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16. A Short History of Materialism
Beginning with the Renaissance in 15th century Europe, a view began to emerge in Western thought that increasingly understood the world as human-centered, rather than centered on something outside the purely human domain. With the great scientific discoveries that followed over the next few centuries, it began to seem to many that human beings would be able to gain complete mastery of themselves and their world—that nothing could keep us from perfecting life and ourselves. Simultaneous with this incredible scientific outpouring, the 17th century became for many the Age of Reason, in which the belief developed that human reason was the one thing that could bring order to life, and solve the problems of the world—and most especially, bring an end to the great religious wars that had ravaged Europe for the preceding hundred years. There was also a growing recognition that many abuses had arisen in the religious organizations of the time, and human reason seemed to be the best antidote to these abuses.
These currents led in turn to the “Enlightenment” of the 18th century, and, combined with its predecessors, this new wave of human thought brought with it dramatic changes—some of enormous value—in how we humans think about ourselves and our world. Out of these currents arose greater individual freedom of thought and action, which in turn brought increased incentives for individual initiative in commerce, in art, in science—in fact, in all areas of human life. These ideas also provided a corrective to the abuses of unrestrained ecclesiastical power that had arisen in the so-called “Dark Ages,” and helped restore a greater balance between excessive institutional power and an individual’s right—perhaps need—to discover his or her own truths for themselves.
In the realm of how to govern our societies, the changes brought by these currents were equally profound. The founders of the United States were deeply influenced by these currents, especially Thomas Jefferson, and these ideas were central to the documents that created the United States of America. From this source arose the fundamental idea that each individual has an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In Europe, the democratic systems of government that organize the Western world of today—which we so take for granted—arose out of these great waves of ideas known today as The Age of Reason, the Scientific Revolution, and The Enlightenment.
Yet, as with any idea that has dramatic success, the seeds of its undoing are sown with its success. Its proponents start to carry its ideas to further and further extremes (if a little of this idea is a good thing, then more of it must be even better). And they tend to become increasingly arrogant, believing that, since great value has come from their views, they should be considered right in all things. So as the 18th century gave way to the 19th, and then to the 20th, more and more followers of these currents came to believe that human reason was the sole basis for all truth, and that spiritual beliefs had no place in understanding or organizing human life.
It is important to recognize, however, that this was not the case with most of the people who developed and sustained these three great currents of human thought—but only with a radical minority. As for the great majority, they understood the importance of maintaining room for other realms of thought. For instance, Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton had as much to do with the creation of modern science as anyone. Yet Descartes thought that his system of logic proved the existence of God, and he also believed the soul survived death. As for Newton, he spent much of the time of his whole adult life as a practicing alchemist, a system that for him clearly had a mystical significance. Newton stated in his writings that this alchemical work had great value and meaning for him, and, significantly, that it was the source of much of his scientific knowledge. He believed there was a force that had set the world in motion, and he felt his achievement was only to discover the God-given laws that governed the universe.
Then there is Galileo. Much has been written through the centuries about his battles with the church, and his struggle has, quite rightly, been held up as an example of an attempt by a religious organization to crush the advancement of knowledge, and to deny what is obviously true. But in using this story as an example, it is often down-played or over-looked that Galileo did not question the belief in a higher order—only the church’s dogma about how the material world was organized: his assertion was only that the church did not understand correctly how the material world functioned. He was not challenging the existence of a spiritual domain, for he was a religious man. He was saying that a particular religious organization’s attempt to say that it had all the truth about how the material world functioned was not correct. Or you could say that he was challenging one part of one religious group’s belief system, but in no way was he challenging spiritual belief itself.
Keeping this distinction in mind, if you read carefully the lives and journals and stories of many of the great scientists of the last three hundred years, you discover that most did not think of their metaphysical beliefs as tangential to their scientific work, but central to it—you discover in fact that much of the scientific endeavor throughout human history has been motivated by a desire to better understand the spiritual domain. As historian Karen Armstrong put it, “Many of the explorers, scientists, and thinkers at the cutting edge of change believed that they were finding new ways of being religious rather than abandoning religion altogether.” This current is so strong throughout the scientific enterprise that it led Albert Einstein to declare, “I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research.”
Nor has this recognition of the role and importance of spiritual currents been rejected by the great scientists of the modern era. As Ken Wilber points out concerning the physicists who created relativity and quantum theory—the crown jewel of 20h century science, “of the dozen or so pioneers in these early revolutions—individuals such as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schroedinger, Louis de Broglie, Max Planck, Wolfgang Pauli, Sir Arthur Eddington—the vast majority of them were idealists or transcendentalists of one variety or another.” In this light, let us listen again to the words of the person selected in one poll as the greatest mind of the 20th century, Albert Einstein: “The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science….. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.”
