Here's a paper I'm presenting at a futures conference in Taiwan shortly. Sorry, some of the formatiing, esp. diagrams doesn't come out properly.
Abstract
This paper traces the past, present and future of intelligence, with a particular focus upon integrated intelligence. The concept of intelligence is situated within a genealogy of the development of the western mechanistic worldview and its preferred rational ways of knowing. It establishes the relationship between this development and defining moments in dominant discourses within modern biological science, psychology and intelligence theory in the scientific era. Lastly three possible scenarios regarding the futures of intelligence discourse are posited.
A Genealogy of the Western Rationalist Hegemony
Introduction and Overview
This paper traces the development of intelligence theory from ancient times through to the present, and then posits three potential futures for dominant intelligent discourse. The idea of intelligence will be situated within a civilisational perspective, and in particular the western rationalist hegemony. Thus the development of western theories of mind is first traced, up until the beginnings of the modern era. Then seminal relevant moments within modern psychology and science are identified. Finally, the three potential scenarios are stated, extrapolating from the past and present.
Diagram 1: Schema Depicting Layers of the Problematic re. Dominant Contemporary Representations of Intelligence and Mind
1. The mechanistic paradigm
2. Ways of knowing
(rational modes: incl. experimental, classificatory, and technological)
3. Molecular Biology and the neo-Darwinist paradigm
4. Neuroscience
5. The field of psychology
6. Specific theory/theorist of intelligence
The seminal historical moments which have created the modernist discourses on mind and intelligence will be identified via genealogy. Genealogies seek to determine which discourses have been victorious in constituting the present, how they have traveled through history, and the points in which the focus issue has become contentious. (Inayatullah, 2002: 27) This paper identifies seminal events in the history of western rationality, wherein the mechanistic worldview became dominant (and thereafter largely implicit and unconscious). It analyses the philosophy and/or science within which these events have been embedded. The focus is upon the relationship of this process to dominant mainstream mechanistic depictions of mind and intelligence within modernity.
In regard to the positing of intelligence theory within current dominant discourses, the argument can be depicted as with Diagram 1, above. In the diagram above each level is defined and mediated by the level preceding it.
The employment of ways of knowing - mediated by historical, civilisational and paradigmatic factors - has vitally affected the development of science and scientific conceptions of intelligence and consciousness. The argument here is predicated upon an essential distinction between rational and intuitive ways of knowing. This is illustrated in Diagram 2, below.
There are two intuition types posited here. Inferential intuition is a mundane representation of intuition. It is a subconscious processing of experiential and sensory knowledge. It incorporates no metaphysical or mystical components. (Torff and Sternberg, 2001) It is the preferred way to depict intuition within modernist discourses. Classical intuition is the second intuition type, which is intuition defined in metaphysical and/or transcendent terms. Historically it has most commonly been depicted in spiritual and mystical texts and forms a part of numerous mystical traditions. Integrated intelligence is a subset of this. This intelligence incorporates transpersonal experience that transcends the boundaries of the individual – it is in effect a collective human and universal intelligence. (1) It is the interplay between integrated intelligence and rationality that is the prime focus of the genealogy to follow.
There are five rational ways of knowing listed in Diagram 2, and they can be seen as subsets of the broader general concept of rationality, which is “the power of the intellect to comprehend, reflect, abstract, analyse, and draw conclusions.” (Rohmann, 1999: 337)
Firstly, classification (natural history) is “notebook science”, and is “about describing and collecting, identifying and classifying, utilizing and displaying.” (Pickstone, 2000: 60) Natural history as a way of knowing dominated science beginning around the year 1500, when medieval anatomy texts featured naturalistic diagrams. (Ibid.: 63) Secondly, analysis as a way of knowing can be seen in science’s analyses of the structures, processes and forms of plants and animals. Analysis also incorporates the earth and social sciences, which began to emerge around 1800. (Ibid.: 106) Thirdly, experimentalism is “about making and displaying new worlds”. Experimentalism emerged around the mid-nineteenth century. (Ibid.: 30) Mathematics as a way of knowing has been added here because its significance in the development of the modern world and science is so great that it requires a category in its own right. Logical-mathematical intelligence is employed to calculate and quantify mathematical problems, and secondly to examine hypotheses and propositions. Finally, rational/linguistic intelligence is the capacity to use language and words to construct and understand thoughts, ideas and meanings. (Gardner, 1993)
Attention now turns to the genealogy itself.
