Science and the Infinite; or, Through a Window in the Blank Wall — John Shaqi
Science and the Infinite; or, Through a Window in the Blank WallKlein, Sydney T. (Sydney Turner)
Religion
Science and the Infinite; or, Through a Window in the Blank Wall
Klein, Sydney T. (Sydney Turner)
Religion and science
I do not wish to lay claim to having made any startling discovery;
similar thoughts, especially those concerning the non-reality of Time
and Space, have no doubt occurred to others, but the whole problem
"What is the Reality?" has been insistently pressing on me ever since
I can remember, and I have tried to give here in simple colloquial
language, without any attempt at rhetoric, the conclusions I have
personally come to as to what is the Truth.
The study of ancient and modern philosophic theories is useful as
showing how impossible it is, for even the greatest thinkers of any
age, to grasp the Absolute with our understanding or to measure the
Infinite with our finite units. The propounders of all these theories
seem to me to be, without exception, looking in the wrong direction
for the "Reality of Being"; they are all arguing from the standpoint
of "Intellectualism" in a similar manner to that of the "Theologians"
referred to in View Three. Our latest expositor of this, M. Henri
Bergson, bases his theory upon "Life" being the Reality; this he
postulates is a "flowing" in Time, and _Movement_ therefore becomes
for him the Reality; and yet we know that Motion is but the product
of Time and Space, and these are only the two modes or _limitations_
under which our senses act and upon which our very consciousness of
living depends. Surely the Absolute cannot be localised, must be
Omnipresent, and therefore independent of Space--cannot have a
beginning or end, must be Omniscient, and therefore independent of
Time; these two unrealities can therefore have no existence in
"Reality of Being." If, then, there is any truth in "Intuition," we
have, in this theory, the Reality, "Life," not only limited by the
unreal but actually dependent for its very existence upon those
limitations! In these Views I have attempted, on the contrary, to show
that Time and Space have no existence apart from our Physical Senses;
they are the modes only under which we appreciate motion, or what we
call physical phenomena, and as our conceptional knowledge is based
upon our perceptional knowledge, our very consciousness of living is
limited by Time and Space, and we must surely therefore look behind
consciousness itself, beyond the conditioning in Time and Space for
the Reality of Being, otherwise _physical motion_, the product of
these two limitations, would become the Reality of Being.
I have also suggested reasons for looking upon physical life as a
mode of frequency, akin to Light, Electricity, Magnetism, Chemical
Action, the Vibration of a Tuning Fork, or the Swing of a Pendulum,
and therefore a transient phenomenon having to do only with the Race;
Life can under these conditions only be looked upon as a reality in
the same sense in which all other forms of energy or matter appear
real to our finite senses--namely, as the shadows or manifestations of
the Absolute on our limited plane of Consciousness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account