The mistake of Descartes

Paolo Dell’Aversana, R&D technical leader, Eni Exploration and Production Division, takes issue with Prof Peter Hubral’s thesis in his article ‘Pythagoras and the mystic Orient’ published in the May 2004 issue of First Break. We also publish Prof Hubral response. Critical thinking about geoscience should be a primary activity in our scientific community. Prof Peter Hubral is the living demonstration that excellent geophysical competence is possible without forgetting other fundamentals about our work and life. His article ‘Pythagoras and the mystic Orient’ (First Break, May 2004), is very interesting from this perspective. It represents a new kind of input for geophysicists completely different from any traditional paper that has appeared in the journal. In the recent past I wrote a couple of short notes (First Break, 2002a, 2002b) in response to the article by Prof Hubral on creativity (2001). Once again I feel an irresistible impulse to express my point of view about the subject treated by Hubral in his new article. In particular, I was impressed by the concept of ‘an inner struggle between the mind dedicated to gaining knowledge and the soul required to gain wisdom’. If I understood correctly, this concept stands as the critical point of the article. Another couple of strong statements by Hubral are that 1) ‘The mind and the soul appear to have a tendency to separate each other…’, and 2) ‘the mind is the spiritual part in us, which is engaged with the outside world and the soul is that part related to our inner self.’ In my opinion, this ‘philosophical’ approach represents the background to a dangerous misunderstanding typical of occidental thinking, namely dualism.