Diagram 1.5 Rational and Intuitive Ways of Knowing and Integrated Intelligence
Rationality
Ways of Knowing
Intuition
Inferential
Intuition
Classical Intuition
Classification
Analysis
Experiment
Math/logic
Linguistic
Intelligence
Integrated
Intelligence .Intelligence
The Past: From Ancient Greece to the Birth of the Modern Secular State
The emergence of rationalism in ancient Greece
Ancient Greek culture was premised upon integrated conceptions of intelligence, where divine and sacred space were closely intertwined. (Shapiro 1992: 6; Tarnas, 2000) Yet Greek society also developed a rational representation of nature, cosmos and consciousness which was to be seminal in the development of the mechanistic paradigm. The history of ancient Greece was one in where scientific and mechanistic models of mind and cosmos were in constant interplay with more metaphysical and spiritual conceptions. (Tarnas, 2000)
The rational mind was well represented. Aristotle defined mankind as a rational animal, an increasingly prevalent theme in the ancient Greek world. The schools established by Plato and Aristotle valorised logic, geometry, and “disputation.” (Gardner et al., 1996: 33) The mathematical predilections of Archytas, Pythagoras and Plato (Sheldrake, 1994: 2005a,b) were also significant. The social sciences that Plato founded at his Academy were predicated upon mathematical models. (Brumbaugh, 1981: 139) Greek rationality has influenced both science in general and consciousness and intelligence theory into the twentieth century, helping shape the dominant view that intelligence is the capacity for abstract reasoning in mathematics and language. (Gardner et al., 1996)
Further, the atomistic tradition of materialism - inspired essentially by the changeless and atomistic conceptions of Parmenides - later contributed to the seventeenth century idea that the universe is mechanistic and changeless. (Tarnas, 2000) The universe of the ancient Greeks was a world of separate “blocks”, and thought was sequential and linear. This would evolve into the civilisation-defining “sequence trap” (de Bono, 1986; 56), which requires that a person be “right at each stage” and thus be able to “keep going forwards”. (Ibid., 60) Notably the “sequence trap” stultifies the fluidity and receptivity (an openness to non-local mind) that is the basis of integrated intelligence. (2)
The philosophy of the ancient Greeks also “implanted the philosophy of dualism very firmly in the western psyche.” (Ross, 1993: 39) Ancient Greece was a culture that “separated God and nature, mind and body, males and female, master and slave and cause and effect.” (Ibid.: 39). The predicates of scientific objectivity were present in the ideas of Thales, Anaximenes and Heraclitus. (Ibid.: 40) These men were practical-minded, and sought understanding through observation, which allowed them to discern the theories of basic elements. (Ibid.) The Western psyche became enamored by the idea of a metaphysically stratified cosmos. Platonic metaphysics entailed a strong dualism – divinity, mind and reason were clearly differentiated from the body and matter, including nature. (Ibid.) For Plato (and for Socrates), truth was something that was available through perfect reason. (Zohar, 1994: 108) This single, ultimate knowable truth later became the foundation of enlightenment science. (Ibid.)
Further, the Socratic method was a question and answer process, with an emphasis on the status of the individual to challenge the polity of the state, and the consensus of society. It was a thus a precursor of modern western intellectual individualism. Socrates also claimed that he did not know anything with certainty, and tended to employ hypotheses instead of didacticisms. (Brumbaugh, 1981: 126, 129), foreshadowing scientific skepticism. The stoics and skeptics of the later Hellenic era were even more rationally declined, yet without the spiritual inclinations of the mystics. (Tarnas, 2000)
These rational ancient Greek conceptualisations deeply influenced the development of modern western thinking, including its depictions of consciousness and intelligence. This interpretation of Greek thought that was revived during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment would ultimately become one of the dualism of mind and matter, of rigid conceptualisations, and linear and sequential thinking. Yet the metaphysical predilections of the ancient Greeks would not endure to the same degree. The transcendent mind of Plato and Socrates, including the divine and transcendent nous which even Aristotle embraced, would become a footnote; while the rationalism of Aristotle would fill the main pages of university texts.
“Rational” Christianity and the suppression of the mystical
The development of modern science was also indirectly influenced by Christian theology. The idea that the world has a rational and coherent order, that the world is a machine, and that a divine being created the world according to “number, weight and measure”, are all medieval themes elucidated by Christian clerics and philosophers. (Huff, 2003: 40-41) Indeed, the idea of laws of nature has Judeo-Christian groundings. Both Newton and Copernicus held a realist interpretation of the world, founded on the theological belief that men are imbued with reason and conscience, empowering them to find “subjective certitude beyond objective demonstration”. (Nelson, 1991: 158-159)
The theology of St Augustine (AD 354-430) was crucial. (Ross, 1993; Wilber, 2000b: 372) Augustine’s was a decidedly “otherworldly” philosophy, deriding the body and sexuality as evil and as being of original sin. (Rohmann, 1999: 33) Augustine also denied the feminine, a cornerstone of mysticism. (Ross, 1993) Later scholasticism would dominate Christian theology, from about 1000 to 1500. Its prime method was the scholastica disputatio, whereby faith was subjected to reason via questioning and evidence. Scholasticism formed the foundation of all schooling and university education up till the twentieth century. (Rohmann, 1999: 353) Notably, the scholastics leant heavily on classical philosophers, especially Aristotle, and early Church fathers, particularly St. Augustine. (Ibid.) Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Newton were all products of the procrustean and scholastic universities of Europe. (Huff, 2003: 344)
Christianity has strong pagan, and animistic roots. (Frazer, 1914) Shamanism, visionary experience and prophecy were all apparent in early Christian thought and practice. (Sheldrake, 1994: 185) However, orthodox Christianity came to discourage mystical experience. The Church, both Protestant, and Catholic, denied the body and the experience of mysticism.