In the area of political and philosophical thought, it is also clear that most of the great minds who developed the ideas of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment were not rejecting religious belief, but simply rejecting what they considered the overly specific views held by the dominant religious organizations of their time. Many of the main figures of the Age of Reason, such as Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, and Leibniz believed that much that passed for religious thought in their time was merely superstition and dogma, and did not fit with what could be observed in the world, or reasoned by the mind. And they began to carve out a greater role for human reason and rationality as a counterweight to the ills they thought superstition and dogma had brought to human life. But they did not reject belief in the existence of a higher order, the existence of something beyond the material realm. Rather, their thought led more in the direction formulated by one of the greatest philosophers of their era, Baruch Spinoza—who developed a pantheistic view of the universe, where God and Nature were ultimately one.
As the Age of Reason gave way to the Enlightenment, there continued the struggle between then current religious beliefs and this new wave of trust in the power of human reason to correct the problems of the past. There were fierce attacks on the dominant church of the time—Voltaire’s battle cry, “Remember the cruelties” (which suggests the force and feeling behind many of these attacks), was directed at the abuses of the church. But it is crucial to remember that almost all these attacks and challenges were directed against a particular religious organization—and mostly its role in worldly affairs—not against religion and spiritual belief per se. In fact, most of the leading figures of the Enlightenment were also exploring new spiritual perspectives of one kind or another for themselves; for instance, many embraced Deism—the belief that God created the world and set it in motion, putting in place the laws that govern its action. One of these Deists, the great Enlightenment figure and statesman Thomas Jefferson, justified the founding of America and the inherent rights of its citizens through this view—“they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.”
Reviewing this history, it is quite clear that most of those who developed the ideas that became modern Western civilization recognized the value of religious and spiritual currents in human life. Yet a small number of influential people in the 20th century began to put their faith in a strictly materialistic view of the world. And in so doing, The Age of Reason, the Great Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution gave way for some to Pure Materialism. Thus the great British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell could say, “Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.” And the noted popularizer of science, Carl Sagan, could say to his large TV audience, “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” (And I understand what Sagan meant by “cosmos,” both in the context of his comments at the time, and from his other writings in the same period, to be strictly the material world.)
The Breakdown of the Perfectibility Project
This belief that a purely materialistic view of the world, combined with human reason, could explain everything—and perhaps lead to the perfection of human life on earth—has had many currents and many streams in the last two hundred years. One example is Communism, whose growth and development sprang primarily from these roots. Another would encompass the scientists who argue that everything can be explained through materiality alone, even things spiritual (for example, see the recent book by John McGraw, Brain and Belief.) Still another would be the view of existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre, for whom there was “No Escape” from the ultimate meaninglessness of human existence—except bravely facing the truth of it, and acting with “authenticity” in spite of the meaninglessness.
But most of these currents have run aground in one way or another, and many of their proponents have been chastened by the painful history of the last two centuries, centuries in which the ideas of the Age of Reason and the great Enlightenment played a central role. The American experiment led in not so many years to the devastation of the Civil War. The great economic gains of industrialization gave way to the Great Depression, and to an increasing number of human beings all over the world—in rich counties as well as in poor—living in poverty and squalor; to massive use of forced child labor; and to periods of famine and starvation the world over. These failures in turn led some to go even further down the materialistic road, resulting in Communism’s surge to power in many countries in the early and mid 20th century. But Communism failed to deliver what it promised, which led to its collapse, or radical redefinition, in most parts of the world.
As for the promise that the Scientific Revolution would perfect our lives, we have instead begun to realize that science gives absolutely no guidance as to how to use what it discovers—so its chemicals and the germs it isolates can be used for warfare and terror; ecosystems can be destroyed quickly and irreversibly with the tools it has developed; its massive bombs can destroy whole cities—or even nations; and its psychological insights can be used to manipulate—and even torture—other beings. We are seeing more and more clearly that science, in spite of its great value, provides no guidance as to what is really important in life, what values we should live by, how we should spend our time, or how we might have better relationships with friend and foe alike. As Huston Smith, the prominent writer on the world’s religions puts it: “The triumphs of modern science went to man’s head in something of the way rum does, causing him to grow loose in his logic. He came to think that what science discovers somehow casts doubt on things it does not discover; that the success it realizes in its own domain throws into question the reality of domains its devices cannot touch.”
