Is There Room for Spirit in Science? By Fritjof Capra    

Is there room for Spirit in science?

Over the past two decades, a new conception of life has emerged at the forefront of science. It is a systemic view of life, based in part on new discoveries in complexity theory. In this new view, the biological and the cognitive aspects of life--in other words, body, spirit, mind, and consciousness--are understood as integral parts of a unified whole.

This view is now replacing the classical Cartesian and neo-Darwinist views, which are mechanistic and reductionist. In those views, the body is a machine, separate from the mind, and evolution is nothing but random mutations plus natural selection. Thus, there is no room for a spiritual dimension. The new conception of life, by contrast, includes the spiritual dimension as an essential aspect.

The origin of life is one of the big puzzles in science. The traditional idea, formulated by Darwin himself, has been that life somehow emerged out of some primordial "chemical soup," in which small molecules somehow assembled spontaneously into structures of ever-increasing complexity. This idea runs counter to all experience with simple chemical systems. Many scientists have therefore argued that the odds for it are incredibly small; or, alternatively, that there must have been an extraordinary triggering event.

Today, our starting position for resolving this puzzle is radically different. During the past ten years, scientists working in this field have come to recognize that the flaw of the conventional scenario lies in the idea that life must have emerged out of this structureless chemical soup through the progressive increase of molecular complexity. The new thinking begins from the hypothesis that very early on, before the increase of molecular complexity, certain molecules assembled into primitive membranes that spontaneously formed closed bubbles, and that the evolution of molecular complexity took place inside these bubbles, rather than in a structureless substance.

So, the new scenario of the origin of life begins with the formation of tiny oily droplets--bubbles bounded by an oily membrane--in the primeval oceans. These tiny droplets formed spontaneously in a mixture of oil and water, following the basic laws of physics and chemistry, just like the bubbles that form when you shake a mixture of soap and water, or oil and vinegar.

Once these globules had formed, a complex network chemistry gradually unfolded in the tiny spaces they enclosed, which provided the bubbles with the potential to grow and evolve into complex, self-replicating structures. This is called "pre-biotic evolution," or "molecular evolution." When catalysts entered the system, molecular complexity increased rapidly, and eventually life emerged from these bubbles, or protocells, with the evolution of proteins, nucleic acids, and the genetic code.

This marked the emergence of a universal ancestor--the first bacterial cell--from which all subsequent life on Earth descended. The offspring of the first living cells took over the Earth by weaving a planetary bacterial web and gradually occupying all the ecological niches. In doing so, the bacteria continually transformed the Earth's surface and atmosphere, making it conducive to the subsequent emergence of higher life forms and establishing the global feedback loops and other features of self-organization that turned the planet into a living system. During the first two billion years of evolution, the bacteria invented all of life's essential biotechnologies, including fermentation, photosynthesis, nitrogen fixation, respiration, and various devices for rapid motion. Recent research in microbiology has made it evident that, as far as the processes of life are concerned, the planetary network of bacteria has been the main source of evolutionary creativity.

One of the main discoveries of complexity theory has been that this creativity is an intrinsic property of all living systems. Its detailed dynamic, which we can now describe mathematically, involves the spontaneous emergence of new order at certain points of instability. Thus, evolution, in this new view, is not just a response to environmental pressure, but is a consequence of life's inherent creativity. Life continually reaches out to create novelty.

Driven by this inherent creativity, the planetary web of life expanded through a combination of three different mechanisms of evolution. This is another fairly recent major discovery. First, there is evolution through mutation, as in the neo-Darwinian theory. In addition, bacteria developed another avenue of evolutionary creativity that is vastly more effective than random mutations: they freely trade genes, and thus hereditary traits, in a global exchange network of incredible power and efficiency. As one microbiologist described it: "Gene trading is like jumping into a pool with brown eyes and coming out with blue eyes."

And finally, bacteria also form new organisms by living together in long-term symbiotic arrangements that eventually result in new species. This process, known as symbiogenesis, is the greatest source of evolutionary innovation for larger organisms, because it allows them to acquire entire genomes from bacteria, and with them fully integrated biological functions, such as mobility, vitamin production, photosynthesis, and so on.

Over billions of years, these three avenues of evolution--mutations, gene trading, and symbiogenesis--created forms of life of ever-increasing complexity and diversity. In this majestic unfolding of life, all living organisms continually responded to environmental influences, and they did so autonomously, according to their own natures. From the beginning of life, their interactions with one another and with the nonliving environment were cognitive interactions (in the new sense that we have come to understand cognition, the process of knowledge). As their structures increased in complexity, so did their cognitive processes, eventually bringing forth conscious awareness, language, and conceptual thought.

