A couple of weeks ago I read an interesting collection of quotes on the website, Brain Pickings, “Nobel-Winning Physicist Niels Bohr on Subjective vs. Objective Reality and the Uses of Religion in a Secular World.”
“I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won’t get us very far.” —Niels Bohr
I couldn’t agree more. In a sense, this is why am writing this blog. I am working to tighten the consistency between my religious beliefs and my life in the world. The path toward this “living consistency” includes the rejection of any clean split between objective and subjective. The way forward includes means and methods which allow subjective experience and objective observations to interpenetrate.
Here’s a simple example:
After lunch on Saturday I found it difficult to stay awake. So I lay down on the couch to take a nap. Some time later our dog pestered me into getting up and taking her out.
From my purely subjective experience, I was unsure if I had even slept. I remembered hearing a couple of radio programs. I remember trying to get comfortable and hoping I could go to sleep. Subjectively speaking, I had a short, restless time on the couch.
When I came back in with the dog, my wife said, “Well, you sure had a good long sleep. I’ve been working for about two hours and I could use your help now.” From her objective side, I had slept for a measurable amount of time. Every time she had passed through our living room I appeared to be sleeping soundly. (I didn’t ask if I had been snoring. I shy away from that subject.)
There was a strong disconnect between my subjective experience and my wife’s objective observations. So, do we simply agree to disagree, or can we look for some interpenetration of the objective and the subjective?
Even though I doubted that I had slept much, I did notice that I was especially groggy when I got up. My objective observation of my gait and of my ability to process new information were clues that I had probably slept more soundly than I had thought. The objective side penetrated the subjective side. Maybe my wife’s side was the one I should trust.
But when I told her that I had had a restless sleep, she was willing to trust my experience and to acknowledge that her observations of my sleep had not been frequent enough or careful enough to yield a definite judgment of soundness. The subjective side was penetrating the objective side. Maybe she should trust my side.
But there are two more observations to take into account:
- I often get sleepy and drift off shortly after 9 PM. But on Saturday night I was awake and alert until my wife was ready for bed about midnight. Apparently I did get a good rest.
- I slept longer than usual on Saturday night and felt well rested on Sunday morning. But Sunday afternoon I couldn’t keep my eyes open. My wife said, “I’m surprised that you need another nap today?” Maybe I hadn’t had a very restful sleep Saturday afternoon.
So what is my conclusion about my nap on Saturday? It is fuzzy and wobbly. But my wife’s objective side and my subjective side have had a fun little dance and we are no where near that hell of “agreeing to disagree.” We didn’t arrive at a place of confident surety, but we did get somewhere.
It is helpful to test our subjective experiences with observations in the physical world which can be more objective. (My gait is less steady than normal.) It is helpful to test our objective observations—and the conclusions we draw from them—by asking the person we observe to tell us their experience. (“How did you sleep?”) . These things take patience and generosity, but they are well worth it.
One way out of the echo-chambers and ingrown communities of modern life is to allow out inner experiences and our outer observations to inform each other and to interact with each other. And then, of course, to live our beliefs and to believe our lives.
