Planets within as vehicles for significance?

Psychosocial Implication of Without Within (Part #3)

As noted above, Marsilio Ficino accorded significance to the "planets within" as a pioneer of Renaissance thinking, The implication has been helpfully described by Thomas Moore (The Planets Within: the astrological psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1990) and by Vernon Wells (Tempering Heaven: a commentary on the first chapter of Marsilio Ficino's De vita coelitus comparanda, 2010). A related framing is offered by Joseph Campbell (The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: metaphor as myth and as religion, 1986).

The challenge for conventional thinking at this time is that both "astrology" and "myth" are scornfully deprecated by "science". The difficulty for science is its own eroding credibility in the face of intractable challenges to society for which it bears some responsibility, however vigorously denied ("Science does not kill people, people do"?). The difficulty is all the greater in that "science" denies all responsibility for them, especially given that collective "responsibility" is of no significance to science as a methodology. Science also exhibits strange inadequacies in addressing the problematic dynamics of knowledge processing within science (Knowledge Processes Neglected by Science: insights from the crisis of science and belief, 2012).

Assumptions that science will "fix" the problems are increasingly questionable, especially given the challenges to consensus, whether within science or in response to any of its (non-consensual) recommendations -- as currently illustrated by issues associated with climate change (The Consensus Delusion: mysterious attractor undermining global civilization as currently imagined, 2011). Technocratic recourse to geoengineering as a remedy is itself questionable (Geo-engineering Oversight Agency for Thermal Stabilization, 2008).

It is therefore appropriate to note the degree to which appeals are made to nebulous intangibles termed "human values" as transcending in significance the variety of models and methods. Various international initiatives have endeavoured to elucidate their nature, including the Human Values Project. Currently the Club of Rome has initiated a ValuesQuest with the Alliance of Religions and Conservation. This could be understood as a successor to the report to that Club by Ervin László (Goals for Mankind, 1976), leading to the formation of the Club of Budapest, and to the interfaith declaration of a Global Ethic (1993), whose promotion continues through the Global Ethic Foundation. Such initiatives serve however to highlight the question of the "vehicles" by which values may be carried, once "found", if they are to be credible in popular discourse rather than abstractions typical of alienating academic discourse -- or as brandished by politicians and preachers. How indeed is a "value" to be recognized -- as being "without" or "within"?

Ficinio's approach had the merit of associating a complex of values aesthetically -- including tone -- thereby enabling what might be "re-cognized" as synaesthesia. The "planets" together then imaginatively exemplified a "music of the spheres" -- but "within" -- a context offering other "correspondences" (Theories of Correspondences -- and potential equivalences between them in correlative thinking, 2007). By contrast, current quests for a set of values have yet to benefit from the attraction of the potential harmonies between them, as separately argued (A Singable Earth Charter, EU Constitution or Global Ethic? 2006).

It is in this sense that both myth and astrology have retained a strange credibility as vehicles over centuries.

As argued by Kenneth Boulding in discussing the evolution of images of the universe and variously preferred alternatives:

We can perhaps dismiss astrology as superstition. If we turn to the sports pages, however, we will find creatures with strange names, like Red Sox and Dodgers, engaged in endless and elaborate rituls of conflict. If we turn to the political pages, we will find embodied spirits like Uncle Sam and John bull, and animal toems in the shape of eagles, lions, and bears, exhibiting behavior and passions that are proper only to individual human beings... The enormous legitimacy of the national state and its capacity to attract human sacrifice may be related to the fact that our image of it is highly animistic and that we think of it as a person. (Ecodynamics; a new theory of societal evolution, 1978, p. 345).

As with any Global Ethic, by what vehicles will the values of the ValuesQuest be carried if they are to engage the attention of the wider population? This constraint on communication of subtlety over extended periods of time can be variously explored (Minding the Future: thought experiment on presenting new information, 1980).

The argument here is that it may well be inappropriate to assume that the last word regarding myth and astrology has been pronounced by science and that there is no scope for fruitfully revisiting their implication, whether now or in the future. The conventional attraction of such intangibles to many may obscure subtleties which only the future will appreciate appropriately -- perhaps by framing them otherwise in relation to science as it is now known.

Again, for Kenneth Boulding (Ecodynamics; a new theory of societal evolution, 1978, p. 344-345):

The pattern we have been describing in this book is by no means the only patern the human race has perceived in the intricate complexities of the universe. We can peceive perhaps a pattern of patterns. Any pattern that has been perceived is part of the total pattern itself. We cannot simply reject and ignore it. All the patterns that have been perceived, therefore, deserve at least our critical respect... Just because something is extinct, however, does not mean it ceases to be part of the total pattern... We must remember, however, that in ecological succession and in evolution later species do not necessarily replace earlier species, but coexist with them. The amoeba coexists with the mammals and with man and may even outlast all the supposedly higher forms.

Rather than being conventional externalities, the question raised by both myth and the planets of astrology is how the significance they are held to carry is internalized for those for whom this is credible. The internal significance of myth and its archetypal figures has long been a theme of some therapeutic disciplines, notably in the light of the work of Carl Jung. Their manifestation in "significant dreams" has long been a challenge to other modes of explanation.

The relationship between Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli is of relevance in this regard (Carl Gustav Jung and Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, 2012; David Lindorff, Pauli and Jung: the meeting of two great minds, 2004; Arthur I. Miller, 137: Jung, Pauli, and the Pursuit of a Scientific Obsession, 2010; Remo F. Roth, Return of the World Soul: Wolfgang Pauli, C.G. Jung and the challenge of psychophysical reality, 2011)

The experiential relation between the planets "without" and those "within" can be explored through the attraction they exert, so evident in the case of gravity. Curiously there is a degree of correspondence between the attraction of human values and the attraction of gravity -- both with unexplained characteristics and a challenge to comprehension in how they govern movement. Values can thus be fruitfully explored as strange attractors (Human Values as Strange Attractors: coevolution of classes of governance principles, 1993). It is in this sense that the attraction of a particular value complex can be sensed to be associated with an internal "planet" as a container or vehicle. The complexity of the shifting relationships between such vehicles -- eluding facile comprehension -- is suitably mirrored by that of the external planets.

The collective imagination has been much stimulated by the potential of travel to other planets -- or galaxies -- "without". Whatever the feasibility for the few in practice ("the 1%"), the possibility for the many ("the 99%") could be fruitfully explored as one "within".

This could prove to be consistent with the imaginative title of the compilation by the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking (The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of: the most astounding papers of quantum physics--and how they shook the scientific world, 2011). The urgency of such exploration could be given focus by comparison with his widely cited assertion, and that of others (cf. Clara Moskowitz, Stephen Hawking Says Humanity Won't Survive Without Leaving Earth, SPACE.com, 10 August 2010; John M. Smart, The Transcension Hypothesis: sufficiently advanced civilizations invariably leave our universe, and implications for METI and SETI. Acta Astronautica, 78, September-October 2012).

The question is whether that insight applies as much "within" as "without". How is the "within" to be distinguished from that offered by drugs (Enstoning through Imagination, Dreams, Drugs and Imbibing, 2012)?

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Planets within as vehicles for significance?