The Curious Popularity of DAVID BOHM and “SCIENTIFIC” MYSTICISM
These days I am puzzled. I have noticed an increasing occurrence in the global word cloud of organisational design conversations (or the portion I happen to be part of) of words like “quantum”, “entanglement”, “oneness”, “daoism”, “spiritual” and so on. Even academics have started citing researchers like Varela, Maturana, Sheldrake, Bohm, Capra etc as if the esoteric portions of their (later) works could offer scientific underpinnings to a modern philosophical discourse.
I fear this is highly questionable, if not completely misguided. Above all, let me admit that I am in no position to judge the quality of their — and similar authors’s — scientific contributions to the natural sciences. Based on their peers’ suggestions, I believe much of their research to be exceptional. However, I do strongly believe that none of their “passages” from science to spiritualism deserve the same credit that goes to their scientific works. Fact is that natural science theories can never be simply transferred to philosophical ideas. I am surprised that many people seem to take the former as a guarantor for the latter — in spite of the “category mistake”.
Let me give 3 specific examples: a) Bohm’s rebellious and long-standing refutation of the Copenhagen consensus deserves interest. However, his “quantum mysticism” — the idea that quantum entanglement “proves” an “implicate order” — is by any standard pure speculation. By the same reasoning I can posit the presence of an almighty God. b) Varela’s notion of “autopoiesis” and the concept of operational closure and structural coupling are very interesting in biology. However, as he warned Luhmann himself, their translation into social science is highly problematic. Yet, people continue to quote his theory as proof of “living systems” — whereas ofc nothing could be farther from the truth -the theory is, by any definition, a suggestion of a “living machine” where inner adaptations are (deterministically) triggered by external stimuli. Most problematically, there is no empirical evidence, nor CAN there be -based on their epistemological assertions. c) Finally, Sheldrake’s idea of “morphic resonance”. As in the other cases, the idea is undoubtedly exciting, yet not only is it absolutely unproven — it has been disproven many times (I believe the editor of Nature once suggested that if ever there was a book that should be burned, because of being unscientific, it was Sheldrake’s).
So why are the esoteric theories of these authors gaining in popularity, in spite of their highly questionable empirical or logical grounds? Why do people crave to give scientific credence to spiritual beliefs? Not even to mention how easily people jump from there to Eastern thought systems like Daoism or Buddhism — mostly, without any understanding of the respective metaphysics. Maybe evidence does (not) matter much as long as it can justify our escape from “reality”?
From: “Sunday Morning Thoughts on LinkedIn” — I will report some of the interesting LinkedIn dialogues here, paraphrased and applying the Chatham House Rule — trying to protect some of the sentiments, thoughts, and above all our stimulating discussions from oblivion ;-)
