Chapter Two: Episode 10
Are You Sensitive to The Sublime?
The Sublime and Science
Scientists themselves experience the emotions of The Sublime/The More amid their questions and discoveries. One of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists, Richard Feynman, wrote of the rapture he regularly felt in his work: “Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars– mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is ‘mere.’ I too can see the stars on a desert night and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light . . . “[1]
These moments of astonished awe are common experiences among hikers, birders, new parents, and theoretical physicists! So, no surprise that such awe has become a subject, itself, for scientific understanding. Two social psychologists identified thousands of research subjects who had experienced this awe. However, their study went further and measured the impact of awe on those individuals. They found that those who experienced sublime awe were more willing to help a stranger, including sharing resources and sacrificing for another.[2]
Why? In the researchers’ words, “One answer is that awe imbues people with a different sense of themselves, one that is smaller, humbler, and part of something larger. Our research finds that even brief experiences of awe, such as being amid beautiful tall trees, lead people to feel less narcissistic and entitled and more attuned to the common humanity people share with one another.”
Notice how moral and even religious ideas are now entering into this very common and documentable experience?
. . .attuned to the common humanity people share.
. . .part of something larger.
. . .reminding us of Emerson’s words, I am part or particle of God.
The Sublime pushes us past the language of ordinary realism. We are having an experience that many others share – it’s public and even lends itself to photographs and scientific analysis. But it outstrips the language of analysis and documentation. Think of a group, analyzing the colors of the Aurora Borealis, but also shivering together in wonder. Imagine those birders, counting Sandhill Cranes, but also gasping in joy as they liftoff.
Our realistic language and scientific analysis just can’t do justice to this moment. We may whisper, “Ah, ah,” we may tear up, we may fall to our knees in astonishment, or even stand tall to raise our arms in reverence.
Reverence? Now, that’s a term with religious meaning. So, let’s move past simple, secular language and give these moments a term that captures their spiritual significance. In these moments of reverence, we sense our connection to a grander, cosmic mystery. As one philosopher observed, such moments bring us to a “deep conviction of a fundamental and indelible solidarity of life . . . an indestructible unity of life.”[3]
Cultivating Reverence
The Sublime is simply ineffable, outstripping the powers of everyday language. Yet, it is experienced through the everyday realities of snowy nights, mountain hikes, even research in the lab. When we experience The More in material reality, we are experiencing that there is “more” to life IN THIS LIFE! Material reality itself offers us this more -- if we’re sensitive to this offering.
But how do we gain that sensitivity? How can we cultivate what one philosopher called, “the taste and sense of the Infinite”?[4]
The great religious traditions are in the very business of The More. Their stories, rituals and special places cultivate within humans an expectation and awareness of The More. And notice this: these great traditions do not seal up The More in some special heaven, seen only by the “saved.” No, they insist that The More dwells among us, beckoning and blessing us. As the Christian apostle Paul put it: “(God) is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’”[5]
The More/The Sublime is the awareness that here, in this world of Sandhill Cranes and snowy parks, starry nights and long days at the lab, we can experience that something, that More “in whom we live and move and having our being.”
Jesus as The More . . .
(To be continued February 18, Chapter Two: Episode 11)
To Eight Trails readers: Does this post suggest a moment you’ve experienced and, perhaps, a photo you took? Share your photos with me by clicking “reply” to this emailed post. I would be delighted to include them in new posts — of course, crediting you!
[1] Quoted in Christopher Sykes, No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman (1996, New York)
[2] Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner (May 22, 2105). Why Do We Experience Awe? New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/opinion/sunday/why-do-we-experience-awe.html?referrer&_r=5
[3] Ernest Cassirer, An Essay on Man (1944, New Haven)
[4] Used first by Friedrich Schleiermacher in his 1799 work, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers
[5] Acts 17: 27- 28