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The scientific community is overflowing with intellects that try to frame the material world in coherent laws, and then exalt it to the status of an ontological ultimate. The first half of this endeavor is ennobling, while the latter half is a collective foible. The relationship between science and society can only be properly articulated if this error is rectified and its metaphysical conceptions are readjusted. Much of the difficulty society has with understanding the role of science stems from the fact that, for most people, that role is simply ill-defined. Its common definitions feel insufficient to many. The primary virtue of science is not, as is often thought, in its utility to ease our suffering, nor in its capacity to delineate objective facts, though no one would deny at least a partial virtue to those. Rather, the verity of science lies in its ability to deepen and intensify our subjectivity. To state it differently, and emphasize the more important aspect of that point: the purpose of science is to vivify the experience of connection between the individual and the cosmos in which they subsist. If this sounds like it borders on the religious, that is because it does. The reputation for the incompatibility of science and religion is not without merit. There are undoubtedly aspects of each that are irreconcilable; however, a proper consideration of religion may help bring their underlying compatibility into view. The underlying teaching that unifies the more fundamental aspects of disparate religious traditions states that the intuitive realization of Truth is the peak and purpose of life. Einstein elucidates this deeper, experiential quality that underlies the various manifestations of religious expression when he states that “the individual feels…the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought,” and tentatively deems this the “cosmic religious feeling,” for lack of a better term. Furthermore, he states that “the religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image.” Religion, if understood in this way, opens the door for more secular-minded people to the idea that there is something different and, arguably, more profound going on in the universal process than arbitrary fluctuations of energy. Einstein then posits his opinion on the purpose of his own work and the work he’s built upon: “how can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it” (41). He reiterates, for emphasis, “I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research” (42 [ideas and opinions]). This is not the philosophical lens through which science is often viewed, yet it is the lens through which the most lauded scientist of all time viewed it. Perhaps that is saying something, perhaps not. Either way, this approach to religion is compelling and worth thinking about. Insofar as it is true, it gives a whole new meaning to the discoveries of the physical world. The results of science, as well as its methodology, cannot be divorced from philosophical interpretation; so, although humanity has successfully managed to excavate some of the brute facts of the objective world, it is difficult to deny that “a new science with any substantial novelty in its notions is considered to be in some way peculiarly philosophical. In their later stages…most sciences accept without question the general notions in terms of which they develop,” and also, that “one aim of philosophy is to challenge the half-truths constituting the scientific first principles” (Whitehead, Process and Reality 10). Challenging those truths is exactly what Einstein did when he wrote those words, and even Heisenberg famously quipped that “when one takes their first sip from the glass of the Natural Sciences, they are turned immediately into an atheist. But, at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting.” Continuing in this line of thought, Whitehead states that “philosophy…attains its chief importance by fusing…religion and science into one rational scheme of thought,” and “in this sense scientific interest is only a variant form of religious interest. Any survey of the scientific devotion to ‘truth,’ as an ideal, will confirm this statement” (Process and Reality 15-16). This approaches Einstein’s view from a somewhat different angle, and reinforces it. In fact, the “physical” goals of science aren’t as easily distinguishable from the “spiritual” goals of religion as one might think. It is thought to be a monumental achievement when any part of science is sufficiently united with any other part. Maxwell’s coalescence of the electromagnetic forces was a revolution in the annals of physics. In fact, the supreme goal of science in the modern age is the daunting Unified Field Theory. Cracking this puzzle would cohere every modicum of scientific understanding with every other. The Large Hadron Collider was built for the purpose of discovering greater unities between natural principles; so, the most impressive achievement of human engineering was created because of a reasonable intuition that a more profound Oneness exists at the base of reality. The inclination of parts toward wholes, and multiplicities toward unities, is how progress is defined in both the world of science and that of religion. “The great point to be kept in mind is that normally an advance in science will show that statements of various religious beliefs require some sort of modification. It may be that they have to be expanded or explained, or indeed entirely restated. If the religion is a sound expression of truth, this modification will only exhibit more adequately the exact point which is of importance. In so far…as any religion has any contact with physical facts…the exact relevance of these facts for religious thought will grow more and more clear. The progress of science must result in the unceasing codification of religious thought, to the great advantage of religion” (Whitehead, Science and the Modern World 189). Buckminster Fuller addresses this issue in language peculiarly devoid of the vernacular traps with which religious tradition often obscures philosophy: “the order sought for and sometimes found by science is always eternally generalized; that is, it holds true in every special case.” Fuller rightly characterizes these generalizations as metaphysical, and his line of thought seems congruent with Einstein when he asks and answers “what is a metaphysical experience? It is comprehending the relationships of eternal principles. The means of communication is physical. That which is communicated…is metaphysical. The symbols with which mathematics is…described are physical. A mathematical principle is metaphysical and independent of whether X, Y or A, B are symbolically employed” (14). Science is full of metaphysical presuppositions. It can be explained by math, but it cannot explain why it can be explained by math. The rigor of science is nothing without it, and yet it seems to occupy a timeless, weightless, transcendent domain. If there is anything that could convince people of the religious notion that there is an immaterial logic governing and guiding material processes, it is the metaphysical status of mathematics. To address this, it is important to once again ask the long restated question of whether mathematical axioms are made or found? Fuller is wise to argue that a substantial sense it is discovered, and that the degree to which it could be considered invented consists in the symbols that have been adopted to express their truths. The truths themselves are beyond the figures employed. Cymatics are a convincing case for this as well. Karl Popper even “felt that if a theory is found to be non-scientific, or ‘metaphysical’ (as we might say), it is not thereby found to be unimportant, or insignificant, or ‘meaningless’, or ‘nonsensical’” (Reading the World 342). Proclus, the Neoplatonic philosopher, in his Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements, positions mathematics in the “middle essence” between the supreme unity of the Good, and the chaos of physicality. It is here placed due to its incorporeal and immutable hypostasis, being an infinitely divisible and re-combinable derivative of the One, and the ground of pure potential on which the structures of the impure actual depend. The Neoplatonic tradition expands upon this and makes mathematical laws the artificer of forms, concluding that Plato’s theory of ideas is not so much the concept of a realm of perfect archetypes to individual objects, but rather the mathematical realm that is both transcendent and immanent in relation to matter. It is what allows for shape and definition to take place in the flux of stuff, permitting individuation to objects, or rather, permitting formless non-entity to be ‘objects,’ by imbuing and ordering their process with a logic contingent on absolute rules. The principle of function in a given system is proportionate to the degree of mathematical soundness that system has attained. In other words, what makes certain conditions work in nature, and what makes them not work, is under the jurisdiction of mathematical law and particularly in its expressions of balance, order, harmony, etc.