Reductionism has been a hallmark of science for many years with the most extreme forms suggesting a kind of cold determinism in the universe. Having known since my undergraduate days that science is the key to knowing, yet having the experience of believing as well, I wondered how they fit together. If they fit. I have just finished reading a very important book on the topic – Stuart A. Kauffman’s Reinventing the Sacred. A theoretical biologist, Kauffman has come to the conclusion that reductionism cannot account for many aspects of the world we actually experience. Evolution, biologically as well as culturally, demonstrates again and again a creativity that cannot be predicted, no matter how much data is acquired. Kauffman suggests that this non-reducible creativity is what might properly be called “God.” Not a believer in a transcendent creator God, Kauffman does not wish to remove the God meme from our psychological vocabulary, but to reinvent it.

In many ways, I found Kauffman’s work to be some of the most affirming science writing I’ve ever read. He believes there is a place for creativity in the overall human experience of knowing and being. Values are not simply arbitrary points selected by people, nor are they imposed on us from a personified God. Values and beauty are emergent phenomena. As Kauffman argues, they are clearly and blatantly real, but not reducible to physics. He also demonstrates that economics falls into the same category of real but non-reducible. As a researcher in complex systems, Kauffman quickly left me in the dust when he reached the more theoretical material. I am not equipped to assess his scientific conclusions. Overall, however, his book possesses a rare sort of urgency for a scientific exploration, and it values the whole of the human experience.

Demonstrating that ethics emerge not from “on high” but from a human sense of value and “right,” Kauffman suggests that we desperately need a global ethic to realize our full potential. In the ongoing debate between science and religion, Kauffman is a voice of both reason and compassion. Science is the way we know – there is no point in debating that. If you are reading this on a computer, Q.E.D. If you are a human being, then you have also experienced the phenomenon of believing, whether or not it is religious. Kauffman has addressed the question directly and has given both specialists in science and in religion a trenchant analysis of an intractable issue. His irenic approach is to be applauded, and hopefully, widely read.