philosophy Archives - Bahai World

By Wendy M. Heller

Wendy M. Heller has published articles on Bahá’í topics and a biography of Lidia Zamenhof and was editor of The Journal of Bahá’í Studies for six years. Most recently she contributed a chapter to The World of the Bahá’í Faith (Routledge, 2022).

And how will you enquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know?
—Plato, Meno

Knowledge is valuable, but the knowledge that is prized above all, and which Aristotle called the “most perfect” of its modes, is wisdom.¹ Its worth, King Solomon himself tells us, is beyond rubies; when compared to wisdom, all the gold in the world is nothing but sand.² Yet, like gold and rubies, wisdom is rare, which accounts for its paradoxical aspect: as exemplified in the archetypal example of wisdom, the Judgment of Solomon, recounted in 1 Kings 3:16–28, it can seem completely incomprehensible—eluding ordinary understanding and resisting the analysis of reason.

Wisdom has always figured prominently in religious scriptures, and it is a frequent theme in the Sacred Texts of the Bahá’í Faith. In 1889 the Founder of the religion, Bahá’u’lláh, then confined as a religious prisoner of the Ottoman Empire in the prison city of ‘Akká, wrote a Tablet titled “Words of Paradise” (Kalimát-i-Firdawsíyyih), in which He extolled wisdom as

the greatest gift and the most wondrous blessing…. It is man’s unfailing Protector. It aideth him and strengtheneth him. Wisdom is God’s Emissary and the Revealer of His Name the Omniscient. Through it the loftiness of man’s station is made manifest and evident. It is all-knowing and the foremost Teacher in the school of existence. It is the Guide and is invested with high distinction. Thanks to its educating influence earthly beings have become imbued with a gem-like spirit which outshineth the heavens.³

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’u’lláh’s son and successor as Head of the Bahá’í Faith, and the authorized Interpreter of His Writings, commented on the inscrutable quality of wisdom in a table talk published in 1908 in the collection titled Some Answered Questions: “How often has it happened that a wise, accomplished, and sagacious person took a course of action, and those who were incapable of grasping its wisdom objected and questioned why he said or did thus. This objection is prompted by ignorance, and the wisdom of that wise man is free and sanctified from error.”⁴ On another occasion He advised the Bahá’ís, “Know that in every movement of ‘Abdu’l Bahá, in every word He uttereth, there lieth a great wisdom. If what He doeth appeareth to be strange, this is because the wisdom is not known to the friends.”⁵

TWO ASPECTS OF WISDOM

In recent decades, the study of wisdom—what it is and how to get more of it—has seen a revival of interest in fields including ethics, philosophy, psychology, education, and organizational studies. In both Eastern and Western traditions, wisdom includes knowledge of the fundamental truths of the reality of things as well as how to use that knowledge in practice, or in Aristotle’s terms, sophia (theoretical wisdom) and phronesis (practical wisdom). Theoretical wisdom is the prerequisite for practical wisdom—the knowledge of the ethically right means to achieve a morally good end, one that conduces to human flourishing.⁶ As philosopher Robert Nozick explains, “Wisdom is not just knowing fundamental truths, if these are unconnected with the guidance of life or with a perspective on its meaning…. What a wise person needs to know and understand” includes

the most important goals and values of life—the ultimate goal, if there is one; what means will reach these goals without too great a cost; what kinds of dangers threaten the achieving of these goals; how to recognize and avoid or minimize these dangers; what different types of human beings are like in their actions and motives (as this presents dangers or opportunities); what is not possible or feasible to achieve (or avoid); how to tell what is appropriate when; … knowing what the true and unapparent value of various things is; when to take a long-term view; knowing the variety and obduracy of facts, institutions, and human nature.⁷

Although the wisdom of the wise can often be inscrutable to others, when the time and circumstances are right, that wisdom can become dazzlingly clear. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá once assured the Bahá’ís that the wisdom of a perplexing stipulation in the Sacred Scriptures would “erelong be made manifest as clearly as the sun at high noon.”⁸ Using the same figure of speech, His grandson Shoghi Effendi, in answer to a question about a provision in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Will and Testament, indicated that “whatsoever has explicitly been revealed” would “eventually become clear and evident, even as the sun in its noon-tide glory.”⁹ But how does that happen?

We can trace the path by which wisdom that once seemed inscrutable, even defying belief, became as clear as the sun at high noon, in the parallel and sometimes intertwined history of two processes of sensemaking—one scientific and one religious—concerning the same phenomenon. Sensemaking refers to the method by which we ascribe meaning to experience in the world and, by doing so, construct social reality. Karl Weick, in defining his conception of sensemaking, describes “reality” as “an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs.”¹⁰

The first of these two processes of sensemaking involves a sequence of events, discoveries, and controversies that would shatter established assumptions about both the physical world and the world order; the second involves efforts to understand the meaning of a passage in the Bahá’í Writings foreshadowing those same events and prescribing measures to avert the consequences. The first process began in 1896 with the scientific intuition of the French physicist Henri Becquerel, but years before he made his chance discovery, its world-historical significance and monumental consequences had already been described in the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh.

In Words of Paradise, Bahá’u’lláh discussed a number of themes in addition to wisdom, including the true nature and virtues of the human being, the foundations of social order, and the means for ensuring the security and advancement of humanity, as well as the very “preservation of the world of being” itself. In a statement that epitomizes the central theme of His social teachings, He wrote:

O ye men of wisdom among nations! Shut your eyes to estrangement, then fix your gaze upon unity. Cleave tenaciously unto that which will lead to the well-being and tranquillity of all mankind. This span of earth is but one homeland and one habitation. It behoveth you to abandon vainglory which causeth alienation and to set your hearts on whatever will ensure harmony. In the estimation of the people of Bahá man’s glory lieth in his knowledge, his upright conduct, his praiseworthy character, his wisdom, and not in his nationality or rank.¹¹

He then warned of the danger of abandoning the principle of moderation, stating that “if a thing is carried to excess it will become a source of evil”—as evidenced by the alarming tendencies displayed by Western civilization, which was already harnessing the power of modern technology to invent ever more deadly weaponry. “An infernal engine hath been devised,” He wrote, “and hath proved so cruel a weapon of destruction that its like none hath ever witnessed or heard.”¹² He may have been referring to the Maxim gun: invented in 1884, it was the first automatic machine gun, could fire over five hundred rounds per minute, and would become one of the deadliest weapons in modern history.¹³ The “deeply-rooted and overwhelming corruptions” represented by such armaments, Bahá’u’lláh asserted, could not be expunged until the peoples of the world became reconciled and united in a common aim and a universal faith. Then He wrote: “Strange and astonishing things (asbáb-i-‘ajíbiy-i-gharíbih) exist in the earth but they are hidden from the minds and the understanding of men. These things are capable of changing the whole atmosphere of the earth and their contamination would prove lethal.”¹⁴

Today we have no trouble making sense of that statement; if we are perplexed, it is not by the statement itself—because we know it is true—but by the fact that He wrote it in 1889, decades before anyone else knew it was true. Those “things” in the earth that can lethally contaminate the atmosphere are now such an established part of humanity’s common knowledge that it is not even necessary to name them, because the answer is so obvious as to be clear as the sun at high noon. But that was not always the case.

SPIRITUALISM AND THE RADIUM CRAZE

In 1908 Bahá’u’lláh’s statement in Words of Paradise puzzled two American Bahá’í women, Helen Goodall and her daughter Ella Goodall Cooper, who had traveled to ‘Akká on a pilgrimage to meet ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. They had read this early, imprecise translation of the text: “A strange and wonderful instrument exists in the earth; but it is concealed from minds and souls. It is an instrument which has the power to change the atmosphere of the whole earth, and its infection causes destruction.”¹⁵ They asked: “Does this refer to an evil power such as psychic control? Is there some other power in the world beside God?”¹⁶ From the context of their conversation, it is clear that they were referring to spirits of the dead exercising evil powers from beyond the grave.

Today, the very idea that psychic forces wielded by evil spirits could possibly be what Bahá’u’lláh was referring to seems naive, even simpleminded—certainly unscientific. But in 1908, the Goodalls’ interpretation was not so improbable. It even resonated with the statements of some scientists of the day. The cultural milieu of the early twentieth century was permeated by a fascination with the supernatural and occult, one of the expressions of which was spiritualism, a movement that arose in the 1840s, reflecting the spiritual ferment of the era. Though originating in the United States, spiritualism spread to Europe and around the world, including to Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan. It held that contact could be made with the spirits of the dead, who would answer by tapping, or by communicating through a “medium,” or through automatic writing, and might even show themselves to the living as ethereal apparitions.

Spiritualists, far from being uneducated, anti-modern, or illiberal, tended to hold progressive views and to support causes including the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, labor reform, temperance, and socialism.¹⁷ Even some prominent scientists were intrigued by the possibility of gaining access to psychic forces and communicating with spirits. Among the scientific and intellectual figures of the time who were interested in—if not seriously investigating or even convinced by—spiritualist phenomena were Alfred Russel Wallace, Henri Bergson, William James, William Crookes, and Marie and Pierre Curie. Thomas Edison attempted to build a device by which the dead could communicate with the living scientifically—without the “crude methods” of “tilting tables and raps and ouija boards and mediums.”¹⁸ Spiritualism also intersected with another cultural phenomenon of the era that had a more direct connection to the topic of Bahá’u’lláh’s statement, and which was also the object of widespread misunderstanding that today seems incomprehensible: the radium craze.

