CONTEMPORARY ALCHEMY

Prague Castle, like most everything else connected to tourism in Prague midsummer, was too crowded. My guidebook warned me to get there early. Instead I spent part of the morning exploring the once funky, hidden-in-the-hill neighborhood above the castle. I was shown around by an older Czeck woman and her daughter I met by chance while asking for directions to the castle. They were delightful and happy at the opportunity to practice their English.

It was difficult even finding where to pay the entrance fee to the castle complex. The audiotour I purchased with the hope it would provide structure to my visit was so detailed, or perhaps poorly done, it left me more rather than less disoriented. I was more than relieved when my due diligence was complete and holes had been punched adjacent to the five or so sites included on my entrance ticket.

I continue to feel out of sorts even after my unofficial sightseeing ended. My rather pleasureless wandering in the gardens behind the castle was punctuated by two sights that at least momentarily pulled me from my funk. One was of a striking couple, both very thin and willowy, dressed alike and all in black. They fit together so well they seemed like twins--- like adjacent puzzle pieces. The other was of a nun dressed entirely in white walking meditatively halfway down the long peaceful grassy slope that went from the palace gardens back to the town.

Heading away from the crowds, I took an obscure wall-lined backroad down from the castle. I was not sure where it would lead, but the views were lovely and I hoped for the best.

Halfway down---there was the twin-like couple. They were peering intently through a gate, the woman taking pictures. My camera was ready and I took several shots of them.

I was intrigued by the idea of capturing this fascinating couple taking pictures of something unknown. They finished their shooting and moved on. Delighted to have caught them on film I forgot about everything else. Only when I came level with the gate did I remember the mystery. This is what they were looking at.

Wolfgang Pauli on Kepler and the Transition from Alchemy to Classical Science

When I opened my new guidebook at random, of all things, it happened to fall on a page listing an alchemical museum. I was delighted at the thought of visiting on my upcoming trip to Prague what was billed as the only alchemical museum in the world. Yet when I looked a second time I saw it was closed for the summer. Instead I had to satisfy myself with rereading an article on alchemy by physicist Wolfgang Pauli I had found very thought provoking. He uses the work of Johanus Kepler as a lens through which to view the transition from alchemy to the classical scientific perspective.

Pauli is best known for his work on the spin of elementary particles. As a particle physicist he grappled closely with the wave particle duality. He also was a patient and collaborator of Carl Jung. He worked with Jung to integrate the intuitive, imagistic, and feeling material that came through his dreams with his much stronger thinking side. Like Jung, he came to feel that both mind and matter were manifestations of the same primary material or force prior to both. The article called "The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler" appears in a volume with an essay of Jung's on synchronicity. The book is entitled The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche and was first published in 1955.

Kepler (1571-1630) was a devout Christian with mystical tendencies as well as an important figure in the history of science. Converted to the Copernican heliocentric universe early in his career by his tutor, he became obsessed with proving that the planetary orbits were circular. He was strongly influenced by, among other things, neo-Platonic philosophy, which explored the harmonious mathematical relationships behind music and tried to generalize these to nature as a whole. Kepler saw the Divine in the regularity of geometry and saw the cosmos as what might be called Divine Geometry. The sphere was for him the most perfect geometric form. He felt its harmonious proportions encoded the Triune Christian God (with the Son standing for Creation), the relationship of the soul to the body, of God to the human soul, and, at least early on, of the sun to the planets. (The picture is a model of Kepler's early view of the solar system.) He thought the soul responded instinctively to the harmonies of the sphere because, as Pauli puts it, by virtue of its circular form [it] is an image of God, in Whom these proportions and the geometric truths following therefrom exist from all eternity. " Below are a few passages from Harmonices mundi, Kepler's book on "the harmony of the worlds."

... the movement of a point located in the center [of the sphere] to a single point on the surface, represents the first beginning of creation, emulating the eternal generation of the Son in that the center flows out towards infinitely many points of the whole surface, which, under the rule of the most perfect equality, is formed and described by infinitely many lines; and this straight line is, needless to say, the element of corporeal form.

The point spreads itself out over this extension so that point and surface are identical, except for the fact that the ratio of density and extension is reversed. Hence there exists everywhere between point and surface the most absolute equality, the closest unity, the most beautiful harmony[literally: breathing together!], connection, relation, proportion, and commensurability. And although Center, Surface, and Distance are manifestly Three, yet they are One, so that no one of them could be imagined to be absent without destroying the whole.

...the circle beautifully fits into the intersecting plane (of which it is the circumscribed limit) as well as into the intersected sphere by way of a reciprocal co-incidence of both, just as the mind is both inherent in the body, informing it and connecting with corporal form, and sustained by God, an irradiation as it were, that flows into the body from the divine countenance; whence it [the mind] derives its nobler nature.