The dualism of Plato and the ancient Greeks was adopted by the early Christian Church, with matter seen as lower and the divine as higher. From the time of Augustine to the time of Copernicus, the Church valorised the divine and the angelic, but reviled the body and the Earth. The Church “held out the goal of perfect Ascent in Christ” while simultaneously “prohibiting it” (Wilber, 2000b: 419), discouraging spirituality as “an ongoing living experience.” (Ross, 1993: 41) Indeed it repressed Gnostic Christianity (which was prominent up until about 300AD) and mysticism, which not only saw gods and the divine in nature, but encouraged the development of personal spiritual experience as a source of knowledge. (Ross, 1993: 41) Instead a “theological elitism” prevailed, with the clergy as the source of revealed wisdom. This put the divine beyond the reach of the common people. In effect the physical world was “despiritualised.”(Ross, 1993: 41)
In medieval Europe the Church rejected persecuted those who practiced or preached ideas such as the immanence of God, accessibility to divine intelligence (and not via the revelation of the clergy), and pagan and druidic rituals and philosophy in general. Witchcraft, a form of paganism, was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in Europe, while in America the Puritan clergy often targeted strong and independent women. The rejection of mysticism meant that western ways of knowing remained centred upon external modalities; the world of the senses, rather the internal world of consciousness. (Ross, 1993: 150)
The Protestant reformation was itself deeply influenced by Augustinian thought. Martin Luther (1483-1546), the prime instigator of the Protestant reformation (Rohmann, 1999: 239) was an Augustinian monk. The reformation reinforced an “intellectualised” way of knowing, based on biblical interpretation, not union with the divine. This theology established “a great faith in reason”. (Huff, 2003: 6)
The re-introduction of Aristotle in the 11th and 12th centuries
A shift in locus of power from clergy to scientist occurred over several centuries, and this shift both featured (and was mediated by) the continued shift towards predominantly rational ways of knowing. Huff writes that:
What laid the foundations for the scientific revolution was Europe’s unique synthesis of Greek philosophy… Roman law… and Christian theology. (Ibid.: 317)
Huff (2003) argues that the introduction of Aristotelian thought into Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was the real point at which scientific rationalism emerged. (Ibid.: 19) Huff argues that there was a powerful intellectual and social revolution beginning at approximately the twelfth century. Reason and rationalism were valorised as a means to truth, something which was “deeply embedded in the vocabulary and discourse” of the Europeans of this period. (Ibid.: 187)
Huff states that this shift:
…was both sponsored by and motivated by the idea that the natural world is a rational and ordered universe and that man is a rational creature who is able to understand and accurately describe the universe. Whether or not men and women can solve the riddles of existence, so this view goes, they are able to advance human understanding mightily by applying reason and the instruments of rationality of the world we inhabit. (Ibid.: 1)
Further, the organised skepticism associated with science began no later than the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. Biblical criticism was common in schools and universities, where rational demonstration was valorised and believed to grant humanity the capacity of comprehending the universe and nature “with or without the aid of Scripture.” (Ibid.: 340)
At this time the shift in university education was a direct result of the re-introduction of the Aristotelian emphasis upon “explaining the world in terms of fundamental elements, causal processes, and rational enquiry.” (Ibid.: 339) For this was the cornerstone of the arts curriculum through which students passed before studying the higher faculties of law, theology and medicine. (Ibid.) This system was still in place when Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus were developing modern physics and astronomy. (Ibid.) By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries European universities were establishing a scientific curriculum “within neutral zones of intellectual autonomy which allowed philosophers and scientists to pursue their agendas free from the dictates of the central state and the religious authorities.” (Ibid.: 317-318) This represented a new naturalistic, intellectual agenda: an open forum, where scholars could ask questions, and indeed they were taught how to do so. (Ibid.: 318)
Between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, in order to aid the teaching of astronomy in universities, the “corpus astronomicus” (new scientific knowledge which included standard texts, scientific instrumentation and collections of data) was also introduced. Thus a new “arithmetic mentality” emerged. (Ibid.: 346)
A parallel legal revolution led to the creation of new forms of social interactions, group and social agency, as well as new areas of autonomy in the intellectual and political domains. Notably:
This revolution also sharply demarcated the religious domain - the moral and the ethical - from the secular state. Not least of all, these changes created both the legal and institutional foundations for the emergence of professional associations of physicians, lawyers, merchants, and, eventually, scientists.” (Ibid.: 317)
We thus see a number of processes occurring to facilitate the further development of rational ways of knowing. Open discussion and debate allowed for individual thought, thus enhancing individuality and ego-centered autonomy. Separation of the religious and secular meant that institutions and individuals were no longer burdened with the need for spiritual and mystical considerations. This represented a freeing of control of the Church, and allowed the intellectual mind and scientific method to flourish. However it also moved those very institutions and the populace further away from spiritual conceptions and intuitive ways of knowing.