Marie Curie’s discovery of radium in 1898 had set in motion an international obsession for the element. The perceptible effects of radium’s energy evoked a dimension beyond the physical—fitting neatly into the ambience of an era captivated by the idea of piercing the veil between the worlds. Other forms of radiation had been discovered, but until then only x-rays, with their ability to penetrate flesh and produce ghostly skeletal portraits, had excited much public interest. Radioactive elements such as uranium did not seem as interesting or important as radium, since they did not seem to “‘do’ anything of particular note.”¹⁹ It was radium—more than a million times more radioactive than uranium—that captured the public imagination. It glowed with an eerie luminescence; it gave off heat apparently without changing; it acted on bodies with an entirely new and thrilling power that seemed to promise life, healing, and even a cure for cancer. Soon people were drinking radioactive water—laced with radium—as a cure-all that was marketed as the “elixir of life.” Radium was added to products including chocolate, cosmetics, and toothpaste (promising a “radiant smile”), and painted on items like watch dials and the buckles of bedroom slippers to make them glow in the dark.²⁰

Advertisement for cosmetic products containing radium, from the 1930s (photo by Jon Evans)

It is not hard to understand how people might draw a connection between spiritualist phenomena and this new, seemingly spectral element that displayed tangible evidence of invisible power. In Japan, according to Maika Nakao, “The concept of radium was frequently combined with spirituality, and many spiritualists were inspired by radiation and radium,” viewing it as a visible manifestation of spirit. One prominent Japanese spiritualist, she writes, “tried to prove the existence of spirit by explaining the nature of radiation.”²¹

Making connections between radioactivity and a supernatural dimension found inspiration, if not support, in the writings of certain scientists, who had made similar speculations about x-rays.²² In 1897 the eminent chemist William Crookes, whose cathode ray tubes enabled the discovery of electrons, suggested that x-rays, which were initially thought to travel in the ether along with light and other electromagnetic waves, might be “a possible mode of transmitting intelligence.”²³ Radium was something more: it was a numinous substance. The radiochemist Frederick Soddy, winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, in a widely read book of lectures given in 1908—the same year the Goodalls visited ‘Akká—described radium in distinctly anthropomorphic terms and in tones of almost religious awe:

There is something sublime about its aloofness from and its indifference to its external environment. It seems to claim lineage with the worlds beyond us, fed with the same inexhaustible fires, urged by the same uncontrollable mechanism which keeps the great suns alight in the heavens over endless periods of time. This tiny speck of matter we can hold in our hands exhibits in perfect miniature many ancient mysteries, forgotten almost in their familiarity, or mistakenly and too easily dismissed as belonging and appropriate to the infinitely great dimensions of the universe.²⁴

With such ideas circulating in the voice of science, the notion that powerful forces hidden in the earth could be linked to forces from “worlds beyond us” was already planted in the public imagination. It was not so illogical after all, that the first thought that occurred to the Goodalls as the most likely, or relevant, phenomenon to which Bahá’u’lláh’s text could have referred was psychic forces. That the Goodalls’ questions were framed in terms of spiritualist concepts (whether or not they gave credence to them) is evident in that they also asked ‘Abdu’l-Bahá whether spirits could influence people and take possession of their will, and what “power” was involved in automatic writing. They recorded that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá replied, to the first question, that spirits could do no such thing and, to the second, that automatic writing came from within the writer.²⁵ But if the Goodalls expected ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to explain the passage about the strange and wonder-inspiring things in the earth in a way that confirmed their own assumptions, they would have been not only disappointed but baffled as well. They recorded in their notes that He began to talk instead about the fundamental forces of nature, saying (in the words of the Persian translator):

This is a deep and lengthy subject, but, briefly, there is, as we know, a power that composes and a power that decomposes. The world of existence is constantly revolving through the changes of building up and tearing down. When elements are attracted something is composed, and when these same elements are repelled that form is decomposed. As by the will of God the power of composition exists, so also by will of God the power of decomposition exists.²⁶

He went on to explain that these two forces are expressed metaphorically in religious scriptures by the Angel of Life, symbolizing the power of composition or attraction, and the Angel of Death, signifying that of decomposition or repulsion. But what, the pilgrims may have wondered, could possibly connect an instrumentality powerful enough to change the atmosphere of the earth with the forces of composition and decomposition? ‘Abdu’l-Bahá summarily dismissed the interpretation that it involved psychic forces exercised by the spirits of the dead. According to the Goodalls’ account, He explained that the souls of evil people who have died exercise no power over the living, that good is stronger than evil, and that even when those people were alive, they had very little power—how much less would they have after they were dead. And in any case, they were nowhere near this planet.²⁷ We do not know how He explained, on that occasion, the connection between the strange and astonishing things in the earth and the physical forces of composition and decomposition, because the notes stop there.

That the forces of composition and decomposition applied to elements at the level of chemical compounds was an established scientific fact at the time. Although electrons had been discovered in 1897 (in a Crookes tube), it took some years before it was fully recognized that the atom was not the indivisible unit of matter it was long believed to be but was itself composed of even smaller particles. Frederick Soddy’s own lectures on the history of chemistry in 1900 had relied on Dalton’s theory of atoms as indivisible.²⁸ But by 1902 Soddy and Ernest Rutherford had discovered that atoms themselves were also subject to decomposition, or disintegration—a phenomenon that Marie Curie had named “radioactivity”—in which they became transformed (or, as Soddy preferred to call it, deliberately borrowing the term from alchemy, “transmuted”) into new and different elements in a violent process that released enormous amounts of energy.²⁹ That would have been no surprise to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Who possessed a profound and prescient knowledge of the realities of things and was well versed not only in the theories of the philosophers and with Bahá’u’lláh’s statements such as “within every atom traces of the sun have been made manifest,” but also with the words of the eighteenth-century Persian mystical poet Hátif-i-Iṣfahání: “Split the atom’s heart, and lo! / Within it thou wilt find a sun.”³⁰ He also understood the inherently incomplete and contingent character of human efforts to make sense of the world:

Mathematicians, astronomers, chemical scientists continually disprove and reject the conclusions of the ancients; nothing is fixed, nothing final; everything is continually changing because human reason is progressing along new roads of investigation and arriving at new conclusions every day. In the future much that is announced and accepted as true now will be rejected and disproved. And so it will continue ad infinitum.³¹

In His Writings and talks, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá often discussed composition and decomposition (or attraction and repulsion) as natural forces that operate at all levels of existence; He also employed these concepts in His philosophical arguments for the immaterial nature of the soul as a simple, uncompounded substance. In such arguments He used an analogy of the atom “as a constituent of organic composition,” in which context the atoms themselves do not decompose.³² As ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself explains, in these discourses He is speaking in relative terms that depend on the context.³³ However, in His account of the nature of material phenomena, it is implicit that, at the most fundamental level, the atom is not the indivisible constituent of matter. If the axiom that all “forms of existence in the material universe … are the result of composition” is true, it also applies to the atom, or the atom would not be a material phenomenon.³⁴

AN IMPETUS FOR PEACE

In 1910 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá set out on a series of journeys, traveling first to Egypt and then to the West, where He gave hundreds of lectures and interviews, introducing the Bahá’í teachings to audiences in cities from Budapest to San Francisco and advocating for the abolition of war and universal peace. During these travels, on several occasions He alluded to or explicitly mentioned Bahá’u’lláh’s enigmatic statement and warned about the mysterious force in the earth that could have catastrophic effects. While en route to New York on the R.M.S. Cedric, a discussion over tea turned to the topic of dirigibles and airplanes. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is recorded as telling those present that airplanes would be used for military purposes and that “There will come to exist such instruments [of war] as to cause all the means of destruction in the past to be looked upon as children’s playthings.”³⁵ In San Francisco, while conversing with a group of Bahá’ís including the Goodalls, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá suddenly began to speak about the statement in Words of Paradise, saying that an element in the earth would be discovered that was so destructive that it could obliterate entire cities and would become an impetus for peace, as the nations would fear the destruction of humanity.³⁶

On another occasion, in Paris, He brought up the issue when He made a point of calling on a visiting diplomat whose wife had expressed a wish to meet Him. That diplomat was Viscount Minoji Arakawa (1857–1949), the Japanese Minister to Spain. As later recounted by Lady Blomfield, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá spoke to him on topics including the importance of Japan, the abolition of war, and scientific discoveries, adding: “There is in existence a stupendous force, as yet, happily, undiscovered by man.” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said He hoped this force would not be discovered by science until civilization became spiritualized because “in the hands of men of lower material nature, this power would be able to destroy the whole earth.”³⁷ In 1919 He was reported as describing it as being a power like that of dynamite.³⁸

Although today we readily understand and appreciate the wisdom of those warnings, the existence of such a force within the earth—of elements whose decomposition (which releases radioactivity) could change the whole atmosphere of the planet and cause lethal contamination—was not definitively proved until July 1945 when, in the New Mexico desert, the scientists of the Manhattan Project detonated a plutonium implosion device, demonstrating the power of the energy concealed within the heart of the atom and making Bahá’u’lláh’s statement a self-evident truth as clear as the sun at noon. In this case, uniquely, the figure of speech was literally true because there is nothing else on earth that is so much like the noonday sun; an American army general who observed the Trinity test that day wrote that the blast light had an “intensity many times that of the midday sun.”³⁹ But until that moment, not even the scientists themselves really knew—to a certainty—what was going to happen. Before the test J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the laboratory at Los Alamos, bet another scientist ten dollars that the “gadget” would not work. Physicist Enrico Fermi suggested, perhaps only half-jokingly, that they should place bets on whether the blast would ignite the whole atmosphere of the earth or just destroy New Mexico.⁴⁰

Pierre and Marie Curie at work in a laboratory.

In retrospect it may seem that the vast destructive power latent within the atom should have been obvious from the start. Unmistakable signs of the power of radioactivity were evident soon after the discovery of radium, but the extent of that power and its lethal effects were not yet understood. Pierre Curie deliberately exposed his arm to the element and studied the burns; Marie Curie kept some radium beside her bed as a night-light.⁴¹ They both suffered what were only later recognized as symptoms of radiation illness, and she would die of aplastic anemia due to long-term exposure. Although we might think, from our perspective, that enough knowledge must have been available to enable people to reason out the probable consequences of radioactivity’s evident power and its dangerous nature, it is all too easy to fall into the fallacy of hindsight bias by assuming that people in the past had the knowledge that we have now.

In fact, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the prevailing scientific view of radioactivity was quite different. Radioactivity, and radium in particular, was initially perceived not as a force of decomposition and an agent of destruction and death, but as one of composition, with life-giving properties, and even as a “biological” force. According to Luis Campos, “Not only were radioactive phenomena characterized in quasi-biological ways from the earliest days, by their discoverers and by others, but radium itself … was often described as a ‘half-living’ element in scientific and popular texts alike.” As he notes, “many botanists and geneticists were eagerly remarking that radium held the key to the secret of life.”⁴² The signs of tissue alteration that would later be recognized as the destructive, and ultimately lethal, effects of radiation were first interpreted as its opposite and as a form of “evolution,” a term Soddy frequently used in his descriptions of radioactive decay.⁴³ The true nature, effects, and implications of the energy hidden within the atom eluded general understanding and acceptance because the very idea that the earth itself could contain a hitherto unknown source of power that could obliterate all life was radically new and unthinkable.