In many different ways, then, those who believed that human life could be bettered, or even perfected, by materialism—doing away with things religious and spiritual—have had to come to terms with a different reality. Rather than increasing happiness and well-being, the 20th century brought the most destructive wars the world has ever known: World War I, World War II, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Civil Wars, Vietnam, and hundreds of smaller wars that went on continuously throughout that difficult century—and go on still today. Then there is the problem of maintaining the belief that human reason leads to progress when all across the planet we see the results from the last few decades of the most massive inhumanities the world has ever known: the Holocaust, the Gulags in Russia, the infamous Re-Education camps in China, the killing fields of Cambodia, the ethic slaughters in Rwanda, the unending terror and violence of the Middle East, and the growing use of terror the world over as a tool to promote one’s beliefs.
Another materialist theme, shared by capitalism and communism alike, is to make the acquisition of more and more material goods the organizing center of human life. Through this focus, an enormous amount of wealth has been created in the modern world. In past ages, this wealth might have remained in the hands of a few, but the modern currents we are discussing have helped spread these riches to a growing middle class the world over—which now includes perhaps half the world’s population. An amazing accomplishment. Yet the belief that more material goods would make us feel safe and secure, would lead to ever-increasing happiness and fulfillment, would help us slow down and enjoy life more (spending more of our time on the things that really matter), has given way to the realization that people in the most wealthy countries are beset by an increasing sense of insecurity, a faster and more hectic pace of life, and an ever-increasing use of frivolous distractions to escape their fears and frustrations. There is therefore a dawning sense that organizing life around acquiring more and more things, whether under a communist system or a capitalistic one, does not seem to bring happiness.
Looking at the world today, even for those of us who live in a relatively safe place—free of war and most types of violence, and with a certain degree of financial freedom—the new era has not brought to us its promise of happiness and fulfillment. In fact, modern Western culture is filled with accounts (even among the well-to-do) of loneliness, alienation, hopelessness, and despair. Thus as the 20th century gives way to the 21st, recreational drugs are being used by a shockingly high percentages of people to escape a crushing sense of loneliness and to “have a good time” for a few hours—regardless of the later consequences. Prescription drugs are increasingly used to overcome the growing number of those who report themselves depressed. And more and more people are shying away from face-to-face human relationships, turning instead to interaction with television, on-line relationships, and even to on-line pornography to meet their relational needs.
***This is not to argue that Reason and the Enlightenment—and the Materialism which emerged from them—caused all these things. Many currents that arose in The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment led to very positive results. Yet as we look at the history of the last few centuries, it would have to be admitted that they sometimes contributed to—and they certainly did not prevent—the many tragedies recorded there. And for many it has become increasingly clear that reason and materialism by themselves offer no promise of solving the great human problems of our age.
Those who are willing to be excruciatingly honest will have to admit that the ideas of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, and especially the Materialism they gave rise to—although at times providing solutions for human problems—at times also caused problems of their own, and sometimes exacerbated others. So, just as the Enlightenment could justly criticize specific religions for failing to solve, and sometimes making worse, human tribulations, so now the same can be said of the Enlightenment’s attempt, and especially Materialism’s attempt, to perfect human life.
Again, this is not to argue that Materialism alone has caused these problems. But it is to say that it certainly has not solved them either. So as the 20th century recedes into history, and the 21st finishes its first half-decade—if we are to be honest with ourselves, and thereby increase our chances of finding a better relationship to life—we will have to recognize that pure Materialism has been found wanting, and that it does not seem to offer great promise in the search for a full and meaningful life. As for Reason and the ideas of the Enlightenment, they might well be part of the solution, but history does not suggest that, by themselves, they are sufficient to guide the search by an individual or a society for a life of meaning, fulfillment, happiness, or joy.
Quote for Reflection
If I were to take a brain scan of somebody who is looking at a piece of apple pie, I can tell you what their brain is doing when they have the experience of seeing that apple pie. But I can’t tell you whether or not that piece of apple pie exists in reality based on the scan. Likewise, if I take a brain scan of a Franciscan nun who has the experience of being in the presence of God, I can tell you what her brain is doing during the experience but I can’t tell you whether or not God was really there, whether the experience represented a true reality. Neuroscience can’t answer that epistemological question. - Andrew Newberg
Not all, for as with any faith system, there are always a few who refuse to question their beliefs despite the facts. And the view that there only materiality is definitely a faith system, as we shall explore in a later chapter.
Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God, Page 61
In Cosmic Religion (1931), 48-49 on "cosmic religion," a worship of the harmony and beauties of nature that became the common faith of physicists.
Ken Wilber, Eye of Spirit
Albert Einstein (1879–1955), Einstein: His Life and Times, ch. 12, sct. 5, Philipp Frank (1947).
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