Back Transdisciplinarity and the Unity of Knowledge: Beyond the Science and Religion Dialogue


Skip Navigation Links
Home
Agenda
Featured Speakers
Paper Presenters
Public Events
Information
Contact
Registration


Sign up for Conference
2009 Updates.




   

Inna Semetsky
Virtual Ontology/Real Experiences


Abstract

In the philosophical literature the ability to know oneself and God as One is usually delegated to the mystical realm as based on the apparent impossibility of connecting the human with the divine in practical experience. Such a connection is often posited as being “beyond the limit of all human understanding” (Kearney 2001: 104). This paper’s argument is that while this connection may seem to exceed human understanding, it does not have to remain as such. To construct the argument of how to overcome the great divide separating the human from the divine, the paper will examine three sources crossing over philosophy and natural science and grounded on a common foundation represented by the logic of the included middle.

The first is B. Nicolescu’s program of transdisciplinarity. The second is the cutting edge of contemporary science called coordination dynamics that posits the natural world in terms of  “The Complementary Nature” (Kelso and Engstrom 2006). The third is a corpus of work by Gilles Deleuze whose ontology of the virtual and method of transcendental empiricism constitute the focus of this paper.

Deleuze’s ontology expands the limits of our understanding and perception and posits Being in terms of two enfolded levels of reality: virtual and actual. The actualization of the virtual potentialities in real experience is what enables us to make connections between different levels of reality and create an epistemic access to a transpersonal dimension. Such connection or bridge is established by virtue of  transversal communication that functions on the basis of the logic of the included middle. 

Deleuze’s method of transcendental empiricism enriches human experience with a religious or spiritual dimension, especially if we understand the meaning of re-ligio literally as a self-referential process linking backward to the origins. Passing through a transpersonal dimension enables us to develop a transrelational attitude leading to holistic intelligence encompassing such experience. Hence, it is in the reality of our human experiences that transversal connection as a necessary condition for the mystical principle of coincidentia oppositorum can be established. A (supposedly) mystical experience would be, in Deleuze’s terms, an event of the actualization of the potentialities or awakening of human perception by raising it to a new power oriented towards a virtual (yet real) object.

The paper will conclude by demonstrating a practical example of “the included middle” that establishes transversal communication andenriches our experience with deeper, spiritual, dimension thus expanding the limits of human understanding. We become able to know Self and Other (other minds; God, Nature, etc.) as One.

Selected references

Nicolescu, B. 2002. Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity, Albany: SUNY Press.

Deleuze, G. 1994. Difference and Repetition, New York: Columbia University Press.

Kelso, J. A. Scott and D. A. Engstrom. 2006. The Complementary Nature. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.

Kearney, R. 2001. The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Semetsky, I. 2009. “The Magician in the World: becoming, creativity, and transversal communication”, ZYGON: Journal of Religion & Science, 4/2: 323-346.

Biography
Inna Semetsky is a Research Academic with the Institute of Advanced Study for Humanity, University of Newcastle, Australia. In 2002 she completed her Ph.D. in philosophy of education in Columbia University, New York. In 1999 she received the Kevelson Memorial Award from the Semiotic Society of America. In 2005 she was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from Monash University, Australia. Her books “Deleuze, Education and Becoming” (2006) and “Nomadic Education: Variations on a Theme by Deleuze and Guattari” (2008) are published by Sense Publishers (Rotterdam). She wrote five entries for the Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development (SAGE, 2006). Her chapters are in Spirituality and Ethics in Education: Philosophical, Theological and Radical Perspectives (Sussex Academic Press, 2004); Complexity Science and Philosophy of Education (Wiley, 2008); International Handbook of Education for Spirituality, Care and Wellbeing (Springer, 2009), and other books.

Her articles appeared in such journals as Spirituality and Health International; AXIOMATHES; Cybernetics & Human Knowing; SEMIOTICA; Sophia: International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Metaphysical Theology and Ethics; Zygon; and others. She is on the Editorial Boards of the journalsEducational Philosophy and Theory,Studies in Philosophy and Education, The European Legacy, and Complicity: an International Journal of Complexity and Education.



 

1616 Walnut Street, Suite 1112, Philadelphia, PA 19103 USA  |  Voice: + 1 484.592.0304 Fax: +1 484.592.0313   |   Email  |  Privacy Policy