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Home > Books > Man: The Thinker—or the Thought?
Man: The Thinker—or the Thought?
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Product Code: ManThinkF
Manufacturer: Kappeler Institute Recordings
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Booklet, 5 pages
Level:
SUBJECT(s):
The Christ-idea
Divine Cybernetics
Christian Science and World Issues
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X-13, The Eight Ordered Steps to Finding our Oneness with Being (1 hour, audio)
SYNOPSIS: Where does thinking come from? The German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) said: "We do not arrive at thoughts. They come to us." In the light of Christian Science, we see that divine Mind "sends" exalted thoughts to us. In a similar vein, Professor Max Born (1882–1970), Nobel prize winner for physics, said: "I believe that science is an institution that progresses irresistibly, and that it is useless for a few people to try to force the development into another direction." It seems apparent that it is the idea of science—and not the scientist—that plans the course of science.
CONTENTS:
Prime-information
A science of science
The idea inspires thought
Logos-creativity
Transcendence as a mandate of science
Toward a Science of Spirit
EXCERPT:
From Max Kappeler, Man: The Thinker—or the Thought?, pp. 1–2. It is generally assumed that man thinks and that thinking originates in the brain. But is man the primary creator of thoughts? Can man claim intelligence exclusively? Was not evolution, prior to the appearance of man and the brain, led and impelled by a goal-directed intelligence, producing during three billion years, out of apparently lifeless matter, ever more strongly differentiated forms of life? To whom or what can this pre-human intelligence be attributed?
Prime-information
The religionist believes this creative power to be God. Some cyberneticians and biologists call this intelligence proto-information or prime-information. A non-human, intelligent, goal-directed Principle has to be assumed, to which human intelligence and human thinking are subjugated, in the hierarchical structure of Being. Such a view, when considered deeply, demands of us a completely new attitude of consciousness; it demands reckoning a prime intelligence, or prime-information, to be the source of all human intelligence. We, therefore, think truly creatively only when we are aware of that source and are willing, through spiritual openness, to serve as its transparency. Any thinking not derived from this transparency is vain.
The religionist, particularly the mystic, has always felt at home with this concept. But today, scientists in many different fields concern themselves with this issue. In this age, we witness very strikingly the rapprochement of religion and science, in statements pointing to the same principle underlying both.
A science of science
These statements indicate that science primarily is not made or developed by the scientists. According to Arnold Buchholz ("Die Grosse Transformation"), many have become aware, especially since the 1960s, that there is a "science of science," that science as such has a science which, through self-generating truth, develops according to its own laws. One could almost speak of the "genetics" of scientific development based on three factors:
1. Exponential growth of knowledge: The snowballing acceleration of the knowledge explosion is caused not so much by the increased number of scientists as by its own dynamic immaterial feedback principle.
2. Logicity in the development of discoveries: The exponential development of knowledge does not follow primarily the logic of the scientists, discoverers, and inventors, but the law of an inner logic. Here a bridge is built to the Logos of the ancient world, the Logos of John's Gospel and the logical development of the "world-mind" (Hegel). Science develops itself according to its own laws and not the way scientists would have it develop. Whenever a general spiritual standard of development is reached in human thought, a new discovery is apt to be made and the possibility of a great theoretical change is imminent. The time is then ripe for a new idea, for a mutation of the whole worldview. One is reminded of Victor Hugo: "There is no mightier force than an idea whose time has come." In such a period of gestation the new idea or discovery manifests itself in various places, each discovery appearing quite independently of the others. Hence the phenomenon of multiple discovery, which is the rule rather than the exception. The new idea is then perceived wherever fundamental openness and spiritual receptivity to the new is coupled with systematic knowledge of the subject. The resulting discovery, however, is determined by the new idea itself. Buchholz deduces that the personalities of the discoverers are replaceable and that without them scientific development, apart from certain structural and timely changes, would have taken a similar course.
3. Goal-directedness (teleology): Within the self-generation of science a definite goal-causality and goal-directedness can be discerned, a built-in, purpose-motivated power drive. Its logicity has a constructive and universally unifying purpose. Political and economic leaders will, in the long run, be unable to work against pure scientific attainments. The more precisely a science is understood, the more it commands the political and economic systems. Mathematics operates the same whether applied in communist or capitalist countries. Decisions in politics and world economy are more and more often dictated, or even enforced, by the best available scientific solutions. The idea of science is programmed for universal unity. It stands above political and confessional creeds, and it can be seen to carry within itself, when understood in its deepest sense, the right way and the right goal for mankind.
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