John Horgan is my favorite science writer. His books The End of Science and The Undiscovered Mind were both valuable for their lucid explanations, and their hard-headed skepticism and debunking of hype. The former book cast doubt upon scientific claims to be on the verge of discovering a “theory of everything”: the latter suggested that current research programs like evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics, and artificial intelligence were far from probing adequately the mysteries of the mind, In his latest latest book, Rational Mysticism, Horgan turns his attention to “the border between science and spirituality.” Specifically, he looks into explorations of mysticism made by a variety of researchers, from religious scholars to neuroscientists to psychologists to self-experimenters (a category that overlaps with the others). The emphasis is mostly on mystical states of consciousness: their physiology, their relation to other forms of experience, and the kinds of (extra-scientific) truths they may convey. This also involves detours into (briefly) parapsychology and (more extensively) psychedelic drugs. Any discussion of spirituality and mysticism quickly turns into a morass, but Horgan is very careful in avoiding both mystical dismissals of scientific rationality, and reductivistic scientific dismissals of spiritual experience as rubbish. He is rightly skeptical of New Age claims to transcendent truth; but this is in pretty much the same way that he is skeptical, in his previous books, of scientific theories that make extreme claims about the nature of being, life, and the mind on the basis of very slender empirical evidence. Horgan (again, rightly, to my mind) finds much to admire in such figures as Susan Blackmore (who combines a Buddhist perspective with a refusal to be taken in by vapid claims for parapsychology and the like) and the late Terence McKenna (of whom Horgan gives an affectionate portrait, bringing out the humor and irony that underlay McKenna’s often extravagant theories). The book’s conclusion, with which I can only agree, is that neither mysticism nor science can explain (or explain away) the mysteriousness and sheer weirdness (as McKenna liked to insist) of being; but they can both lead us to appreciate these qualities more. Personally, I found the parts of the book where Horgan deals with psychedelic drugs the most interesting, because of my own psychedelic experiences when I was younger. On the other hand, I seem to be utterly devoid of any craving for a larger truth, or for a consolation for the pains of existence, that most often drives the mystical quest, and that Horgan admits to feeling himself. The only form of “spirituality” discussed in the book that has any emotional appeal for me is (again) McKenna’s quest, not for God or nirvana or some sort of ultimate enlightenment, but for novelty. (The question of “how is newness possible?”, which McKenna addressed in his own wacky way, is of course the same question that animates the philosophies of Bergson, Whitehead, and Deleuze).
Rational Mysticism
John Horgan is my favorite science writer. His books The End of Science and The Undiscovered Mind were both valuable for their lucid explanations, and their hard-headed skepticism and debunking of hype. The former book cast doubt upon scientific claims to be on the verge of discovering “a theory of everything”: the latter suggested that current research programs like evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics, and artificial intelligence were far from probing adequately the mysteries of the mind, In his latest latest book, Rational Mysticism, Horgan turns his attention to “the border between science and spirituality.” Specifically, he looks into explorations of mysticism made by a variety of researchers, from religious scholars to neuroscientists to psychologists to self-experimenters (a category that overlaps with the others). The emphasis is mostly on mystical states of consciousness: their physiology, their relation to other forms of experience, and the kinds of (extra-scientific) truths they may convey. This also involves detours into (briefly) parapsychology and (more extensively) psychedelic drugs. Any discussion of spirituality and mysticism quickly turns into a morass, but Horgan is very careful in avoiding both mystical dismissals of scientific rationality, and reductivistic scientific dismissals of spiritual experience as rubbish. He is rightly skeptical of New Age claims to transcendent truth; but this is in pretty much the same way that he is skeptical, in his previous books, of scientific theories that make extreme claims about the nature of being, life, and the mind on the basis of very slender empirical evidence. Horgan (again, rightly, to my mind) finds much to admire in such figures as Susan Blackmore (who combines a Buddhist perspective with a refusal to be taken in by vapid claims for parapsychology and the like) and the late Terence McKenna (of whom Horgan gives an affectionate portrait, bringing out the humor and irony that underlay McKenna’s often extravagant theories). The book’s conclusion, with which I can only agree, is that neither mysticism nor science can explain (or explain away) the mysteriousness and sheer weirdness (as McKenna liked to insist) of being; but they can both lead us to appreciate these qualities more. Personally, I found the parts of the book where Horgan deals with psychedelic drugs the most interesting, because of my own psychedelic experiences when I was younger. On the other hand, I seem to be utterly devoid of any craving for a larger truth, or for a consolation for the pains of existence, that most often drives the mystical quest, and that Horgan admits to feeling himself. The only form of “spirituality” discussed in the book that has any emotional appeal for me is (again) McKenna’s quest, not for God or nirvana or some sort of ultimate enlightenment, but for novelty. (The question of “how is newness possible?”, which McKenna addressed in his own wacky way, is of course the same question that animates the philosophies of Bergson, Whitehead, and Deleuze).