The Copernican shift
The heliocentric universe as posited by Copernicus (1473-1543) was not only an intellectual shift - it was a metaphysical one which determined whether “the decision regarding truth and certitude could be claimed by anyone who was not an officially authorized interpreter of revelation.” (Ibid.: 183) As Grof (1985) states, paradigms delimit not only conceptions, but also the methods of enquiry and ways of knowing. After the Copernican revolution, the scientific method became the final arbiter of the real in western culture, and the study of scientific ideas became the core of the university curriculum. (Huff, 2003: 183)
Critically, the development of the scientific method further shifted the western world’s dominant ways of knowing. Phenomena which were not easily measured and observed effectively became less real, and intelligibility was seen as being found in the observation of matter. (Ross, 1993: 41; Grof, 1985: 19) This affected the representation of consciousness itself, which was essentially ignored until the very last years of the twentieth century because of its intangible nature. (Blackmore, 2001; Maddox, 1998: 2-3) The interplay between observation and explanation was made more explicit with the clarification of scientific method. Extra-sensory phenomena began to be left off the map. To this day a theory is not deemed a valid explanation unless it has been tested by observation or experiment. Thus all phenomena demand a physical explanation, and this includes the working of the human brain (Maddox, 1999: 2), a factor which has made both the examination and representation of integrated intelligence highly problematic within modernist science.
Thus with the coming of the enlightenment, a new philosophy emerged, based upon reason and sensory evidence. As Panek (2000) writes of the new astronomers such as Galileo:
(they)… trusted in evidence from the telescope, but they trusted in it even more when it didn’t depend on the interpretation of the observer; when it was answerable to the higher power not of ancient authority, or even to God, but of Nature; when it was quantifiable, measurable, replicable, absolute – when it was, in a word, mechanical. (Panek, 2000: 85)
Thus in a matter of decades, the Church, which had stripped away inner knowing with its denunciation of Gnosticism and mysticism (Ross, 1993), and replaced it with the divinity of the priesthood, had itself been usurped as the arbiter of ultimate knowledge. (Dossey, 1993; Laura and Leahy, 1988) Within two centuries after the positing of the heliocentric universe, “man had gone from being the apple of God’s eye to being God’s eye.” (Panek, 2000: 61)
The differences between the mechanistic representations of consciousness that are depicted in mainstream science, and the holistic representations seen in many traditional mystical and spiritual philosophies, are a direct result of the application of their polarised ways of knowing. The ancient mystics of India, Tibet, Kashmir, Japan, China and Europe, used first person methodologies, and wrote extensively about consciousness. They revealed a set of general principles considered “empirical” by some. (Wilber, 2001; Kafatos & Kafatou, 1991: 3) Thus in the East, looking in and seeing out were considered complementarities. (Kafatos and Kafatou, 1991) There was no negation of inners as is now found in Western science.
Another crucial issue was that a definite dualism emerged at the birth of the scientific era. Cartesian dualism depicted mind as separate from matter. (de Quincy, 1999) Descartes saw mind/self as knowable in isolation from others, primarily via observation and analysis. (Owusu-Bempah & Howitt, 2000: 38-39) Descartes’ dualism was integral to the birth of Newtonian science and its mechanistic and materialistic predicates. (Ross 1993: 42)
Cartesian dualism implied a split between humanity and nature, and between the individual and society. Kafatos and Kafatou argue that this damaged the “very ideals” of Western culture. (Kafatos and Kafatou, 1991: 17) Further, the new science was incapable of answering deep questions about the meaning of life and each person’s place in society. (Ibid.) This estrangement from the greater society mirrored a parallel alienation from the whole at a psychic level, as consciousness became increasingly self-fixated, and the processes of cognition became externalised and alienated from the inner dimensions of the psyche. Ultimately, mystical states of consciousness would come to be termed “nonordinary” (Grof, 1985) or “altered” (Tart, 1972), thus consecrating the status of intuitive and integrated perception as “other”.
The enlightenment was ultimately a victory for the materialists who rejected transcendent phenomena. All “other worlds” were denied. (Wilber, 2000b) The spiritual basis of Western society, which had been built upon the philosophy of Christ, was attacked and ultimately dismantled by the scientific community. This severed the link between the divine and humanity and nature. (Kafatos and Kafatou, 1991: 17) The result was that “there was no way to actually reconnect the self with a “holistic cosmos.” (Wilber, 2000b: 370) Enlightenment space ultimately banished all hierarchy, non-locality and divinity from the cosmos in favor of a clockwork, mechanistic atomism.
Zohar (1994) argues that prior to Descartes, thinkers had used reason to ask fundamental questions such as what were the most important values, and what constitutes a good life (Zohar, 1994). Ideas were judged as rational according to whether they made sense within a holistic and broader context. However, after Descartes and the seventeenth century rationalists, reason became associated with logic and mathematical truth.
