http://www.williamjames.com/transcripts/roszak.htm
JM: Welcome back Ted.
TR: Good to be with you Jeff.
JM: In our earlier segment we discussed contemporary psychiatry and psychology. And in a nut shell what we mainly addressed were the deficiencies in psychology as it has developed to date in addressing the connection of the human being with the world of nature at large and I think it is appropriate in this segment to look at the contribution that systems theory and cosmology can play to a larger and a deeper understanding of those ecological and psychological relationships.
TR: I introduce cosmology and some science into the discussion of eco-psychology in a very specific way. And I introduce it primarily because I am trying to follow in the foot steps of Sigmund Freud, who asked the great question how does the psyche connect with the rest of nature. Now I find myself very much in disagreement with Freud's answer to that question because he sought to answer it within a world view that I think we would now call the old scientific paradigm. The universe scene is a cold, alien, remote machine; a mechanistic view of nature. And within that model of nature, Freud could find no significant connection between life and mind and the rest of the cosmos. So he came to a very negative and despairing conclusion. At the turn into the twentieth century there was indeed an entire cult of what might be called entropy, the cult of entropy, which saw the universe as running down towards a bleak dead end. It was called the heat death of the universe. Many intellectuals of that period subscribed to the idea that the universe was destined to simply become a void filled with cold centers. A very despairing conclusion. And Freud subscribed to that.
JM: Based on Newtonian physics.
TR: Based on Newtonian physics and based above all on the great idea of nineteenth century physics which was the second law of thermodynamics-- entropy. The inevitable, inexorable increase of entropy in the universe. Freud subscribed to that and within that context he saw life and mind as an exception, as an accident, as freakish and doomed to a dead end. And so Freud developed his psychiatry within that framework. Indeed the basis of Freud's idea of death instinct is entropy. The idea that the universe is naturally a cold dead place. And the death instinct which he called the most conservative of the instincts has as its goal returning life to the inert state. That's the way he described it. That's what the death instinct is within us. This gave Freud psychology a dark, stoical character. And I think that has haunted psychiatry, psychiatric theory all the way through the twentieth century. It has been sometimes been put even more dramatically by the existentialist schools, which sees human life as inevitably alienated. Deeply alienated with the universe, which is on friendly, remote, distant and holly other. Now I decided to question that deeply in my approach to eco-psychology primarily because within just the last generation, I would say since about the 1950s the last thirty to forty years, there have been profound changes in modern, scientific thought. And most significantly a growing appreciation of the importance of systems in nature. The study of systems in nature is pretty much what science has become in our time. We have come to recognize that at the foundations of the physical universe we are dealing not with atoms that are small indivisible billiard balls that simply stick together in some convenient way, but even the very foundations of matter are deeply systematic, made of particles and forces that are highly complex. The universe as a whole is a hierarchy of systems building up from the very foundations of matter to the great galactic clusters of outer space. And somewhere in the middle of that we have the biological complexity of life on at least one planet, this planet. Where the systems have taken on vitality, life and have evolved toward mind. Our appreciation of this has become profound especially within the last generation. We have come to see the universe as an evolving hierarchy of systems within which we find our place as one of the most complex of systems in the universe. Within that world view I think Freud would have to come to a very different conclusion. Life and mind far from being freakish and exceptional, are the out growth, the natural and harmonious outgrowth of a lengthy process of evolution that takes us back to the very beginning of cosmic time and what we call the big bang. Over a period of fifteen to twenty billion years since that, all of these systems have grown out of one another in a hierarchical way, which means that they are positioned as lower and higher meaning less complex and more complex systems. And life and mind are part of that process. They are not alien from it, they are part of it. They are layered upon system after system after system in a way that gives us a entirely different vision of nature. In the late twentieth century we know that time and matter have a history. And it is an evolutionary history, an unfolding toward greater and greater net complexity in the universe, and that we find our as thinking, living creatures. And indeed all life on this planet finds its place within that evolutionary process in a way that is graceful and natural. So far from seeing life and mind as something freakish and accidental in the universe, we can know see it as having a natural, evolutionary place, a continuity with the rest of nature. I think there are deep ecological implications in that and if it is integrated with a psychology that does justice to our contemporary scientific vision of nature, the result of that would be a eco-psychology, which is deeply grounded in modern science and can treat life and mind, the psyche, as a natural part of the continuum of nature.
