science is the study of magic (pt II) | the syntropy series, letter IV
how does science-worship affect our perception of reality?
audio version. get those dishes done. ride that commute. look out the window of a train. block out uninteresting words in a pointless meeting
Does the act of measuring take something away?
In Braiding Sweetgrass, the author begins her book with a story about starting higher education as a biologist because she wanted to know why goldenrod and aster look so beautiful next to one another. Her professor laughed and replied that this was not scientific inquiry, and simply a subjective experience of the world that belongs in the soft studies of poetry or visual arts.
Instead, in order to be hard-core, valid, and scientific, she had to prove through objective language that goldenrod and aster were companion plants (plants that like to grow next to one another) because it is more effective at attracting pollinators.
In her book, she communicates the belief that life is more beautiful and magical when we experience these two ways of seeing (scientific and indigenous) side by side. She writes that we can “see the world more fully when we use both.”
I completely agree.
I also want to offer a more critical framework for our obsession with science in validating our experience.
I think when we limit ourselves exclusively to the measurements of science in our pursuit of experiencing the wonders of the universe, we limit ourselves to a single reality. And that reality, by the way, is, at its root, sculpted by white colonizer values and fueled by the interests of empire. Science has been used as one of the many tools in the empire’s tool belt to commit a genocide against indigenous and non-white cultural, spiritual, and scientific knowledge.
When we limit ourselves to science as the supreme validator of reality, we see goldenrod and aster as living side by side simply to adapt effectively to their environment by increasing their likelihood of reproduction through stimulating an advantageous attraction to pollinators who then aid in the plants’ survival and reproduction. It is survival of the fittest, after all. Every species is on this planet just struggling to outcompete and out-reproduce the other.
How limiting and boring when taken as the entire, complete truth. Yes, this is one narrative, and it does have truth in it. But the way it is framed, the story around it, and the understanding of plant and insect ambitions on the planet and how they work in collaboration with one another is limited to the point of fallacy.
You and I both know things that we cannot prove scientifically, but that are certainly related to aster and goldenrod living side by side. We know that the earth loves to adorn herself in beauty. We look around, and we are universally blown away by the breath-taking beauty of nature.
We know that the intelligence of the planet conspires to create infinite shades of beauty at every turn. Through this lens, we can start to explain the pollinators’ attraction to the complimentary colors of purple and gold through an understanding of the earth’s reverence for beauty, instead of simply something fitness & competition based.
In fact, while we are here, science got the “fitness and competition” foundation wrong. It speak to an element of how evolution works, but it does not speak to the unconditional love and collaboration that is the primary energetic principle of life. Those plants are actually collaborating in order to promote one another’s growth, and will happily complexify the soil until the plants of the next stage of succession are better suited to grow in that spot, and they will cede that plot to their children.
Similarly, we do not need scientific studies to show us that being in nature, bathing in forests, and listening to the sounds of birds and creeks, creates peace inside our bodies and spirits. We do not need scientific studies to help us know that bathing consciously in the delights of nature help us regulate our bodies and emotions and live longer. That it decreases inflammation and brings clarity to the mind.
The reason we don’t need scientific studies for this is because we already know it to be true. We can observe the way the universe works inside of ourselves.
Many spiritualities & ancient cultural practices re-affirm these understandings without science and practice them through rituals and celebrations instead of scientific papers & magazine articles.
I don’t think scientific studies proving the things we already know to be true is harmful. Maybe it’s helpful and adds fullness and texture to inherent truths. But, I do think that it can be harmful to the way we perceive the world and what information we rely on in order to paint the dimensions of our reality if we are not careful.
the endless nuance of my claims
All concepts such as this have so much nuance. For example, if folks are just trusting their guts and making sweeping observations based on their own small experience around things like vaccines, then we have the re-arrival of diseases like mumps and polio that inflict harm on the most vulnerable and marginalized among us. Science, or scientific malpractice in research and implementation on the other hand, has also led us to many medical mistakes.
