The 20th century witnessed the physicists’ struggle with their whole way of thinking when trying to understand the paradoxes of the universe. As Capra (1983) states in his book “The Turning Point”, these paradoxes indeed were essential aspects of atomic physics. Although their effects on the scientific view of reality were shattering.
In traditional science, the persistent belief is that studying the parts is the key to understanding the whole; so in order to learn more about the workings of individual parts, things are taken part and then put back together (Wheatley, 2006). Such a machine imagery is based on he world works of great scientists such as Newton and Descartes. This Newtonian science tries also to understand the world by focusing on the building blocks of matter that can be known through our physical senses. So, it was materialistic.
In contrast to Newtonianism, the new science focuses on the whole systems and their relationships within those networks. As the old Sufi teaching states: “You think because you understand one you must understand two, because one and one makes two.” So, to view systems from this perspective, we must not try to reduce phenomena to simple cause and effect relations or study its parts as isolated contributors.
In the quantum world, relationship is the key determiner of everything. Instead of existing as independent things, subatomic particles are observed only as they are in relationship to something else. As Heisenberg described it, the unseen connections between entities that were thought to be separate is the main ingredient of all creation. “The world appears as a complicated tissue of events in which connections of different kinds alternate and determine the texture of the whole.” (Heisenberg, 1958).
To understand life as life we should move away from the machine imagery (Wheatley, 2006). Like the human body that is an integrated system rather than a collection of discrete parts, the earth is a self-regulating system; a community of interdependent systems that create the conditions for life. These dynamics of living systems that reorganize themselves into greater order when confronted with change made scientists leave behind the machine model of life.
Moreover, new science should also take into account that both order and chaos are required for new creative ordering. Within a state of chaos, a system is held within well-ordered and predictable boundaries so that change can occur. New science also describes how order is created by simple rather than complex formulas which repeat back on themselves through the exercise of individual autonomy (Wheatley, 2006).
New science is changing our beliefs and perceptions. Scientists start to move away from the mechanistic worldview and speak in terms of fluid and invisible fields without any boundaries that can grow and adapt to life. After all, wouldn’t this be very illuminating for scientists themselves, as well?
