http://www.gurdjieff-con.net/2008/09/28/bennetts-the-dramatic-universe-2/ Debriefing the Gurdjieff work Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:41:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://www.gurdjieff-con.net/2008/09/28/bennetts-the-dramatic-universe-2/comment-page-1/#comment-1651 Darwiniana » Science, religion, and the archaeology of Samkhya Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:24:44 +0000 http://www.gurdjieff-con.net/?p=207#comment-1651 [...] J.G.Bennett and Samkhya Much of the science/religion debate is fundamentally impoverished, and beside the point. Scientists have a flawed critique of religion, and religionists, that is, Occidental monotheists at least, are in a state that can only be called, ‘metaphysical basket case’. It wasn’t always like that! The link above is to a discussion of a little known writer, J.G. Bennett, whose ‘The Dramatic Universe’ contained, among other things, an attempt to reconstruct the classic Samkhya legacy. I am entirely critical of that effort, for various reasons, and am a known ‘dog at the heels’ for Mr. Bennett. But his gesture remains significant, in a classic pilfering of something of substance to try and beef up the vacuous dementia of Christian theology. Between shaking my fist, “you won’t get away with it”, and a number of severe reservations about his methodology, the fact remains that I have sneaking admiration for the sheer audacity of what he attempted to do, stretching between General Relativity and the long lost triadic evolutionism of the mysterious Samkhya. This system, as it boots up into its complex set of triadic levels, shows at a glance where most psychologies, spiritual or not, are completely lacking in the core insights needed for an understanding of human evolutionary psychology. Read down the material at the link to the series of levels: three, six, twelve, twenty-four, forty-eight, etc…, go a long way to unifying the fragments western thought has been dealt. These diagrams, understood, might scare the daylights out of naive scientists determined to reduce man to mechanical explanation, and explain why religionists will never submit to a reductionist substitute. But religion as we know it knows nothing of this, and secularists, armed with Samkhya, might be better equipped to challenge the infelicities of their theological laggards. [...] [...] J.G.Bennett and Samkhya Much of the science/religion debate is fundamentally impoverished, and beside the point. Scientists have a flawed critique of religion, and religionists, that is, Occidental monotheists at least, are in a state that can only be called, ‘metaphysical basket case’. It wasn’t always like that! The link above is to a discussion of a little known writer, J.G. Bennett, whose ‘The Dramatic Universe’ contained, among other things, an attempt to reconstruct the classic Samkhya legacy. I am entirely critical of that effort, for various reasons, and am a known ‘dog at the heels’ for Mr. Bennett. But his gesture remains significant, in a classic pilfering of something of substance to try and beef up the vacuous dementia of Christian theology. Between shaking my fist, “you won’t get away with it”, and a number of severe reservations about his methodology, the fact remains that I have sneaking admiration for the sheer audacity of what he attempted to do, stretching between General Relativity and the long lost triadic evolutionism of the mysterious Samkhya. This system, as it boots up into its complex set of triadic levels, shows at a glance where most psychologies, spiritual or not, are completely lacking in the core insights needed for an understanding of human evolutionary psychology. Read down the material at the link to the series of levels: three, six, twelve, twenty-four, forty-eight, etc…, go a long way to unifying the fragments western thought has been dealt. These diagrams, understood, might scare the daylights out of naive scientists determined to reduce man to mechanical explanation, and explain why religionists will never submit to a reductionist substitute. But religion as we know it knows nothing of this, and secularists, armed with Samkhya, might be better equipped to challenge the infelicities of their theological laggards. [...]

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