My ultimate point is not that western science should be disposed of and that intuitive and cultural understandings of the universe should reign without question.
you are still the child
you are not deficient in the capability of multi-dimensional ‘knowing’
My point is that there are many many ways of piecing together ‘knowledge’ or ‘understanding’. And that the way of knowing you likely already embrace, that of western science, is a measurement of magic. And that you already have the capacity within yourself to believe in magic.
It is not just the stuff of childhood. You are not jaded and cynicized into an irreversibly anesthetized view of the world that lacks hope and beauty and wonder.
You are still the child. You are still the child who wanders around disbelieving and believing the unimaginable wonders of the cosmic realm. You have just been tricked into believing that there is only one way of observing and knowing these wonders. And you have also been tricked into believing that this way of knowing is “rational” and “predictable” and “NOT MAGIC WHATSOEVER.”
We know absolutely nothing.
We know how to measure things, hypothesize, and observe the universe at smaller and smaller levels. Our microscopes and telescopes can see smaller and farther than ever before. Do not confuse this with knowing. Great, now we know that magic occurs on an atomic level.
Cool!
Magic can be observed at invisible microscopic levels we never knew existed. That’s a cool aspect of magic. Guess what? There’s a whole lot we have yet to observe or measure, and most of it is invisible to the eye and to studies based in control.
Most things we now take as truth today, thanks to science, would be dismissed as irrational magic or make-believe thought just a short time ago.
What are we denying the existence of now because we don’t know it to be true via the lens of science?
Now what?
Well, now we know that there are many ways of knowing, observing, and wondering. Many of these ways I think we might all collectively label as ‘magic’ if we were to see them from the right lens at the right moment.
If this is the case, then it means two things:
We can observe and trust that we are experiencing the magic of the universe, and we don’t really need science to prove to us that there is magic. You are constantly experiencing it, but, unfortunately, taking it for granted much of the time.
However, when you do identify a piece of magic and you question it, it is likely because science has not yet observed, studied, measured, and named it. That does not necessarily mean you are making something up, or that it’s not “real.” (Whatever real is or means to you.)
It can be awe inspiring and add helpful tools to our life when we are able to measure the magic. But it’s also deeply impactful to accept magic that refuses to be measured. Not everything in the universe wants to be measured and studied under a microscope, or with control based trials. The limits of science are real, just as with any singular way of knowing.
Maybe you experienced magic while on a hike. You felt like you communicated with a bird, or you felt the earth communicating love to you, that you had a premonition about a loved one’s future. Guess what: you probably did. It’s possible that what you are experiencing is very much real, the way gravity is real. We cannot measure it, and therefore you are told it is a metaphor, a figment of the imagination, a delusion, a creative experience of random neurons firing in the brain, doing non-magic electricity things (electricity in the brain is still magic…).
Sometimes, we are able to measure this magic — like the ability of trees to communicate with one another. Before this delightful concept was measured and “proven,” it sounded like something out of a children’s fable. This begs the question: why are we so skeptical in the first place?
There are many things you cannot measure that I am sure you know are real in this very moment. You cannot measure or see love, just as one small example. But you know you feel it, and you know signs of it, and you know it’s an energy that does things to your body and your spirit and your mind. You can observe the pathways lighting up in your brain. You know it can act as a force that can bring people together. Do you think that’s where it stops, then? Is it “just” the firing of random electric pathways in our brains? Is it “just” the predictable release of pleasant neurotransmitters that lead to predictable and pre-determined responses? Or are we reacting, as we do to all things in nature, to the magic forces, energy, and flow of patterns that move through us and around us? This kind of wild notion deserve anything but a “just” modifying it.
We can have hope that when life seems dismal, or hopeless, or perfectly boring and the breeding grounds for cynicism (war, planetary destruction, hatred, capitalism), that we do not know the full picture. We do not know what exists outside of humans and the bounds of human energy and human comprehension.
The earth has more knowledge, information, and magic than you or I can wrap our heads around. We can f*ck up entirely, destroy all humans, wipe out 99% of the earth’s species, and still not know what the end result truly is.
