Four years
earlier, in a letter to a friend, Kepler wrote, ‘My aim is to show that the
celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism, but to a
clockwork.’ The metaphor of the cosmos as a clock was promoted at the time
by many of his contemporaries.
In his Astronomia
Nova he, no doubt, considered that he had achieved that aim.
Sadly he,
and many other pioneers of the Scientific Revolution, by introducing this
mechanistic metaphor into the world helped to entrench our perceived disconnect
from nature. Nature was no longer an organism, but was now a mechanical,
automated, and lifeless machine.
And, being
mechanical and lifeless, nature could be exploited and open to another of the disturbing
metaphors to come out of the Scientific Revolution – misogyny and rape. Francis
Bacon, for instance, avowed that the scientific method allowed him to uncover ‘the
secrets still locked in (nature’s) bosom… (so that) she can be forced
out of her natural state and squeezed and moulded.’ Descartes too, was
emboldened by this metaphor, asserting that science could ‘render ourselves
the masters and possessors of nature.’
With such
metaphors and the attendant worldviews, it is little wonder that today we are
exploiting nature and extracting every little resource we can.
But, is
the clock beginning to shatter?
The sciences
of the 20th and 21st centuries are overturning the outlook
of the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th
centuries. Perhaps we could say that these sciences represent a Second
Scientific Revolution. The sciences of ecology, quantum physics, biology, systems theory, and
theories of Emergence, Chaos, and Complexity are all reasserting the cosmos as an
organic wholeness.
Throughout
the world there are groups of people, small communities, and especially
indigenous societies challenging the mechanistic view of the world. Workshops,
seminars, retreats, and vision quests are all being utilised to return to an
organic outlook.
Although
small, these enterprises and experiences are important. Our belief systems and
worldviews are built upon the stories we tell ourselves and the metaphors we
use. When we contest these, we open up to new, refreshing, possibilities,
including the potential to return to an acknowledgement that we live in, and
are part of, a divine organism.
All that
is exciting. It reconnects us with a sense of wonder at the mysteriousness of
life, the universe, and all it contains.
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