Alas poor Kepler, working with the careful astronomical data collected by Tycho Brahe, found that the planetary orbits are not circular. However his commitment to geometry had not failed him since he eventually was able to show that they are elliptical. He also determined that a planet swept out equal areas of its orbit in equal time periods (click for an animation of Kepler's 2nd Law. Finally he recognized the mathematical relationship between the (mean) distance of a planet from the Sun and the size of its orbit. By doing so he found a much more complex harmony in nature, which finally enshrined the sun at the center of the universe. Kepler's work was essential to the formulation of the law of gravity by Newton, who lived from 1643 to 1727.

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The final part of Pauli’s article explores the vitriolic controversy between Kepler and his contemporary Robert Fludd, a practitioner of alchemy.

Kepler's understanding of a rational universe ultimately grounded in the harmonies of mathematics collided with the traditional alchemical view based on a “archaic-magical” apprehension of nature in which boundaries between the real and the symbolic were completely absent. Like Kepler, Fludd understood the Divine to be reflected in the cosmos, yet much more dimly. Thus the relationship between the Divine and his creation was not harmonious for Fludd and other alchemists. They saw a cosmic struggle between form as the light principle, and matter, or darkness, which dwells in the earth. This struggle could only be redeemed by the alchemical process, which releases from matter its latent light and by the same token transforms the alchemist. The pictures below, what Fludd called "hieroglyphic figures," demostrate his view of the cosmos.



Pauli writes, "Fludd never distinguishes clearly between a real, material process and a symbolical representation. Because of the analogy of the microcosm to the macrocosm the [al]chemical process is indeed at the same time a reflection of the whole universe.... After the withdrawal of the formal light principle matter remains behind as the dark principle, though it was latently present before as a part of God…. In the middle, the sphere of the sun, where these opposing principles just counterbalanced each other, there is engendered in the mystery of the [al]chymic wedding the infans solaris, which is at the same time the liberated world soul."

Quantitative measurement has no role in, and was indeed a threat to, Fludd's understanding of the universe. Pauli quotes Fludd's spirited attack on Kepler's Harmonicies mundi and defense of the alchemical approach.

...What he has expressed in many words in long discussions I have compressed into a few words and explained by means of hieroglyphic and exceedingly significant figures, not, to be sure, for the reason that I delight in pictures (as he says elsewhere), but because I…had resolve to bring together much in little and, in the fashion of the alchemists, to collect the extracted essence, to reject the sedimentary substances, and to pour what is good into its proper vessel; so that, the mystery of science having been revealed, that which is hidden may become manifest; and that the inner nature of the thing after the outer vestments have been stripped off, may be enclosed, as a precious gem set in a gold ring, in a figure best suited to its nature---a figure, that is, in which its essence can be held by eye and mind as in a mirror and without many-worded circumlocutions.

For it is for the vulgar mathematicians to concern themselves with quantitative shadows; the alchemists and Hermetic philosophers, however, comprehend the true core of the natural bodies.

...I contemplate the internal and essential impulses that issues from nature herself; he has hold of the tale, I grasp the head; I perceive the first causes, he its effects.

Kepler answers:

If you know of another mathematics (besides that vulgar one from which all those hitherto celebrated as mathematicians have received their name), that is, a mathematics that is both natural and formal, I must confess that I have never tasted of it, unless we take refuge in the most general origin of the word...and give up the quantities. Of that, you must know, I do not speak here. You, Robert, may keep for yourself its glory and that of the proofs to be found in it---and how accurate and how certain those are, that, I think you will judge for yourself without me. I reflect on the visible movements determinable by the senses themselves, you may consider the inner impulses and endeavor to distinguish them according to grades. I hold the tale but I hold in my hands; you may grasp the head mentally, though only, I fear, in your dreams. I am content with the effects, that is, the movement of the planets. If you shall have found in the very causes harmonies as limpid as are mine in the movements, then it will be proper for me to congratulate you on your gift of invention and myself on my gift of observation---that is, as soon as I shall be able to observe anything.

Pauli points out that Kepler, a transition figure, overstates the empirical impetus behind his ideas. Pauli is also unwilling to side completely with the quantitative mode that Kepler defends, lamenting what was lost in the transition to the classical science that was to come. (Even thought Newton was a devoted alchemist, he kept his scientific work and writing separate from his alchemical concerns.)

Whereas as Kepler conceives of the soul almost as a mathematically described system of resonators, it has always been the symbolical image that has tried to express, in addition, the immeasurable [emphasis added] side of experience which also includes the imponderables of the emotions and emotional evaluations. Even though at the cost of consciousness of the quantitative side of nature and its laws, Fludd’s "hieroglyphic" figures do try to preserve a unity of the inner experience of the "observer" (as we should say today) and the external processes of nature, and thus a wholeness in its contemplation....

