SUBJECT: A CHANGED VIEW OF SCIENCE FILE: UFO2720 Mon 24 Feb 92 8:15 By: Robin Gober To: ALL Re: Intergration ---------------------------------------------------------------------- When we last left Doc. Rogers he was faced with how to resolve the conflict of viewing a subjective experience as an experientialist or scientist. I see a lot of things in this debate that can be useful to a Contactee. As a Contactee I know, as William James stated that these experiences can be very real and very authoritative. I also that as a thinking Contactee, sometimes, I like to be able to view the the experience objectively as well. I think Rogers gives some very good guide lines on how to go about this. "A Changed View of Science [...] Gradually I have come to believe that the most basic error in the original formulation was in the description of science. I should like, in this section, to attempt to correct that error, and in the following section to reconcile the revised points of view. The major shortcoming was, I believe, in viewing science as something `out there,' something spelled with a capital S, a `body of knowledge' existing somewhere in space and time. in common with psychologists I thought of science as a systematized and organized collection of tentatively verified facts, and saw the methodology of science as the socially approved means of accumulating this body of knowledge, and continuing its verification. It has seemed somewhat like a reservoir into which all and sundry may dip their buckets to obtain water--with a guarantee of 99% purity. When viewed in this external and impersonal fashion, it seems not unreasonable to see Science not only as discovering knowledge in lofty fashion, but as involving depersonalization, a tendency to manipulate, a denial of the basic freedom of choice which I have met experientially in therapy. I should like now to view the scientific approach from a different, and I hope, a more accurate perspective. Science in Persons Science exists only in people. Each scientific project has its creative inception, its process, and its tentative conclusion, in a person or persons. Knowledge--even scientific knowledge can be communicated only to those who are subjectively ready to receive its communication. The utilization of science also occurs only through people who are in pursuit of values which have meaning to them. These statements summarize very briefly something of the change in emphasis which I would like to make in my description of science. Let me follow through the various phases of science from this point of view." _On Becoming a Person_ Carl R. Rogers Ph.D. 1961 "The Creative Phase Science has its inception in a particular person who is pursuing aims, values, purposes, which have personal and subjective meaning for him. As a part of this pursuit, he, in some area,`wants to find out.' Consequently, if he is to be a good scientist, he immerses himself in the relevant experience, whether that be the physics laboratory, the world of the plant or animal life, the hospital, the psychological laboratory or clinic, or whatever. This immersion is complete and subjective, similar to the immersion of the therapist in therapy,[or the Contactee in the encounter]. He senses the field in which he is interested, he lives it. He does more than `think' about it--he lets his organism take over and react to it, both on a knowing and on an unknowing level. He comes to sense more than he could possibly verbalize about his field, and reacts organismically in terms of relationships which are not present in his awareness. Out of his complete subjective immersion comes a creative forming, a sense of direction, a vague formulation of relationships hitherto unrecognized. Whittled down, sharpened, formulated in clearer terms, this creative forming becomes a hypothesis-- a statement of a tentative, personal, subjective faith. The scientist is saying, `I have a hunch that such and such a relationship exits, and the existence of this phenomenon has relevance to my personal values.' What I am describing is the initial phase of science, probably its most important phase, but one which American scientists, particularly psychologists, have been prone to minimize or ignore. It is not so much that it has been denied as that it has been quickly brushed off. Kenneth Spence has said that this aspect of science is `simply taken for granted.' Like many experiences taken for granted, it also tends to be forgotten. It is indeed in the matrix of immediate personal, subjective experience that all science, and each individual scientific research, has its origin." _On Becoming a Person_ Carl R. Rogers Ph.D. "Reality, our good buddie!" --Robin Gober "Checking With Reality The scientist has then creatively achieved his hypothesis, his tentative faith. But does it check with reality? Experience has shown each one of us that it is very easy to deceive ourselves, to believe something which later experience shows is not so. How can I tell whether this tentative belief has some real relationship to observed facts? I can use, not one line of evidence only, but several. I can surround my observation of the facts with various precautions to make sure I am not deceiving myself. I can consult with others who have also been concerned with avoiding self-deception, an learn useful ways of catching myself in unwarranted beliefs, based on misinterpretation of observations. I can, in short, begin to use all the elaborate methodology which science has accumulated. I discover that stating my hypothesis in operational terms will avoid many blind alleys and false conclusions. I learn that control groups can help me to avoid drawing false inferences. [The same way I use information from other recovery groups on topics like trauma, P.T.S.D.,Codependants, and Religious Addiction] I learn that correlations and t tests and critical ratios and a whole array of statistical procedures can likewise aid me in drawing only reasonable inferences. Thus scientific methodology is seen for what it truly is -- a way of preventing me from deceiving myself in regard to my creatively formed