25 June 2007

Habitude is a new philosophical concept (see Introduction) with world-changing/saving potential (see ‘Habitude studies’ below).

About twenty years ago the biologist Rupert Sheldrake came up with a new science which was a revolutionary alternative to the mechanistic world-view. He may have realised that these ideas had world-changing/saving potential, but devising experimental proofs diverted him from exploring that potential. Science, in any case, is all about discovering – actually probably inventing – explanations for how the world works, and changing the world by bringing in often destructive new technology. It is within the remit of philosophy to change the world for the better, but only through awakening people to new understanding of themselves in society, and how they/we got where we are.

The idea of ‘saving the world’ has associations with religious evangelism, so the first thing to say about habitude is that it is an atheistic concept. There are some very vocal atheists in the public arena today who declare themselves atheists to pursue a mission of saving the world from religion. The two best known atheist evangelists are Richard Dawkins of ‘selfish gene’ fame, and Daniel Dennett who ‘explained consciousness’, both popularly published theoretical scientists. They have been joined by Christopher Hitchens, with God is Not Great: The Case Against Religion ( Atlantic, 2007), reviewed by A.C. Grayling, in ‘The New Review’ (The Independent on Sunday, 24 June 2007), p.35). Grayling says:

Hitchens begins by demolishing the metaphysical claim that the universe contains any supernatural agency or agencies, for once this is done and religions are seen for what they are, namely man-made constructions whose original point was to supply the ignorance of mankind’s pre-scientific infancy, the main point can be tackled, which is to expose their many falsehoods, harms and dangers.

It would seem that Hitchens, and Grayling too, see religion from a scientific perspective, with the ‘God of the gaps’ idea. They ignore or are unaware of religion as, historically, a social binder and repository of accepted belief and practice covering all aspects of community life, and, following the breakdown of rooted community, a means to identity as a member of an often dispersed and illusory ‘community’ of fellow believers. They also ignore religion as a means to avoid mortality and the prospect of oblivion. The fact that atheist proselytisers put the emphasis on religion as a substitute for science, rather than on the more relevant and compelling reasons for religion and being religious, is highly significant. What it points to is that science itself is religious: it requires the existence of God, because science is based on the idea that the universe can, and can only, be explained using reason and mathematics, which implies that it was created by a human-like intelligence. As someone wrote in a letter to The Guardian recently: ‘[T]he monotheistic world-view is perfectly suited for the emergence of science since it posits a rational order of which we are stewards and provides a motive for the pursuit of truth that science ultimately is.’ I first met this idea from Professor John Polkinghorn, who concludes the Epilogue to his book, The Particle Play: An account of the ultimate constituents of matter (Oxford: Freeman, 1979), with this:

In the creation myth of Genesis, Adam is given lordship over nature in the naming of the animals. The pursuit of science is an aspect of the imago dei. Therefore it does not seem to me strange that these words which I have written while Professor of Mathematical Physics in the University of Cambridge will be published when I am an ordinand studying for the Anglican priesthood at Westcott House. (Polkinghorn, p.126)

The compatibility and interdependence of religion and science is developed further in a new book: The Language of God, by Francis Collins (Pocket Books, 2007), of which a reviewer says:

Collins’s book aims to persuade us that it’s perfectly possible to hold religious and scientific beliefs at the same time. He trained in astrophysics and medicine, before achieving worldwide prominence as the leader of the Human Genome Project; he found God in his twenties while tending to patients. If he says it’s possible to believe in both scientific progress and God, then clearly it is.

