Welcoming Remarks
Winter Chaos Conference 2006
Chair, Department of Psychology in Education
This conference is a strange attractor, or perhaps an attractor of the strange. In any case, I feel right at home. Karen VanderVen and I have rarely talked about it, but I am a closet chaos theorist. This event gives me the opportunity to come out.
My interest in cognitive and spiritual development led me to complexity theory. Piaget’s theorizing, as you may know, was driven by deep spiritual crisis over the seeming irreconcilable division between science and religion. He could not accept a science of reality that was devoid of value, combined with a religion of value that was divorced from reality. His solution -- the driving force of his life work — was to look at how value arises spontaneously and intrinsically in reality, through processes of self-organization.
Like Piaget, I believe that spiritual value arises from appreciating reality in all its awesome complexity. Science in this sense resonates with art, literature and religion in the largest sense. With this bigger view of reality, let me quote the author, Henry Miller, who said, "Chaos is the score upon which reality is written." He explained that
“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would be realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or desire, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”
So, I welcome you to this conference on a rainy morning in Pittsburgh, with confidence that it is truly a golden moment, precisely because you have the vision to recognize it.
Response
Dr. Johnson’s warm and insightful welcome warranted a response dedicated to the spirit of the synthesis of science and spirituality evident in his remarks. A French priest, Bernardis Silvestris, provided this spirit with the opening poetry of his 12th century creation myth, the Cosmographia. His epic myth was an attempt to bring scientific ideas into harmony with the church, in a subtle revolutionary manner. We also add our gratitude to the Department and the University for their hosting of, and support for, our conference.
From the Cosmographia
Silva rigens, informe chaos, concretio pugnax,
discolor usie vultus, sibi dissona massa!
optat et a veteri cupiens exire tumultu
artifices numeros et musica vincla requirit. . . .
Quid prodest quod cuncta suo precesserit ortu
Silva parens, si lucis eget, si noctis abundant,
Perfecto decisa suo, si denique posit
Auctorem terrere suo male condita vultu?
Invidiam factura tibi quod cana capillos,
Informi squalore suum deduxerit evum. . . .
Silva, intractable, a formless chaos, a hostile coalescence, the motley appearance of being, a mass discordant with itself! Being turbulent, she desires tempering, being ugly, beauty, being uncultivated, refinement. Yearning to emerge from her ancient confusion, she asks for the shaping influence of number and the harmonious bonds of music. What profits Silva that she has preceded everything in her origin if, as our parent, she needs light and abounds in darkness, if, cut off from her own perfection, she is able in a word, to terrify her own creator with her ill-formed face? At her feet, Hyle presents herself with all her progeny, to express resentment to you [Noys] that though grown white-haired, she has spent long years in distasteful squalor.
Translation based on both:
Stock, Myth & Science in the Twelfth Century, A Study of Bernard Silvester, 1972, Princeton, and
Wetherbee, The Cosmographia of Bernardis Silvestris, 1973, Columbia.
The myth takes a dynamical, on-going, self-organizational view of creation.
Noys—God’s Providence (right hand goddess, based on Plato’s Timeus, the starting cosmology for Silvester.
Natura—goddess daughter of Noys, is the speaker.
Silva (Hyle)—The substance of the world.
Revised 2/11/06