THE UNTHINKABLE RADICALLY NEW

Radioactivity and atomic energy were literally unthinkable because they were radically new. Since we make sense of experience and organize our knowledge by reference to our mental representation of the world, assigning meaning to new information in terms of old information (that is, information we have acquired from experience and which has been incorporated into that conceptual model), a phenomenon that is radically new is not intelligible: it does not fit into any of the categories based on prior experience that we use to interpret and make sense of information presented to the mind. Thus, paradoxically, the effort to understand an experience that is unlike anything ever encountered before is thwarted by the very process we rely on to make sense of the world. As physicist Norris Bradbury, who worked on the Manhattan Project, observed: “Most experiences in life can be comprehended by prior experiences, but the atom bomb did not fit into any preconceptions possessed by anybody.”⁴⁴

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was no category in the structure of accepted scientific knowledge for an entity that possessed power of the kind or the magnitude that was hidden within the atom, just as there had been no category to make sense of the phenomenon of radioactivity itself, which, Soddy had written, “ran counter to every principle of physical science.”⁴⁵ In a 1904 lecture he had stated that, with the discovery of radioactivity, “a new world has been opened to us … in which the atom is not the unit, in which the forces are not chemical, and in which common physical conceptions such as temperature are without meaning.”⁴⁶ In his 1908 lectures, speaking of the nature of “atomic disintegration,” which was “sudden and explosive in character,” Soddy again alluded to its radical unthinkability as he explained that

in the complete change of one grain of radium no less than 125,000,000 calories would be evolved. The energy evolved in the change of radium is nearly a million times greater than that evolved from a similar weight of matter undergoing any change known previously to the discovery of radioactivity. By the burning of a grain of coal, for example, only about 500 calories are obtained. No wonder then that to account for the boundless energy displayed everywhere in the starry heavens proved a difficult problem for physicists, acquainted with no more energetic chemical process than the burning of coal!⁴⁷

But even after three more decades of research, expert opinion remained unconvinced as to whether atomic energy could ever be accessed: more than one prominent physicist doubted that splitting atoms could ever produce more than negligible energy, while some scornfully dismissed the very idea as not only scientifically unproven but ignorant nonsense, and rejected the possibility of weaponizing that energy as remote—or at least “absurdly premature.”⁴⁸

Soddy was one of the first scientists to understand the terrifying practical implications of the “gigantic forces” latent within the earth and in 1903 had written that “the knowledge of their existence must … make us regard the planet on which we live rather as a storehouse stuffed with explosives, inconceivably more powerful than any we know, and possibly only awaiting a suitable detonator to cause the earth to revert to chaos.”⁴⁹ The carnage of the First World War would present him with evidence of the devastation and death that modern technology could deliver when harnessed for military use: in 1916, on the opening day of the First Battle of the Somme, more than 19,000 British soldiers were killed—a large proportion of them by the German version of the Maxim gun.⁵⁰ In a lecture in 1915 Soddy raised the alarm about the potential danger of weaponizing atomic energy:

Imagine, if you can, what the present war would be like if such an explosive had actually been discovered instead of being still in the keeping of the future. Yet it is a discovery that conceivably might be made to-morrow, in time for its development and perfection for the use or destruction, let us say, of the next generation, and which, it is pretty certain, will be made by science sooner or later.⁵¹

That same year, in a speech, he said: “The social effect of recent advances in physical science promises to be annihilating, unless, before it is too late, there arises an equal and compensating advance, of which there is at present no sign, in the moral and spiritual forces of society.”⁵² And in 1917 he warned that if the vast energy within the atom could be tapped, war “would not be the lingering agony it is today. Any selected section of the world, or the whole of it if necessary, could be depopulated with a swiftness and dispatch that would leave nothing to be desired.”⁵³

But to many at that time, his words were hyperbolic, unscientific ravings that belonged rather to science fiction than to science. In 1928 Robert Millikan, the 1923 Nobel Laureate in Physics, told the Chemists’ Club in New York: “There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom. The glib supposition of utilizing atomic energy when our coal supply has run out is a completely unscientific Utopian dream, a childish bug-a-boo.”⁵⁴ The next year, addressing the Society of Arts and Sciences, he sarcastically disparaged Soddy’s warnings, saying that “if you belong to the group … which fears the too rapid advance of science and lives in dread of the day when some unscrupulous, or careless, Dr. Faust may touch off the stupendous subatomic powder magazine and blow this comfortable world of ours into star dust, you may henceforth banish your hobgoblin and sleep in peace.…” because, as Millikan assured the audience, “there is no appreciable energy available to man through atomic disintegration.”⁵⁵ In 1930 he went even further out on that limb, summoning Science herself to testify against Soddy:

She has kept steadily at work since Mr. Soddy raised the hobgoblin of dangerous quantities of available subatomic energy, and has brought to light good evidence that this particular hobgoblin—like most of the bugaboos that crowd in on the mind of ignorance—was a myth.… Now the new evidence born of further scientific study is to the effect that it is highly improbable that there is any appreciable amount of available subatomic energy to tap.⁵⁶

He went on to insist—somewhat incongruously for a scientist making an argument about physics—that those fearful of the consequences of atomic disintegration could “sleep in peace with the consciousness that the creator has put some fool-proof elements into his handiwork and that man is powerless to do it any titanic physical damage.”⁵⁷

Millikan was not alone in his pessimism. According to Richard Rhodes, “by the mid-1930s the three most original living physicists had each spoken to the question of harnessing nuclear energy,” expressing doubt about the possibility—namely, Soddy’s colleague Ernest Rutherford, Albert Einstein, and Nils Bohr.⁵⁸ In 1932 Einstein said, “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”⁵⁹ In 1946, after it had been proven that it could indeed be done, Einstein wrote: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe…. a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.”⁶⁰

In 1937 Shoghi Effendi, who had been appointed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as Guardian and head of the Bahá’í Faith, was asked about Bahá’u’lláh’s statement concerning the hidden force in the earth that could lethally contaminate the atmosphere. As it turns out, Shoghi Effendi’s response, written on his behalf by his secretary, was more scientifically accurate than the scientists’ dismissal. It said: “The instrument referred to by Bahá’u’lláh has not yet been fully discovered.”⁶¹ That was true: artificial nuclear fission would not be fully discovered until the following year, 1938, and it would be another seven years until its power would be decisively demonstrated on the test site at Los Alamos. In October 1945, after atomic weapons had been used to devastate two Japanese cities, Shoghi Effendi could draw the conclusion, in response to a question, that “There is no direct reference to atomic bombs in the teachings, but many references to the powers latent within the universe; atomic force is obviously one of these powers.”⁶² It was only then that one could use that word—”obviously”—because finally the fact that there were things in the earth that could change the atmosphere, and whose contamination would prove lethal, had become just that—obvious—like the sun at high noon. The next year, he confirmed in a letter to an inquirer: “The words of Bahá’u’lláh regarding ‘a strange and wonderful instrument …’ can, in the light of what the Master [‘Abdu’l-Bahá] said in San Francisco, be taken as a reference to the great destructive power atomic energy can be made to release.”⁶³

The phenomenon of radioactivity—and the sheer immensity of the power within the atom—were discoveries that scientists were unprepared for, and many reacted first with the reflexive denial that greets the shock of the new and unprecedented, which does not conform to anything they know or believe to be true. Even for Millikan, the discoverer of cosmic rays, the true extent of the power hidden in the atom was outside all experience and therefore beyond belief.

MAKING SENSE

As we make sense of experience, fitting the new information into our conceptual representation of the world, the new phenomenon is initially assigned meaning in terms of the categories available in that model. This heuristic process enables understanding, but it also subtly constrains it as the categories operate as what Kenneth Burke called “terministic screens”—filtering thought so as to “direct the attention into some channels rather than others”—and excluding some directions altogether.⁶⁴ Moreover, as Burke wrote,

Not only does the nature of our terms affect the nature of our observations, in the sense that the terms direct the attention to one field rather than to another. Also, many of the “observations” are but implications of the particular terminology in terms of which the observations are made. In brief, much that we take as observations about “reality” may be but the spinning out of possibilities implicit in our particular choice of terms.⁶⁵

If no adequate category exists, we may try to force the new information into what we perceive to be the closest or most relevant category available—even if it is only “bugaboo”—and even if doing so results in distortion, misinterpretation, and failure of understanding. Or we may ignore the parts that don’t fit, dismissing them as irrelevant or as meaningless noise. These futile efforts are signs that we have reached the limit of human rationality, “where,” as Nassim Nicholas Taleb puts it, “our representation of reality ceases to apply but we do not know it.”⁶⁶ Similar to Burke, Taleb notes that categorizing, while unavoidable, is inherently unreliable because categories, as abstractions (and thus stereotypes), are inevitably reductive, suppressing critical distinctions. Categorizing, Taleb writes, “becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories.”⁶⁷

Soddy, Rutherford, and others, in their initial attempts to make sense of the strange new phenomenon of radioactivity—and not entirely unlike like the Goodalls in their efforts to make sense of the scriptural text—seized on what seemed to be the most relevant of the concepts and images available in the repertoire of categories that populated their representation of reality. For the Goodalls, those happened to come from spiritualism; for some scientists, including Soddy, they were drawn from alchemy, which experienced a resurgence of interest around the same time as the rise of spiritualism, as part of the prevalent fascination with the occult. Mark Morrisson, in his study of the peculiar connection between the nascent science of atomic physics and the concurrent interest in alchemy, claims that “the broad alchemical revival had an impact on the way some scientists understood and portrayed their research programs” and “obliquely helped inform … the emerging science of radioactivity and radioactive transformation.”⁶⁸

Before Soddy himself came to understand the destructive power latent in the atom, he was one of those who initially conceptualized radium as having a living quality, associating it with the alchemical “philosopher’s stone,” which, he wrote, “was accredited the power not only of transmuting the metals, but of acting as the elixir of life.” He found this analogy to be

a perfect and but very slightly allegorical expression of the actual present views we hold to-day. It does not require much effort of the imagination to see in energy the life of the physical universe, and the key to the primary fountains of the physical life of the universe to-day is known to be transmutation. Is then this old association of the power of transmutation with the elixir of life merely a coincidence?⁶⁹

The harsh reality of experience would eventually force scientists to abandon the fanciful but tragically mistaken conception of radioactivity as a benevolent, living force and replace it with a more realistic understanding of radioactivity as a process of decay and a bringer of death. But fully grasping the magnitude of the atom’s destructive power would require a strange imaginative confluence of ideas in which science and fiction influenced each other.

