Reinventing the Sacred
Book: Stuart Kauffman. Reinventing the Sacred.
Review
John Hagel:
"Stuart Kauffman’s book “Reinventing the Sacred” really got me thinking about creativity and the sacred. The book is an impressive stroll by a deeply thoughtful scientist through many domains from the microscopic to the cosmic, with a particular focus on the common patterns emerging in the universe, the biosphere and human culture. Kauffman observes:
- “We live in a universe, biosphere, and human culture that are not only emergent but radically creative. We live in a world whose unfolding we often cannot prevision, prestate, or predict – a world of explosive creativity on all sides. This is a central part of the new scientific worldview.”
Throughout the book he offers a sustained critique of reductionism. Instead, he stresses the importance of emergence as a way to begin to understand the dynamics that we shape - and that in turn shape us. He is also deeply skeptical of universal laws, focusing instead on understanding the situatedness of the objects under discussion. I found it refreshing that, in discussing situatedness, he puts equal emphasis on context, the surroundings at any point in time, and history, the trajectories that have been traveled by the object.
Kauffman also highlights the central role of agency in emergence, observing that “ . . .we are co-creators of a universe, biosphere, and culture of endlessly novel creativity.” He argues that agency helps to define meaning and in turn gives rise to values. His book is an ambitious attempt to overcome four “injuries” splitting humanity apart at the seams – the divisions between science and the humanities, facts and values, secularism and spirituality and divisions across diverse value systems.
Kauffman follows the admonition of Scott Momaday, a Kiowa poet, to “reinvent the sacred.” Kauffman seeks to demonstrate that “in this ceaseless creativity in the universe, biosphere, and human culture and history we can reinvent the sacred, and find a new view of God as the fully natural, awesome, creativity that surrounds us.”
Kauffman later clarifies what he means by sacred: “The word sacred is, for many, tied inextricably with the concept of the divine, but in many instances it is used to express an immense respect or reverence. . . . . if we are the authors of what is to be held sacred then we will engage in mature reasoning about what is sacred. Might it be the case, then that at this stage in human cultural evolution we are, at last, ready to assume responsibility for our own choices of what is to be sacred?”
Kauffman goes further and asks: “Do we use the word God meaning that God is the natural creativity in the universe? . . . How dare we use the word God to stand for the natural creativity in the universe? Yet I say yes, we can and should choose to do so, knowing full well that we make this choice. . . .This sense of God enlarges Western humanism for those who do not believe in a Creator God. It invites those who hold to a supernatural Creator God to sustain that faith, but to allow the creativity in the universe to be a further source of meaning and membership. I hope this sense of God and the sacred can be a safe, spiritual space we can all share.” (http://edgeperspectives.typepad.com/edge_perspectives/2010/02/reinventing-the-sacred.html)