But he also tries to argue that there are intellectually compelling reasons for the scientifically minded to have religious faith, and ultimately fails. The claim that there exists in humans an innate moral law and an innate sense of spiritual yearning, which can’t be accounted for by Darwinian evolution, has been refuted by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and many others. Collins’s other main point – that the universe is too finely tuned to have been an accident – does have the rationalists stumped. But if it was created by God then God is an even more perfect – and thus implausible – entity. Still, Collins’s arguments are thought- provoking, and his call for a truce between the two cultures is appealing. (‘The New Review’, in The Independent on Sunday, 24 June 2007, p.45)

It would seem from this that Collins and the reviewer of his book are as lost in the confusion of science and religion as are Dawkins and Dennett. Habitude offers a way out. The concept of habitude sets aside all of that in favour of an understanding of the universe as having essential attributes which we experience ourselves and are associated with life: memory, habit, growth, and evolution. By the concept of habitude, such attributes are not confined to life as such, with its hydrocarbon-based forms in complex interdependency on a solar energy fed planetary ecosystem, but are present in all that exists, and ‘all that exists’ necessarily includes all that has ever existed; there is no past , nothing passes or is forgotten or forgets, and the universe accumulates; what we know as the present being the surface of ongoing growth.

Is habitude ‘true’? Religion and science used to determine what kind of philosophy could hope to stand. Religion and science used to hold a monopoly on this thing called ‘truth’, which was either received from on high or proven by experiment, in both cases adjudicated by authorities. Reconcile and then abandon both religion and science and new philosophy is liberating and liberated. It doesn’t need to be ‘true’. What it does need is to be useful.

Why or how is habitude potentially world-changing/saving? Because if the power of habit in human society were recognised as the same kind of stuff as is fundamental to the whole of existence, we would be able also to see that our habits of thought drive us but can be resisted. Notions which are accepted as practical necessities and well-nigh inevitable, such as the systems under which the world operates: capitalism, the nation state, the market and money/finance, and its rules and ideals such as respect for individual human rights, including the right to own and protect one’s property – all the ‘stuff’ of modern society – bind us with a universal type of compulsion. But nothing is absolutely determined. Habits can change. Revolution is possible.

Habitude studies

Because it is a new concept, any discussion of habitude requires contextualising, by pointing to its origins in Sheldrake’s science, and also drawing attention to the various assumptions and fixed attitudes, explicit terms, key words, and ordinary language, which support, often invisibly, the present model of the universe, thus acting against the new ideas being taken seriously. Once those assumptions are loosened, and the invisible language revealed, one can begin to study habitude itself. Habitude studies, as applied to world change, would consist of mapping the habits of thought and behaviour amongst groups of people in society, over the course of human life on earth. A set of criteria would need to be established in order to discuss the strength of sets of habits. Habits can be thought of as having dimensions, including how ancient they are, how persistent over what durations, how recent, how prevalent and so on.

However, there is a long way to go before habit can be seen as a universal attribute, worthy of study, and with revolutionary and world-saving potential. The prevailing mindset is very deeply embedded in the modern world, due to having been developed over a long period and applied to all that has power over our lives: science and religion, the law and the state, politics and economics. One sentence from the Preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (see context) illustrates the kind of thinking which habitude challenges:

So far as nature is concerned, people grant that it is nature as it is which philosophy has to bring within its ken, that the philosopher’s stone lies concealed somewhere, somewhere within nature itself, that nature is inherently rational, and that what knowledge has to investigate and grasp in concepts is this actual reason present in it; not the formations and accidents evident to the superficial observer, but nature’s eternal harmony, its harmony, however, in the sense of the law and essence immanent within it.

When scientists like Dawkins and Dennett attack religion but embrace orthodox science they are throwing out the baby but keeping the dirty bathwater. They may be right that it was a filthy baby, stained with centuries of blood and tears, but the stuff that remains is suffocating and toxic. It is vital we recognise that, without faith in a rational Creator, there is no need to suppose that the universe behaves predictably and obeys rational laws. It is that mindset which makes people obedient to the laws that govern us, and the whole superstructure of authority, inevitability, and obligation. If we were to give up all that bossy nonsense, we could focus on ‘the formations and accidents evident to the superficial observer’, that is the living world as we know and experience it, and could then design communities and systems of land use which are viable and sustainable.

Last updated 29 June 2007

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