Cover of The World Set Free by H. G. Wells, First Edition, 1914

A key step in the collective process of making sense of this new phenomenon involved the writer H. G. Wells. He had read Soddy’s popular book of lectures on radium and, struck by its description of the power inherent in radioactivity, wrote a novel called The World Set Free, which he dedicated to Soddy’s book and published in 1914. The novel—in which a scientist representing Soddy speaks words taken from Soddy’s book—describes a war in which the European states use weapons against each other that Wells called—coining the term— “atomic bombs.” Wells imagined atomic weapons as black spheres with handles, which were dropped by hand out the window of an airplane to destroy entire cities by continuous explosion (the real nature of a nuclear blast was still unimaginable).⁷⁰

In the novel, the cataclysmic results of this war lead the nations of the world to come together to form a world state that would ensure global peace.⁷¹ Wells comments on the phenomenon of being unable to see what later would be obvious: “Certainly it seems now that nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands.”⁷²

Frederick Soddy, in turn, read Wells’s novel just as World War I was beginning to display, on the battlefields of Europe, the gruesome evidence of the destructive nature of modern weapons. Against that background, reading the novel galvanized Soddy to realize that atomic energy could be used to develop even more powerful weapons than those that were already causing deaths in the tens and hundreds of thousands in mere days, and impelled him in 1915 to issue his first public warnings about the danger.⁷³

But by 1933 even Soddy’s former colleague Rutherford appeared to have given up on the idea of accessing atomic energy in any practical way. He was reported as telling a meeting of British scientists:

We may in these processes obtain very great quantities of energy, but on the average we cannot hope to obtain energy for practical use in this way. The bombardment of the atom is a very poor and inefficient way of producing energy and anyone who is looking for a source of cheap power in the transformation of the atom, is talking pure moonshine.⁷⁴

The account of Rutherford’s speech that appeared in The Times was read by the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilárd, who was then living in England. Szilárd had also read Wells’s novel, and he wondered if Rutherford just might be wrong. Ruminating on the possibility while crossing a street in London, Szilárd suddenly realized how a nuclear chain reaction could be achieved and later proved it. In 1939 he explained to Albert Einstein how atomic energy could be weaponized (Einstein said that the idea hadn’t occurred to him), and the letter they sent to President Roosevelt warning about German research toward that goal led to the creation of the Manhattan Project, and, six years later, to the detonation of the device whose light was so intense that, like the sun’s, it reflected off the moon.⁷⁵

HOBGOBLINS AND MOONSHINE

From this account of the emergence into human consciousness of the reality of the power hidden within the atom and its implications for the future of humanity and the planet itself, we have seen that what is radically new and unprecedented cannot be properly understood by forcing it into the received categories of conceptual structures based on prior experience. If the radically new is to become intelligible, enter the body of shared knowledge, and become part of social reality, a process must take place as events unfold over time and new experiences are subjected to conscious analysis in a reflective collective enterprise of critical sensemaking. First, we instinctively try to fit the new information into the available categories in our mental representation of the world. If the new information does not fit into those categories, it will appear anomalous. If we persist in interpreting it in terms of inadequate categories, then anomalies, incoherence, and dissonance will proliferate. If we are committed to the preservation, at all costs, of the conceptual structure and its categories—whether it is that of science, of religious tradition, or of ideology—we may (like the Muslim divines who constructed implausible reinterpretations of Quranic verses to make them conform to the Ptolemaic geocentric theory that the verses actually contradicted), try to force the data to fit the theory.⁷⁶ Or we may (like William Crookes, who might have been the discoverer of x-rays had he not dismissed as a manufacturing defect the fogging that appeared on the photographic plates stored near his cathode ray tubes), misinterpret the significant unknown as an insignificant known. Misjudging the radically new by miscategorizing it can lead to catastrophe, whether by blindly embracing the toxic as tonic, as in the radium craze, or by dismissing it as hobgoblins and moonshine.

The unfolding of events over time—along with the reflective, ongoing conversation to make sense of those events—makes the knowledge publicly available and only then provides a perspective that permits reflection on the developments that led to the emergence of that knowledge and its progressive elaboration, revision, and refinement. In retrospect, it can be all too easy to think, as Thomas Huxley did on being told of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that.”⁷⁷ But at the beginning of the process, the end is not at all obvious, much less as clear as the sun at high noon—not even to (or especially not to) experts, who tend to have a vested interest in the conceptual systems, discourses, and paradigms that undergird their own claims to expertise. Even those who perceive—whether through scientific intuition, creative imagination, or divine inspiration and wisdom—a truth of the reality of things that is not yet generally known, will not be able to produce irrefutable evidence to convince all doubters, because no matter how accurate the warning or how valid the conclusion, the evidence only emerges as the consequence of a sequence of events in time and the discourse that strives to make sense of them, which has not yet taken place.

As Taleb notes, the key to avoiding the trap of “naive empiricism”—that is, reliance on inductive reasoning based on experience, which is vulnerable to confirmation bias and the fallacy of hasty conclusion—is knowledge.⁷⁸ And the knowledge that is most conducive to avoiding traps of all kinds is wisdom. Thus, until events unfold, acting on faith in the counsel of the wise—whose knowledge of the realities of things enables them to see farther; to perceive relationships, implications, and consequences that others cannot; and to know the right response to every exigency, like the physician who knows the right remedy to treat the cause of an illness—would seem to be the most rational course, especially when dismissing that counsel carries a high risk of mass destruction and death or, in less dire cases, merely prolongs the suffering that the remedy was meant to cure.

In the late nineteenth century, there were others, such as Jean de Bloch (who published his six-volume work The Future of War a decade after Bahá’u’lláh had warned, in Words of Paradise, about modern weaponry), who had also concluded that future wars would be far more devastating than previous wars. Bloch was disregarded by many experts, and it was widely assumed that international developments, including the establishment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration as a result of the first Peace Conference at The Hague in 1899, and even the fearsome power of modern weapons, had made war “unthinkable.” A professor of history assured Frederick Soddy in 1900 “that there would never be another war.”⁷⁹ So, people did not believe ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s warnings that the approaching storm would be an unprecedented cataclysm for the world. In 1914, after the war had begun, He commented on why His warnings had been dismissed:

While travelling in Europe and America I met altruistic and sanctified souls who were my confidants and associates concerning the question of Universal Peace and who agreed with me and joined their voices with mine regarding the principle of the Oneness of the World of Humanity; but alas, they were very few! The leaders of public opinion and the great statesmen believed that the massing of huge armies and the annual increase of military forces insured peace and friendship among nations. At that time I explained that this theory was based on a false conception; for it is an inevitable certainty that these serried ranks and disciplined armies will be rushed one day into the heat of the battlefields and these inflammable materials will unquestionably be exploded and the explosion will be through one tiny spark; then a world conflagration will be witnessed, the lurid flames of which shall redden all the horizons. Because the sphere of their thoughts was contracted and their intellectual eyes blind, they could not acknowledge the above explanation….

… Although the ends of war were evident and manifest to the sages and scholars, they are now made clear and plain to all the people. No sane person can at this time deny the fact that war is the most dreadful calamity in the world of humanity… and that war is the most ruinous catastrophe and the most deplorable adversity.”⁸⁰

Many of the themes in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s talks and Writings explaining the dynamics of international conflict, including the massing of military force, the accumulation of armaments, and the lack of trust among nations, closely parallel what would, in the years following the Second World War, be conceptualized in International Relations theory as the “security dilemma,” while His prescription for arms reduction, a binding system of collective security, and an international tribunal anticipate the measures that would eventually be proposed to mitigate those dynamics.

Although it was naively hoped that the Great War would be (in the words of H. G. Wells) a “war to end war,” after the guns had fallen silent the root cause of conflict still festered.⁸¹ In 1919 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was reported to have told visiting pilgrims that the peace was only a “false dawn.”⁸² Until the oneness of humanity and the ethical implications of that fact were universally recognized, there would be more war; peace conferences alone would be ineffectual. In 1920 He wrote: “The Hague Conference held before the war had as its President the Emperor of Russia, and its members were men of the greatest eminence. Nevertheless, this did not prevent such a terrible war. Now how will it be? For in the future another war, fiercer than the last, will assuredly break out; verily, of this there is no doubt whatever.”⁸³ And indeed, the Second World War would not only see more devastation and death than the First, but also the weaponizing of the “stupendous force” about which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had warned Minister Arakawa, and its use against his own country.

Was there anything that Bahá’u’lláh, a religious prisoner in a remote backwater of the Ottoman Empire, writing seven years before Becquerel’s discovery of radioactivity, could have said to audiences of the nineteenth century—or ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to those of the early twentieth (even to a representative of the government of Japan)—not merely to warn against war but to prove the existence and nature of atomic energy in a way that would have made them understand the wisdom of the warnings and take action to prevent the catastrophic consequences? In November 1918 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote to a Bahá’í in Iran that He had warned the people of the West:

The entire continent of Europe hath become an arsenal for arms and munitions waiting for a spark to kindle the flame of war and make the planet earth tremble…. But as the wise Saná’í saith: ‘To speak of the subtleties of Saná’í before the foolish and the weak of mind / Is like plucking the lute for the deaf or holding a mirror to the blind.’ Thus all that should not have happened did happen and still the wayward people were not awakened or guided aright. Neither signs nor warners avail them.⁸⁴

And whatever rational explanations or reasoned arguments might have been offered would also have been futile because a context within which the warning—or even the proof—could have made sense, much less be properly appreciated, did not yet exist.

In fact, in an even earlier reference to the strange and astonishing phenomenon of the power concealed within the atom, written in 1881—eight years before Words of Paradise—Bahá’u’lláh had made that very point:

Every soul hath been and will ever remain incapable of comprehending the inmost essence of divine wisdom. Understanding is in truth the most great sign in the human soul…. However, we observe that, notwithstanding his excellent rank and exalted position, man is unable to comprehend the reality of most things, for understanding is dependent upon the power of vision. If the eye doth not see the palm tree, the mind cannot comprehend the world of fruits, leaves, trees, branches, and twigs enfolded in the seed. How could the mind, before observing it, comprehend that a thing existeth in the world, a particle of which would consume the whole world, reduce it to ashes, and completely obliterate it?⁸⁵

By William Hatcher

INTRODUCTION

Part of the difficulty involved in attempts to understand and clarify the relationship between religion and science is that the nature of religion seems much less clearly defined than that of science. Is religion primarily a cognitive activity like science, or is it more akin to an aesthetic or emotional experience? If religion is seen as primarily cognitive, then the main problem seems to be that of reconciling the application of scientific method to religion. In particular, it is often felt that this is difficult to do without falsifying either the nature of scientific method or else the global, subjective, mystic character of religion. On the other hand, viewing religion as primarily non-cognitive appears ultimately to relegate religion to an unacceptably secondary and inferior status in the range of human activities.

