Sunday, August 26, 2007
The Occult, Science, and Joseph Smith
Just finished a rather interesting little article by David Grandy a philosophy professor at BYU. The article is entitled Science and the Occult: Where the Twain Meet, and appeared in the July/August 2004 issue of Historically Speaking magazine. In the piece professor Grandy talks about the seemingly contradictory beliefs held by many great scientists, that reflect the cultural Zeitgeist of their times. For example, while Sir. Isaac Newton was the founding father of our modern understanding of physics, he was also involved in a protracted search for ‘the philosophers stone’, which was said to hold the secret of eternal life (see: Harry Potter book 1). Arthur Russell Wallace co-formulator along with Darwin of the theory of evolution believed in Spiritualism (seances and such), as did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the supremely logical Sherlock Holmes. The point is that highly capable and intelligent men who helped bring about some of the great discovers of all time, could also hold beliefs now considered anathema to reason. Therefore the logical extension, which I’m sure professor Grandy was more then mindful of when formulating his thoughts on this subject, is that Joseph Smith could easily have believed in finding treasure through seer stones and the like, and have that be historically consistent with being a great bearer of world challenging truth, or at least competent theory. Any thoughts?
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Science is pretty good at explaining what it can explain, and pretty bad at explaining what it cannot. Also pretty bad at acknowledging what it cannot explain. In modern times scientists have learned the equivalent of some clever card tricks, so now they think they know, or will in time know, everything. I doubt very much that’s true and I suspect that “occult” can easily become a disdainful catch-all term to include anything science can’t explain.
Sensing the limitations of science, at least, so far discovered science, intelligent people in the past have been willing to look well off the beaten path. It should be chalked up to their credit, not counted as an embarrassing liability. It’s our age, not theirs, which has grown intellectually timid.
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