Featured Interview With Scott O’Reilly
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Ever since I was a little kid I’ve been fascinated by dreams and the mystery of existence. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why did God create the universe? What is the purpose of life? These are the kind of questions I asked as a six-year old kid. Later, I studied philosophy to try and make sense of life. Today, I consider myself a recovering-philosopher. Still, I love pondering life’s mysteries. I also love playing guitar, running, and writing.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I began writing poetry quite early. I’m quite amazed at how much creativity kids naturally have. Children are natural philosophers and artists, until they have the creative impulse drummed out of them by the educational system.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Melville, Shakespeare, and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus are big influences. I love books that wrestle with big questions.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
I believe science and spiritually will ultimately converge. Today, science tells us how we can control our world, but it says little about value or meaning. In contrast, traditional religious outlooks provide emotional comfort and put our lives in a context, but their metaphysical claims are often incoherent or at variance with the facts.
The universe is not just stranger than we suppose, it is stranger than we can suppose. We live in a deeply mysterious cosmos. Our world is suffused with tremendous beauty and a subtle order. Why is this so? Why is there something rather than nothing? Was the evolution of conscious creatures inevitable? After all, as the late Princeton physicist John Wheeler once put it: “What good would the universe be if no one emerged to observe it.” In my view, the potential for sentience has been woven into the fabric of the universe from the beginning. Consciousness is like a flower, but its roots extend backwards in time billions of years and also into the fundamental realm of sub-atomic particles, which is governed by the paradoxical laws of quantum mechanics.
Modern day science is permeated by dubious assumptions. The notion that consciousness is a fluke may be one of these. But there is an exciting new cosmological narrative that is taking shape. For instance, the psychologist Zeising argued that nature aims at beauty. This is an astonishing thought. The notion that evolution has an aim or telos is out of fashion with most contemporary scientists, but there is something about beauty that attunes us to the world. Why is this so?
The philosopher Schelling believed that beauty was a bridge between consciousness and the cosmos. It is through beauty and wonder that the individual self comes to recognize its identity with a more cosmic Self. My book, “Socrates and Cyberspace,” is an attempt to sketching out a perspective that includes the best of science, philosophy, and spirituality. It is book about discovering a more soulful way of looking at ourselves and the world.
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