The rationalists versus the empiricists
The enlightenment debate between the rationalists such as Descartes, and the British empiricists such as Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke established a precedent that is still seminal in consciousness and intelligence theory in the contemporary world. (Gardner et al., 1996: 33) Locke and Hume argued that the contents of the mind could be explained entirely in terms of sensory inputs. Their argument was predicated upon the idea of the mind as “tabula rasa” or a blank slate, with the environment determining mind and personality. (Ross, 1993: 115) These assumptions would be echoed in the early to mid years of the twentieth century, when behaviorists postulated similar notions. (Ross, 1993: 115) Notably Hobbes’ and Locke’s individualistic and fragmented representations of mind and self became the philosophical basis of the western state. (Owusu-Bempah & Howitt, 2000)
Kant, like other rationalists, argued that the mind lacked a material substrate, and thus could not be examined empirically. Yet he also held the view that knowledge was dependent upon sensory experience. He claimed that the ways that this knowledge is acquired is innately determined. Kant’s ideas formed a vital and influential impact upon various branches of psychology such as Piaget’s developmental conceptions. (Gardner et al., 1996: 35-36)
The instruments of reason
As western science developed, both questions and answers were largely driven by the developments of a new instrumentation. (Jardine, 2000: 9) The ideas that were generated quickly began to spread to other disciplines: botany, geography, geology, mineralogy, zoology, physiology and pharmacology. (Panek, 2000: 73)
At the beginning of the scientific revolution, the Copernican model had placed the sun at the centre of the universe. (Panek, 2000) The effect was great. Before the publication of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius in 1610 the Copernican universe stretched as far as Saturn, with the sun as the centre of the universe. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the universe had expanded until it had become “exactly one galaxy big.” (Panek, 2000: 123); and by January 5th, 1996, that number had expanded by approximately forty billion times, the number of estimated galaxies revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope. (Panek, 2000: 1)
Prior to the invention of such instruments, the frontiers of knowledge had belonged to philosophers and sages, predominantly employing what Wilber (2001) refers to as the eyes of reason and contemplation. However Wilber points out that the map of reality which emerged from the enlightenment depicted the universe in “empirical and monological” terms. (Wilber, 2000a: 226). This included a “well intentioned but deeply confused attempt to understand consciousness… by putting (it) under the microscope of the monological gaze.” (Ibid.) The result was the evaporation of all “interior depths” because they could not be seen with reductionist apparatus. Thus “they were pronounced nonexistent or illusory or derivative or epiphenomenal – all polite words for ‘not really real.’” (Ibid.) Apparatus commonly employed in modern brain research - such as magnetic resonance imaging equipment and the electroencephalograph continue this process.
Galileo, Newton, Kepler and the enlightenment “scientists” shifted the focus and the power firmly back to the sensory-motor domain, aided by the advanced instrumentation and mathematics which they employed. Galileo stated that he placed his faith “not in ancient tomes, but in close observations and personal consecration…” (quoted in Panek, 2000: 72) It was sensory evidence of “the great book of nature” that became the ultimate purveyor of truth. (Ibid.)
The telescope, the microscope, the spectroscope, and ultimately computer-aided means of information processing took human perception from inners to outers; the cosmos became closer even as inner worlds diminished. The world of faith, divinity and even philosophy was relegated to secondary status, and often derided as limited, irrelevant or even dangerous. (Panek, 2000)
Industrialisation, secularism and the ego
The influence of the industrialisation of western society and emergence of the secular state had a profound affect on the western mind and its relationship with nature, the cosmos and the divine. Such effects have included the establishment of an increasingly utilitarian education system, the desacralisation of space, and the reinforcement of ego-centered consciousness - all of which contributed to the entrenchment of the western rationalist hegemony.
The great growth of urban centers and their industries during the industrialisation of society created a demand to identify and train individuals with the capacity to manage the social and economic challenges that were occurring. (Gardner et al. 1996: 41) This would eventually lead to the development of “technoscience” (Pickstone, 2000), which in itself would radically alter the way that humanity saw itself, and the universe (Ibid.) and contribute to the entrenchment of the hegemony of rationality.
The industrialisation of society compounded the movement towards ego-centered, individualistic and competitive modes of consciousness and their preferred rational ways of knowing. It “bred the philosophy of atheistic materialism.” (Ross, 1993: 35) Comparisons can be made with the mechanistic paradigm, which “endorses individualism, egoistic emphasis, competition, and the principle of ‘survival of the fittest’” as normal and healthy. Cooperation, synergy and ecological factors are not assigned value in this model. (Grof 1985: 27; also Loye, 2004b)
This individualism and egoism was compounded by the separation of church and state. (Laura and Leahy, 1988) No longer were spirituality and God the focus of the typical person’s life. Christian theology was questioned, and the individual became the center of the universe. (Kafatos and Kafatou, 1991; 17) Divine medieval space was replaced with a more mundane perspective. In order to validate commercial enterprise, various thinkers (most notably Adam Smith) developed critiques and political ideologies which supported commercial enterprise. These ideologies undermined the validity and power of the estate-based society, with its static, hierarchical and divine predicates. (Shapiro, 1992: 13) Thus Adam Smith replaced “piety with calculation.” (Shapiro, 1992: 13) Later, the development of early psychology and behaviourism would be deeply influenced by “the exploratory and exploitative drives of nineteenth century capitalism.” (Ross, 1993: 116)
The modern secular state not only eliminated hierarchical social structure, but also rejected the spiritual and metaphysical framework upon which it was predicated. The focus became economy and work, and mathematical and abstract modes of operation became institutionalised even as “calculation” superseded divination.
