Spiritual Materialism
[ June 13, 2002 4:57 PM ]

This is one of those hokey terms I made up to express an inherent conflict in beliefs between Art & Science. More correctly, it should be "Spiritual Physicialism", since materialists are few on the ground these days, but eliminative physicialists don't really exist anyway do they. An even better term might be "illogical positivist", but again logical positivism is also out of favour. Try "theology of process" for size.

Spiritual materialists are physicialists who "see" an "inner oneness" in processes of the world. The poet Manley-Hopkins used the term "inscape" to describe this. Philosophers may ask what is the ontology of this "inner oneness" (particularly if you call yourself a physicalist), to which I reply "I am not a philosopher so ask someone else."

If its all sounding horridly western romanticism or even west coast newage you're probably right and those are two things I'd certainly like to avoid. My guess is that it has something to do with biophilia.

Sometimes people ask me: "Should I believe in Spiritual Materialism?", to which I paraphrase from that famous jazz quote – "if you need to ask then probably not."

Recommended Reading:

Hamilton-Paterson, J.: Seven-Tenths: The Sea and Its Thresholds. London, Vintage (1992)

Coyne, Richard: Technoromanticism, MIT Press 1999.

[created: October 11, 2001 5:00 PM, last modified: June 13, 2002 4:57 PM ]