A Conversation with Owen Barfield
Owen Barfield http://anitra.net/books/images/barfield.gif
The museum was packed with students for the day’s celebration. It had been one hundred years to the day since the ‘Great Evolutionary Debate’ took place at the Oxford Museum of Natural History. Two minds, set apart by ideology, battled for something greater than life – reputation – in this room. We were graced with the presence of two contemporary minds to reenact the debate. Unfortunately, the minds we were graced with belonged to two undergrads from the University Drama Society.
I wearily made my way to the rear of the crowd where I could escape the vapid reenactment. I was interested more in the contents of the room long dead rather than still alive. The ancient fossils and dinosaur bones were positioned around the room to portray animals and plants of all sizes in their prehistoric environments.
I closely examined the exhibit of the baby dinosaur drinking from a pond. Some type of ancient crocodile species lurked in the water. I could not help wondering how the baby dinosaur died at such a young age. Was it starvation, a meteor or simply the crocodile in the pool of water it was drinking from? I would never know. There was no way to know. Upon realizing this, my only reaction was to let out a laugh and shake my head. “No way to really know,” I murmured to myself.
Cretaceous Crocodile http://pharyngula.org/images/cretaceous_crocodile.jpg
[4]
The old man leaning on the rail next to me and facing the ongoing debate turned towards me. “What? Don’t believe that dinosaurs walked the earth? No faith in science?”
Startled, I faced the man. “No, it’s not that. I believe the scientists. I think dinosaurs roamed the earth and then went extinct when that meteorite hit the earth like my science teacher taught me. But… how do we really know? We have all these fossils here that we assembled to look like these dinosaurs. Then we even put skin on a couple of them and said that they were giant reptiles. This is all just a guess, though. Some scientists now believe that they weren’t reptiles at all. They could have been giant, flightless birds. How do the scientists really know that the dinosaurs looked like the ones in the display here and behaved like the docent explained to us that they did?”
“Ah. Perceptive questions,” the man replied. “A scientist would tell you that we know these things through critical scientific inquiry. We hypothesize and then we find evidence to support our hypotheses and come to a refined conclusion. We study bone structure, comparative biology and genetic makeup. We even employ behavioral psychology techniques to come to as many conclusions as we can about the past.”
I
looked at the man and thought to myself, “Great, I’m talking to an
“I’m getting a little ahead of myself,” the man said. “My name is Owen Barfield, and I don’t work here, but many of my friends do.”
“Wow, for a moment there I thought I was talking to a professor. You seem to know a lot about science.”
“Science is just an interesting topic that I enjoy studying. I enjoy most subjects though – literature, philosophy, physics, epistemology. I wouldn’t really call myself a scientist. I’m more interested in ideas, no matter what subject they come from.”
“Why are you so interested in this evolution debate? Evolution has been debated to death. You could read hundreds of books on it, biology and other relevant topics at the library. Coming here just seems a waste of your time.”
“You are mistaken in assuming that evolution is just a biological phenomenon. Biology is only one aspect of evolution, but life is really much more complicated than that.”
“What do you mean by that?” I replied. “Evolution is about natural selection and variation in species.”
“That’s only one facet of a phenomenon that is misunderstood by many. Evolution is an interesting theory...”
The man stopped at that. From the look on his face, I could tell that he had some very profound things to say if only he knew where to begin. His brow was furrowed as he opened his mouth several times to begin and found that words would not sound. There would be no easy solution for this man. I only had to look at his face to know that his ideas on evolution were complicated and unconventional.
After a pause of several seconds and several attempts to start speaking again, Owen Barfield spoke. “This is all very complicated. I must start at the beginning.”
“The beginning,” I asked, “how long ago was that and how long will it take?”
“Well,” Owen replied, “I promise I’ll be finished before this debate is over, but I’ll have to start with a little background story on how the idea of a hypothesis has evolved.”
He took a deep breath, and then began casually. “In Greek thought, a hypothesis was merely a device for explanation that conveyed no sense of truth. It was a model, or proposition, that was used to better understand and conceive of phenomena. Again, I reiterate that the truth or untruth of the hypothesis was irrelevant. ‘They were arrangements – devices – for saving the appearances; and the Greek and medieval scientists were not at all disturbed by the fact that the same appearances could be saved by two or more quite different hypotheses.’[5] Now, what does this phrase, ‘saving the appearances,’ mean? Today, we are likely to think about a high society hostess at a dinner party where something has gone terribly wrong. This is not the way Greek and medieval scientists used the phrase. No, their theories ‘saved the appearances’ if they provided a valid explanation for natural phenomena. It is not that their theories were saved from something, but that they accounted for all observations – the appearances. Let me use the example of Copernicus. He was not the first to postulate that the earth orbited the sun. This hypothesis had indeed been around since around the third century B.C. Copernicus changed our entire world by saying that this heliocentric hypothesis might not be a hypothesis at all, but the ultimate truth.”
I had to interject, “One second, before you go any further, this doesn’t seem relevant to evolution at all.”
