Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology I am here less as any particular kind of theist (or atheist) than as an
observer and occasional participant in ongoing discussions and sharings of
things that work (or do not work) to enhance my sense of fulfillment. This
is arguably the greatest of anyone's undertakings --in some views our
reason for being-- and in this we are colleagues -- Colleagues in
Scientific Pantheism, if you will. Thanks to the sensitive group
facilitation by Paul and his collaborators, I find myself in a congenial
and perhaps uniquely empowered community in which we all seem to feel
comfortable sharing our concerns and interests in exploring one path or
another toward fulfillment --whether we seek on behalf on ourselves or for
others (real or surrogate family, community, humankind, life, or . . . ).
Scientific Pantheism is a comfortable term -- but all labels are dangerous
-- alternatively enlarging and stultifying -- and like all words, the dig
the channels through which our thoughts often run. They can be deceptively
objective- yet their capacity to seem explicit can mask a vast reservoir of
socially constructed implicit meaning. A few of us expend vast energies
burrowing through that loamy substratum. Sometimes I do too. Sometimes I
thrash happily in the mud and come up with a shiny stone which may then
become my sacred relic of the experience. I have lots of relics. On reflection, these interests were born during my years at Drew
University, a center of liberal Methodism where my disposition for Jewish
Buddhism was consolidated (and which I still regard as my principal
animating (or pacifying) spiritual resource). My interests survived
graduate training in biology and behavior at Rutgers, five subsequent years
in a brain research laboratory at the National Institute of Health, and the
publishing and tenure struggles that characterize major research
institutions. Now, at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, I am a
Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. With wife Kathy, also a
professor, we are active in the local Unitarian Church where our spiritual
eclecticism, occasional skepticism, and disdain for dogmatism are accepted
-- I present an occasional lay service and enjoy the feedback. I am a collector. A scientist. A teacher. A husband and parent. At
University, I research the behavioral physiology of social hierarchies in a
model critter; I also direct The Threshold Honors Program -- a unique,
integrative pilot curriculum reform in which students work closely with
research-active faculty in ways designed to prepare them for creative
research careers. At home I write, putter, and with Kathy, help oversee a
house full of exotic clutter and do what we can for kids Jessica and Lisa
(both in college). As a hedge against total confusion, I've organized most
of my activities in more-or-less overlapping projects which are
more-or-less represented on my website -- the most satisfying exercise of
narcissism I've had in many years. I invite visits to my homepage:
http://www.bio.utk.edu/ecology/faculty/greenberg.html --and for my most
likely common interests with this group, perhaps my pages on "Science and
the Spirit" will be of interest -- click on PROJECTS then follow the
links. I recall complementing Paul on the "pitch" of his website -- steering the
"perilous course," biologist Ernst Mayr called it, " between a
pseudoexplanatory reductionist atomism and stultifying nonexplanatory
holism." (this reveals my weakness for jargon --for which I forgive
myself with Emerson's help (words are "fossil poetry," he said, and I try
to revive them -- redefining myself as well as the terms of interest).
I believe -- as a biologist-- that spirit and spiritual discipline are ad
aptations and involve capacities that have evolved even if the
experiences they lead to are unusually hard to tell about --But often in
the trying they become more fully realized, understood. In this sense I
fiddle with projects and try to communicate not to be understood, but to
understand. -- I also recall sharing a favorite Joseph Campbell quote with Paul
shortly after we e-met: --it epitomizes my problems with introductions
such as this-- but we have to start somewhere: "The best things cannot
be told, the second best are misunderstood. After that comes civilized
conversation; after that, mass indoctrination; after that,
intercultural exchange. And so, proceeding, we come to the problem of
communication: the opening, that is to say, of one's own truth and depth
to the depth and truth of another in such a way as to establish an
authentic community of existence." It is an "authentic community" that
I sense and seek here. Paraphrasing Pascal, I have written so much because I haven't had the
leisure to make it shorter -- but I'll always try to find time to respond
to correspondence from Pantheists -- ngreenbe@utk.edu
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, Tennessee
B: 10/30/41