The Metaphysics of Science

Part 1

When it comes to the scientific method some people might tie it to Christianity. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, many scientific advancements occurred in Christian Europe. Prominent figures like Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, and Johannes Kepler were devout Christians and saw their scientific work as a way to understand God’s creation. The belief that the universe was orderly and governed by laws (reflecting a divine creator's rationality) encouraged exploration and experimentation. Christianity posits a world-view where nature is not divine (unlike animistic or pantheistic traditions) but a creation of God, distinct from Him and open to study. Yet cultures outside of Christianity, like ancient Greece, India, and the Islamic Golden Age, also significantly contributed to the foundations of the scientific method. Yet if we are to truly understand the ideas connected to the scientific method and what it really does, its implications and with it its true purpose, we have to start at the very beginning. What I can say already is that the process of the scientific method has much larger implications, and a much deeper foundation than what we assume.

The foundational presuppositions tied to the scientific method, are tied to something much more ancient, and ties into the nature of consciousness itself. It is an iterative process and attempt of through exploration and the process of peer review bring to consciousness the truth about something. What I do however have to say is that this process can never be assumed to be complete, let alone be tied to any form of agenda, be this political, cultural or predicated on a specific outcome. Whilst for some the scientific method is a mere tool, yet if we divorce it from the true intend of the process, instead of truly understanding the world, tying it to research impact, and having to have a certain impact, this presupposes that the world-view which makes such a claim is already the proper understanding of the world.

If we now bring Plato's cave into this, to put this in a grander context, what this does is, is to increasingly be at the risk to see the shadows on the cave wall as the truth of something. Yet there is a risk of failing to see, how if this process is tied to any ideology, it ties the method itself to the shadows on the cave wall, and constraints the true purpose of the scientific method. The foundational ideas become something to strive towards due to rewards being tied to having research impact. Which itself makes the scientific method as a tool, something tied to societal standards based on an ideology, and with it to the shadows on Plato's cave. It instead becomes a tool that further pulls people into the shadows on the cave wall, the illusions of the world, which tie to our unconscious patterns, biases and projections onto the world.

The Ancient Origins of Scientific Thought

Yet if we are to truly understand why this is such we have to start at the early foundations of which much of philosophy and even the Socratic method is predicated upon. Taylor's "Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries" reveals that quite a few references from Platonic texts discuss the "mysteries" (teletai). There have been long-running Greek "mystery schools" that originated with Orpheus, continued through Pythagoras, Plato and were revived by the Neoplatonists. Plato himself as much as Socrates were initiated into these mysteries, and specifically the Eleusinian mysteries. Which have their foundations in much more ancient Neolithic cave rituals. So if we are to understand the foundations of Western thought we have to understand these foundations, and how they evolved throughout time.

The ancient cave rituals of the Neolithic where an ancient death and rebirth ritual, in which the participants crawled into the cave and underwent a symbolic rebirth. This also included psycho active substances next to various instruments like drums, flutes and rattles to induce an altered state of consciousness. This type of ritual went as far back as the Upper Palaeolithic era (40,000-10,000 BCE). This period, spans the last cycle of the Ice Age. The currently accepted interpretation of parietal art contends that the majority of the cave images are manifestations of shamanic ritual mediated through visionary experience in altered states of consciousness. From a more psychological understanding they were projecting through these experiences their unconscious content onto the literal cave wall. Trying to come to grasp with the world, and find communion with the spirits and gods. Which in the deepest sense represent patterns of human behaviour, tied to our consciousness and biology. Which these ancient people sought to understand and work with in these rudimentary forms. This itself is the birth of a consciousness that sought to understand the world, and depict its findings onto the cave wall. Where ancient shamans were the bearers of the wisdom of the tribe, being the guides of this process, which every person within the tribe would undergo.

The later mystery schools such as the Eleusinian mysteries that were one particular sect of the Orphic mysteries at later times, also are connected in its most ancient sense to these ancient cave rituals. The Mystery schools, also known as ancient mystery religions, were secretive religious organizations in the ancient world that offered teachings, rituals, and initiation ceremonies to their members. These schools were typically devoted to the worship of specific deities or had a strong focus on spiritual and mystical experiences. The mysteries themselves often revolved around sacred stories, symbolism, and the pursuit of deeper spiritual knowledge. Which later from their more pre-rational forms slowly birthed into Plato's Forms. Which also ties directly to his allegory of the cave.

The Eleusinian Mysteries were a series of ancient Greek religious ceremonies held in honour of the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone. These ceremonies were held annually in the city of Eleusis, located in Attica, Greece. They were considered to be the most important religious event in ancient Greece and were celebrated for over 2,000 years. The exact origins of the Lesser Mysteries are unclear, but they were believed to have been established in the Mycenaean period, around 2000-1500 BCE from the earlier Cybele cult. The initiation process for neophytes occurred in stages, and the annual cycle began with purification rites known as the Lesser Mysteries, which were to prepare them for the Greater Mysteries.

The Eleusinian Mysteries had two stages of initiation, the first being called Teletce or termination, which symbolized the end of an imperfect and incomplete period of life and the start of purification. The initiate was then referred to as a mysta, meaning "veiled or liberated person." The second stage, the Greater Mysteries, provided further instruction and discipline, leading the initiate to be known as an epopta or "seer". They then were believed to have attained the ultimate understanding of the principles of life. It means, one who knows the interior wisdom. This process itself how later Olympiodorus commented “The passive or feminine nature of our irrational part, through which we are bound in body, and which is nothing more than the resounding echo of the soul, requires her own form, which she has lost through Titanic dispersion into matter. For every external form or substance is wrought into an identity with its interior substance, through an in-generated tendency. She needs to be freed from such identification so she can act herself without the external image, having become established within according to the first-created life.”

And this is the same process that Plato described in his allegory of the Cave, where instead of a communion with the gods, which was achieved by removing the externalisation of what we could call in psychological terms the content of our unconscious onto the world, to work through our inner biases that cloud our understanding of the world, with Plato this became the Forms. The Forms, in Plato's philosophy, represent the highest and most fundamental truths, abstract, eternal, and unchanging ideals that exist beyond the physical world. They are not mere mental constructs but the ultimate reality that the physical world imperfectly reflects. For instance, a physical chair is but an imperfect manifestation of the ideal "Form" of a chair, which embodies the essence of "chair-ness." Similarly, concepts like beauty, justice, and goodness are imperfectly represented in the physical world but exist in their purest form in the realm of the Forms.

Within Part 2 of the series I will continue how Plato’s forms ties deeper into the ancient origins of Scientific thought. Stay tuned!