subjective hunches which have developed out of the relationship between me and my material. It is in this context, and perhaps only in this context, that the vast structure of operationism, logical positivism, research design, test of significance, ect. have their place. They exist, not for themselves, but as servants in the attempt to check the subjective feeling or hunch or hypothesis of a person with the objective fact. And even throughout the use of such rigorous and impersonal methods, the important choices are all made subjectively by the scientist. To which of a number of hypotheses shall I devote time? What kind of control group is most suitable for avoiding self-deception in this in this particular research? How far shall I carry the statistical analysis? How much credence may I place in the findings? Each of these is necessarily a subjective personal judgment, emphasizing that the splendid structure of science rest basically upon its subjective use by persons. It is the best instrument we have yet been able to devise to check upon our organismic sensing of the universe. _On Becoming a Person_ Carl R. Rogers Ph.D. "The Findings If, as scientist, I like the way I have gone about my investigation, if I have been open to all the evidence if I have selected and used intelligently all the precautions against self-deception which I have been able to assimilate from others or to devise myself, then I will give my tentative belief to the findings which have emerged. I will regard them as a springboard for further investigation and further seeking. It seems to me that in the best of science, the primary purpose is to provide a more satisfactory and dependable hypothesis, belief, faith, for the investigator himself. In regard to the findings of science, the subjective foundation is well shown in the fact that at times the scientist may refuse to believe his own findings. `The experiment showed thus and so, but I believe it to be wrong,' is a theme which every scientist has experienced at some time or other. Some very fruitful discoveries have grown out of the persistent disbelief, by a scientist, in his won findings and those of others. In the last analysis he may place more trust in his total organismic reactions than in the methods of science. There is no doubt that this can result in serious error as well as in scientific discoveries, but it indicates again the leading place of the subjective in the use of science. Communication of Scientific Findings Wading along a coral reef in the Caribbean this morning, I saw a large blue fish -- I think. If you, quite independently, saw it too, then I feel more confident in my own observation. This is what is know as intersubjective verification, and it plays an important part in our understanding of science. If I take you (whether in conversation or in print or behaviorally) through the steps I have taken in an investigation, and it seems to you too that I have not deceived myself, and I have indeed come across a new relationship which is relevant to my values, and that I am justified in having a tentative faith in this relationship, then we have the beginnings of Science with a capital S. It is at this point that we are likely to think we have created a body of scientific knowledge. Actually there is no such body of knowledge. There are only tentative beliefs, existing subjectively, in a number of different persons. If these beliefs are not tentative, then what exists is dogma, not science. If on the other hand, no one but the investigator believes the finding then this finding is either a personal and deviant matter, an instance of psycho-pathology, or else it is an unusual truth discovered by a genius, which as yet no one is subjectively ready to believe. This leads me to comment on the group which can put tentative faith in any given scientific finding." _On Becoming a Person_ Carl R. Rogers Ph.D. "Communication to Whom? It is clear that scientific findings can be communicated only to those who have agreed to the same ground rules of investigation. The Australian bushman will be quite unimpressed with the finding of science regarding bacterial infection. He knows that illness truly is caused by evil spirits. It is only when he too agrees to scientific method as a good means of preventing self-deception, that he will be likely to accept its findings. But even among those who have adopted the ground rules of science, tentative belief in the findings of a scientific research can only occur where there is a subjective readiness to believe. One could find many examples. Most psychologists are quite ready to believe evidence showing that the lecture system produces significant increments of learning, and quite unready to believe that the turn of an unseen card may be called through an ability labelled extra-sensory perception. Yet the scientific evidence for the latter is considerably more impeccable than for the former. Likewise when the so-called `Iowa studies' first came out, indicating that intelligence might be considerably altered by environmental conditions, there was great disbelief among psychologists, and many attacks on the imperfect scientific methods used. The scientific evidence for this finding is not much better today than it was when the Iowa studies first appeared, but the subjective readiness of psychologists to believe such a finding has altered greatly.[Much like the subject of Contact/Abduction] A historian of science has noted that empiricists, had they existed at the time, would have been the first to desbelieve the findings of Copernicus. It appears then that whether I believe the scientific findings of others or those from my own studies, depends in part on my readiness to put a tentative belief in such findings. One reason we are not particularly aware of this subjective fact is that in the physical sciences particularly, we have gradually adopted a very large area of experience in which we are ready to believe and finding which can be shown to rest upon the rules of the scientific game, properly played. The Use of Science But not only is the origin, process, and conclusion of science something which exists only in the subjective experience of persons -- so also is its utilization. `Science' will never depersonalize, or manipulate, or control individuals. It is only persons who can and will do that.