The Bahá’í Faith, founded in 1844 in Persia under extraordinary circumstances, is significant among the religions of the contemporary world in its clear statement both of the nature of religion itself and of the applicability of scientific method to religion. In a summary description of basic Bahá’í beliefs, Shoghi Effendi (1897–1957) affirms:

The Revelation proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh, His followers believe is divine in origin, all-embracing in scope, broad in its outlook, scientific in its method, humanitarian in its principles and dynamic in the influence it exerts on the hearts and minds of men. The mission of the founder of their Faith, they conceive it to be to proclaim that religious truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is continuous and progressive, that the Founders of all past religions, though different in the nonessential aspects of their teachings, “abide in the same Tabernacle, soar in the same heaven, are seated upon the same throne, utter the same speech and proclaim the same Faith.” His Cause, they have already demonstrated, stands identified with and revolves around, the principle of the organic unity of mankind as representing the consummation of the whole process of human evolution. This final stage in this stupendous evolution, they assert, is not only necessary but inevitable, that it is gradually approaching, and that nothing short of the celestial potency with which a divinely ordained Message can claim to be endowed can succeed in establishing it.

The Bahá’í Faith recognizes the unity of God and of His Prophets, upholds the principle of an unfettered search after truth, condemns all forms of superstition and prejudice, teaches that the fundamental purpose of religion is to promote concord and harmony, that it must go hand-in-hand with science, that it constitutes the sole and ultimate basis of a peaceful, an ordered and progressive society…¹

Further, the essentially cognitive nature of religion is affirmed by the founder, Bahá’u’lláh (1817–1892) in language such as that of the following passage:

First and foremost among those favors, which the Almighty hath conferred upon man, is the gift of understanding. His purpose in conferring such a gift is none other except to enable His creature to know and recognize the one true God—exalted be His glory. This gift giveth man the power to discern the truth in all things, leadeth him to that which is right, and helpeth him to discover the secrets of creation. Next in rank, is the power of vision, the chief instrument whereby his understanding can function. The senses of hearing, of the heart, and the like, are similarly to be reckoned among the gifts with which the human body is endowed… These gifts are inherent in man himself. That which is preeminent above all other gifts, is incorruptible in nature and pertaineth to God Himself, is the gift of Divine Revelation. Every bounty conferred by the Creator upon man, be it material or spiritual, is subservient unto this…²

In other words from the Bahá’í viewpoint religion is importantly and basically a form of knowing, the object of knowledge (or basic datum) of which is the phenomenon of revelation. The other mystic and emotional aspects of religion are also affirmed in the Bahá’í Faith, but still the Faith is proclaimed to be “scientific in its method.” Another essential aspect of religion is that of action or “good works.” Still, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (1844–1921), son of Bahá’u’lláh and designated interpreter of his father’s revelation, affirms the primacy of knowledge with respect to action in the following terms: “Although a person of good deeds is acceptable at the Threshold of the Almighty, yet it is first ‘to know,’ and then ‘to do.’ Although a blind man produceth a most wonderful and exquisite art, yet he is deprived of seeing it… By faith is meant, first conscious knowledge, and second the practice of good deeds.”³

The problem with all of this is that to affirm something as true does not necessarily give us an understanding as to how or why it is true. My purpose in this paper, then, is to discuss the religion–science conflict from a Bahá’í viewpoint with the specific goal of explicating the above affirmations. It is my hope that such an effort may prove of interest and profit to those of any religious background or viewpoint.

THE NATURE OF THE RELIGION-SCIENCE CONFLICT

At the heart of the conflict between science and religion is the fact that two essentially different views of man are associated respectively with each, at least in the popular view. In the one instance, man is seen as a superevolved animal, a chance product of a material thermodynamic system. In the other case, he is seen as a spiritual being, created by God with a spiritual purpose given by God. Of course, conflicting views of the nature of man are as old as thought itself and certainly predate the period of modern science. However, it is only in the modern period that these materialistic views have become linked to a prestigious and highly efficient natural science. This prestige of science forces people to take seriously any pronouncement that is put forth in its name. All of this contrasts sharply with the pre-modern period in which the materialistic view was just one among many competing views and had no particular natural or obvious superiority over other views. People could simply discredit or disregard the materialistic viewpoint without feeling any pangs of conscience or without feeling threatened.

In sum, then, I am suggesting that the conflict between religion and science is due essentially to the two qualitatively different views of man which are associated respectively with them, that the force of the materialistic view associated with modern science is due not to any inherent philosophical superiority of that view but rather to the immense prestige of the science in the name of which the materialistic view is put forth, and that this prestige of science is due essentially to its evident technological productivity and efficiency.

One may, in turn, ask to what the efficiency and productiveness of modern science is due, and I believe that here there is one basic answer: scientific method. It is the method of science which has led to such remarkable results and thus to the present situation. Although some thinkers have tried to attribute the success of scientific method to one aspect or another of Western culture or religion, it is now abundantly clear that modern scientific method can be practised with success independently of any particular and religious or cultural orientation. Indeed, we can say that science as an activity is characterized by its method, for the immense diversity of domains which are now the object of scientific study defies any intrinsic characterization in terms of unity of content. The unity of science is its method.

The importance of religion, on the other hand, derives precisely from its goal and its contents rather than its method. Religion treats of questions which are so fundamental for us that every human being is obligated to realize the importance of answering them. Some of these questions are: the purpose of man’s existence, the possibility of life after death, the possibility of self-transcendence, the possibility of contacting and living in harmony with a higher spiritual consciousness, the meaning of suffering, the existence of good and evil. Once we realize that the basis of science is its method and that the basis of religion is its object of study, the essential move towards resolving the religion–science controversy seems obvious and logical: apply scientific method within religion. But, as we have already noted in the preceding, there is widespread feeling that this is not truly possible. Thus, each side remains with its view of the nature of man and feeling basically that a reconciliation is not possible.

It seems to me, however, that the conviction of the impossibility of applying scientific method to religion rests on several misconceptions both of the nature of scientific method and of the nature of religion. The ensuing discussion, though clearly incomplete, attempts to identify the sorts of misunderstandings involved.

THE NATURE OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Science is, first of all, knowledge. Moreover, it is human knowledge because it is humans who do the knowing, and the nature of human knowledge will be determined by the nature of human mental faculties. Of course, every human being on earth knows things and uses his mental faculties in order to attain this knowledge. What distinguishes the scientific method of knowing, it seems to me, is the systematic, organized, directed, and conscious nature of the process. However much we may refine and elaborate our description of the application of scientific method in some particular domain such as mathematics, logic or physics, this description remains essentially an attempt on our part to bring to ourselves a fuller consciousness of exactly how we apply our mental faculties in the course of the epistemological act within the given domain. I offer, therefore, the following heuristic definition of scientific method:

Scientific method is the systematic, organized, directed and conscious use of our various mental faculties in an effort to arrive at a coherent model of whatever phenomenon is being investigated.

In a word, science is self-conscious common sense.⁴ Instead of relying on chance happenings or occasional experiences, one systematically invokes certain types of experiences. This is experimentation (the conscious use of experience). Instead of relying on naive reasoning, one formalizes hypotheses explicitly and formalizes the reasoning leading from hypothesis to conclusion. This is mathematics and logic (the conscious use of reason). Instead of relying on occasional flashes of insight, one systematically meditates on problems. This is reflection (the conscious use of intuition).⁵

The practice of this method is not linked to the study of any particular phenomenon. It can be applied to the study of unseen forces and mysterious phenomena as well as to everyday, common occurrences. Failure to appreciate the universality of scientific method has led some to feel that science is really only the study of matter and purely material phenomena. This narrow philosophical outlook, plus the historical fact that physics was the first science to develop a high degree of mathematical objectivity, has led to a common misconception that scientific knowledge is inherently limited only to physical reality and material phenomena.

It should also be stressed that the scientific study even of material and concretely accessible phenomena involves a heavily theoretical and subjective component. Far from just “reading the facts from the book of nature,” the scientist must bring an essential aspect of creative hypothesis and imagination to his work. Science as a whole is underdetermined by experience, and there are often many different possible models to explain a given phenomenon. The scientist must, therefore, not only seek to find out how things are but he must also imagine how things might be. Developments in all branches of science during the twentieth century have led to an increasing awareness among scientists and philosophers of the vastness of this subjective input into science.

Another feature of scientific knowledge is its relativity. Because science is the self-conscious use of our faculties, we become aware that man has no absolute measure of the truth. The conclusions of scientific investigations are always more or less probable. They are never absolute proof.⁶

Of course, if a conclusion is highly probable and its negation highly improbable we may feel very confident in the results, especially if we have been very thorough in our investigation. But realization and acceptance of this essential incertitude and relativity of our knowledge is important, for the exigencies of the human situation are often such that we are forced to act in some instances before we have had time to make such a thorough investigation. It therefore behooves us to remain constantly alert to the possibility that we may, in fact, be wrong.⁷

Let us note, in passing, that a similar view of scientific method is expressed in several places in the Bahá’í Writings. In a talk delivered at the Green Acre Institute in Eliot, Maine in 1912 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá discusses the methods of knowledge or criteria of judgment available to man:

Proofs are of four kinds; first through sense-perception; second through the reasoning faculty; third, from traditional or scriptural authority; fourth, through the medium of inspiration. That is to say, there are four criteria or standards of judgment by which the human mind reaches its conclusions.⁸

‘Abdu’l-Bahá then discusses each of these criteria and shows why it is fallible and relative.⁹ He then continues:

Consequently it has become evident that the four criteria or standards of judgment by which the human mind reaches its conclusions are faulty and inaccurate. All of them are liable to mistake and error in conclusions. But a statement presented to the mind accompanied by proofs which the senses can perceive to be correct, which the faculty of reason can accept, which is in accord with traditional authority and sanctioned by the promptings of the heart, can be adjudged and relied upon as perfectly correct, for it has been proved and tested by all the standards of judgment and found to be complete. When we apply but one test there are possibilities of mistake…¹⁰

In still another passage, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains the relativity of man’s knowledge in the following terms:

Knowledge is of two kinds: one is subjective, and the other objective knowledge; that is to say, an intuitive knowledge and a knowledge derived from perception.

The knowledge of things which men universally have, is gained by reflection or by evidence; that is to say, either by the power of the mind the conception of an object is formed, or from beholding an object the form is produced in the mirror of the heart. The circle of this knowledge is very limited, because it depends upon effort and attainment.

