Back in 2021, Jane Goodall won the Templeton Prize which was described as “Celebrating Scientific and Spiritual Curiousity.”
Goodall’s combination of science and spirituality may sound strange in a culture where science and religion are often seen as mortal enemies. The Templeton website further explains they were celebrating those, “harnessing the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it.”
Jane Goodall is the granddaughter of an open minded and inclusive Congregationalist minister. She is something of a blend of scientist and nature mystic. She wrote, “For those who have experienced the joy of being alone with nature there is really little need for me to say much more; for those who have not, no words of mine can ever describe the powerful, almost mystical knowledge of beauty and eternity that come, suddenly, and all unexpected.”
To me, a mystic is not a magical person. To me, a mystic is anyone who can be teleported by reverence to an experience of the common life. When Einstein praised the mystical sense he was not speaking of anything opposed to science and reason. By “mystical” I believe Einstein was speaking of something beautiful that could be experienced as a RESULT of good science and mathematical reason.
Science had already weighed, measured and dissected primates. What was missing was someone who could pair that knowledge with a respectful sense of our kindred bond as primates. Goodall’s work would require the best of science AND a very deep reverence.
Jane Goodall knew humanity had a lot to learn from animals. She said she had a wonderful teacher about animal behavior in her dog Rusty. “He taught me that animals have personalities, minds, and feelings. She also noted that while humans are the most clever species ever to have lived, we also seem to be destroying the only planet we have. “Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutan have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forests, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment.”
Like Schweitzer, Goodall became something of an evangelist for the animals. She said,” To me, cruelty is the worst of human sins. Once we accept that a living creature has feelings and suffers pain, then by knowingly and deliberately inflicting suffering on that creature, we are guilty, whether it be human or animal.”
Like a prophet of old Goodall declares that our survival is intertwined with the survival of other animals, “Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.”
May the scientist and mystic both say, “Amen.”