, like a song, is a living being; a being
with which one can come
into relationship. Coming to knowing is an
active dialogue with nature; with the rocks, plants and animals.
As one Blackfoot put it, 'the plants and animals are our microscopes
and laboratories.'
Knowledge
is relationship and relationship brings with it
responsibilities and obligations. Thus it has been put to me that
when Western science performs its experiments it is actually
conversing with nature and, in this process, telling nature
about
ourselves. Are we willing to take responsibility for what we say?
Each action in the laboratory must
be balanced by its reaction
somewhere else in the world. When we create order in one place we
give birth to disorder
in another.
Such a point of view should not be entirely alien to our European
minds. It was a European, Goethe,
who suggested an alternative to the
Newtonian method which he saw as a way of gaining knowledge by
placing nature
in highly artificial situations. By contrast, Goethe
sought 'an instant worth a thousand, bearing all within itself.'(5.)
His method involved, for example, coming into relationship with
plants and contemplating their inner nature. In this
fashion Goethe
sought to understand the inner nature and meaning of plants.(6.)
While Newtonian science studies
particular instances in the hope of
generalizing into a law of nature - unity within multiplicity -
Goethe studied
the multiplicity that arises out of unity. Goethe's
notion of the archetype of all plants resonates with Indigenous
concept of the Guardians or Keepers of plants and animals. By
carrying a piece of bone a Blackfoot comes into direct
contact with
the Guardian or Keeper of the buffalo.
Healing:
Plants have the power to heal. For
the Blackfoot the nature of their
action cannot be reduced simply to chemical substances or molecules.
Healing involves
a relationship to the entire plant and this includes
its power, energy, spirit, or in Goethe's terms, its archetype.
One can perhaps understand this by analogy to sacred sculpture of,
for example, India. Within a ceremony these
objects act as windows
into the world of the sacred yet are at the same time no more than
stone, clay and pigment.
Their action is that of a diagram, or map,
of the pattern of the sacred. One comes into relationship with the
numinous
though the catalytic action of the icon. In a similar way
the plant and its associated chemicals open into a larger world
of
energies and healing powers.
There is a related metaphor in Western science. A molecule is not so
much
an object but a dynamical pattern. At the quantum level it is a
pattern of energies which extend into the ground state
of the entire
cosmos. Absorbed into the body this dynamic energy pattern provokes a
range of transformations of
the body's biochemical activities. Of
course, the analogy can only go so long as Western science continues
to
fragment matter from ethical values, consciousness and spirit.
It goes without saying that the relationship to
the plant world
extends into ecological practice, and here I am drawing not upon the
Blackfoot but my conversations
with the Mohawk. When one hunts for a
medicine plant, or for that matter for an animal, one does not pick
the first
or second one comes upon but always the third. A prayer is
first offered that the plant will sacrifice itself and after
it has
been picked an offering is made to the earth. Returning home the
plant is treated in a respectful manner
for one is not only dealing
with the particular but the universal, the Guardian of the plant, the
archetype. In
the action of healing with the plant energy may be
exchanged but within such a metaphysics whatever is taken must, in
some way, be paid back.
Language:
The Blackfoot I have met speak of their traditional ways as a science.
(7.) Of particular significance is the way this science is enfolded
within their language. The language contains the
map of the land, the
relationships to the energies and spirits of all living thing - the
rocks, the trees, the plants,
birds, fish and animals. The flux in
which they live is perfectly expressed in what could be termed
their 'process
language'. European languages have a heavy reliance
upon nouns and lend themselves so well to a type of thinking
that
deals in categories and Aristotelian logic.(8) Our physical reality
is that of objects in interaction with
one another - nouns linked by
verbs. This thinking also extends into the abstract and psychological
spheres when
the world of our experiences, relationships and feelings
becomes a collection of objects of thought to be manipulated,
generalized, abstracted and acted upon.
How eagerly do we build categories and concepts, how literally do we
take our 'language games', how easily do we become trapped in empty
philosophical argument.
While
other problems may certainly arise this sort of trap is not
present within a language where the verb takes centre stage.
Within Blackfoot all is movement, process and transformation. Nouns
as objects emerge in a secondary way though
the modification of
verbs. To them the English language is a straight-jacket which forces
their minds into a world
of objects, categories and restrictive logic.