Along the same lines, we can find ways to root inward, observe and accept magic, and channel ways of being that have the potential to re-align our human spirits with the earth spirit. One example of such alignment is syntropic agroforestry ;-) paired with community-building rituals (singing, dancing, ecstatic gratitude, trance, grief, prayer).
Who do you want to be on a planet of nature magic made of the same clay that comprises the body of the intelligence? Whose narrative do you want to listen to? The narrative that tells you to succumb to the powers of oppression that ask us to live unimaginative, listless lives in the hands of greedy overlords, or a narrative that dreams of something more?
Where do creativity and new openings come from but dreams?
The Big Trick is getting you to believe that because we can study the earth’s magic, that it’s entirely knowable, and entirely non magic.
Science is an avenue to understanding our own insignificance. To start to understand just how little we truly know and understand.
How does this relate to syntropy?
As I continue to write about syntropic principles and how they shed light on different aspects of being human and our function and flow in the universe, I am not speaking metaphorically.
I am not speaking metaphorically when I say that we are part of an intelligent system, that we are not the intelligence.
I am not speaking metaphorically when I say we are the same as the patterns we observe in nature, & that we have the same patterns inside of us.
When I talk about the ways trees communicate and animals strive to spread the seeds of life and how collaboration and unconditional love are the drivers of succession, not competition… I am not creating metaphors or analogies. This isn’t an English class studying symbolism in The Great Gatsby.
I am talking about magic.
I am talking about observing how magic works in the universe outside of us, and then applying that magic within.
The thing is, I always used to think this was a metaphor. I thought we would apply principles of nature and ecosystems we observe outside of us to the human experience simply because we found it peaceful, or beautiful, or like a good, scientific literary metaphor where the pieces perfectly line up with one another.
It’s taken time for me to understand (and I’m still trying to… because I was born under the same scientific lens that most of us were) that we are not noticing metaphors when we observe our ecosystems. We are observing the patterns of magic that apply to us all. We are observing systems of communication that don’t look like scientific papers, and so we are not sure if they are directly communicating information, or instead communicating information through poetic metaphors. It is all beautiful and quite poetic, but it is not indirect. The communication is as direct as a scientific paper.
After some years of trying to unlearn the mindset I inherited, my current understanding is that what we observe of the planet and her magic workings are what is happening inside of us.
I think we are made of all the same stuff. All of the same elements. I think we come from the earth and go back to the earth, and that is evidence enough that we are not separate.
I think of it sometimes like a ball of clay. A giant ball of clay is floating in space. We pop up, in ephemeral forms, shaped from the clay. As we walk around, we get to observe how the clay acts & moves outside of us, as it moves around as part of this big ball. We are clay watching the clay move around the ball in different forms. Then our form disintegrates, and we morph back into the big clay ball from which we came.
While we are small, human clay forms observing the big ball of clay, we are not observing something OTHER than ourselves. We were simply observing the stuff we are made from, but from a different perspective and in different forms. We are observing from a human perspective.
Why humans though?
I think we have several unique things to offer, which is why the earth may have created us. But one of those unique things is a particular brand of awareness, and the gratitude that comes with this awareness. If this isn’t unique and special to just humans, nonetheless it is undeniably extremely important. Everything in this greater intelligent earth body oozes a reciprocal flow of gratitude. And the way we are able to offer gratitude as humans is particularly delicious.
I think about the art, the prayers, the rituals, the music, the dance, the thoughts, the movements, the gifts, the designs that humans can offer, and it makes sense. How delicious, this gratitude.
I also think we are able to act as stewards of the land in an intelligent, design-forward way. From the syntropic agroforestry perspective, this is our central function. More about that in the next article.
Ultimately, an acceptance and greeting of magic enables us to do our jobs more effectively. We are able to experience effusive gratitude more effectively when we feel the magic. We are able to observe nature principles and farm better. We are able to form community and rituals better. We are able to hear more information, gain more knowledge, and harness the wisdom that the intelligent body needs us to have in order to fulfill our functions.
~ Tid Bits ~
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i adore this!!!!!