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Andrea Palessandro

Rick Searle

Dear LadyBug, thank you for taking the time to read my essay. I am glad you liked it.

Yes, I am definitely sympathetic to Gould's idea of non-overlapping magisteria. Science tells us about facts, or happenings, in the world. Religion has a completely different approach: it deals with meaning. Facts by themselves have no meaning, and that is the reason why our society, being a thoroughly secular and technological one, is so utterly devoid of purpose. We have all the knowledge in the world, and no idea what to do with it.

The role of religion (or philosophy) should be to tell us what this all means, what all the mindless facts amount to. I think we are in desperate need of it. I know I recognize that need in myself.

As many correctly point out, NOMA also means that when religion starts dealing in facts, or science in meaning, monsters are produced.

Jenny Wagner

Hey Bandicoot, thank you for taking the time to read my essay, and for your inspiring questions.

It seems that you are arguing in the spirit of Spinoza that there is one (whole) truth, i.e. one complex world and all our sciences, arts, etc.. capture aspects of it. Does that imply that you assume there is one objective view about the world that we all could agree on? Where does subjectivity enter?

I personally don't think Spinoza's idea is at odds with the existence of subjectivity. I think human beings have an essence, which is determined by the particular history of evolution on Earth, and almost certainly the structure of the laws (or Law, see my reply to Vladimir's question) of physics. This means that human beings share a common set of attributes, and in particular a common aesthetic sensibility, and are therefore attracted and moved by the same kind of things, but not necessarily in the exact same way. No two individuals will ever be exactly the same, which is where subjectivity enters. Having said that, while I believe that many different things could be called beautiful, and are beautiful, subjectively, to many different people, I do also believe that there is a meaningful distinction to be made between what is beautiful (or artistic) and what is not, so I would personally endorse the idea of "objective beauty", defined as something that speaks to human beings, even if only a subset of them, even if only to one (there are some limits here dictated by morality I won't go into right now).

For instance, do you think that after creating your "holistic theory" (or whatever you want to call the ultimate theory), we will be able to understand and feel other people's qualia? You also write that the optimum theory should contain some mysteries we will not be able to resolve, which ones would fall into that category?

We might be able to understand how qualia arise, and we might be able to classify them, but I don't think we will ever be able to feel other people's qualia, let alone other species' qualia (we can never answer questions like What is like to be a bat?). Even if we could build such a holistic theory, I don't think at all it would be omnipotent, quite the contrary. This theory would be the best we humans can do in our quest to understand the world, but it would still be subject to our (many) limits. One of these is we can only feel our own qualia. Other hard limits (mysteries) are our inability to see the world outside mathematical or poetic/literary archetypes: there might be other ways to look at the world, unknown to us.

I am glad you liked my essay. Thank you for commenting.

Vladimir Rogozhin

Hey Vladimir, thank you for taking the time to read my essay, and for your kind comments.

Like you, I am sympathetic towards the idea of the Logos (In the beginning was the Word ...) and therefore to the existence of only one true Law of Nature, of which all others are partial expressions. In a way, this is the question at the heart of the essay: can we find such a Logos, i.e. can we find a holistic theory of the universe that can encompass all of its attributes, not just the mathematical? I don't know if such a thing is possible. If it is, then it is appropriate to talk about The Law, which uniquely determines the overarching structure of the world in all its manifestations. If not, then Nature is more like a patchwork of different domains governed by different laws, that somehow peacefully coexist and never clash. I think the first option is intellectually more pleasing, but, whatever the case may be, the point remains that mathematical structure is only one of many ways to look at the world, and a formula, no matter how clever, can never exhaust the contents of the world.

I am glad you liked my essay. Thank you for commenting.

I argue that science, as currently understood, is only one of a potentially infinite number of “modes of understanding” of the world. Not every attribute of the universe, and possibly a vanishingly small fraction of them, can be captured by the methods of traditional science. Assuming that reality is one, philosophy, religion, and art all illuminate different but complementary aspects of the truth. I speculate that the next big intellectual challenge for humanity will be the integration of these diverse ways of knowing into a unitary understanding of the world, with rational inquiry as the guiding principle. This process will likely foster inclusion, diversity, and creativity, and reconnect human beings and society at large with their lost sense of purpose and meaning.

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