Take, as an example, healing. To the Western mind this is a
transitive
business in which the doctor (noun) acts upon the patient
(another noun) to bring about a some-change-of-state.
For the Blackfoot healing is a process. This process is itself the
primary reality, rather than that of patient and
doctor. Healing
often involves singing. In this case in speaking about healing the
process of the singing is the
focus of the linguistic act. Rather
than singing being performed by someone, the pure act of singing is
taking place
- singing is singing itself. It is out of this singing
that healing unfolds to reveal the previously sick person.
Again an analogy from contemporary science may help. According to
classical physics nature consists of objects
in interaction with one
another. Observation is an objective business that reveals the world
for what it is.
Quantum theory, by contrast, stresses that observation is
participation and within any act of observation the
observer and
observed are united in a holistic and unanalyzable way. Observation
is a process within which it is
no longer possible to speak of the
independent existence, or properties of, the observer and observed.
AS
NEILS BOHR POINTED OUT THE PARADOXES AND DIFFICULTIES OF QUANTUM
THEORY ARISE OUT OF OUR NEED TO EMPLOY ORDINARY LANGUAGE
IN OUR
DISCOURSE. BUT THIS LANGUAGE, BE IT ENGLISH OR DANISH, HISTORICALLY
DEVELOPED IN A PARTICULAR WAY AND WITHIN
A WORLD OF CLASSICAL
OBJECTS. WE ARE SUSPENDED IN THIS LANGUAGE SO THAT WE DO NOT KNOW
WHICH WAY IS UP AND WHICH
IS DOWN. BY CONTRAST, THE BLACKFOOT LIVE IN
A WORLD THAT IS MUCH CLOSER TO THAT QUANTUM DOMAIN, A WORLD OF FLUX,
TRANSFORMATION
AND ESSENTIAL RELATIONSHIP FAR FROM THAT OF ABSOLUTE
CATEGORIES, FIXED OBJECTS AND RIGID ARISTOTELIAN DUALITIES. THEIR
LANGUAGE PERFECTLY REFLECTS THIS WORLD.
Harmony and Balance:
Knowledge is not partitioned in a holistic
world and Blackfoot
science is not confined simply to the material. It embraces society
and good government. Its
norm is balance and harmony. Society is not
an artifact built by individuals with rights and freedoms, rather it
is
a process of renewal, a coherent whole out of which emerge persons
with responsibilities and obligations. An individual
exists in
respect to his or her relationships with society and nature.
Take as an example, Blackfoot justice.
What we would term a crime is,
to many indigenous people, a disruption of the harmonious working of
their society.
Rather than approaching this disorder in terms of
adversarial trial, proof, guilt and punishment, a circle of elders
meet with the aggrieve party and perpetrator. Discussion within this
circle is not so much designed to establish the
factuality of what
has occurred but rather it seeks a way of restoring balance. Thus the
perpetrator may asked to
suggest some action that would satisfy all
parties. Finally, when everyone is again in a balanced relationship
the
decision is made public.
Indigenous Science:
The Blackfoot speak of a science which includes a metaphysics
of the
reality in which they live, a set of relationships to the natural
world, a deep understanding of their immediate
environment, and a
technology appropriate to their lifestyle. Such a science is common
to many other indigenous
peoples of the Americas and, indeed, to
traditional peoples world-wide.
As the notion of 'a Map in the
Head' suggests, such a science is not,
like our own, of an exclusive objective and global nature but is
specific
to a people and a place. Perhaps an analogy with cooking may
help. The world's great cuisines are each associated
with a
particular country and region. After having lived in Italy for more
than a year I am discovering that there
is no such thing as 'Italian'
cooking but rather a way of cooking that is specific to the meats,
fish, vegetables
and fruits of a particular region. Even the Tuscan
cooking of my particular province is subdivided. Great cooking
involves a deep understanding and empathy to the nature of the
materials available. It is at the same time a science
and a high art
that is not easily exportable.
This metaphor applies to the indigenous sciences of North America.