Pauli felt psychology as well as physics was beginning to bridge the gap between the quantative and qualitative that Kepler's work helped bring about. My sense is that more than 60 years after Pauli's article, this important coming together of the quantitative and the qualitative is still just beginning.

ME, MALCOLM GLADWELL, AND A BLINK OF THE EYE

Time to get back to the Gladwell Affair. He seems to have appropriated my previously published metaphor for intuition ‘a blink of the eye’ in Blink, and the book turned into a best seller. Check out Things Are Not As They Seem

I first published the metaphor along with the unusual experience in which it came to me in 1997 in a journal article in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine titled “Towards an Understanding of Intuition and its Importance in Scientific Endeavor." (See link to paper at end; the metaphor etc. is on page 4.) The metaphor may sound obvious, but like most powerful metaphors, this is only true once you have heard it. It is also at the core of a book I have written over a period of ten years that explores the science and experience of intuition.

Here are the facts. Early in 2002, at the suggestion of a former colleague, I wrote to Tina Bennett a literary agent in New York and asked her to represent my book on intuition. In my letter I included the citation to the paper I had published on the topic---to show I was qualified to write the book. She turned me down.

In early 2005, Malcolm Gladwell her client published Blink and did not cite my paper. The title is a clear reference to the metaphor, however this is legitimate in terms of copyright law since titles are open game. He crosses the line when he uses the metaphor as a synonym for intuition in the introduction (page 17) and said " ...there can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of analysis." The line is frequently quoted.


After Blink came out, I wrote to Gladwell, Tina Bennett, the agent, and Michael Pietsch, the head of Little Brown, the publisher of the book, asking them to cite my first use of the metaphor. They declined; a lawyer informed me that both Gladwell and the agent claimed they had not seen my paper.

It would be more comfortable for me in several ways if I could believe that my work was not the source of this metaphor, which had an important part in making Gladwell book a bestseller. But, alas, this comfort was not to be.

Early on, when I was in the midst of trying to convince myself my work was not their source for the metaphor, I had one of the most unusual spiritual intuitions I have ever had. Time slowed down, and soft, other-worldly inner light illuminated the stunning message that they had indeed taken the metaphor from my work.

I find the ordinary or clearly biologically-based aspects of intuition much more arresting than its potential extraordinary aspects at this point in my life. But because of the completely unbidden, even “contrary” nature of this experience---along with its strong spiritual surround, it intrigues me. (The connection between intuition and spirituality does interest me strongly.) Most of the time, I believe what it reported is true. At the very least, I cannot just ignore its uncomfortable message.

I have decided not to sue for copyright violation---at least for the time being. Eventually should I decide to do so, I sense there is a very interesting case to be made. For anyone who might be holding their breath, rest assured it does not depend on extraordinary knowing, but rather on the copyright law and the nature of metaphor. In fact whether or not Gladwell initially saw the paper is immaterial to the copyright issue. I informed of them my prior use of the metaphor, and they declined to cite it.

My unwitting connection with Malcolm Gladwell has made my book on intuition, which is a difficult book to publish, even more so. I sense publishers are uncomfortable with the fact that I actually first published this metaphor, which has cemented Gladwell’s role as the king of the publishing world. Alas this emperor---who claims he wants "to make a better world"---may be only scantily clad.

My book is inherently difficult to publish because it includes both scientific material about intuition and intuitions about intuition. (These intuitions, like my blink of the eye experience, are very powerful and rather extraordinary in their own way, but they do not require extraordinary intuition to account for them.) I was surprised and delighted to find these two different approaches bootstrapping on each other to reveal so much more about intuition than I would have ever imagined possible. Over time, the book turned into a bridge between our two ways of knowing.

What some might see as a risky partnership in which vast culture differences spell failure, I know to be an alchemical marriage in which both sides are transformed. Sometimes having to hang out with material that is alien to one's ordinary way of thinking and seems unclear has much bigger impact than information effortlessly absorbed. This kind of hard won impact is what is needed for the transformation I am hoping to have a part in bringing about. I am also convinced that there is a large audience for the book. Most people who have more than a passing acquaintance with this material have been deeply affected by it. We are all at some level longing for the sense of wholeness that this joining promotes.

I wish that this difficult experience had not happened. But it has had a silver lining. It has forced me to retink what is really important in living. Certainly I want a sense of completion for my long project, recognition for my work, and to share what I have found with others. But I have learned that many apparently lesser things are perhaps even more important to me---most especially the simple joy of being.

When Blink first came out, I asked myself half jokingly, “ If I had to choose between enlightenment and getting my book published, which would it be?” Had I responded from the place where I usually lived then, I would have answered that getting my book published was more important.

