In Search of the Irresistible Force
Modern science is derided by Gurdjieff throughout The Tales. He refers unsympathetically to “sorry scientists,” “scientists of new formation,” “contemporary terrestrial ‘sorry scientists.’ ” ‘scientists of ‘new format,’ “the ‘evil wiseacrings’ of their contemporary ‘scientists,’ ” etc. Writing about the Germans, he notes that “the contemporary ‘scientists’ of that community, firstly, for the most part only fantasy, and, secondly, like the beings of ancient Greece, do not prepare anything good or beneficial for future generations, He describes Chai-Yoo as “being one of the first so to say ‘ideally formed scientists of new formation’ there, that is, a being with a ‘completedly formed inherency to wiseacre,’ not only ‘wiseacred’ a new theory of his own…”
One would think then that people in the Work, particularly those who study Gurdjieff’s writings, would be extremely skeptical about the many proclamations of modern science. But sadly that is often not the case.
According to Gurdjieff, one of man’s severe weaknesses is suggestibility, and in complete submission to that weakness many people in the Work happily adopt the ideas of modern science without even a critical glance. Perhaps the most ironic aspect of this is that modern science which was once so critical of religious authorities for inventing invisible entities (like angels) and unprovable assertions (such as making the Earth in 7 days) suffers from similar beliefs.
Modern astrophysics is now awash with invisible things. For example, black holes, or dark matter (which is undetectable), or dark energy, which similarly impossible to detect. There are also other speculative entities, such as neutron stars, gravitational lenses and EInstein’s much adored curved space. Things are no better in the quantum world where we encounter (or in fact fail to encounter) both the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. The ridiculous idea of natural selection still poisons the minds of our biologists and geneticists, And so on.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with the broad populace believing whatever takes their fancy. That’s inevitable. In the Work, the situation is different. Modern science and its methodology cannot be blended with the Work. In contemporary science, truth is determined by a combination of the weight of evidence and the general consensus. In the Work truth is determined in the crucible of the self – a place that modern science has no respect for at all.
Objective Science and Subjective Science
Both Subjective and Objective Science demand an intellectual posture of skepticism, which assumes that the scientist does not know, but seeks to know.
Subjective Science takes the following approach. The scientist begins with a hypothesis, that is most likely based on some already existing “accepted truths.” He proceeds by formulating experiments, analyzes the results of those experiments and then either proclaims that the hypothesis has been wholly or partly confirmed, or if that is not the case, alters the hypothesis to conform with the experimental results. Results and theories are subjected to peer review. Thus the scientific community decides what is accepted as proven and what is accepted as a credible theory. This process is repeated time and again, and this is how modern science evolves or involves.
Modern science can thus be described as “bottom up.” It starts from some basic assumptions about reality and, via “provably repeatable” experimentation, it builds a “tower of knowledge.” Occasionally, some of the basic assumptions of science are challenged and proven to be wrong. As a consequence, the “tower of knowledge” is periodically remodeled.
In Objective Science we are given formulations of fundamental laws and information about them. It is suggested to us that these laws come from “higher mind,” and can only be thoroughly understood by higher mind.
Our goal, as Objective Scientists, is to attempt to comprehend these laws and how they operate. We are expected to adopt an attitude of skepticism as we investigate them. We do not formulate original hypotheses and investigate them, but we do formulate personal hypotheses about what these laws may imply, in our attempts to understand them. We carry out personal experiments to gather information. As such we confirm or refute the formulations we have been given.
Objective Science can thus be characterized as “top-down,” coming from (in theory) higher mind, with the possibility that by our efforts we may ascend step by step to that level. If the formulations of Objective Science that we have been given are wrong, then we will never get anywhere close to the truth by our activity.
That’s the landscape. Objective Science and Modern Science will never be reconciled.