The Haida, living on the British Columbia seaboard developed
masterpieces of marine engineering: coastal and ocean
going canoes,
carved out of giant cedar trees. The particular shape and mass of
these vessels enables the Haida
to move at high speed across the
ocean and to sustain long voyages without exhaustion. Another of
their sciences,
which is shared with other Pacific peoples such as
the Maori and Hawaiians is a ways of navigating over long distances
using patterns of stars, and observing the pattern of waves and the
direction of the wind.
The Algonkin
of the Eastern Woodlands are hunters and gathers who
must venture for many days from their homes. Their technology enables
them to construct a birchbark canoe, using only a curved knife and
the materials of the forest, in less than a day.
The vessel is strong
enough to support a heavy load as it travels though white water
rapids, yet light enough to
be portaged from river to river.
South of the Algonkin the Mohawk nation of the Iroquois confederation
are
farmers. They employ a biological symbioses by planting the Three
Sisters (corn, beans and squash) together; corn supplying
a
mechanical support and beans fixing nitrogen to supply nutrients in
the earth. Yet eventually land can be farmed
out and wild plants over
picked. So, in traditional times, the Mohawk would, after two or
three generations, abandon
their villages and rebuild some distance
away, allowing the forest to return to its pristine state. The
complexity
of their civilization and their negotiations with the
energies of the earth is reflected in a language which employs
a
large number of names referring to relationship.
In so many cases a traditional people, before disruption
by European
civilization, possessed considerable knowledge of their territory and
adapted technologies appropriate
to the environment and way of life.
For this reasons such people may appear conservative and slow to
adapt. But
one should remember a maxim employed by some of the
indigenous people of North America. In taking a decision one does
not
so much consider its immediate impacts but the consequences it will
have upon the seventh generation to come
after. In this respect we
should recall a, possibly apocryphal, story that has been related to
be by a number of
architects. It was found that, after many
centuries, the great oak beams in an Oxford college needed replacing.
Consultants
considered substituting other materials until someone
discovered in the college records that at the time of the founding
of
the college a stand of oaks had been donated with an eye of future
replacement. According the story these oaks
were now well matured and
could be used to renovate the roof.
Conclusions:
It is not the intention
of this essay to argue that we should abandon
the Western world-view and become Blackfoot over night. Rather it is
to suggest that it would be useful for us to examine our metaphysics
in the light of that of another society. In this
way we may come to
realize that much of what we take to be inevitable and self-evident
is, to a great extent, a
social conditioned perception which contains
a variety of unexamined assumptions.
There is a great deal to
be proud of in our science and technology
yet our modern world exhibits much that we now desire to change.
Radical
change requires a shift in perception and a transformation of
consciousness. Maybe there are lessons to be learned from
Blackfoot
physics as an alternative way of viewing the world.
But could 'Blackfoot physics' be applied
in Europe, for example? The
essential issue is that, unlike in the west, there are no Blackfoot
physicists, nor
for that matter are there any Blackfoot artists.
Rather each person is a generalist, who has come to know the wisdom
of the group. This is not to say that there are not people with
special healing abilities, or Keepers of Sacred Bundles,
or Elders
who know many of the Lodge tales, but rather that the traditional
ways of the Blackfoot are available
to all their people.
Blackfoot science has not fragmented as a particular system of
knowledge from the other
areas of life. It would be difficult, and
probably impossible, to abstract something called Blackfoot Physics
from
the entire culture and then import in packaged form into a
Western laboratory.
It is certainly true that Western
science is already extracting
certain knowledge from the Indigenous peoples of the world. Most of
this involves
information about the pharmaceutical powers of rare
plants, fungi and the like. Indeed, one of the arguments for delaying
the destruction of the world's rain forests and other threatened
ecologies is their potential for exploitation
for wonder drugs and
miracle cures. But, again, this is being done in a fragmentary way.
Science removes the plant
from its environment and analyses it to
discover active ingredients. Once they have been synthesized there is
no
need to preserve that particular ecology or to attempt to
understand the world-view in which that plant was respected
and used.
As long as Indigenous science is only employed in this fragmented way
it will make little impact
on the Western mind. A genuine dialogue
can only develop if Western science is willing to extend its horizons
and,
for example, temper its abstract objectivity with what could
perhaps be called an impersonal subjectivity:. Impersonal
since it
does not rely upon the accidents of personal biography and prejudice,
yet subjective because it speaks
to our deep relationship to the
world, and our objective intuitions about nature.