“Oh, but it is. Just wait,” he replied. “Copernicus’ affirmation of the heliocentric hypothesis as the ultimate truth changed science forever. It was in fact the beginning of the scientific revolution. When Galileo went to affirm Copernicus’ hypothesis, the church didn’t turn against him because of the hypothesis itself. ‘It was not simply a new theory of the nature of the celestial movements that was feared [by the church], but a new theory of the nature of theory; namely that, if a hypothesis saves all the appearances, it is identical with truth.’[6] Are you still with me?”
“I think I see how this might be important to evolutionary theory,” I said. “The theory of evolution is accepted as fact today because it hasn’t been falsified, but this is not a reason to accept that it is true.”
“Precisely,” Owen replied with an affirmative smile. “Evolution may very well be a true doctrine, but it is wrong to believe that just because it saves all the appearances that it is the truth. This definition of truth is too narrow. It does not accept that other explanations may be true as well, especially in a non-empirical approach.”
“Earlier you said that evolution was more than just biology. What did you mean by that?”
“Yes, this concept of evolution as ‘true’ leaves no room for other explanations. These other explanations are what I call the evolution of consciousness. It is easy to see through a careful study of human thought and knowledge that not only have our biological selves evolved, but our spiritual and mental selves as well. Our minds have slowly changed through the way we perceive our surroundings. Think back to the ideas we have uncovered from any early human civilization. They were often largely poetic and mythological in nature. Why is that? Is it because these mythic creatures once roamed the world? No, probably not, but it could be because our perception of this world has changed – evolved. At one time, humanity and nature were inseparable entities. We fully participated in nature. It was a part of us. This has now all changed. Nature is as distanced from humanity as possible. Our science has shown mankind living in a relatively lifeless universe. Just look at our writings. We used to write about dragons and magicians. Now we write about interesting subjects like quantum mechanics. Despite that, I don’t believe that this change has taken place because we have found more outside of nature to believe and participate in, like science. No, I think it is because our basic perception of the world has changed. Our minds are still evolving greatly. I believe that we are at the cusp of a new evolutionary period in our consciousness because ‘the biological evolution of the human race is, in fact, only one half of the story; the other has still to be told.’”[7]
“Okay, that’s great. It’s a little creepy, but still very interesting.”
“I’m
obviously not getting my point across.
Let me try explaining humanity’s current situation this way: ‘We may very well compare the self of man to a seed. Formerly what is now
the seed was a member of the old plant (when humanity was closer to nature),
and as such was wholly informed with a life not wholly its own (nature). But
now the pod or capsule has split open, and the dry seed has been ejected. It
has attained to a separate existence (through science). Henceforth one of two
things may happen to it: either it may abide alone, isolated from the rest of
the earth, growing dryer and dryer, until it withers up altogether; or, by
uniting with the earth it may blossom into a fresh life of its own… uniting
itself with the Spirit of the Earth, with the Word, it may blossom into the
imaginative soul, and live. It differs from the seed only in this, that the
choice lies within itself.’”[8]
“Umm…
What exactly are you talking about when you say the Word?”
“You
should think about it in terms of its biblical context. Remember the first lines of the Gospel
according to John: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God,
and the Word was God.”[9] Word is then used in the sense of the Greek
“logos.” This entails something more
than speech. It is God’s agent in the
world, creating and redeeming. This
implies, then, that the Word is connected with the Spirit of the Earth in a way
that many people fail to acknowledge.”
“So
what are you saying? Should we abandon
science?”
“Oh
no, science is a wonderful tool of critical inquiry. It just can’t be the only tool. Imagine what it
would be like to encounter an automobile if you had never experienced one. After a considerable time in the driver’s
seat you may figure out how to use the wheels and pedals, maybe even how to
start the car. You look at the gauges
and know what is going on inside the car.
Eventually, you are able to operate the car quite well, through
experience. Now, imagine what it would
be like to be the person who designed that automobile. You would know how every part in the engine
fits together, what the purpose of every part is and how they all operate for
one uniform purpose. Consider the
knowledge of the automobile designer and the operator. They both possess knowledge sufficient for
their own purpose. The car operator
possesses “operative knowledge” which is an entirely different kind of
knowledge than what creator of the car has.
This is the same kind of knowledge that we develop through critical
inquiry and other scientific means. It is
the only type of knowledge about our world we will ever possess. Even some of our scientists today realize
that this is the only knowledge we will ever attain. Modern physicists have observed phenomenon
that they are unable to explain with a single hypothesis. Structures on the subatomic level exhibit
behavior that is both wave and particle like.
They call this wave-particle duality.
Note, though, that there is no evolution-creationism duality. The physicists have accepted that there may
be some phenomenon which may not be explainable, but the biologists still seem
to think that everything will be explained by theory eventually. When humanity can accept that there may be
other explanations besides the scientific one, we might begin to reach the next
phase in the evolution of human consciousness – when our perception changes and
we finally see ourselves in nature.”
Word Count: 1,911
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