JM: There are growing numbers of profound thinkers in science and philosophy and in cosmology who are saying we can longer view the universe as lifeless. And a God or a divine intelligence is somehow outside and apart from the universe. For example, the anthropic principle in cosmology suggests that there are some, at least in one of its strongest forms, suggests there's an intelligence that created the universe so that we could exist in it, that if any one of a number of physical variables were modified ever so slightly human life would have been impossible.
TR: I draw upon this very speculative line of thought in my book Voice of the Earth primarily because while the anthropic principle which you mentioned is a highly controversial point in contemporary physics and cosmology. It is never the less the sign of the times, some scientists have introduced this idea. Let me try to explain it to you. What is the anthropic principle? The anthropic principle briefly put has to do with the proper place of thinking creatures in a universe. Now there are many interpretations of this principle. One of which is almost a low level and non-controversial totality. The reason things are as they are in the universe is because it is only within such a universe that thinking beings could have come into existence. Here we are as thinking beings and so everything that led up to us must have happened the way it did and could it could have happened on a purely gratuitous or chance or random basis. Nothing is remarkable about that. There is however another use of the anthropic principle which is deeply controversial. And it contends that life and mind were intended by the universe and are the inevitable outcome of that universe, that there is a purpose within the universe to produce life and mind at some point in the evolution of time. Now I want to underscore the fact the that most physics do not accept this because it smacks too much of religion and theology. And we can come back to that later on. But I want to underscore the fact that I'm not defending that idea; I'm not endorsing that idea, I'm simply observing the fact that in contemporary science there respectable figures in cosmology, physical theory that are at least toying with ideas of that kind as the only way to understand as something as complex as life and mind could have come into existence within a life span that is limited-- fifteen to twenty billion years. Can that have happened by pure chance? Well, you could never say it couldn't happen by pure chance. But there are those who can't believe that it did. And I'm talking about figures as significant as say the astronomer Fred Hoyle, who in many of his writings came to feel that there must be other principles involved that are very different than the mechanistic principles of the old paradigm. I simply observe that there scientists thinking like that, trying to make sense of highly complex systems like living creatures and thinking creatures like ourselves within a universe that has a fixed time span. And some of them are prepared to speculate that the anthropic principle may indeed the idea of a purpose to the universe as a hole. Now most scientists do not accept that, but I think interesting that the idea has appeared within scientific literature at all.
JM: Well, science as it grew out of the nineteenth century was based on I guess what might be called a mechanistic paradigm and that whole paradigm is breaking down. I think it was in the 1930s that Sir James Jeans said that the universe appears to him to be more like a great thought than like a great machine.
TR: This is an intriguing aspect of systems in nature. We now recognize that the universe can be described as an evolving hierarchy of systems. And scientists find it hard to talk about systems without introducing the language of purpose and intention. If you ask why anything in the system does what it does, it impossible to avoid saying in order to. But where does that purpose reside? Where in the system, in a purely physical system, can you find that purpose? And that's a great problem for scientists. Now many of them will simply say well, this is just a convenient linguistic device. But if you eliminate the convenient linguistic device, it turns out that they're tongue-tied. There's no other way to talk about these systems. It's amazing to me, I've collected quite a file of literature in science that uses the language the language of purpose and intention to describe systems, even systems of a tiny organic kind like why an enzyme behaves the way it does or how it describes the behavior of an enzyme or some part of the genetic material. And it always turns out to be the language of consciousness, that there is recognition taking place, there is a purpose, there is information transfer. All of things are much more mental images than mechanistic images. So I think one of the things we may find happening is science as we move into another millennium is that we will find scientists using metaphor of mind more frequently than metaphors of machinery in order to describe how nature acts. And I would take things like the anthropic principle simply to be early, perhaps very tentative assertions of the idea that purpose and intention are deeply engraved in the nature of things so that even if we find they don't accept the anthropic principle, as I suspect that will happen it will be rejected as an inadequate formulation for various reasons it will never find its way into the textbooks. Systems with their inherent purposes and attentions will become more and more what scientists study, they will become more and more used to the idea of using the language of purpose and there is no way to use that language without invoking metaphors of the mind.