I am in no danger of getting enlightened any time soon, but something has started to switch. I sense that certain essential oils with spiritual overtones are concentrating and growing stronger in me---as sometimes happens to herbs grown in poor soil. My wish is more and more for wisdom in my efforts to serve. I sometimes still worry about the book getting published, but for the most part I know that it will happen when the time in right

My 1997 paper on intuition has not been readily available on the web. I have decided to make it so and eventually some of my other work on intuition. Anyone tempted to use my work without attribution--or any other work--beware of the risk! Alas this risk is so easy to overlook in the rush to get ahead---and ahead---and even further ahead. Though intangible, I suspect it is substantial---at least for those who care about an open relationship with their soul.

Cool Like Who?

Experimenters trained a high-status female chimpanzee to drop her tokens into a bucket---rather than a container with a tube---to get a reward. All the other chimpanzees followed her and dropped their tokens in the bucket to get a reward. A low status-female eventually realized that she would get a reward even if she dropped her tokens in the container with the tube. No one followed her.

So here's the twist. Forget the experimenters,
since they have nothing to do with actual culture. This is what the cultural anthropologists found.

The low-status female used to favor the bucket that all the others dropped their tokens in--- actually she was the first one to drop her tokens there. The high-status female is not really a very adventurous type since she is uncomfortable getting too far out in front of the crowd. Rather she is skilled at picking up on emerging trends. In fact, she began by followed the low-status female to the bucket she was favoring and doing what she did. But since the high-status female is by definition Ms. Popular Culture, whatever she does is cool. She and everyone else who just fell in line put on their sexy shades and stood around feeling real cool.

The low-status female was not interested in being cool. A curious type, she got bored doing the same thing all the time. “Been there done that. This no longer seems to fit. I need to broaden my horizons,” she thought to herself. Besides, she didn’t particularly like wearing shades; they block out too much light and restrict depth of vision. So she followed the beat of her own drum and went to check out the other side.

Things are not as they seem

It was music to my ears. Yesterday on NPR someone actually resisted the urge to use the idiom ‘a blink of the eye.’ Seems like the phrase is everywhere nowadays. To their great credit, whoever it was instead said “in a flash."

Don't get me wrong. I love the phrase a blink of the eye and it's old-fashiony feeling. But it has come to grate on me. This is because I have an unusual relationship to it. I first published it as a metaphor for unconscious cognition and intuition in 1997 in an article entitled “Towards an understanding of intuition and its importance in scientific endeavor.” The article appeared in the journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. It was part of a very complex experience, which has had an important role in guiding my decade-long exploration of intuition.

The long and short of it---at least at one level---is that Malcolm Gladwell "scooped" me with his book BLINK. (There is a lot more to that story---in case you are wondering --- but I will save that for another day). I'm not sure that technically one can get scooped on what one has already published. But scooped I was--- in the sense that the perception is widespread that the use of the idiom in the context of intuition is original to Gladwell, which is not true.

My book is very different from BLINK (Review of BLINK). It is an attempt to plumb the depths of intuition. It explores the topic from both a scientific and experiential perspective. I am a biologist whose cognitive style is unusually intuitive. After I became interested in intuition, I had a number of unusual experiences that turned this elusive mental capacity on itself. The encounter in which 'a blink of the eye' came to me as a definition of what I called intuitive processing (the rapid thought-like unconscious cognition Galdwell describes) as well as full intuition is one of roughly 10 intuitive experiences that I explore in-depth in the book.

As a scientist, I also examine the biological and cognitive mechanisms likely to underlie intuition. Over time, rather to my surprise, the experiential and the scientific material began to integrate. The thinking and writing took a lot of hard work and went fairly slowly, but the process was very satisfying. Eventually the two approaches began, not just to integrate, but to bootstrap on each other. Each further insight in one domain tended to lead me deeper into the other. When I first began the project, it seemed a nearly impossible task, and I could not even imagine the terrain ahead. Now the book seemed to be taking on a life of its own. I started to breathe more easily.

Then came Gladwell's book! It took a while for the import of it to sink in. The most difficult moment came when I heard his book was on the bestseller list during an NPR interview with him. I realized then that, in spite of the fact that I published this intuitive definition of intuition first, for all practical purposes Gladwell now owned the metaphor. In fact, since it was the core metaphor of my book, it left me in the position of seeming to be plagiarizing Gladwell.

The next month was difficult, but it turned out to be the beginning of another journey--- one I had certainly not realized I was signing up for when I began studying intuition. Looking back, I see that one cannot delve seriously into matters that touch on spirituality----as intuition does --- without getting one's feet wet. Many people have the idea that spirituality is an attitude that we can pull out of our stash of attitudinal coveralls when we feel we need some comfort. Sometimes it is that--- and I have to admit that I have used it this way. But I've come to learn---once more---that real spirituality tends to challenge you to your very core. It is---as they say, life changing---something that seldom comes without some serious growing pains. Enough for today---