But the second sort of knowledge, which is the knowledge of being, is intuitive, it is like the cognizance and consciousness that man has of himself.

For example, the mind and the spirit of man are cognizant of the conditions and states of the members and component parts of the body, and are aware of all the physical sensations… This is the knowledge of being which man realises and perceives for the spirit surrounds the body, and is aware of its sensations and powers. This knowledge is not the outcome of effort and study; it is an existing thing, it is an absolute gift.¹¹

‘Abdu’l-Bahá then explains that the Manifestations, or Revelators, are distinguished from ordinary men in that they have the subjective (intuitive) knowledge of all things:

Since the Sanctified Realities, the universal Manifestations of God, surround the essence and qualities of the creatures, transcend and contain existing realities and understand all things, therefore their knowledge is divine knowledge, and not acquired: that is to say, it is a holy bounty, it is a divine revelation.¹²

In yet another passage, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá puts the matter in the following way:

Know that there are two kinds of knowledge; the knowledge of the essence of a thing, and the knowledge of its qualities. The essence of a thing is known through its qualities, otherwise it is unknown and hidden.

As our knowledge of things, even of created and limited things, is knowledge of their qualities and not of their essence, how is it possible to comprehend in its essence the divine Reality, which is unlimited?¹³

We might try to sum up, however inadequately, the epistemological implications of these passages in somewhat the following way: human knowledge is the truth which is accessible to man, and this truth is relative because man, the knower, is relative, finite, and limited. There is an absolute reality underlying the multifaceted qualities and experiences accessible to man, but direct access to this reality, direct contact with it, or direct perception of it are forever beyond man’s capabilities. His knowledge is therefore relative and limited only to the knowledge of the various effects produced by this absolute reality. However, if man uses systematically all of the various modes of knowledge available to him, he is assured that his knowledge and understanding, such as it is on its level, will increase.¹⁴

POSITIVISM AND EXISTENTIALISM

The main purpose of this brief discussion of scientific method is to suggest that a misconception of the nature of scientific method—namely that it is applicable only to more or less concretely accessible material phenomena¹⁵ and only in a relatively narrow way—has led to the general conclusion on the part of many religionists and scientists that scientific method is not applicable to religion. Depending on what further assumptions are made, one is led to two basic positions which I have labeled positivism and existentialism. There are many variants to each one of these two positions, and so these labels must be understood in a very general, heuristic way.

On the other hand, we may add to the narrow view of scientific method the assumption that scientific method (so construed) is the only valid method of knowledge. One then concludes that religion is not a form of knowledge at all but rather an institutionalized form of superstition, emotionalism, fanaticism, togetherness, or what have you. On the other hand, we may conclude rather that there are methods of knowledge other than the scientific one and appropriate to religion. Religion, in this view, is seen as so deeply private, mystical, and subjective as to be “beyond” scientific method. It is, of course, the first of these views that I have labelled “positivism” and the second “existentialism”. I would like now to discuss briefly each of these positions in an attempt to show exactly why I hold them to be mistaken.

Basically, the positivistic position regards religion as too hopelessly lacking in objectivity to be accessible to scientific treatment. It is true, of course, that the subject matter of religion is more complex than that of, say, physics because it includes more parameters. In the same way, biology is more complex than physics, psychology more complex than either and religion the most complex of all. In this sense, religion is indeed more “subjective” for the presence of many more parameters makes objectivity harder to obtain since the effort to make all parameters explicit is correspondingly much greater. Indeed, this is quite clearly reflected in the historical development of science in which first physics was developed to a fairly high level of objectivity, followed by chemistry, then biology, and now increasingly psychology and sociology.

But it is important to realize, as we have already mentioned in the foregoing, that there is an essential part of subjectivity involved in the application of scientific method in any context. Suppose, for example, that we try to eliminate the subjective element of the notion “red” by agreeing that the term shall be applied only to those objects which give a reading of thus-and-so on a spectroscope. Once this agreement is made, we may still argue sometimes about whether or not the needle really is quite on thus-and-so, and the unbeliever will go away saying that the definition was all wrong in the first place. Though parts of the total context of science may involve highly articulated objectifications, the ultimate roots of understanding lie always in collective human subjectivity and so there is always “room for argument”.

Besides appealing to explicit conventions, formal logic, and the like, positivists have tried to discredit the application of scientific method in religion by insisting on public verifiability as an essential aspect of scientific method. However, a little reflection will easily show that this restriction is arbitrary and in no wise a criterion of scientific method. I offer the following paradigm as an illustration of this point.

A biologist looks through a microscope in his laboratory, sees a certain configuration, and exclaims: “Aha, at last I have the evidence that my theory is correct!” Question: How many people in the world are capable of looking at the configuration and verifying the findings of the biologist? Answer: Very few, almost none, probably only a few specialists in his field. The fact is that the biologist will publish his findings, and a few other qualified individuals will test his results, and if they seem confirmed, the scientific world at large will accept the theory as verified. The positivist might concede this but say: “But if an individual did go through the years of training necessary to understand everything the biologist knows, then the individual could verify the statement. Thus, I admit the statement is not practically verifiable by the public, but it is theoretically verifiable.” But even this is not enough. That fact is that the positivist will be constrained to admit that a great many people may be unable, through lack of intelligence or mental proclivity, ever, in theory, to validate the result. The fact is that the findings are not verifiable by the public at all. The findings can be verified only by individuals capable of assuming and willing to assume the point of view of the researcher. In most instances, this group is a very select one indeed, drawn from those who are members of a community of understanding and who participate in a certain framework of interpretation which is applied to all those subjective experiences which fall within a certain category. More will be said of this further on.

At bottom, the criterion for truth in science is pragmatic. “Does it work the way it says it will?” is the question to be answered. If the theory says that such and such a thing must happen, then does it happen? It is by repeated application of this pragmatic criterion, interlaced with intervening theory, that we gradually build up a model of reality, a collection of true statements. We might try to formulate a general criterion of scientific truth somewhat as follows: We have a right to accept a statement as true when we have tendered it considerably more acceptable than its negation. Proof, in scientific terms, means nothing more than the total process by which we render a statement acceptable by this criterion. Such a proof remains always relative, for it depends on the total context of the statements involved, the implicit and explicit conventions concerning the meaning and operational use of symbols, the experiential component of these statements, and so on. All of these things have their ultimate roots in human subjectivity and are therefore liable to possible revision in the future.

In practice, of course, it often happens that revision comes either from strikingly new and different experiences which demand that we revise our conceptual framework in order to account for them, or else from some unexpected conclusions deduced within the framework itself and which contradict known experiences (the most radical case being that of logical contradictions). But nothing excludes the possibility that revision might come from some subtle interaction of all of these factors in a way which is totally inconceivable to us at present.

In short, I maintain that any sort of formulaic, pseudo-objective characterization of scientific method such as that attempted by various positivistic-minded philosophers cannot truly capture scientific method.¹⁶ Our description of scientific method must remain scientific, i.e. pragmatic, relative, open, etc.

Lacking any such closed, exclusive formula characterization of scientific method, there is no basis on which to limit scientific method in such a way as to exclude its application to religion. Of course, this does not mean that everything that passes for religion is scientific nor does it allow us to say what we will find if we do apply scientific method to religion. My essential contention is simply the following: no known positivistic formulations of or restrictions on the nature of scientific method and which exclude a priori the applicability of scientific method to religion, seem to be justified by the nature of scientific method itself. Furthermore, the nature of scientific method does not appear to lend itself to such formulations or restrictions.

The existentialist position derives its character more from its view of religion than from its view of scientific method. The existentialist might well accept, even readily, that scientific method cannot be applied to religion. But such a contention would not bother him (as it does me) because it only serves to heighten the difference and cleavage between science and religion. For him the very importance of religion derives from its being unsystematic, even chaotic, subjective, private, incommunicable, emotional, etc. For him, the knowledge that religion brings is a mystic or occult knowledge, communicable only to a limited extent and primary through myth, symbol, art and other forms of non-verbal activity.

One extreme form of this position would be to accept completely the positivistic contention that religion is not a form of knowledge, and to view religion primarily as an aesthetic experience of some sort. Otherwise, if religion is viewed as a form of knowledge, it is a form totally different from science, with its own methodology (or lack of methodology), symbols, experiences, etc.

Perhaps, in the last analysis, the difference between the existentialist and the positivist lies not so much in their respective views as to the nature of religion and of science but rather in their difference in attitude towards these perceptions. The positivist values science above religion and sees his narrow interpretation of scientific method, with the consequent exclusion of religion, as purifying science from the unwanted trash of emotionalism and irrationality. The existentialist values religion above science and is just as glad to see religion separated from what he feels to be the soul-stultifying dryness, uniformity, formalism, and mechanization of science. While the positivist is impressed primarily by the efficiency and achievements of science, the existentialist is impressed by the potentialities of the richness of subjective experience. This richness he sees as constituting that which is most truly human and which deserves to be most thoroughly and strenuously developed in man. Since, as he supposed, scientific methods cannot be used to develop this richness, religion must develop methods of its own different from those of science. It is to the development of such methods that the existentialist bends his efforts, and it would never occur to him to try to reconcile religion and science, something which he would regard as impossible in any case.

My sketch here of what I have labeled as the existentialist position is consciously exaggerated at some points, but the logical thrust is clear: the existentialist grants that science cannot be applied to religion, that religion is peculiarly subjective and mystical in a way that makes it necessarily unsystematic and thus inaccessible to science, and he values this subjective aspect of religion above science and its method. He is, therefore, not upset by the cleavage between religion and science (except that he may have existential difficulties living in a world which is currently so dominated by science and its fruits!).

Now, I am as impressed as anyone by the richness of subjective experience, and I certainly feel that if the practice of science, or anything else, is going to lead ultimately to a progressive impoverishment of it, then such practice is dehumanizing and should be abandoned. But I feel that the existentialist position and its variants fall into their particular view of internal experience only by neglecting seriously the collective and social dimension of religion, in short, by considering religion as something which is purely internal to the individual. It is only within such a framework that the subjective aspect of religion can be so isolated from the rest and made to seem as inherently separate from other types of subjective experience, and in particular from that involved in the practice of science itself.

