Consilience (Paperback)

My fate in the hands of a scientist. All my thoughts nothing but silent chemical murmurings, heard by nothing.

Progress towards what, and how will I find it if I can't choose it, but must derive it?

Where are Plato's forms? Isn't that which is transcendent, immanent as well?

What powers the formula, if it be not will?

Something from nothing, a long algebraic calculation. The ultimate algorithm. The universe as a computer. Or no, as software, but run on what?

If you were to perform all the calculations on me in a very powerful computer, and tell me what I was bound to do on the basis of your calculations, then would I not do something different, just out of the capricious need to be free?

Values based on what? If it's all in the genes and chemical processes, and these are understood, then am I naught but my own chemical processes telling my own chemical processes what to do? Isn't there at least a hint of paradox in this?

Let's make it easier. Just for the sake of argument, let's say it's all genes. I know that no one is trying to go this far, but it makes the argument easier to see. If I decided to change, say, a gene 152, which we can and will do, then it must be because another gene, say, gene 153 made me do so. But what if in the capriciousness need to be free, I change gene 153 so that I won't want to change gene 152. But that's no help because, actually, gene 137 said that I would do that. Well, then, I'll change gene 137 as well. Well, that's still no help because gene 125 said I'd do that. And so on and so on ... and how far will you take this process? How far can you take it? Till Death?

What is there exactly between cause and effect? How does cause ever reach effect?

How can you build a system of values on something that is in itself malleable and changeable? We can alter our genes. We can alter the chemical processes of our brain. Who knows what "laws" of physics we might dare dream of changing in the future? Do I dare build my values on such shaky foundations.

We lust for foundations, but is not materialism- ahem, I mean- deism just one more totem? One more sacred image for the holy to enter into?

Where is Dostoevsky when you need him? Does anyone still read Notes from the Underground?

Can anyone really answer what numbers are except the apprehension of something other. One. I and it. I and thou. Why?

If it's all a chain of cause and effect then that which exists outside of me might as well exist in me? But then why do I feel so separate? Why do I feel at all? Why is there an observer in me longing for freedom?

Is the conception of the greater Self given in the Upanishads really just another religion to be shot down as we move towards greater enlightenment? Or is it a realization that can be pointed to rationally, but only apprehended intuitively?

The collapsing of a reality wave, the big bang. Are we so sure that these things were not and are not choices?

I'll not give up my freedom, and do all you can with your sciences, I'll help you, science is a good thing. But come to your senses, don't grip too tightly what you'll have to let go of later.