CHAPTER 5 The New Synthesis In Part I of this book I developed a rational, evolutionary perspective of the universe and our place in it, basing my exposition on generally accepted, well-understood facts with logical, speculative extrapolations from these facts. The extrapolations, although possibly radical to some, were in the spirit of scientific tradition, with few or no mystical compo- nents. I am now going to deviate from that tradition and bring in mystical components which are in harmony with scientific facts. This is something which is generally not acceptable within scientific discourse. I have learned through personal experience that the creative process is not purely logical or linear. It involves irrational, nonlinear, and diffused thinking which makes apparently irrational jumps between many appar- ently unrelated topics. Eventually, this type of thinking and perceiving must become focused and subject to objective, rational analysis, or it is very likely to lead to self-deception. If we are to be maximally creative we must learn to combine rigorous scientific thinking with diffused mystical thinking. ‘We create through diffused, intuitive, mystical thinking. That type of thinking can also lead to gross self-deception. We separate truth from illu- sion through science. In this chapter—and to a lesser extent in the chapters that follow—I shall try to bring about a synthesis between these two types of often antagonistic mental processes by deriving the Creative Transfor- mation process not linearly and logically, as I derived the evolutionary per- spective, but rather subjectively and personally, as the process actually became understood by me. This involves sharing my subjective experiences with the reader as well as sharing the objective facts that led to these experi- ences. To the best of my knowledge this has never been done successfully. However, it would be misleading to give a linear, logical derivation of Crea- tive Transformation when the linear logic of the process occurred to me only after I derived it. I hope that by my taking this risk, you will benefit. If I fail now, you and I can both try to derive the Creative Transformation process rigorously, linearly, and logically in future books about this new synthesis.210 THE NEW SYNTHESIS The new synthesis is a twentieth-century phenomenon by which all fields of knowledge are converging to show that physical, biological, and psychosocial evolution are different facets of a single cosmological process. The new synthesis begins in this century with Einstein, who through his understanding of the ethical teachings of Spinoza was able to get new insights into how the universe is structured. Since Einstein, many persons have contributed to the new synthesis. We will discuss some of them later. The thinker who most exemplifies the new synthesis is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Teilhard was born in France in 1881 to an aristocratic family. He was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1912, but volunteered to be a stretcher-bearer in ‘World War I. He was decorated for valor and received the Legion of Honor. He became a world-famous paleontologist. In the 1930s he was one of the discoverers of Peking Man, the first known complete set of fossils of advanced Homo erectus. In addition to his more conventional scientific activities he was a philosopher of evolution who made the first complete, modern synthesis of science, evolution, ethics, art, and mysticism. Spinoza had made a more rigorous but less complete synthesis 300 years earlier. Teilhard wrote many beautiful books on these subjects [759-768]. Almost all of them were banned by the Catholic bureaucracy. However, they were published after his death in 1955 while in “‘exile”’ in New York City. I had the privilege to encounter Teilhard once in Berkeley, California, around 1953, a few years before he died. Crossing paths on a campus walk, we smiled at one another and said “hello” but did not otherwise speak. I did not know who he was at that time, but that incident stayed with me and profoundly affected me for the rest of my life. I felt I had encountered a remarkable man and always regretted that I did not attempt a conversation. Teilhard’s best-known book is The Phenomenon of Man (Le Phéno- mene Humain, a much better title in the original French) [767]. In it he speculates that evolution is a process leading us toward convergence with God at a point he called Omega. Many persons, including me, have been deeply moved by Teilhard, and I was an anticlerical agnostic when I first read him, not knowing he was that impressive person I had encountered sixteen years earlier. Yet Teilhard is decreasing in popularity. Part of the problem is that as a total generalist, i.e., a full scientific and artistic mystic, he was misunderstood by both the scientific and the humanistic communi- ties. He violated some of the prejudices of each. The scientific bureaucracy takes any apparent error in an argument as reason for discarding the entire argument, even if it leads to obviously correct conclusions. Scientists are also highly prejudiced against the introduction of any form of mysticism to any scientific discussion. Specialists in any field always try to discredit gen-The Moral Society 2u eralists by latching onto any error they make in the former’s specialized fields. They always miss the forest for the trees. That is why specialists are minimally creative, We cannot create when we fear error. Science can always eliminate our errors. The major value of Teilhard, as with Spinoza and other scientific mystics, is not that he is correct in all his details but that the beauty and completeness of his synthesis can stimulate the imagination of others to perfect his vision in an unending process. The tragedy of Teilhard is that his vision was not practical—indeed, less so than that of Spinoza. He showed us from where we came, how we got here, and where we are going; but he did not tell us how to take the next step. He left thousands of per- sons ready, willing, but unable to take the next step. What happened was that eventually a cult, dominated primarily by self-deluded, mystical spe- cialists, took over the Teilhardian movement and further alienated the sci- entific community. One of the effects of Teilhard was to stimulate many other persons to explain and amplify his vision. This led me to write my first book on these subjects, The Moral Society, in 1970 [280]. The Moral Society In this book it was my twofold objective (a) to perfect the vision of Teilhard by amplifying it through my presumably more extensive and deeper knowl- edge of mathematics, physical science, and technology, and (b) then to make it practical both through my knowledge of the real world and by purging it of all mysticism, ideology, and sentimentality. My intent was no less than to write a book that would replace the Bible, the Koran, and Das Kapital as motivating factors in human history, I was much less successful at it than Teilhard. My youthful arrogance might be forgiven in light of the facts that at the time I was a very successful, 34-year-old high-technology entrepreneur and scientific generalist who had many inventions to his name and had for two years been the founder, chairman of the board, and president of a fast- growing, highly creative engineering company that was destined to earn hundreds of millions of dollars. As with many Americans, I thought that having achieved financial and technical success I now qualified as an “enlightened master.” However, as soon as I saw myself becoming wealthy and powerful I realized that this would not fulfill my life or give meaning to my existence. Indeed, it was a trap. What moved me and gave meaning to my life was the vision of Teilhard and Spinoza and its restatement by me in The Moral Society. The first thing I did after I finished The Moral Society was to give copies of the manuscript to my closest associates, many of whom I had greatly enriched and all of whom I respected. I was astonished by the results. All of my senior coworkers claimed I had personally betrayed