We have already had occasion in the foregoing to appreciate the fact that subjective experience is intimately and irrevocably involved in the practice of science at all levels. Clearly it is more reasonable, then, to view subjective experiences as being ranged on some sort of continuum from less intense to more intense, or from less profound to more profound, or yet some other characterization. As different as may be the experience of seeing a red object on the one hand, and that of mystical ecstasy on the other, they are generically instances of subjective experience before they are specifically anything else. Moreover, the practicing scientist and the mystic, when confronted with the problem of building and communicating conceptual models of their experience, both face essentially the same logical difficulty on their level of experience. For everyone, including the scientist, knows that no amount of explication, verbal or otherwise, can ever exhaust all of the subjective richness of the experience of “red”. Our previous example of the spectroscope shows the nature of the problem involved, and we must further remember that during the long years of science’s evolution, such sophisticated conventional devices were not at hand.

Science has overcome this barrier by creating a community of understanding. Each individual scientist must undergo training of a sort which enables him to participate in the validation of the subjective experience of other members of the scientific community, when this experience falls within a certain range determined by the nature of the particular scientific discipline in question. As we have already seen in the example of the biologist and his microscope, subjective experience is never publicly verifiable. It is verifiable only by those capable of assuming and willing to assume the point of view of the one who has the experience. By maintaining a growing discipline of education and training in science, a community of qualified individuals capable of assuming and willing to assume a certain point of view is gradually evolved. This community gives a framework of interpretation to the individual practicing scientist, and it is the framework of interpretation which alone enables his own work, however brilliant or insightful, to become truly illuminating. No matter how far above the common lot of scientists an Einstein or a Newton may be, he can function significantly only in the context of such a community of understanding. If these same individuals had been born in a desert or in a tropical rainforest, their subjective experience would have fallen within another framework of interpretation and would certainly not have had the same result (though it may have been just as illuminating in its own context).

This model of the objectification of internal experience through creating a community of understanding and a consequent framework of interpretation is borne out by observation and experience, not only of the history and development of science but also of individuals. For example, case histories of individuals blind from birth who were given sight after reaching maturity indicate, as one would expect, that perception is not immediate but has to be painfully and slowly learned. Their first experience is a chaos of sensations with no discernible objects, forms, etc. Gradually, through participation in the framework of interpretation given by the community, perception is born, and order is brought out of chaos.¹⁷

The neglect of the social dimension of religion is only one aspect of the weakness of the existentialist position. Another aspect comes into focus when we further examine the comparison between the scientific view of subjective experience and the existentialist view. While our discussion of scientific method has led us to acknowledge a certain irreducibility of the subjective input into the epistemological act, it is nevertheless equally clear that our experience, however subjective, of anything, say a red object, is still an experience of something. Even the chaos of sensation that the previously sightless person experiences is a reaction of his subjectivity to something “out there”. It is not simply the mind’s experience of itself (which might be like the sensations of images one has during sleep or when one’s eyes are closed). But the existentialist glorification of the subjective amounts to treating the internal experience of the individual as the datum of religion. Religious experience is thus not viewed as an experience of anything, at least not anything other than the internal self of the individual. Insofar as religion is scientific, it would thus be indistinguishable from psychology, and this again explains the tendency to emphasize the unsystematic, unpredictable, irrational, mythic, and aesthetic aspects of religious experience, for these are the only aspects which, from such a standpoint, can be viewed as properly and specifically religious.

If such a view of religion and religious experience is to be refuted, one must face and answer the basic question “of what is religious experience an experience?” What is religion about? If scientific method can be applied to religion, then what is the datum of religion?

THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH

The answer which the Bahá’í Faith offers to this central question is, or so it seems to me, particularly cogent, clear and direct. For Bahá’ís, religion is the study of the phenomenon of revelation and religious experience a response to the spirit and teachings of the Revelator or Manifestation. The Bahá’í Faith offers the scientific hypothesis that revelation is a periodic phenomenon of a period of roughly one thousand years. The large number of generations intervening between two occurrences of revelation poses obvious problems for the study of this phenomenon.

However, we cannot refuse to study something simply because the study is hard or because the data associated with it are, in some instances, accessible only with difficulty. Other natural sciences, such as astrophysics, also study periodic phenomena whose periods are much greater than a thousand years and for which the accessibility of data is likewise a problem. Simply, allowances have to be made for the fact that, because of the periods involved, careful records must be kept since the observations which a given individual scientist can make in his lifetime are too limited to form in themselves a basis for the furtherance of the science.

Let us take a brief look at the phenomenon of revelation as it presents itself to us in history, which is man’s collective experience. If we consider the great religious systems of which there still exists some extant manifestation or some historical record, we will see that each has been founded by an historical figure, a unique personage. Islam was founded by Muhammad, Buddhism by Buddha, Christianity by Jesus, Judaism (in its definitive form) by Moses, Zoroastrianism by Zoroaster, and so on. These religious systems have all followed quite similar patterns of development. There is a nucleus of followers gathered around the founder during his lifetime. The founder lays down certain teachings which constitute the principles of his religion. Moreover, each of these founders has made the same claim, namely that the inspiration for his teachings and his influence was due to God and not to human learning or human devices. Each of these founders claimed to be the exponent on earth of an invisible, superhuman, personal God of unlimited power, the creative force (creator) of the universe. After the death of the founder, an early community is formed and the teachings of the founder are incorporated into a book (if no book was written by the founder). And finally a great civilization grows up based on the religious system, a civilization which lasts for many centuries.

All of the statements of the above paragraph are statements with high empirical content and low theoretical content. These are a few facts of religious history. Of course these facts are based on records and observations of past generations. One can try to dispute these records if one chooses, but we must be scientific in any approach we make. In particular, the records of the older religions are of validity equal to any other record of comparable date. If, for example, we refuse to believe that Jesus lived, we must also deny that Socrates lived for we have evidence of precisely the same validity for the existence of both men. The records of Muhammad’s life are much more valid than these and are probably beyond serious dispute. Moreover, if we choose to posit the unreality of the figures whose names are recorded and to whom various teachings and influence are attributed, we must, at the same time, give an alternative explanation for the tremendous influence which these religious systems, elaborated in the name of these founders, have had. This is more difficult than one may be inclined at first to believe.

The major civilizations of history have been associated with the major prophetic religious systems. Zoroastrianism was the religion of the “glory of ancient Persia” the Persia that conquered Babylon, Palestine, Egypt, and the Greek city-states. Judaism was the basis of the great Hebrew culture which some philosophers such as Jaspers regard as the greatest in history. Moreover, Jewish law has formed the basis of common law and jurisprudence in countries all over the world. Western culture, until the rise of modern science, was dominated by Christianity. The great Muslim culture invented algebra and preserved and developed the Hellenistic heritage. It was probably the greatest civilization the world had seen until the rise of the industrial revolution began to transform Western culture.

We are, however, very much in the same position with respect to past revelations as we are with regard to any phenomenon of long period. We were not there to observe Jesus or Muhammad in action. The contemporaries of these people were certainly impressed by them, but these observations were made years ago and are liable, we feel, to embellishments. Even though it may be unscientific to try to explain away the influence of these religious figures, there is still a certain desire to do so. We are put off by certain obvious interpolations, and we are not sure just what to accept and what to reject.

Bahá’ís believe that man’s social evolution is due to the periodic intervention into human affairs of the creative force of the universe by means of the religious founders or “Manifestations”. What is most significant is that the Bahá’í Faith offers fresh empirical evidence, in the person of its own founder, that such a phenomenon has occurred. Bahá’u’lláh (1817–1892) claimed to be one of these Manifestations and he reaffirmed the validity of the past revelations (though not necessarily the accuracy of all the details recorded in the ancient books). Here is a figure who walked the earth in recent times and whose history is documented by thousands of records and witnesses. Moreover, the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh are preserved in his manuscripts and so we are faced with a record of recent date and one of which there can be no serious doubt.

The only way we can judge Bahá’u’lláh’s fascinating hypothesis that social evolution is due to the influence of the Manifestations is the way we judge any proposition: scientific method. This is the only way we can judge Bahá’u’lláh’s claim to be one of these Manifestations. We must see if these assumptions are consistent with our knowledge of life as a whole. We must see if we can render these assertions considerably more acceptable than their negations. In the case of Bahá’u’lláh, we have many things which we can test empirically. Bahá’u’lláh made predictions. Did they come true? Bahá’u’lláh claimed Divine inspiration. Did he receive formal schooling, and did he exhibit power and knowledge not easily attributable to human sources? He insisted on moral purity. Did he lead a life of moral purity? In his teachings are found statements concerning the nature of the physical world. Has science validated these? He engaged in extensive analysis of the nature of man’s organized social life. Does his analysis accord with our own scientific observations of the same phenomena? He also makes assertions concerning human psychology and subjectivity and invites individuals to test these. Do they work? The possibilities are unlimited.

Of course, the same criteria can be applied to other Manifestations, but the known facts are so much less authenticated and so restricted in number that much direct testing is not possible. This does not disturb Bahá’ís because they believe that, essentially, there is only one religion and that each of the successive revelations is a stage in the development of this one religion. The Bahá’í Faith is thus the contemporary form of religion and we should not be surprised that it is so accessible to the method of contemporary science. Christianity and Islam were probably just as accessible to the scientific methods of their day as is the Bahá’í Faith to modern scientific method.

This relative inaccessibility of data concerning the older religions should not be taken as in any way lessening their importance or value relative to the Bahá’í Faith. The Bahá’í view is that of the absolute unity of religion, not the superiority of one religion over another for whatever reason.¹⁸ Nevertheless, if one is talking about applying scientific method to religion, problems such as that of the authenticity of ancient records must be frankly faced and seen in their true light. They must be neither exaggerated out of proportion nor swept under the rug as if they did not matter. Indeed, the best of modern Biblical scholarship, both Christian and Jewish, has been undertaken in this scientific spirit. If it has resulted, in some instances, in the undermining of certain traditional beliefs, it has more fundamentally served to clarify and enlighten the faith of truly informed students of religion. If the doubtfulness of a few passages of the Bible has been exposed, the validity of the basic text has been vindicated (as for example by the corroborative version of Isaiah in the Dead Sea manuscripts).

Each religious system has been founded on the faith in the reality of the phenomenon of revelation, and those people associated with the phenomenon felt fully justified in their faith. But as the influence of religion declined and the facts of revelation receded into history, the sense of conviction of the reality of the phenomenon subsided, and this was only natural as we have seen. It is therefore important to realize that the Bahá’í Faith offers much more than new arguments about the old evidence for the phenomenon of revelation. It offers empirical evidence for the phenomenon and it is frank to base itself on this evidence and to apply the scientific method in understanding the evidence. So much is this so, that I would unhesitatingly say that the residue of subjectivity in the faith of a Bahá’í is no greater than the residue of subjectivity in the faith one has in any well-validated scientific theory. Just as in the example of the biologist and the microscope, the findings of a Bahá’í can be verified by anyone willing to assume and capable of assuming the point of view of a Bahá’í.

