Intuition & the Hidden
There is what we know, and what we don't know.
The hidden is a fact of life. We might assume we see life well enough, but unconsciously we know there is much we cannot see directly. We lock our doors at night, save for a rainy day, take out insurance, keep our passwords secret, and check the weather before leaving home, and we do all this because we know there is much to life that is beyond direct inspection.
The hidden also informs the wider world we live in. We cannot see the inner life of others, the agendas of large organisations, the machinations that inform political life, the planning of military operations, or the policy decisions of the media. We know all this and we live with it just as we live with the unknown in daily life.
In addition to the hidden in human nature, there is the hidden in nature itself. We see a spider’s web but not what causes the spider to spin it. We see birds migrate and return each season but not what guides them. We see hexagonal snowflakes, each individual, each perfect, but not the geometrical laws governing their form.
We feel duty-bound to explain such phenomena because we know there is more to the world than the world we see. And so we reflect, and when we do, we reflect on the hidden. All science is based on this fact. We build laboratories to test hypotheses, and use microscopes and telescopes to see what the naked eye cannot, and we do all of this because, unconsciously at least, we know there is more to the world than as it appears.
In many respects the Modern Era has increased the availability of information to an extraordinary extent. The widespread availability of the internet means we can now research any subject or topic that interests us and communicate our interests with others across the globe. It would seem, from this perspective at least, that we have more knowledge than ever before.
And yet this increased availability of information has brought with it an unexpected consequence; we are no longer naively willing to trust authority. We no longer trust our political leaders; indeed, every statement and deed is now scrutinised for a hidden motive. Almost concomitant with the availability of information has been the growth and proliferation of conspiracy theories. What were once ideas of interest to a few obsessives are now commonly known by many. Social media has overtaken the mainstream media, both as a news source and for insightful commentary, and where the mainstream media is referenced on social media, it is to highlight any hidden agenda. This has resulted in the questioning of official narratives, both in history and in current affairs, and a loss of trust and deference for all forms of authority.
All of this is a way of saying that, unconsciously at least, we are aware that there is more to the world than meets the eye. And it is what we don’t know and can’t see directly that bothers us most.
Logic is good at dealing with what we already know. We can define, label and categorise what we know and experience directly. If we are suitably rigorous in our thinking - as was Descartes when he stated he could doubt anything except his own doubting - then we can create a logical framework to make sense of the world.
But we cannot define, label and categorise what we don’t know. For that we need intuition. Many scientists, particularly those at the leading edge of science have been quite clear about this. Albert Einstein, for example, speaking to George Sylvester Viereck (Glimpses of the Great, 1930), said:
‘I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.’
Max Planck, who founded quantum mechanics, said much the same in in his Scientific Autobiography (1948):
‘The pioneer scientist must have a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by artistically creative imagination.’
In order to think about the unknown, we first have to be willing to imagine it. This is contrary to reason, which insists that all knowledge has to be based on what we know directly.
It might be said that resorting to intuition and imagination to think about the unknown can lead to fantasy, illusion, and a loss of grounding in reality. But this doesn’t have to be so. We can use the same judgement - indeed, intuitive judgement - to weigh up new thoughts and ideas that we use to weigh up our existing ones.
The fear of employing our intuitive mind is largely due to our lack of familiarity with the method. The more we become familiar with our intuitive mind, the more clearly we will hear its voice when it speaks. Intuition is not something foreign to us; it is essential to our nature. William James, the American philosopher and psychologist, put it this way (Essays in Popular Philosophy, 1897):
‘If you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature than the loquacious level which rationalism inhabits. Your whole subconscious life, your impulses, your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared the premises, of which your consciousness now feels the weight of the result; and something in you absolutely knows that that result must be truer than any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, however clever, that may contradict it.’
The hidden is a part of life. Logic is too limited to deal with it. If there is a principle of intuitive thinking, it is that what we don’t know is probably greater than what we know. If we tell ourselves we already understand life, we will learn nothing new, discover nothing new, and see life from a very limited perspective. If we focus on what we don’t presently know, we might have the chance to change that.