The Present: Towards the modern mind
By the mid-eighteenth century at the dawn of the modern era, scientific knowledge in western society had developed predominantly rational ways of knowing - classificatory, experimental, linguistic/philosophical, and mathematical. The door was then open for empirical science’s rational ways of knowing to entrench their hegemony on the various discourses on life (biology), mind (psychology) and intelligence.
Biology and the mechanisation of life and mind
Mechanistic assumptions came to dominate biology and thus biological perspectives on consciousness (Dossey, 2001; Grof, 2000), and modern cognitive psychology became “a handmaiden to neuroscience.” (Maddox, 1999: 278)
The mid nineteenth century publication of Darwin’s theory of evolution had a massive impact upon biology, science in general and also upon ways of knowing. (Gardner et al., 1996: 39; Maddox, 1996: 18) Darwin permanently changed humanity’s perspective of its place in nature by demonstrating that all life on the earth is the product of the same processes - chance variation and natural selection. (Maddox, 1998: 235) By the mid-twentieth century the neo-Darwinian paradigm became “entrenched seemingly beyond all contesting in the textbooks from grade school through graduate studies.” (Loye, 200 4a: 6) The theory confirmed a link between humans and great apes and nature in general, and needed no place for God. It thus reinforced the Copernican Principle. (Grof, 1985; 21; Maddox, 1998: 7) Notable is the paradigmatic exclusion of the contribution to the initial development of evolutionary theory by Darwin’s cotemporary Alfred Lord Wallace, who “fell from scientific favor” by engaging in “dubious interests” such as spiritualism and the possibility of alien life. (Bryson, 2003: 389)
The work in genetics of Mendel helped establish modern biology, and like Pasteur’s work, represented a further vindication of reductionism and focus upon the world of the very small. The inevitable implication from Mendel’s work was that cells are the essential units of living things. (Maddox, 1998: 18) Specifically Mendel’s concept of dominant and recessive genes was significant, as it enabled the mathematical prediction of inherited characteristics. (Gardner et al., 1996: 53) Notably, Mendalian conceptions became a popular way to describe human characteristics, including intelligence. (Gardner et al, 1996: 54)
Crick and Watson’s construction of a DNA molecule in the 1960’s had a tremendous and pervasive effect upon science in general, and especially biology, psychiatry, and thus psychology. (Maddox, 1999: 20) Indeed the practical and intellectual implications of the structure of DNA “are without precedent in the whole of science.” (Ibid.: 195) When Crick and Watson built their model of the DNA molecule, ontogeny had finally been bought within the bounds of rational enquiry. (Maddox, 1999) Writes Maddox:
That was the springboard for a detailed explanation of what has proved to be the universal bio-chemical machinery of living things, which continues still at breakneck pace. (Ibid.: 20. Italics added)
The death of vitalism, animism, pantheism, panentheism and mysticism was seemingly complete; for finally the random mutation of the gene - seen as the overriding “driving force” of nature (Dawkins, 1976, 1987) - was then made material, sensible and therefore observable and empirical.
Thus in the nineteenth century and beyond “How?” become the overriding question, not “Why?” (Maddox, 1999: 9) The very questions upon which spiritual discourses were founded had been rendered effectively obsolete by reductionist biology and the dominant rational ways of knowing which underpinned it. The alternative musings of the romantic movement throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were ignored within dominant scientific discourse at this time. This included the romantics’ valorisation of affective experience, individual subjectivity and the “transmuting power of the relationship between subject and object.” (Buckley, 2001: 458)
The beginnings of modern psychology and intelligence theory
Kant insisted that consciousness could not be studied objectively. Yet later anatomical and physiological investigations of the nervous system revealed clear links between human abilities and brain structure. (Gardner 1996: 36, 37) The period from the 1860s until the early 1890s saw the wide deployment of experiments using complications tasks, reaction times and the subtractive procedures. (Ibid.: 37)
The research of German anatomist and phrenologist Francis Gall (in the early nineteenth century) implied that the development of the cerebral cortex was linked to enhanced human and mammalian capabilities. Other European physicians and scientists were revealing the relationship between brain damage and impaired mental and linguistic functions. These individuals included Marc Dax, Paul Broca, Carl Wernicke, and Hermann von Helmholtz. (Ibid.: 36-37) When Helmholtz demonstrated that nerve impulses travel at 100 metres per second, he effectively grounded the brain, and thus consciousness in the physical world. The way was then open to research the mind at a physical level, in line with the tenets of western materialism. (Ibid.)
