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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

The Line John Abramson Is Drawing and Why I Still Don't See It

A response to John Abramson's 'The Line Frank Is Drawing'

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

John Abramson has sent me a thoughtful response to my essay "Why Science Will Never Accept Élan Vital, Eros, or Cosmic Creativity," and I want to begin by acknowledging what we clearly have in common. He agrees with my central criticism of Eros when Eros is promoted from a metaphor for human longing into a cosmic force that supposedly drives evolution toward Spirit. He agrees that a concept must do more than name a mystery, that a hypothesis must expose itself to the possibility of being wrong, and that a principle capable of explaining every possible outcome explains none of them scientifically.

So far, so good. In fact, I find Abramson's formulation useful: the problem is not that Eros is "spiritual," but that, in its cosmic form, it is unstructured. That is an important clarification, and I am happy to accept it.

Where we part company is over what follows.

Abramson argues that the line between science and spirituality is not where I have placed it. The real line, he says, runs between "structured" and "unstructured" claims. A spiritual claim, he argues, can be perfectly legitimate if it has clear failure conditions. Conversely, a naturalistic concept such as "emergence" can become just as empty as Eros if it is used merely to label an unexplained transition.

I agree with the first point in principle and with the second point entirely. But I think the argument ultimately proves less than Abramson wants it to prove.

Yes, emergence can become a placeholder

Let me start with the easy agreement.

The word "emergence" can indeed become a placeholder for ignorance. Saying that consciousness "emerges" from matter does not, by itself, explain how consciousness arises. If emergence is invoked as a magic word that closes the explanatory gap, then it is no better than Eros.

But there is an important difference between saying that emergence is a possible explanatory framework and saying that Eros is a cosmic force.

Emergence has a legitimate scientific pedigree because there are many cases where we can actually demonstrate how properties arise from interactions among simpler components. Temperature, for example, is not a mysterious substance added to molecules. It is a statistical property of their collective behavior. Wetness is not a hidden ingredient in water. It is a property arising from molecular interactions.

When scientists speak about emergence in consciousness, they are not necessarily claiming that the word itself constitutes a complete explanation. They are proposing a research program: investigate how higher-level properties arise from lower-level interactions.

That program may ultimately succeed, fail, or require radical revision.

The crucial point is that it opens an investigation.

By contrast, cosmic Eros often closes one.

"Why does evolution produce novelty?"

"Because Eros drives it."

"How?"

"Because Eros is the drive toward novelty."

That is not a research program. It is a metaphysical interpretation.

Abramson is therefore right that any concept can become vacuous if stretched too far. But this does not put every concept on an equal footing. We should distinguish between a term that sometimes functions as a placeholder within an ongoing empirical research program and a metaphysical principle that is introduced precisely because the mechanism is unavailable.

The real issue is not only falsifiability

Abramson puts considerable weight on falsifiability. I agree that falsifiability is important, but I would resist making it the sole criterion separating meaningful claims from meaningless ones.

Scientific reasoning involves more than asking whether a proposition could, in principle, be wrong. It also asks whether the claim is supported by evidence, whether the evidence is reliable, whether alternative explanations have been excluded, whether the claim generates successful predictions, whether it integrates with established knowledge, and whether the proposed mechanism is independently warranted.

A claim can be falsifiable and still be false.

It can be falsifiable and still be poorly supported.

It can even be falsifiable and still be scientifically uninteresting.

This matters because Abramson's own example, as I understand it, is presented primarily as a case of a spiritual claim that could be wrong. But the possibility of being wrong is only the beginning of the scientific conversation.

The next question is:

What evidence currently makes us think it is right?

That is where I remain unconvinced.

The mathematics-mysticism comparison

Abramson offers an intriguing example involving mathematics, the foundations of the continuum, and the supposed convergence between certain mathematical structures and the descriptions of ultimate reality found in contemplative traditions.

I will not attempt to evaluate the technical mathematics here. My concern is with the epistemological structure of the argument.

Abramson says that his claim could fail in several ways. Independent coders might disagree about whether the relevant traditions actually display the proposed structural properties. Other contemplative traditions might contradict the pattern. New mathematical foundations might prove adequate without exhibiting the proposed structure. Or the pattern might appear so frequently across mathematics that the correspondence loses its significance.

All of these are indeed possible failure conditions.

But there is a difference between a claim being falsifiable and a claim having been empirically confirmed.

If I propose that the architectural styles of Gothic cathedrals and certain mathematical structures share a deep formal pattern, I can specify in advance what would count against the claim. That makes the hypothesis more disciplined than an unfalsifiable assertion.

But it does not yet demonstrate that the correspondence is real.

We still need to establish that the mathematical structure and the spiritual descriptions are genuinely comparable, that the comparison is not selectively constructed, that the categories are independently defined, and that the apparent correspondence is unlikely to arise simply because human beings tend to perceive recurring patterns.

In other words, the methodological structure of the argument may be sound while the conclusion remains unproven.

That distinction is essential.

The danger of pattern recognition

There is a reason science is so cautious about cross-domain correspondences.

Human beings are extraordinarily good at finding patterns.

Sometimes we find genuine patterns.

Sometimes we find patterns that are merely suggestive.

And sometimes we discover patterns because we unconsciously selected the features that made the comparison work.

This is particularly relevant when comparing mathematics with mystical traditions. Both domains contain extraordinarily abstract language. Both can speak about levels, unity, infinity, hierarchy, transcendence, and inclusion. It is therefore not surprising that analogies can be found.

The scientific question is not whether similarities exist.

The question is whether the similarities are specific, independently derived, and predictive.

