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COSMOS & TRANSCENDENCE
Breaking Through
the Barrier of Scientistic Belief
BY THE SAMEAUTHOR
Teilhardism and the New Religion
The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key
The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology:
Contemporary Science in Light of Tradition
Sagesse de la Cosnwlogie Ancienne
Christian Gnosis
(in preparation)
Wolfgang Smith
COSMOS &
TRANSCENDENCE
Breaking Through
the Barrier of Scientistic Belief
SECOND EDITION
SOPHIA PERENNIS
SAN RAFAEL, CA
Second, revised edition, 2008
First edition,
Sherwood Sugden & Co., 1984
© Wolfgang Smith 2oo8
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, without permission
For information, address:
Sophia Perennis, P.O. Box 151011
San Rafael CA 94915
sophia perennis.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Wolfgang
Cosmos and transcendence: breaking through the
barrier of scientistic belief I by Wolfgang Smith.-2nd ed.
p. em.
Rev. ed. of: Cosmos & Transcendence. c1984
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59731-080-2 (pbk: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-59731-084-0 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Science-philosophy. I. Smith, Wolfgang,
Cosmos & transcendence. II. Title
Q175.S636 2oo8
501--dc21 2008005657
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to
reproduce the frontispiece of Codex 2554, a thirteenth-century Bible
housed in the Austrian National Library in Vienna.
Grateful acknowledgment is also made for permission to reprint
excerpts from the following material:
Douglas Dewar, The Transformist Illusion,© 1995 by Sophia Peren
ms.
Louis Bounoure, Determinisme et finalite, © 1957 by Flammarion.
Reprinted with permission of Librairie Ernest Flammarion, Paris.
C. G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul,© 1933 by Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York.
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by Norman Kemp Smith,
© 1958 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted with permission of St.
Martin's Press, New York.
Sigmund Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, © 1949 by W. W.
Norton & Company. Reprinted with permission of W. W. Norton &
Company, New York.
Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id, © 1960 by W. W. Norton &
Company. Reprinted with permission ofW. W. Norton & Company,
New York.
Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,
© 1965 by W. W. Norton & Company. Reprinted with permission of
W. W. Norton & Company, New York.
C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, recorded and edited by
Aniela Jaffe, trans. by Richard and Clara Winston, © 1963 by Pan
theon Books, a Division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted with
permission of Random House, Inc., New York.
For Thea, whose sound judgment
has so many times saved the day
CONTENTS
Foreword 1
Preface to Second Edition 3
1 The Idea of the Physical Universe 7
2 The Cartesian Dilemma 21
3 Lost Horizons 39
4 Evolution: Fact and Fantasy 64
5 The Ego and the Beast 95
6 The Deification of the Unconscious 115
7 'Progress' in Retrospect 141
Index of Names 167
FOREWORD
As THIS nooK makes compellingly dear, the Scientific Revolution of
the seventeenth century heralded the triumph of a particular philo
sophical outlook (rationalistic, materialist) with its attendant episte
mology (empiricism) and procedures (the 'scientific method').
Contrary to popular assumption, modern science is not simply
a disinterested, detached, and value-free mode of inquiry into
the material world: it is a complex of disciplines and techniques
anchored in culture-bound assumptions about and attitudes to the
nature of reality and the proper means whereby material phenom
ena might be explored, explained, and, perhaps most tellingly, con
trolled. It is, in fact, impossible to separate the methods of modern
science from its theories and the ideologies which provide its motive
force, and it is to this tangled skein-or as he puts it: to the unverifi
able assumptions which the 'verifiable' propositions of science
presuppose-that Wolfgang Smith applies the term 'scientism'.
As the book likewise makes clear, the modern scientistic outlook
is, in principle, unable to countenance God (by whatever name),
who is either repudiated as an obsolete 'hypothesis' or altogether
ignored-which amounts to the same thing. Likewise, scientism
cannot allow any sense of the sacred, the absence of which is one of
the defining characteristics of modernity as a whole. Needless to
say, the much-misunderstood issues at stake in the conflict of 'sci
ence' and 'religion', or 'modernity' and 'tradition', are immense: our
view of what constitutes 'reality', 'human nature', 'life' and 'death',
transcendence and immanence, and the relationship of the material
world to higher spiritual realities, to mention only some of the most
salient. It is to an inquiry into these issues-an interrogation of the
orthodoxies of modern science in the light of a traditional wisdom,
informed by immutable principles and truth~ which are neither
'old' nor 'new' but timeless-that Cosmos and Transcendence sum
mons us.
2 COSMOS AND TRANSCENDENCE
Wolfgang Smith brings to his task a rare combination of qualities
and experiences, not the least his ability to move freely between the
somewhat arcane worlds of contemporary science and traditional
metaphysics. Alongside Dr. Smith's imposing qualifications in
mathematics, physics, and philosophy, we find his hard-earned
expertise in Platonism, Christian theology, traditional cosmologies,
and Oriental metaphysics. His outlook has been enriched both by
his diverse professional experiences in the high-tech world of the
aerospace industry and in academia, and by his own researches in
the course of his far-reaching intellectual and spiritual journeying.
Here is that rare person who is equally at home with Eckhart and
Einstein, Heraclitus and Heisenberg! Dr. Smith is no obscurantist,
rejecting well-attested scientific facts, nor a sentimental reactionary
seeking to 'turn back the clock'. He is a sober-minded scientist and
philosopher who has confronted some of the most daunting issues
of the age, refusing to surrender to the shibboleths and complacen
cies of modernity.
In this book Wolfgang Smith excavates the very foundations of
modern thought in order to explain the cracks and fissures that are
everywhere appearing in what was thought to be the impregnable
edifice of 'science'. He also traces the pedigree of some of the most
mesmerizing of modern prejudices (the belief in Progress, for
instance) and analyzes the intellectual legacy of figures such as Des
cartes, Newton, Darwin, Freud, and Jung, all the while rendering
the most abstruse ideas and principles into lucid and elegant prose,
intelligible to any receptive reader. Cosmos and Transcendence,
which first appeared a quarter of a century ago, is the fruit of many
years of fearless intellectual exploration, of deep rumination, and of
seasoned judgment. Our era stands in urgent need of the truths and
insights yielded by Wolfgang Smith's wide-ranging inquiry. Sophia
Perennis is to be commended for bringing a new edition of this pro
found and exhilarating work within the purview of a new genera
tion of readers.
HARRY OLDMEADOW
LaTrobe University
Bendigo, Australia