Dear Dan, Michael and all,
Before the discovery of quantum physics, mainstream scientists
considered that all of the important discoveries in physics had already
been made. Although the tenets of quantum physics are scientifically
without doubt, quantum physics leads one to take consciousness into
consideration. Mainstream scientists are simply in denial and avoid the
whole area of inquiry into the nature of consciousness.
Niels Bohr, the architect of quantum physics said: "Anyone not shocked
by quantum mechanics, has not understood it."
It is simply a shortcoming of our perception, wisdom and science that we
don't know how or why constellations work. The important thing is that
they help clients with issues that they have had difficulty resolving.
The how and why of constellations are important questions that are
worthy of serious inquiry. However, the classic Newtonian world view is
simply inadequate to provide the kind of conceptual framework that is
needed. For questions of consciousness and how things operate in a
quantum world, quantum physics and mature spirituality provide better
models, better metaphors from which to work.
If what we are doing makes sense to those with similar experience and
training, then what we are doing makes sense. To others it may simply
remain not understood.
Thomas Bryson
Michael Reddy wrote:
Hello All,
This is a big subject and one that has fascinated me for decades. I
could go on at length (as I am sure many of us could). But the quote
you present from DeGrasse Tyson, Dan, is particularly interesting.
"The methods and tools of science have wholly replaced our feeble five
senses as tools of inquiry to the natural world. So what something
looks like to your senses is no longer the measure of what is true in
the physical world."
The tools of "big" science especially have become increasingly
specialized, expensive, complex, and operationally distant from our
senses. Interpreting the output of their "measurements" is by no
means obvious or easy. It requires the formulation of complex, often
competing conceptualizations. In the classic book CONSTRUCTING
QUARKS, Andrew Pickering provides a very detailed and telling
explanation of the ways in which competing sets of ideas, the
existence of expensive equipment that permits certain questions to be
asked and answered (but not others), and social relationships among
groups of researchers--all have a very large impact on which theories
of physics become dominant. What then happens, because so many
scientists are unwilling to look at these influences, is that the
dominant theories are said to represent the "discovery" of an
"objective" reality. Yet it seems clear from Pickering's work that
different groups who had perchance invested in different kinds of
instruments, or formed different social alliances, could easily have
"discovered" different realities.
In a word, there is a process of "social construction" going on in the
use of these "methods and tools of science," which DeGrasse Tyson, in
this quote at least, is not acknowledging. Only by failing to look at
this process can the claim of utter "objectivity" be made. Once
again, our senses may be small alongside of the power of a modern
microscope, or telescope, or collider--but our conceptualizations, the
tools we do or do not build, and who likes who among researchers, are
all hugely instrumental in creating "the universe." To hold to the
positivist fable that we are so small and insignificant next to the
vast, overpowering wonders of "the universe" is in my view somewhat
naive. We are quite large. Our conceptions (if not perceptions) are
still co-creating what we regard as "reality." "It" exists in this or
that way only in relation to our minds. We are in conversation with
it. This I think is what Hania Moser is getting at when she quotes
Bowne earlier in this thread.
Constellation work is an evolving form that conversation with reality
is taking on.
The missing dimension here, I would say, is human subjectivity
itself. It cannot really be escaped. And way too much evidence of
its importance is being overlooked or denied by the dominant
"scientific" approach. If subjectivity provides knowledge that proves
true, if it heals, then that fact needs to be allowed to exist as data
to be explained--not simply denied. What that data says is our
current models of "reality" fall far short of what "reality" is
"really" capable of.
I don't know if it is so much a matter of convincing the old guard, as
it is is of seeing new thinkers arise who stretch their minds further.
Best,
Michael
Michael Reddy, PhD, CPC, ELI-MP
michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:michael%40reddyworks.com>
www.reddyworks.com
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