[as in cults] That is surely a most obvious and trite observation, yet a deep realization of it has had much meaning for me. It means that the use which will be made of scientific findings in the field of personality is and will be a matter of subjective personal choice. -- the same type of choice as a person makes in therapy. To the extent that he has defensively closed off areas of his awareness, the person is more likely to make choices which are socially destructive. [As in a Contactee closing off feelings of anger, pain or fear]. To the extent that he is open to all phases of his experience we may be sure that this person will be more likely to use the findings and methods of science (or any other tool or capacity) in a manner which is personally and socially constructive. There is, in actuality then, no threatening entity of `Science' which can in any way affect our destiny. There are only people. While many of them are indeed threatening and dangerours in their defensiveness, and modern scientific knowledge multiplies the social threat and danger, this is not the whole picture. There are two other significant facets. (1) There are many person who are relatively open to their experience and hence likely to be socially constructive. (2) Both the subjective experience of psychotherapy and the scientific findings regarding it indicate that individuals are motivated to change, and may be helped to change, in the direction of greater openness to experience, and hence in the direction of behavior which is enhancing of self and society, rather than destructive. To put it briefly, Science can never threaten us. Only persons can do that. And while individuals can be vastly destructive with the tools placed in their hands by scientific knowledge, this is only one side of the picture. We already have subjective and objective knowledge of the basic principles by which individual may achieve the more constructive social behavior which is natural to their organismic process of becoming." _On Becoming a Person_ Carl R. Rogers Ph.D. "A New Integration What this line of thought has achieved for me is a fresh integration in which the conflict between the `experientialist' and the `scientist' tends to disappear. This particular intergration may not be acceptable to others, but it does have meaning to me. Its major tenets have been largely implicit in the preceding section, but I will try to state them here in a way which takes cognizance of the arguments between the opposing points of view. Science, as well as therapy, as well as all other aspects of living, [as well as being a Contactee] is rooted in and based upon the immediate, subjective, experience of a person. It springs from the inner, total, organismic experiencing which is only partially and imperfectly communicable. It is one phase of subjective living. It is because I find value and reward in human relationships that I enter into a relationship known as therapeutic, where feelings and cognition merge into one unitary experience which is lived rather than examined, in which awareness is non-reflective, and where I am the participant rather than observer. But because I am curious about the exquisite orderliness which appears to exist in the universe and in this relationship I can abstract myself from the experience and look upon it as an observer, making myself and/or others the objects of that observation.[I feel the same way about Contact encounters] As observer I use all of the hunches which grow out of the living experience. To avoid deceiving myself as observer, to gain a more accurate picture of the order which exists, I make use of all the cannons of science. Science is not an impersonal something,but simply a person living subjectively an other phase of himself. A deeper understanding of therapy (or of any other problem) [like Contact issues] may come from living it, or from the communication within the self between the two types of experience. As to the subjective experience of choice, it is not only primary in therapy, but it is also primary in the use of scientific method by a person. [This is it,folks, the really good part] What I will do with the knowledge gained through scientific method -- whether I will use it to understand, enhance, enrich, or use it to control manipulate and destroy -- is a matter of subjective choice dependent upon the values which have personal meaning for me. If, out of fright and defensiveness, I block out from my awareness large areas of experience, -- if I can see only those facts which support my present beliefs, and am blind to all others -- if I can see only the objective aspects of life, and cannot perceive the subjective -- if in any way I cut off my perception from the full range of its actual sensitivity -- then I am likely to be socially destructive, whether I use as tool the knowledge and instruments of science, or the power and emotional strength of a subjective relationship. And on the other hand if I am open to my experience,and can permit all of the sensing of my intricate organism to be available to my awareness, then I am likely to use myself, my subjective experience, _and_ my scientific knowledge, in ways which are realistically constructive. This then is the degree of integration I have currently been able to achieve between two approaches first experienced as conflicting." _On Becoming a Person_ Carl R. Rogers Ph.D. 1961 Houghton Mifflin Company Boston ISBN: 0-395-08134-3 ISBN: 0-395-08409-1 pbk. ENDNOTES: I placed all of my comments in [ ] I hated to interject myself into the text but it seemed like the best way to make sure that I stayed on topic. I believe most readers are smart enough to have caught those connections without my help. take care! ********************************************** * THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo * **********************************************