In many instances these three dis­ci­plines inter­sect. Peo­ple of wide-rang­ing learn­ing called poly­maths have wield­ed all three in search of knowl­edge. Realign­ing ini­tia­tives based on the core con­nec­tions with­in this Venn dia­gram of com­ple­men­tary forces, will help har­mo­nize humanity’s under­stand­ing of our place in the sto­ry of life.

“Sci­en­tif­ic edu­ca­tion for the mass­es will do lit­tle good, and prob­a­bly a lot of harm, if it sim­ply boils down to more physics, more chem­istry, more biol­o­gy, etc to the detri­ment of lit­er­a­ture and his­to­ry. Its prob­a­ble effect on the aver­age human being would be to nar­row the range of his thoughts and make him more than ever con­temp­tu­ous of such knowl­edge as he did not pos­sess.” — George Orwell

Pur­su­ing edu­ca­tion in STEM (Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, Engi­neer­ing, Math­e­mat­ics) fields is often held up as the most sen­si­ble choice stu­dents can make in regards to their future careers. Con­verse­ly, the human­i­ties are some­times belittled—the new pre­vail­ing thought being that this area of edu­ca­tion­al focus is less like­ly to trans­late to good job oppor­tu­ni­ties. More and more, the world is run by the lin­ear­ly, ana­lyt­i­cal “left brain­ers”. This mind­set is typ­i­fied by the Sil­i­con Val­ley ide­ol­o­gy, in which social prob­lems are viewed as one algo­rithm away from being solved. How­ev­er, eth­i­cal frame­works in the study of com­put­er sci­ence are woe­ful­ly under­em­pha­sized, leav­ing many in the field lack­ing the appro­pri­ate toolk­it to real­ly come to grips with the poten­tial con­se­quences of their work. The arc of tech­nol­o­gy over the last few years has shown us that there are clear­ly not enough voic­es ask­ing, “should we even be doing this?” We believe we need to be ask­ing more ques­tions about why we have arranged soci­etal pri­or­i­ties as we have. Also, that we should be more imag­i­na­tive about how we envi­sion our way of life. And we believe we can learn infi­nite­ly from the orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ples sci­en­tif­ic inquiry con­tin­ues to draw from the phys­i­cal world.

The beau­ty of a math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion can tran­scend the num­bers and sym­bols used to write it when we see a real-world rep­re­sen­ta­tion unfold by its design. Con­sid­er the Fibonac­ci sequence that shows up in the num­ber of petals in flow­ers (most often 5, 8, 13, or 21), or the spi­ral con­struc­tion of a snail’s shell.¹³ These exam­ples are rather sim­ple when it comes to math­e­mat­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties, yet much more elab­o­rate exper­i­men­ta­tion is cur­rent­ly under­way. In the­o­ry and tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment, an array of physi­cists, com­put­er-sci­en­tists, and spir­i­tu­al­ists con­tin­ue to decode and apply quan­tum physics in ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions and exper­i­men­ta­tion. While tech­nolo­gies stand to improve astro­nom­i­cal­ly with the devel­op­ment of quan­tum com­put­ing, what if the pri­ma­ry impact of quan­tum mechan­ics on soci­ety is not so much of tech­no­log­i­cal ben­e­fit, but instead an abil­i­ty to under­stand our inter­con­nect­ed­ness and to inter­act on a quan­tum lev­el? The idea of quan­tum heal­ing is that there is no inter­me­di­ate process, recov­ery is imme­di­ate. This instan­ta­neous change of one’s state can be illus­trat­ed by how if you think you’ve lost your keys, and you begin to wor­ry, and then find your keys in an unex­pect­ed place, you imme­di­ate­ly feel relief and con­sid­er­ably bet­ter. Imag­ine that, in the future, repairs with­in the body could be made almost instan­ta­neous­ly, with­out lengthy pro­ce­dures and peri­ods for recov­ery. What would that impli­ca­tion mean for con­ven­tion­al heal­ing? Will we then become able to man­u­al­ly manip­u­late the cells in our bod­ies? What would that mean for imme­di­ate demands in the health sec­tor? What would it mean across a vaster scale of evolution?

These kinds of ques­tions should act as guardrails to guide the streams of thought that tran­scend the edge of cur­rent knowl­edge and cas­cade into the unknown.

“The body itself is a screen / to shield and par­tial­ly reveal / the light that’s blaz­ing / inside your pres­ence.” — Rumi, Sto­ry Water

Sci­ence as well as the arts each flour­ish when incor­po­rat­ing insights from oth­er dis­ci­plines and inspired by mys­tic rev­e­la­tions. In the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Jesuit priest Pierre Teil­hard de Chardin (1881–1955) devel­oped an idea that the universe—including all its phys­i­cal mat­ter and spir­i­tu­al energy—is evolv­ing toward increas­ing com­plex­i­ty and con­scious­ness. And the point of absolute con­ver­gence Teil­hard called the Omega Point.¹⁴ While this notion of ulti­mate com­plex­i­ty and con­scious­ness con­verg­ing in an arrange­ment of divine ele­gance is root­ed in spir­i­tu­al inves­ti­ga­tion, Teil­hard framed his idea of the Omega Point as grounds for sci­en­tif­ic explo­ration. Whether or not the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty is eager to adopt Teilhard’s premise might impact just how far sci­ence can advance our under­stand­ing of the mys­ter­ies enfold­ed in the uni­verse. Either way, Teil­hard’s idea of the Omega Point con­tin­ues to be an impor­tant top­ic for meta­phys­i­cal explo­ration. Ques­tion­ing how con­scious­ness is con­fig­ured through­out the uni­verse, and whether or not we are all part of a com­plex evo­lu­tion toward some­thing like an Omega Point, can help cre­ate mean­ing on a per­son­al and col­lec­tive lev­el. We feel it’s impor­tant to con­sid­er ideas that have the poten­tial to influ­ence how we think of our rela­tion to cos­mic his­to­ry and future.

When we look to schools of thought out­side our typ­i­cal purview, we open our per­spec­tives and we become more recep­tive to dif­fer­ent prob­a­bil­i­ties. By realign­ing our inputs to include the obser­va­tions of artists, sci­en­tists, and mys­tics, and the more that con­ver­sa­tion between their dis­ci­plines can evolve, we will undoubt­ed­ly be more ful­filled, informed, and connected.

“Both for the physi­cists and the Sufis, the mul­ti­di­men­sion­al expe­ri­ences tran­scend the sen­so­ry world and are there­fore almost impos­si­ble to express in ordi­nary language.”
— Ibrahim B. Syed, Ph. D. Pres­i­dent of Islam­ic Research Foun­da­tion International

Aware­ness of the com­mon ground between sci­en­tists and spir­i­tu­al­ists cre­ates more fer­tile ter­ri­to­ry to explore and expand con­scious­ness. Art­work sim­i­lar­ly inspires our imag­i­na­tions and can direct­ly influ­ence con­scious­ness. Fur­ther devel­op­ment of a com­mon lan­guage around the areas of inquiry that account for meta­phys­i­cal mys­tery, sci­en­tif­ic speci­fici­ty, and artis­tic expres­sion could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly ben­e­fit all of human­i­ty. As well, in search­ing for bal­anced inter­play between these areas, we might one day be able to envi­sion a way of regard­ing and under­stand­ing phe­nom­e­na that defy explanation.