Mystic Science

Science & spirituality were once one in the same. Have we lost something by separating them?

The Earth and the Milky Way and Moon by W.T. Benda

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality;

it is a profound source of spirituality”

Carl Sagan

In the eyes of many today, science and spirituality are wholly incompatible. Like oil and water, the two cannot mix. To these men and women, science represents all that is rational, empirical, and true. It is an authority to be reckoned with, a power that can shape the world seemingly overnight. Spirituality, by contrast, is seen as watery and weak—an obsession only fit for the likes of religious zealots and New Age yoga instructors who practice sanitized witchcraft.

Yet scholars of old would balk at such a notion. To them, science, spirituality, and everything in between were deeply intertwined parts of the Divine whole. In the search for rationalism and material knowledge, however, academia in recent centuries has shed its spiritual skin almost entirely. Now, as

Adrian Gaty

recently explained, even love is something to be viewed clinically. However, this has not led to a more rational society. If anything, science has become blatantly irrational in many ways, signaling a deep, spiritual imbalance and mental rigidity in its scholars and researchers, who have gone mad with data, tables, and jargon.

Modern science has become a largely passionless vehicle to stifle wider society, and spirituality has become the source of mockery. Yet neither can exist without the other. Perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves if divorcing science from spirituality was a mistake.

Though science and faith have long butted heads, when unified, the two can create a beautiful balance. In the past, scientific exploration—then known as “natural philosophy”—represented a way to fill in the gaps of religion. Whereas religious traditions explained the potential spiritual underpinnings of the cosmos and the beings within, science explained how various forces and beings interacted with one another directly. When it came to the existence of the universe, religion explored the “why” and science explored the “how.” Meanwhile, philosophy—and its offspring, metaphysics and psychology—acted as the bridge between these often vastly different worlds.

This order was the standard in academia for millennia. Hesiod, Archimedes, Pythagoras, Hypatia, Claudius Ptolemy, Ibn al-Haytham, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Leonardo da Vinci, René Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and countless other thinkers—known and unknown—had an understanding that science and spirituality are merely two sides of the same coin. If a Godhead created the universe, they reasoned, surely it is man’s duty to understand both the creation and its creator.

However, it seems the first to challenge this harmony were religious institutions. The hierarchies in religious institutions are easily corruptible and difficult to reform, with a few, shortsighted and self-serving leaders having the ability to destroy years of progress. The Catholic church, for example, is no stranger to this. Throughout the West, Catholicism—and later, Protestantism—has been both science’s greatest ally and enemy. Anti-scientific fervor has swept nations overnight, plunging the people within into periods of largely—if not, entirely—unnecessary strife and persecution.

Perhaps as a response to the delusions of church leaders, rationalism was founded in the 16th century, thanks to scholars such as Descartes, himself a devout Catholic. The philosophy posited that reason and data provide the basis of truth, rather than experiences alone¹. Rationalism was adopted by thinkers both religious and non-religious alike and applied throughout academia. It greatly altered how scholars approached spirituality, science, and everything in between, with ripple effects throughout history. Today, many in the Western and Western-influenced nations are raised with a rationalist education, using experience and speculation as the gateway to seeking data and facts to shape their understanding of the world.

However, for all of the benefits that rationalism brought, some scholars took the philosophy to an extreme. Between the 16th and 19th centuries², academia slowly began to drift away from spirituality, a chasm that drastically widened during the 1800s³. During this time, some scholars began to wonder if, not just religion, but the belief in the supernatural itself was an outdated superstition—a belief perhaps best captured when Karl Marx scoffed that religion is “the opium of the people.” Yet, many non-academics still held onto their faith, even in a cultural sense. Some explored various religions, while others still began to explore alternate forms of spirituality in the form of occultism and mysticism. But the rise in communism soon upended much of this exploration and would further break the bond of science and spirituality.

Communism is a political and economic ideology that has destroyed the world. Its members spread rapidly, searching high and low for systems to rearrange in the name of “fairness.” Academia, increasingly lacking its spiritual balance, was a prime target for Marxist renovation.⁴ Communism swept through scholastic institutions, seduced instructors, and infused itself into the lessons naive students received. It painted a bleak world with no God, no purpose, just oppression and hatred. Scientists raised in this environment were taught that the world was falling apart at the seams and perhaps ran to empirical data and facts to soothe their fears in a seemingly unstable world. Even those who were not communists were affected by this change. Maybe these young scholars could’ve been soothed by faith, but an increasingly polarized society made it difficult for lost, liberal youth to reconcile with religious institutions that often seemed overzealous, dogmatic, and political.

In the wake of WWII, science and spirituality had drifted far apart. Any attempts to reunite were sporadic and awkward, and communist thought only served to push the two worlds further apart.

The divorce has created a deep imbalance in both science and faith. Spirituality has become increasingly lost, as seen in the rise of fundamentalism in the United States⁵, New Age practices, conspiracy theories bordering on heresy, and blatantly anti-scientific rhetoric among “enlightened” types. Science, likewise, has lost its mystical touch. Without the belief in a God-made order or divinely inspired morals, reality itself is up for debate. Now, we live in a world where men claim to be women, human-animal chimeras are manufactured in labs⁶, and AI is being abused to supposedly bring back the dead in the world known as “grief tech”.⁷ ⁸

Science and spirituality are running in opposite directions towards oblivion. Their former bridges—philosophy and psychology—are equally entropic and unsure of their future. What’s left behind is an ever-growing chasm of confusion, nihilism, and disharmony.

Our postmodern society is ill, and I believe this is in part due to the divorce of science and spirituality. The day cannot exist without the night nor the soul without the flesh. As the National Academies stated, “Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.” ⁹ In order to create a more balanced and healthy society, we must acknowledge that science and faith are two complementary pieces necessary to understanding the whole of our reality. The former allows us to understand our external world while the latter allows us to better connect with our inner world. Neither should be discarded as useless but rather should be jointly explored however one sees fit. Together, these studies will allow us to tap an endless well of wonder and possibilities. We will once more be able to see the universe for all its opportunities and become better, more humble, and more curious students of the marvelous Creation.

1. Rationalism vs. Empiricism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). (2004, August 19). Retrieved August 18, 2024, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism

2. Contributor, Q. (2014, December 17). When did science and philosophy separate into different fields of study? Slate Magazine. https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/12/when-did-science-and-philosophy-separate-into-different-fields-of-study.html

3. Quack, M. (2023). Science and Arts, Philosophy and Science: Why after All? Why Not? Helvetica Chimica Acta, 106(4). https://doi.org/10.1002/hlca.202200174

4. Rufo, C. F. (2023). America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything. HarperCollins.

5. Munson, H. (2023, September 19). Fundamentalism. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/fundamentalism

6. Auto Travel World. (2024, August 8). MSN. Retrieved August 19, 2024, from https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/human-animal-embryo-hybridization-innovation-or-ethical-quagmire/ar-AA1ox8wQ?ocid

7. Bao, A., Zeng, Y. Embracing grief in the age of deathbots: a temporary tool, not a permanent solution. Ethics Inf Technol 26, 7 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-024-09744-y

8. Jiménez-Alonso, B., Brescó de Luna, I. Griefbots. A New Way of Communicating With The Dead?. Integr. psych. behav. 57, 466–481 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-022-09679-3

9. National Academies. (n.d.). Evolution resources at the National Academies. Retrieved August 19, 2024, from https://www.nationalacademies.org/evolution/science-and-religion