Quotes from Holistic Scientists (Nobel Laureates)
[The comments in
brackets are by Rolf Sattler]
Mystery
(see also
Mystic Quotes # 8 and
13-15)
1
The most
beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is
the source of all true art and science (Albert
Einstein: Ideas and
Opinions, 1954; quoted by
Ravi Ravindra. 1991. Science and
Spirit. New York:
Paragon House, p. 322).
[One easy door to the mysterious is laughter that is also
beneficial for our health (see Mystic Quote # 9, Wisdom
Quotes # 30, and Laughter Yoga)]
2
Every advance in
knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own
being (Max Planck. 1932. Where is Science Going? New York:
Norton; quoted by Ken Wilber. 1984. Quantum
Questions. Mystical Writings of the World’s Great
Physicists. Boston &
London: The New Library, Shambala, p. 152).
[Note: Instead of mystery, I also refer to the unnamable
because mystery is beyond words (see Ken Wilber,
his AQAL Map and Beyond and
Beyond
Thinking, Writing, and Speaking - the
Unnamable)]
Marvel
3
Things are much
more marvelous than the scientific method allows us to
conceive (Barbara McClintock; quoted by Evelyn Fox Keller.
1983. A Feeling for
the Organism. The Life and Work of Barbara
McClintock. New York:
Freeman, p. 203).
4
[Plants] are
fantastically beyond our wildest expectations (plant
geneticist Barbara McClintock; quoted by Evelyn Fox Keller.
1983. A Feeling
for the Organism. The Life and Work of Barbara
McClintock. New York:
Freeman, p. 200).
5
Gravitation
cannot be held responsible for people falling in love
(Albert Einstein).
Oneness and Holomovement
(see also
Mystic Quotes)
6
Basically,
everything is one (Barbara McClintock; quoted by Evelyn Fox
Keller. 1983. A Feeling for
the Organism. The Life and Work of Barbara
McClintock. New York:
Freeman, p. 204).
7
Quantum physics
thus revels a basic oneness of the universe (Erwin
Schrödinger
http://www.great-quotes.com/cgi-bin/viewquotes.cgi?action=search&Author_First_Name=Erwin&Author_Last_Name=Schrodinger&Movie=
8
Isolated material
particles are abstractions (Niels Bohr. 1934.
Atomic
Physics and the Description of Nature. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, p. 57).
9
…to emphasize
undivided wholeness, we shall say that what ‘carries’ an
implicate order is the
holomovement, which is an
unbroken and undivided totality. In certain cases, we can
abstract particular aspects of the holomovement (e.g., light,
electrons, sound, etc), but more generally, all forms of the
holomovement merge and are inseparable. Thus, in its
totality, the holomovement is not limited in any specifiable
way at all. It is not required to conform to any particular
order, or to be bounded by any particular measure.
Thus, the
holomovement is undefinable and immeasurable
(David Bohm.
1981. Wholeness and
the Implicate Order. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 151).
10
The new form of
insight can perhaps best be called Undivided
Wholeness in Flowing Movement [=holomovement]
(David Bohm. 1981. Wholeness and
the Implicate Order. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 11).
11
…mind and matter
are abstractions from the universal flux (David Bohm.
1981. Wholeness and
the Implicate Order. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 53).
12
In this movement,
there is NO THING. Rather, things are abstracted out of the
movement in our perception and thought, and any such
abstraction fits the real movement only up to a point, and
without limits. Some ‘things’ may last for a very long time
and be fairly stable, while others are ephemeral as the
shapes abstracted in perceptions of clouds (David Bohm.
1976. Fragmentation
and Wholeness. Jerusalem: Van
Leer Jerusalem Foundation, p. 40).
13
Instead of
saying, ‘An observer looks at an object’, we can more
appropriately say, ‘Observation is going on, in an undivided
movement involving those abstractions customarily called “the
human being” and “the object he is looking at” (David Bohm.
1981. Wholeness and
the Implicate Order. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 29).