JM: You yourself, I think point out that even if a scientist chooses to be very strictly mechanistic to describe a human being as nothing more than a machine, there hasn't been a machine yet that didn't have a purpose.
TR: Well, there has always been lurking in the background of every mechanistic explanation an element of purpose and intention because there is no such thing as a machine that doesn't serve a purpose. However, scientists you see have simply gotten used to the idea of using words like mechanism as an element in nature. Now there are no mechanisms in nature, mechanism is imported in from the world of technology. But we have come to associate mechanism with science so deeply that we forget that it came from outside of science. I suspect the same thing might happen with words like idea, purpose, goal, intention, recognition, language of that kind. I mean already every use of the word information in science, information transfer, in genetics for example, is imbued with elements of mentality. Aldous Huxley once said we must begin to see the universe as mind at large. And I think that maybe something that scientist will find themselves more and more drawn to. The assumption that the universe is much more like an idea, much more like a thinking mind than it is like some kind of a dead machine or simply dancing billiard balls, atoms that are nothing more than little balls of matter than simply bounce off one another and simply somehow shake into or distribute themselves into the universe as we know it.
JM: I know your wife Betty Roszak has been very eloquent in creating poetry that describes for example how our very existence is dependent upon the death of stars that took place eons ago across the galaxy.
TR: Yes, you know there's a lot more lyricisms in poetry in science these days and many scientists may recognize themselves, though many do. For example, the fact that we refer to stars as having a life span, that they are born and they die. It's coming to be more and more natural to us to see organic and mental images in nature. And Betty who's a poetry has drawn upon this to find the lyricisms poetry inherent in the new vision of science, the new cosmology. Some scientist find that actually much more appealing than they're willing to admit in public.
JM: Well, I very much enjoyed her image of a star sacrificing its self that we might live.
TR: You know, it's not so far fetched. I mean there is a kind of sacrificial death of a star. Scientist themselves refer to the death in a supernova. You know, it's not too far fetched to see this as a sacrificial acts that creates the very matter, the heavy matter carbon for example out of which our bodies living things are made. There's a great deal of poetry to that. And yes it's an intriguing new way to see poetry in the universe.
JM: Well, one of the other more poetical aspects of eco-psychology, which is very closely linked to modern science is the Gaia hypothesis.
TR: The Gaia hypothesis which is again a highly controversial hypothesis in science is deeply poetic because it uses a mythological reference. Gaia was the Greek earth Goddess. And the Gaia formulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulies. They looked around for a name to give this hypothesis. They might have chosen anything I suppose, but they finally came up with a reference to Gaia. Now the Gaia hypothesis tells us that the earth can only be understood as a total system within which living things life-- the biomass of the planet, plays a central role in controlling. So it's very basic aspects of life on earth as the atmosphere, carbon cycle a number of things of this sort have to be understood against the background of an evolving and proliferating life upon this planet. The way in which they decided to package this idea was to imagine that the earth was a living organ, a total system, and they gave it a name-- the name was Gaia. No sooner did they do this then this idea which was meant to be a matter of biochemistry a little more than that got out into the culture at large and became deeply evocative. It was a deeply poetic image of the role of life on this planet. And then again you find science perhaps almost in spite of itself bridging over into poetry and to lyrical and rhapsodic expressions. But once again I would emphasis that at the foundation of the Gaia hypothesis is a deep insight into the systemic character of life on this planet. The fact that it is an extremely complex system that has to be understood as a whole. And within which things are doing what they're doing presumably with the purpose of preserving and enhancing life on this planet.
JM: When I think of the Gaia hypothesis I think of a statement that you made which is something like this. I believe you said that the central problem of eco-psychology is not what we will do about the earth, but what the earth will do about us.
TR: That's a good way to put it I think because it challenges us to see that the earth within the terms of the Gaia hypothesis, maybe another player and the most important player in the environmental crisis of our time. If indeed the Gaia hypothesis is correct, that the planet seeks to control and to enhance the conditions of life, then in a condition of ecological that we find ourselves in the twentieth century then it maybe to ask whether the planet may not itself be asserting certain influences upon all the life forms upon it, but most importantly us as its principle challenge or irritant. Exerting an influence upon us that will transform our habits and our ways is that a possibility? Well, I think eco-psychology has to ponder the very real possibility that there is a bond that links the human psyche to the Gaia hypothesis. To the intention of the planet as a global system, to preserve and enhance life. In which case we have something to draw upon in our ecological problems which is more than simply social duty. We have deep biological necessity.