William Wundt, in part, attempted to study consciousness empirically. For Wundt even religion, language and customs could be explained as consisting of “elements.” Individuals were the units that developed culture and transmitted it from one generation to the next, moving from simpler to more advanced cultures over time. (Gardner, 1996: 38) Wundt’s empiricism mirrored the methodologies of physics, and was a seminal incursion point of mechanistic paradigm into psychological theory, as his methods were widely copied throughout Europe and North America. (Gardner et al., 1996: 38) Yet notably Wundt’s more humanistic Volkerpsychologie (cultural psychology) was largely forgotten as American psychology became predominant; a process which would later be mirrored in the Americans’ over-emphasis of the rational components of Freud and the downplaying of his spiritual predilections. (Bettleheim, 2001)
Francis Galton’s work in the mid to late nineteenth century was crucial in developing intelligence and aptitude tests. He applied statistics to the study of intelligence, a trend which continues to this day. These tests focused on sensory modalities. (Gardner et al., 1996: 51) Meanwhile Alfred Binet was more interested in comprehension, judgment, and the capacity for reason and inventiveness. (Gardner et al 1996: 49) Notably, these two psychologists avoided any deeper reflective processes that might require introspection or even mildly non-ordinary states of consciousness. The tendency of some of those who later employed Binet’s tests was to interpret the IQ score as a single universal measure of intelligence of an individual. The IQ score became “reified.” (Ibid.: 50).
Freudian psycho-dynamics have also profoundly influenced contemporary understandings of the human psyche. (Vandermeer, 1996) Like the behaviourists, Freud’s model was essentially linear and one of stimulus and response, but with the unconscious and its intricacies as the focus. (Goleman, 1986: 57-60) Notably, Freud failed to account for transpersonal experience. (Grof, 1985, 1992) Freud’s major contribution to knowledge is his tool of free association, (Wilber, 2001: 52) an interrogative process which mirrors the Socratic method, and is still the basic tool of psychoanalysis. Significantly, by mid century Freud’s more humanistic and spiritually inclined contemporary Carl Jung was widely rejected in academia and even derided, reflecting the predominance of mechanistic thinking. (Ross, 1993)
Towards the mid-twentieth century
The emergence of behaviourism had a vital influence upon the development of psychological theory and practice in the twentieth century. (Dossey, 1999; Gardner et al., 1996; Ross 1993: 112-113). It emerged in a time of dominance of mechanistic thinking, where “science was focusing its materialistic analytic beam on just about everything”. (Ross,1993: 115) At this time all mind was being reduced to matter by mainstream scientific thought and represented as materialistic epiphenomena. (Ross, 1993: 115) In psychology introspectionists’ claims were being attacked as subjective, and it was thought that self-articulated reports of one’s own consciousness were not dependable. Instead, objective verification, modeled on the data-specific disciplines of physicists and chemists were felt to be more accurate. (Gardner et al, 1996: 52) Behaviourists wanted to make psychology rigorous and scientific, and avoid nebulous ideas such as “plans, images, consciousness, schemata, thoughts, ideas and the mind.” (Ibid.) It denied the mental and spiritual; and even consciousness in totality - “an audacity which could only have been countenanced in a society falling into the hypnotic trance of atheistic materialism.” (Ross 1993: 112) Behaviourism was an almost perfect projection of the mechanistic paradigm, where “the human organism is viewed as a rather complex but totally reactive mechanism.” (Wilber, 2001: 50)
The conceptions of Jean Piaget have deeply influenced developmental psychology, and so have the information and computer models of consciousness. Yet Piaget made no attempt to observe or measure any effect or process involving spiritual or reflexive inner dimensions. Piaget used the scientist as the basic model of the learner. (Gardner and others, 1996: 113) Piaget’s method clinique was a dialogical question and answer method modeled from Freud. (Wilber, 2000b) Thus the process was heavily verbal/linguistic, and did not allow for the non-ordinary states of consciousness which facilitate mystical experience. In the wake of the successes of Piaget, other researchers such as Kohlberg, Loevinger, Broughton, and Maslow also employed a dialogic approach (Wilber, 2001: 54), thus perpetuating a method which often obfuscated the inner, the intuitive, and the transpersonal.
The neuroscience which dominates modern cognitive psychology was becoming well established by 1949, when psychologist Donald O. Hebb declared a finding that remains the dominant position in neuroscience. (Dossey, 1993)
Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural function are perfectly correlated. There is no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the brain now and then and make neural cells do what they would not do otherwise… One cannot logically be determinist in physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology. (quoted in Dossey, 1993: 138)
Hebb’s materialistic position that the machinations of individual brains and consciousness itself are inseparable remains the foundation of physiological psychology. (Dossey, 1993: 139) The lineage has continued into recent times. Francis Crick epitomised this with his “astonishing hypothesis” that “everything about you” and “all aspects of experience …can be explained by neurons.” (BBC, 2001; Crick, 1994) In this way psychology (and thus intelligence theory) has been restricted by the very same parameters that have increasingly restricted theories of consciousness and the mind – only fixed, measurable, isolated and preferably microscale entities are permitted to qualify as causal; and the neuron is the perfect fit.