When we look at this scenario--from the formation of oily droplets to the emergence of consciousness--it may seem that all there is to life is molecules, and the question naturally arises: Is there any room in this new vision for the human spirit? The view that life, ultimately, is all about molecules is, indeed, one that is often advanced by molecular biologists. It is important to realize, in my opinion, that this is a dangerously reductionist view. The new understanding of life that is now emerging is a systemic understanding, which means that it is based not only on the analysis of molecular structures, but also on the analysis of patterns of relationships among these structures and of the specific processes underlying their formation. The defining characteristic of a living system is not the presence of certain molecules, but the presence of a self-generating network of metabolic processes.

Life, then, is not all about molecules. It is much more about patterns of relationships among specific processes. These processes of life include, most importantly, the spontaneous emergence of new order, which is the basis of life's inherent creativity. Moreover, the life processes are associated with the cognitive dimension of life, and the emergence of new order includes the emergence of language and consciousness.

Where does the human spirit come into this picture? To answer this question, it will be useful to remember the original meaning of "spirit." The Latin spiritus means "breath," which is also true for the related Latin word anima, the Greek psyche, the Sanskrit atman, and the Hebrew ruah. The common meaning of these key terms indicates that the original meaning of "spirit" in many ancient philosophical and religious traditions, in the West as well as in the East, is "the breath of life."

Since respiration is indeed a central aspect of the metabolism of all but the simplest forms of life, the breath of life seems to be a perfect metaphor for the network of metabolic processes that is the defining characteristic of all living systems. Spirit--the breath of life--is what we have in common with all living beings. It nourishes us and keeps us alive.

Spirituality, or the spiritual life, is usually understood as a way of being that flows from a certain profound experience of reality that is "mystical," "religious," or "spiritual." There are numerous descriptions of this experience in the literature of the world's religions, which tend to agree that it is a direct, non-intellectual experience of reality with some fundamental characteristics that are independent of cultural and historical contexts. One of the most beautiful contemporary descriptions, in my view, has been offered by the Benedictine monk, psychologist, and author David Steindl-Rast.

In accordance with the original meaning of spirit as the breath of life, Brother David characterizes spiritual experience as moments of heightened aliveness. Our spiritual moments, he says, are those moments when we feel most intensely alive. The aliveness felt during such a "peak experience," as psychologist Abraham Maslow called it, involves not only the body but also the mind. Buddhists refer to this heightened mental alertness as "mindfulness," and they emphasize, interestingly, that mindfulness is deeply rooted in the body. Spirituality, then, is always embodied. We experience our spirit, in the words of Brother David, as "the fullness of mind and body."

This notion of spirituality is very consistent with the notion of the embodied mind that is now being developed in cognitive science by George Lakoff and his colleagues. Spiritual experience is an experience of aliveness of mind and body as a unity. Moreover, this experience of unity transcends not only the separation of mind and body, but also the separation of self and world. The central awareness in these spiritual moments is a profound sense of oneness with all, a sense of belonging to the universe as a whole.

This sense of oneness with the natural world is fully borne out by the new scientific conception of life. As we understand how the roots of life reach deep into basic physics and chemistry, how the unfolding of complexity began long before the formation of the first living cells, and how life has evolved for billions of years by using again and again the same basic patterns and processes, we realize how tightly we are connected with the entire fabric of life.

The awareness of being connected with all of nature is particularly strong in ecology. Connectedness, relationship, and interdependence are fundamental concepts of ecology; and connectedness, relationship, and belonging are also the essence of religious experience. I believe therefore that ecology is the ideal bridge between science and religion.

When we look at the world around us, we find that we are not thrown into chaos and randomness but are part of a great order, a grand symphony of life. Every molecule in our body was once a part of previous bodies--living or nonliving--and will be a part of future bodies. In this sense, our body will not die but will live on, again and again, because life lives on. Moreover, we share not only life's molecules, but also its basic principles of organization with the rest of the living world. And since our mind, too, is embodied, our concepts and metaphors are embedded in the web of life together with our bodies and brains. Indeed, we belong to the universe, we are at home in it, and this experience of belonging can make our lives profoundly meaningful.

Fritjof Capra is professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley and author of The Tao of Physics.