ABSTRACT
In our analytic context, often characterised as ‘Babylonian’, there are definitely many problems, but there are also potentials worth realising before looking for solutions ‘beyond Babel’. The title “Inside Babel” should elucidate which pole of the field of tension between ‘Inside and beyond Babel’ this chapter is located on. The Bible story of the Tower of Babel, with the consequence of language confusion among human beings, is understood, in religious interpretation, as a punishment of God for human presumptuousness. The plan, to rise up to God physically, to enter heavenly spheres through the high tower, alludes to an old motive – the aspiration to be God-like – which we find again in manifold ways in the sciences today. However, scientists are, above all, seeking insight and knowledge, that is, to decode God’s creation plan of the world through science. Some physicists want to have already discovered ‘God particles’ and some neuroscientists claim to be able to watch the psyche working by using a scanner. Others are looking for universal natural laws, which can give a causal explanation of all our behaviour and actions. As we know, the God of the Old Testament was ‘not amused’ by the Tower of Babel and, as a consequence of his punitive action, the negative impact of the difficulty in communicating ensued: chaos, violence, flight and dispersal all over the world – phenomena that are ubiquitous still today.
