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Home > Books > Stately Science Pauses Not (Mary Baker Eddy)
Stately Science Pauses Not (Mary Baker Eddy)
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Product Code: 0-942958-15-2
Manufacturer: Kappeler Institute Publishing
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Booklet, 49 pages
Level:
SUBJECT(s):
Christian Science as a Science
Introduction to the Divine System of Reference (7, 4 & 4)
The Structure of the Christian Science Textbook
RELATED RECORDINGS:
M-19, The Development of the Science of Christian Science Since Mary Baker Eddy (3 hours, audio).
SYNOPSIS: This booklet explains that the impulsion of the divine idea has evolved scientifically. After Mary Baker Eddy left us, John W. Doorly, CSB, of London, England (1878–1950), was the first to pursue deeply the question of what Christian Science means as a Science. Dr. Max Kappeler of Zürich, Switzerland (1910–2002), a pupil of John Doorly, expounded upon Doorly's work and, among many discoveries, revealed the scientific structure of Science and Health. Both Doorly and Kappeler showed that Mary Baker Eddy must be acknowledged as a Scientist who was far in advance of her era. Mrs. Eddy's concept of Science incorporated such advanced concepts as structuralism, dimensionalism, holism, one-valued logic, gestalt-theory, general systems theory, and divine cybernetics.
CONTENTS:
Chapter 1: The Development of the Idea of the Science of Christian Science
- The demand for a Science of Christian Science
- The history of the development of the Science of Christian Science
Chapter 2: The Structure of the Christian Science Textbook
- Is the Textbook a scientific textbook?
- The structure of the Textbook
- Christian Science today
EXCERPT:
From Max Kappeler, "Stately Science Pauses Not" (S&H 566:9), pp. 10–12.
Our model of understanding determines what we discover. A higher model of understanding, a structured consciousness, not only gives us a higher experience but also a higher concept of the Textbook. The text of the Textbook is fixed. It does not need to be changed. Yet this same text can yield different insights according to our method of approaching it; and changing our method of approach makes it seem as if we had a completely new Textbook before us. We know that any object looks different according to the way we look at it. You may know that often quoted illustration which Lecomte du Noüy gives in "Human Destiny": Take the edge of a razor blade. Looked at with the naked eye, it shows a continuous straight line. Through the microscope we see it as a broken but solid line. On the chemical scale we have neither a straight nor a zigzag line, but atoms of iron and carbon. On the sub-atomic scale we have electrons in perpetual motion at terrific speed, looking much more like a swarm of gnats than a solid straight line. This illustrates the fact that the same object appears in very different form according to the model of observation; yet the identity of the object does not change.
So it is with the Textbook. If we approach it with a religious sense we may find in it many marvelous religious truths and get all sorts of individually subjective inspiration from it, but we shall not be able to find its Science. Or again, if we read it with an atomistic consciousness we shall find many marvelous metaphysical facts which will help to solve many problems on a metaphysical basis and level. The Textbook then appears as a most helpful collection of aphorisms, but not as a system of Science. But when we investigate it with a structured consciousness we find something infinitely greater, namely the structure of the one infinite Being, the Science of being.
A higher sense of demonstration. It is evident that a structural understanding, being a higher model of understanding than an atomistic knowledge, also expresses itself in a higher sense of demonstration, a higher sense of healing and life-experience. We must be clear on this point. A structural understanding of Christian Science does not try to bring forth better demonstrations of what is expected with an atomistic consciousness, but something very different, namely a better sense of that which has to be demonstrated. The two cannot be compared, they are just different.
Demand for a structural understanding. If we ask what the general state of consciousness is among Christian Science students, then I think we have to admit that most of them work atomistically. They are engaged in reading passages out of context, studying single terms such as "intelligence," "substance," or "supply" with the help of the Concordance. It is a fact-finding activity, piling up knowledge of data, facts, truths. This is all done with great devotion, sincerity, and humility. Though this atomistic research is insufficient, it is not superfluous. After all, we first have to get the facts before we can be engaged in a fact-arranging activity.
Though this fact-finding activity has its merits, we must become aware that we have to go further and see that by accretion alone, that is to say, by adding more and more, we do not make something more perfect, more complete. Most of us have been educated in the classical belief that the whole cannot be bigger than the sum of its parts. From this came the belief that in order to get the whole we must accumulate as many parts as possible. But the transclassical concept (structuralism, gestalt-theory, synergy) no longer agrees with this belief, and rightly so. We now know that the whole is bigger, much bigger, than the sum of its parts. Mary Baker Eddy knew this, for she says: "the whole is greater than its parts" (Un. 5:28). Today, structuralism teaches that the whole consists of its parts, plus the relationships of its parts with the other parts and with the whole.
Take as an illustration the human body. If a surgeon dissected a human body and laid out all the parts separately on a table, we should have the sum of its parts, but not a body. The body would not live, breathe, move. What makes the body a body is not only that it has all its parts but that the parts also have their right relationships and interrelationships.
Thus it is with the Textbook. We may read it over and over or even learn it by heart and yet not understand it; nor will it live. The parts may be known, but that which makes it alive is the understanding of the relationships. Therefore we must get hold of it through understanding its structure. I will tell you more about the structure of the Textbook later on [in this book].
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