That subjectivity is antithetical
to science because it is believed
to involve the distortions of highly personal biographical material
is the legacy
of Europe's romantic movement. In an earlier age the
subject, the artist or musician for example, sought to eliminate
the
purely personal in their work and become the servant or conduit of
what lay beyond. Indeed, personal expression
was considered to be in
bad taste, a falling from the ideal.
Such art sought to express the numinous, the
divine archetype, pure
form, call it what you will, in a direct a way as possible by
eliminating the idiosyncratically
personal. It was a marriage of
objectivity and subjectivity, the inner and outer response to
archetypes and materials.
I am suggesting that something similar may
be possible within Western science. The power of its objectivity
should
be retained while, at the same time, opening the door to an
impersonal subjectivity - a more direct connection to the
material
world, one that is felt, experienced and becomes the object of a
trained intuition.
Within the
framework of such a science it may be possible to open a
dialogue to other traditions and ways of thinking. Such a science
could be simultaneously global, in that it seeks universal laws of
nature, and local, in that it responds to particular
ecologies and
social needs and, at the same time, choosing alternative metaphors
for its expression.
The
philosopher Wittgenstein pointed out that when philosophy
believes it is speaking of great truths it is really involved
in a
variety of language games. This is equally true of science for, no
matter how abstract the mathematics, its
interpretation and meaning
must always be expressed in everyday language. And such language
carries with it a great
deal of biological and cultural baggage.
Language, in which all science must be expressed, is far from being
value
free.
It could be said that our current way of thinking, our 'European
minds', has not yet caught
up with the deeper meaning of the
scientific discoveries of this century. Quantum theory stresses the
wholeness
of nature and the inadequacy for what could be termed 'the
Cartesian Order'. That is, an order based upon notions
of continuous
space and time. One of the most significant movements within
contemporary science is the search for
this new order. In a sense it
is a desire to reanimate time, a way of bringing back a truly
dynamical time into
the heart of physics. But to do this implies an
entirely new metaphysics and a change in the way we think about the
world.
Such a change is also inherent in the discoveries of chaos theory and
non-linear systems. A science
seeking certainty, control,
predictability and closure has ended up subverting itself. The world,
we have learned
is far more complex than our attempts to describe it.
It contains regions of infinite sensitivity and absolute
unpredictability.
As I have argued in this essay, one of the great changes in the
European mind was the secularization of time
and the projection of
nature into some world external to the essence of a human being. It
seems to me that within
our modern world are the seeds of something
entirely different. They are the seeds of a consciousness that, in
some
ways, may resonate with that of the Blackfoot. It is a
consciousness that seeks a deeper and more compassionate relationship
with the natural world. One which may replace prediction and control
by something more intelligent, more subtle and
more and holistic
gentle in its action. Above all what is require is a creative
response to the modern age. Such
a change of consciousness requires
an enormous energy, for we are being called upon to dismantle old
perceptions
and prejudices and leave ourselves open for the operation
of the creative.
References:
1. U. Eco,
'Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages', Yale U.P., 1986
2. Joyce Medina, 'Cezanne and Modernism: The poetics
of painting'
SUNY, Albany 1995
3. F. David Peat, 'Blackfoot Physics' 4th Estate, London, 1995.
4. F. David Peat, 'Synchronicity: The Bridge between Matter and
Mind', Bantam Books, NY, 1987
5. Henri Borthoft 'The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe's Way towards a
Science of Wholeness'. Lindisfarne Press,
Hudson, NY 1996
6. The biologist Brian Goodwin, in a private discussion, told me
about a current revival in
the Goethean approach. He is working with
what could be called objective intuition, an way of inner knowing
that,
he believes, should coexist with conventional biology, each
enriching the other.
7. In this respect I am reminded
to a story from Ancient China. In a
time of great political unrest the country's leaders sought the
advice of
the Confucius. What action should they take to restore
harmony. The sage replied that they should first purify the Chinese
language and restore it to its original pristine state. In our own
times we have become aware of the extent to which
the English
language has become corrupted in the mouths of some politicians and
the military. The language we use
is irreducibly linked to our
perception of the world.
8. Alan Ford and F. David Peat, 'The Role of Language
In Science',
Foundations of Physics 8, 1233, (1988)
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