In our previous post, Larry Rifkin, MD, wrote an exquisite ode to the wonders of science, including its ability to help us find meaning in life. In response, Chris Crawford penned another beautiful tribute to the ability of science to provide spiritual meaning. His response, like Rifkin’s original essay, moved me deeply. Here are his words.

Spiritual satisfaction requires deep contemplation of reality. Most people look inward to find that satisfaction, but science allows us to look outward. It has taken me decades to learn the physics, chemistry, biochemistry, biology, evolution, geology, and so many other components of science to reach a point of spiritual satisfaction. I can walk through the forest and feel the unity of reality. The color of the sky; the photons raining down; the leaves eagerly gobbling them up; the fluids slowly seeping upward inside the trees, carrying nutrients from the soil out to the furthest leaves; the chemical reactions in the leaves generating ATP, driven by DNA containing components shared in my own DNA; the insects flitting about and the birds sweeping through, snagging the insects; these too containing DNA that I share; the soil created by worms from rocks that emerged from deep, deep in the earth where they were forged by intense pressure and temperatures and metamorphosed from the igneous rocks released by volcanoes 250 million years ago; the warmth of the sunlight on my face, generated by thermonuclear reactions deep inside the sun a million years ago (yes, it takes a million years for a gamma ray released by a thermonuclear reaction to elbow its way through the immensely dense plasma of the sun to reach the surface and blast off for the earth); all these realizations and more make me contemplate the oneness I feel with the universe.

Most people see reality as nothing more than a random collection of things. I see it as a unified system of processes that fit together with infinite synergy.

Reading this extraordinarily powerful prose, Rifkin responded,

Chris Crawford’s comment beautifully and powerfully conveys the deep emotional connection and sense of belonging that knowledge, deeply felt, can provide.

Picking up on just one of his insights, the light from the sun we are bathed in now, light we use to see and to sustain our lives in the present, embraces us from the deep past, from a time at least as old as the dawn of humanity.

The only thing I would add is that Crawford’s ideas remind me of Richard Dawkins’ claims in “Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder.” His starting point is John Keats’s well-known accusation that Isaac Newton destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by ‘reducing it to the prismatic colours.’ Dawkins’s agenda is to show the reader that science does not destroy, but rather discovers poetry in the patterns of nature.

I agree with Rifkin, Crawford, and Dawkins. Truth, beauty, and meaning can be found in the world science has revealed.

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