According to Bahá’u’lláh, the social purpose of religion is to create an adequate spiritual basis for the progressive unfolding of an ordered social life for mankind. Indeed, as one examines the history of mankind, one can perceive the gradual ordering and re-ordering of man’s collective life on ever higher levels of unity, each new level maintaining the integrity of the previous ones and, at the same time, calling forth from the individual a correspondingly greater degree of altruism and other-centeredness. The family, the tribe, the city-state, and the nation can be seen as significant steps in this social evolution. The first two of these successive stages can be identified in a large measure with the respective revelations of Abraham and Moses, while the latter is due essentially to Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam.¹⁹

Bahá’u’lláh explains that, besides the general mission of renewing the spiritual life of men and society, each religion has a specific mission which accomplishes a definite step forward in the total evolution of mankind. He views his own revelation as being the most recent in this succession and as having the unification of mankind as a whole for its specific mission.²⁰

As one thinks about this progressive unfoldment of human society, one comes to see certain aspects of its mechanism. To begin with, it is clear that unity on one level can eventually become disunity on another; the unity of the family can coexist with disunity between families, for example. When the new level of unity is first attained, it represents a positive step, but the very accretion of power and the increased mastery resulting from the reorganization of society on this higher level can ultimately lead to tensions among these higher order units themselves. This may happen years or centuries, or millenia later, but when it does happen, the suffering caused by these tensions becomes increasingly unbearable and serves as one of the factors generating the motivation to accomplish the next stage of unity. That is, the individuals participating in the social system in question develop a strong sense of, and a need for, the higher unity.²¹

This higher unity is effected not by the suppression of the existing units, but rather by their being harmoniously organized into a higher unit—the unity to the tribe is the unity of families, the unity of a race that of tribes, the unity of a nation that of races, etc. Indeed, the attainment of unity on the lower level has been a necessary prerequisite to its establishment on the higher one. In the same way, Bahá’u’lláh envisages world unity as being a unity among nations, with a world government, a world tribunal, a single auxiliary universal language, and a world economic system.

Just as a tree must push its roots deeper as it grows higher, so must each external step forward have an internal concomitant. The individual must, at each stage, become less self-centered. He must give his loyalty to and identify with an ever-widening circle of his fellow humans. Whereas “brother” first meant physical brother, it gradually came to mean fellow Jew, fellow brother in Christ, fellow countryman, and must ultimately mean fellow world citizen. There is, in short, a gradual increase in the consciousness of the individual, and it is this new consciousness which alone allows the new unity, the new external step forward, to take place on a spiritual basis. This new depth of individual spiritual awareness also serves to increase the quality of unity at all levels. In this way, the creation of the new unity is not a superficial juxtaposition of parts or a purely formal restructuring, but rather a renewal of the whole of the society, and indeed the only way the society can be so renewed at that given stage in its development. Thus Bahá’u’lláh teaches that the establishment of world unity will lead to the perfecting and deepening of the quality of life at all levels of society.

This model also explains why we cannot wait for the lower levels of society to become perfect before working on the establishment of world unity (such an objection of the Bahá’í goal of establishing world unity is frequently heard). The interdependence of the part and the whole is too great for such a piecemeal approach to succeed. Bahá’u’lláh explains that mankind is like a body whose cells and organs are the individual human beings and the smaller social units. If the whole body is ill, every single cell will be affected in some way. At the same time, the whole body suffers to some extent from even a few unhealthy cells. Thus, in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, there are provisions for the organization and restructuring of society on a world level, and there also provisions for the perfecting of social organization on the local and intermediate levels, as well as manifold spiritual aids for the individual in his own effort to spiritualize his life and attain to a new, more universal, consciousness.

Indeed, the individual aspect of religion is just as important and essential as the global, social aspect. This individual component was the point of departure for our whole discussion and so I would like to return to it in closing this essay.

For Bahá’ís, the individual, internal aspect of religion is a direct response to the datum of the Manifestation, his spirit and teachings. It is not simply the mind’s experience of itself or some form of autosuggestion. This is why scientific method can be applied even in this aspect of religion. In the Bahá’í Faith, the individual component of religion takes the form of daily prayer, communion with God, meditation on the words of Bahá’u’lláh, and a constant effort to express one’s developing spirituality through service to mankind. Among the many individual attributes which Bahá’u’lláh mentions as characteristic of the spiritually-minded individual are humility, obedience to the will of God, justice, love, abstention from backbiting and criticism of others, regarding others with a sin-covering eye, and preferring others to oneself in all things.

Bahá’u’lláh stresses that personal spiritual development, the experience of self-transcendence, and the mystic, sense of union with God—all of which have been described and discussed in the world’s mystic literature—these are the fruits only of conscious and deliberate search and struggle. They are not haphazard experiences which we can casually cajole from the universe. They must be consciously sought and practiced as diligently as any scientific or academic discipline. Scientific method, the conscious, systematic, organized, and directed use of our mental faculties, must be employed if we are to be successful in developing spirituality.

Of course, to say that spirituality must be consciously and systematically sought does not imply that it can be reduced to any formula practice, any more than science itself can be so reduced. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has expressed it simply:

Everything of importance in this world demands the close attention of its seeker. The one in pursuit of anything must undergo difficulties and hardships until the object in view is attained and the great success is obtained. This is the case of things pertaining to the world. How much higher is that which concerns the Supreme Concourse!²²

In contemplating the application of scientific method to individual spiritual practice, let us again recall that science never leads to total or absolute objectification of internal experience, for such a thing is simply unobtainable. Moreover, the quality of internal experience involved in the pursuit of spirituality will clearly be infinitely richer than that connected with most other types of activity. In this perspective, emphasis on the aesthetic and the mythic is legitimate, important, and useful, for the gap between any descriptive models of such experience and the experience itself will be correspondingly greater than in other areas, though the basic method remains unchanged.²³

Religion is primarily a form of knowing, but the relativity and limitations of our knowledge will be felt even more keenly here than elsewhere. Indeed, it is this self-knowledge, the acute consciousness of these very limitations, which constitutes an important part of our knowledge of God. One of the profoundest truths that the mystic discovers is that the ultimate goal is, not to comprehend, but to be comprehended. The deepest knowledge is attained by the profoundest awareness of our own relative ignorance. Bahá’u’lláh expresses this important truth in the following terms:

Consider the rational faculty with which God hath endowed the essence of man. Examine thine own self, and behold how thy motion and stillness, they will and purpose, thy sight and hearing, thy sense of smell and power of speech, and whatever else is related to, or transcendeth, thy physical sense or spiritual perceptions, all proceed from, and owe their existence to, this same faculty… Wert thou to ponder in thine heart, from now until the end that hath no end, and with all the concentrated intelligence and understanding which the greatest minds have attained in the past or will attain in the future, this divinely ordained and subtle Reality, this sign of the revelation of the All-Abiding, All-Glorious God, thou wilt fail to comprehend its mystery to appraise its virtue. Having recognized thy powerlessness to attain to an adequate understanding of that Reality which abideth within thee, thou wilt readily admit the futility of such efforts as may be attempted by thee, or by any of the created things, to fathom the mystery of the Living God, the day Star of unfading glory, the Ancient of everlasting days. This confession of helplessness which mature contemplation must eventually impel every mind to make is in itself the acme of human understanding, and marketh the culmination of man’s development.²⁴

Since, in the Bahá’í view, internal religious experience is not simply the self’s experience of itself, but is a direct response to the datum of the Manifestation, there is consequently a need for a constantly accessible focal point towards which the individual can turn in his pursuit of these individual spiritual goals. This indeed is one of the reasons for the periodic nature of the phenomenon of revelation. Although something of God’s nature can be said to be revealed in every aspect of creation, clearly the force and importance of such a revelation are conditioned by two things, namely, the inherent limitations of the instrument used as a vehicle of revelation, and the accessibility to us of the occurrence of revelation.

Man himself is the most highly-ordered and subtle phenomenon in all the universe known to man. It would thus seem logical that man would be the most perfect available (i.e. least limited) instrument as a vehicle for God’s self-revelation. Hence, the Person of the Manifestation.²⁵ The necessity for the repetition of revelation derives from the condition of accessibility. The length of the period between occurrences, on the other hand, derives from the social nature of religion as described in the foregoing. Simply, it takes a certain time for a Manifestation to become known, His system to become established, and for the specific purpose of His revelation to be accomplished.²⁶

The knowledge of the Reality of the Divinity is impossible and unattainable, but the knowledge of the Manifestations of God is the knowledge of God, for the bounties, splendours, and divine attributes are apparent in them. Therefore, if man attains to the knowledge of the Manifestations of God, he will attain to the knowledge of God; and if he be neglectful of the knowledge of the Holy Manifestation, he will be bereft of the knowledge of God. (Some Answered Questions, p. 257–58.)

CONCLUSIONS

I feel that the Bahá’í view of religion is exciting in its fundamental assertion of the universality and accessibility of religion and religious experience to the enquiring mind. The existentialist view of religion, as well as other subjective views, see religious experience rather as something which cannot (and perhaps should not) be cultivated, practised and sought systematically. Rather it must strike like lightning for reasons which are never wholly clear or else as the result of some magical or occult practice. Clearly no experience of such an erratic and unstable nature could ever serve as the basis for a progressive society.

Positivism and its variants limit unduly the application of scientific method and fail to see that the essence of the method can be applied to all phenomena and to all aspects of life, including the spiritual.

The ultimate resolution of the religion-science opposition is thus based on a balance and complementarity between the two, involving a better understanding of the nature and universality of scientific method on the one hand, and of the nature and content of that datum which is the phenomenon of revelation on the other. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has expressed admirably the nature of this balance in the following words:

Religion and science are the two wings upon which man’s intelligence can soar into the heights, with which the human soul can progress. It is not possible to fly with one wing alone! Should a man try to fly with the wing of religion alone he would quickly fall into the quagmire of superstition, whilst on the other hand, with the wing of science alone he would also make no progress, but fall into the despairing slough of materialism… When religion, shorn of its superstitions, traditions and unintelligent dogmas, shows its conformity with science, then will there be a great unifying, cleansing force in the world which will sweep before it all wars, disagreements, discords and struggles—and then will mankind be united in the power of the Love of God.²⁷