JM: Yes, one of the statements and I think many other people in the ecology movement have been quoting a lot is the statement attributed to Chief Seattle who said that one thing he knew when his people knew for certain is that we don't own the earth. The earth owns us.
TR: Chief Seattle is a bit of a problem Jeff. I've gotten a lot of mail about that quote. I didn't need it because I already know that it's apocryphal.
JM: Right.
TR: However, while Chief Seattle may never have said that, somebody said it. And it's a noble sentiment that I think has a lot of ecological relevance behind it. It's a deep insight into the systematic nature of life on earth as, well why not, a living organism. And that therefore the role we have to play in the late twentieth century early twenty-first century will be to try to recognize the effect of the call of the voice of the earth upon us, to change our ways and ecological habits. And my feeling is that if we hear that voice clearly and strongly, if it comes through to us aesthetically as well as biologically and many different levels, that we will rather gracefully move to do what is ecologically right and balanced.
JM: We've been discussing for the last twenty-five the questions of cosmology, systems theory, the Gaia hypothesis, the anthropic principle as they apply to eco-psychology. I get the impression that what you're trying to build here is an intellectual framework which points in one direction and that is that the human mind is very deeply linked to every aspect of nature from the furthest galaxies to the tiniest single cell organisms at the bottom of the sea.
TR: Well, this is I find a powerfully evocative vision of nature to see the world the universe at large as an evolving hierarchy of systems within which life and mind find their place. It means that in some sense, which is as poetic as it is scientific, life and mind were inherent in that universe from the very beginning. They have matured, they have evolved, out of it. You know like the fruit appearing on a tree. Alan Watts, I remembered once said you know the universe at a certain point-- people. In the same way in which a tree bares fruit. And that's to see life and mind as having a very different in the heavens. Deeply rooted all the way back to the beginning. It means that the universe is more of a home for us than we may have realized. Now, I'll just mention one point, ever since I was aware enough to be studying science, one of the issues that has always come up is the issue of the size of the universe. How vast it is and the vastness, the size of the universe has often been used as a measure of how lonely and alienated and puny and unimportant we are. We now know that it is only within a universe of a certain age and a certain size that life could have come into existence.
JM: That's the anthropic principle.
TR: That's right. And that therefore that universe of that size is appropriately our home. We could not have come into existence in any smaller universe in a younger universe. It had to happen in just that universe.
JM: And this is not the controversial aspect of...
TR: No, that part of it is widely accepted. That it's only after a certain period of evolution and cooling, at which point the universe reaches a certain size, that the planet like the earth could come into existence bearing life upon it. So that far from the size of the universe being something that dwarfs, that intimidates us, that overwhelms us, we should recognize. And this is for me a deep insight into the nature of the universe at large, that it is only within that universe that we could be here, that our home has to be of that size. And that gives us that size that dimension of things that magnitude of things more of a naturing quality that I would've never guessed I could have found.
JM: I gather you're also, though we don't have time to cover it, very interested and perhaps impressed by the work of people in the area of physics and consciousness who are suggesting, for example that there are properties of sub-atomic particles photons for example that exhibit qualities that might be the rudiments of consciousness itself.
TR: Well, insofar as any system holds together and all the parts are cooperating in a sense. Let me take the word cooperation. It already implies some type of mentality at work. The parts aware of one another and holding together in certain way. In so far as any of that is perceived in the universe we may be perceiving evidence of mind. And may be what we have to get over is the idea that minds can only be only located in heads. Again, I would invoke Huxley's phrase that mind at large is the nature of the universe. In the same way as that we've gotten used to the idea that a wave does not have to be embodied as it once originally was for us in a mound of water moving through the sea. We can manage waves being liberated from a physical context and appearing as pure energy in a very ethereal way in the universe at large. So it maybe important at some point to recognize that mentality does not have to reside within a skull, within a Brian, within a head.
JM: Theodore Roszak, thank you so much for being with me. And thank you very much for being with us in part two of this three part series. Please tune in again for part three in which we'll discuss further the principles of eco-psychology.
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