Suppose a mathematical theory developed for entirely unrelated reasons predicts a particular structural feature that is subsequently found in mystical descriptions from traditions that were not part of the original comparison. That would indeed be fascinating.

But now we would need to ask: how specific was the prediction? How many possible structures were available? How many traditions were examined? How many failed to match? Were the criteria established beforehand?

This is where the difference between an interesting analogy and a scientific discovery becomes visible.

The more precise the prediction, the more impressive the correspondence.

The more elastic the categories, the less impressive it becomes.

And this brings us back to the very issue raised in my original essay.

The burden of the positive claim

Abramson says that the line should not be drawn between science and spirituality but between structured and unstructured claims.

I would accept that formulation with one addition:

The line is between claims that are not merely structured to fail, but that are positively supported by evidence.

This may sound like a minor qualification. It is not.

The history of science is full of ideas that were beautifully formulated, logically coherent, and perfectly falsifiable—but wrong.

Falsifiability protects us from dogma.

It does not guarantee truth.

That is why the scientific method requires the much harder task of accumulating evidence.

And this is where spiritual claims face a special challenge—not because they are spiritual, but because many of them concern domains where independent measurement is extraordinarily difficult.

If someone says that meditation produces measurable changes in attention, stress, or neural activity, that is perfectly open to scientific investigation.

If someone says that contemplative practice produces a subjective experience of unity, that can be investigated phenomenologically and psychologically.

If someone says that mystical traditions repeatedly report similar experiences, that is an empirical claim about human experience and can be studied comparatively.

But if someone moves from these observations to the conclusion that the universe itself possesses a level-structured metaphysical architecture corresponding to those experiences, the burden of proof increases dramatically.

The argument has moved from what people experience to what reality ultimately is.

That is a very large step.

The fish and the bowl

I particularly appreciate Abramson's distinction between methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism.

I agree that science's restriction to detectable phenomena does not logically prove that nothing exists beyond the detectable.

Scientists cannot simply say:

"Science cannot investigate X, therefore X does not exist."

That would indeed be an illegitimate leap.

But there is another distinction that needs to be made.

Science's inability to investigate something does not make that thing scientifically plausible.

There is a large space between:

"Science has not demonstrated that X exists."

and

"Science has demonstrated that X does not exist."

But there is also a large space between:

"Science cannot rule X out."

and

"We have good reason to believe X."

The first is agnosticism.

The second is evidence.

I am perfectly comfortable leaving the door open to metaphysical possibilities that science cannot currently address. What I resist is the tendency to treat the mere possibility of something beyond science as evidence that such a thing exists.

The fish may not know the shape of the entire ocean.

But that does not mean every story about the ocean is equally credible.

Where I think Abramson is right

There is nevertheless a valuable point in Abramson's argument that I would like to emphasize.

Spirituality should not be protected from criticism by declaring it permanently outside the reach of rational evaluation.

If a spiritual claim makes no predictions, cannot be tested, cannot be independently assessed, and can accommodate every possible observation, then it should not receive a free pass merely because it is spiritually meaningful.

But the reverse is also true.

If a spiritual claim generates clear predictions, survives serious attempts at refutation, and accumulates independent supporting evidence, then there is no legitimate reason to reject it merely because it originated in a spiritual tradition.

Science has no rule saying:

"A Buddhist may not discover a fact."

Nor does it say:

"A mystical experience cannot lead to a true hypothesis."

The scientific question is always:

Does it hold up?

If it does, we keep it.

If it doesn't, we discard it.

The line may be movable—but the standard must remain

So perhaps Abramson and I are not drawing two completely different lines after all.

I am drawing a line around what science can currently establish through empirical methods.

Abramson is drawing a line around what can be formulated as a disciplined, potentially falsifiable claim.

These lines overlap, but they are not identical.

I am happy to acknowledge the second line. I simply do not think that crossing it is enough to arrive at the first.

A spiritual idea can become a legitimate hypothesis.

But becoming a hypothesis does not make it true.

It earns the right to enter the conversation.

It does not earn the right to win it.

And this brings us back to Eros.

I remain skeptical that Wilber's cosmic Eros can meet the standard Abramson himself proposes. What would Eros predict that a universe without Eros would not? What observation would count decisively against it? What measurable phenomenon would reveal its presence independently of the evolutionary history it is supposed to explain?

I still do not see the answer.

And until we do, I am content to leave Eros where it is most illuminating: as a metaphor for desire, attraction, creativity, connection, and the human experience of reaching beyond ourselves.

That is not a small role.

Indeed, it may be the role in which Eros is most powerful.

The line I would draw

In the end, I would redraw the line somewhat differently from both Abramson's formulation and the caricature of scientific naturalism that he rightly criticizes.

The line is not between science and spirituality.

Nor is it simply between falsifiable and unfalsifiable.

It runs through several stages:

Meaningful.

Coherent.

Falsifiable.

Testable.

Supported by evidence.

Predictively successful.

Each step is harder than the one before.

Spiritual ideas can certainly make it through the first few gates. Some may even make it further.

But we should not confuse the fact that an idea could be tested with the fact that it has survived testing.

And perhaps this is the point on which Abramson and I ultimately agree most strongly.

The answer to spiritual overreach is not scientific dogmatism.

It is better spirituality.

A spirituality that is willing to distinguish metaphor from mechanism, experience from explanation, possibility from evidence, and profound mystery from premature certainty.

If Eros can survive that discipline, I will gladly welcome it back.

But it will have to come back without its cosmic passport.

And without claiming to be the engine of evolution.