14
The best image of
process is perhaps that of the flowing stream, whose
substance is never the same. On this stream, one may see an
ever-changing pattern of vortices, ripples, waves, splashes,
etc, which evidently have no independent existence as such.
Rather, they are abstracted from the flowing movement,
arising and vanishing in the total process of the flow (David
Bohm. 1981. Wholeness and
the Implicate Order. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 48).
15
We will now
consider a mode in which movement is to be taken as primary
in our thinking and in which this notion will be incorporated
into the language structure by allowing the verb rather than
the noun to play a primary role…we shall give this mode a
name, i. e. the rheomode (‘rheo’ is from a Greek verb,
meaning ‘to flow’) (David Bohm. 1981. Wholeness and
the Implicate Order. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 30-31).
[Note: Oneness has different meanings. Intuitively, it has
often been considered the ultimate: in oneness with the
universe we transcend our limits and limitations, we become
whole and holy. However, on logical grounds, it has been
pointed out that oneness excludes its opposite (manyness) and
therefore is incomplete and lacking. Hence, it has been
argued, mystical union, although referred to as union, is not
just oneness with the universe but beyond the one and the
many (what could be referred to as the Unnamable or perhaps
the Ultimate One). - Furthermore, it has been much debated,
if and how oneness in physics is related to oneness in
spirituality. For Ken Wilber, a hierarchical (holarchical)
thinker, oneness of matter in physics is at best a pale
reflection of the oneness of spirit, since matter is at the
lowest level of the hierarchy that culminates with spirit at
its highest level. However, if one admits complementary
non-hierarchical views (that I suggested in
Ken Wilber, Holarchy and
Beyond and in
Chapters 1 and 2 of Wilber’s AQAL Map and
Beyond), oneness in
physics is an important aspect of oneness in general as is
oneness in biology, psychology, and spirituality (see,
e.g., Agnes Arber.1967. The
Manifold and the One. Wheaton, Il:
The Theosophical Publishing House, and Malcolm Hollik.
2006. The
Science of Oneness: A Worldview for the Twenty-First
Century.)]
Limitations of Science
16
What we observe
is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our mode of
questioning (Werner Heisenberg, quoted by Kosko, B.
1993. Fuzzy
Thinking. The New Science of Fuzzy
Logic. New York:
Hyperion, p. 267).
17
We have learned
that the exploration of the external world by the methods of
the physical sciences leads not to a concrete reality but to
a shadow world
of symbols, beneath which
those methods are unadapted for penetrating (Sir Arthur
Eddington. 1929. The Nature of
the Physical World. New York:
McMillan, p. 282).
18
The frank
realization that physical science is concerned with a world
of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances
(Ibid.).
19
Physics most
strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the
symbolism. Surely then that mental and spiritual nature of
ourselves … supplies just that … which science is admittedly
unable to give (Sir Arthur Eddignton. 1929.
Science and
the Unseen World. New York:
Macmillan; quoted by Ken Wilber. 1984. Quantum
Questions. Mystical Writings of the World’s Great
Physicists. Boston &
London: The New Library, Shambala, p. 10).
20
[Scientic
knowledge is] lots of fun. You get lots of correlations, but
you don’t get the truth (Barbara McClintock; quoted by Evelyn
Fox Keller. 1983. A Feeling for
the Organism. The Life and Work of Barbara
McClintock. New York:
Freeman, p. 203).
21
…our science –
Greek science – is based on objectification… But I do believe
that this is precisely the point where our present way of
thinking does need to be amended, perhaps by a bit of blood
transfusion from Eastern thought (Erwin Schrödinger; quoted
by Evelyn Fox Keller. 1983. A Feeling for
the Organism. The Life and Work of Barbara
McClintock. New York:
Freeman, p. 203).
22
I was so startled
by their [Tibetan Buddhists] method of training and by its
results that I figured we were limiting ourselves by using
what we call the scientific method (Barbara McClintock;
quoted by Evelyn Fox Keller. 1983. A Feeling for
the Organism. The Life and Work of Barbara
McClintock. New York:
Freeman, p. 201).
[see also Wisdom Quotes]