Ironically it has been the publication of Crick’s Astonishing Hypothesis (1994) which has been crucial in the re-introduction of the concept of consciousness into recent scientific discourse. (Maddox, 1999) Notably, it is Crick’s mechanistic hypothesis and his methods (microscale focus upon the neuron) that establish the validity of his thesis within dominant consciousness discourse. This epitomises the self-perpetuating and self-obfuscating hegemony of dominant paradigms in general: only when a conception conforms to the paradigmatic parameters, and is explicated via its preferred ways of knowing, and shaped according to the agreed upon preconceptions, will it be acknowledged as legitimate. In short Crick’s hypothesis is not at all astonishing. Its lineage can be traced back through the history of western civilisation
Summary of the past and present
Thus within the dominant reductionist methods of neuroscience, the concept of integrated intelligence has effectively been excluded. For in such a science there is no intelligence as a property of the individual - only as a description of behaviour (Nash, 2005: 7) or as an emanation of the neuron, as verified through experiment. The introspectionists and the mystics remain largely silenced.
The Future: Three Scenarios
Paradigms lock the perception of individuals, institutions and civilisations into simplistic and linear modes of thinking. The present is often viewed as an ineluctable process of modernisation whereby falsehoods are discarded and the givens of the current discourse verified. The same is true of modern science. (Kuhn, 1970) Thus Richard Dawkins sees the elimination of all non-material representations of mind (which he sees as one of “the last vestiges of vitalism”) as an inevitable outcome of scientific research in the future. (Dawkins, 1999: 63) Yet the constant interplay of intuitive and rational cognitive modes throughout the western world since the time of the ancient Greeks suggests that a purely mechanistic and rational discourse would be short-lived.
Thus these three possibilities for the future of intelligence and mind are posited in the knowledge that none of them is likely to be a static and unchanging end point, and that all three are likely to gain precedence at different times.
Scenario One: The Mind Machine. In this scenario mechanistic representations of mind and intelligence continue to dominate until such time as the other discourses are effectively silenced altogether. Mind is represented in neuro-physiological modalities with the computer continuing to be the defining mechanistic metaphor. As the mechanistic predilections of Dawkins (Ibid.), Dennett (1991), Jensen (1998), and Murry and Hernstein (1994) prove correct, an interface between human and machine becomes inevitable. Intelligence continues to be defined in terms of the mechanists’ preferred ways of knowing – mathematical/logical and verbal/linguistic, with the experiment as the ultimate purveyor of truth. Thus it would seem likely that in this scenario that IQ theory and the domain-general thesis would continue to strengthen, with factor analysis determining what constitutes valid cognitive modes. Intuitive and spiritual representations of mind cease to be posited on the paradigmatic map, relegated to a place in history, or depicted as a vestige of an outmoded misunderstanding of human consciousness.
Scenario Two: The Soft Mind Machine. This is the more gentle version of the mind machine. Mechanistic models of mind continue to dominate, yet various theorists continue to critique it, and the shortcomings of the mechanistic model become more apparent. The limitations of factor analysis, materialism and the computer metaphor are recognised. Theorists permit feelings, emotions and inferential intuition to re-enter the discourse. Nonetheless, the dominant discourse baulks at permitting representations of mind that suggest the possibility of brain-transcendent consciousness and integrated intelligence. Yet the ideas and conceptualisations of the latter are not so radical that they are incomprehensible. Thus in the soft mind machine scenario the mechanists essentially retain control, but “the others” are allowed a voice within the discourse as “the unfashionables”, and tolerated.
The Integrated Mind. In this possible future, mainstream academic and educational intuitions acknowledge that the interplay between intuitive and the rational ways of knowing is not an either/or dynamic; nor a simple linear process whereby the false ideas of the ignorant “others” will be successfully eliminated. Intelligence is redefined to incorporate the intuitive, the immeasurable and the spiritual. Intuitive ways of knowing (including classical intuition) are permitted a place in universities and schools, both as valid theory and as method. Alongside more traditional scientific methods, scientific research permits the employment of transpersonal research methods: including insight, deep questioning, systematic contemplation, non-ordinary states of consciousness; and even dreams, visions and shamanistic processes. Thus the individual would draw upon integrated intelligence as part of the research process and learning in general.
The Integrated Mind would be a fundamental challenge to mainstream science as it exists in the early 21st century. So paradigmatically dissimilar is it to current mainstream discourses on mind and intelligence that the infiltration of such conceptions and methods would appear to be a long way off at the present moment. The two academic disciplines which most heavily feature integrated mind - transpersonal psychology and parapsychology - are still fringe discourses. In mainstream consciousness and intelligence theory the major debates are generally representative of a struggle between scenarios one (Crick, 1994; Jensen, 1998; Murry & Hernstein, 1994) and two (de Bono, 1999; Gardner, 1993; Goleman; 1999); with scenario three (Grof, 2000; Wilber, 2000c; Zohar, 2000) a generally distant aside.
Yet futures have a habit of being unpredictable. The stoics and skeptics of ancient Greece may well have seen the emergence of mechanistic depictions of mind and cosmos as inevitable. It is less likely that they could have predicted the endless waxing and waning of the interplay of the intuitive and rational, the mechanistic and the spiritual in the more than two millennia which have followed them, up to the present year of 2005 when their particular worldview is once again dominant. The pendulum may once again swing back towards the intuitive and the spiritual.
Only the futures will tell.
Notes:
1. See Anthony (2005a) for an expanded explanation.
2. See Anthony (2005b) for more on the concept of receptivity.
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