SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION - The Mary Baker Eddy Science Institute

correspondence of noumenon and phenomenon,” or Principle and itsidea. The entire textbook could be regarded as a treatise on thistopic. But we noticed that whereas the capitalized terms areunquestionably always God, the uncapitalized terms associated withthem in the text are not always God's expression Sometimes theyseem to be the very opposite, and so call for a process of translation.In that case, we reason not from material objects or mortal beliefs butfrom the divine noumenon, from what God is. In the text of the twotranslations, we find this point borne out by the fact that thecapitalized terms all appear in the first, while none but uncapitalizedappear in the second. As the divine capitals pour their revelation intoconsciousness (first translation), demonstration happens in theuncapitalized area in the second.Scientific MethodFrom the start the most striking thing about Mary Baker Eddy'srevelation was her absolute conviction that what she had discoveredwas Science (always given a capital S because it is God's selfknowledge).Many seers before her had proclaimed the certainty ofthe spiritual oneness of God and man; many healers before her hadrecognized the mental nature of disease and of its cure. She alone, itseems, realized that the two themes, brought together as one,constitute a practical divine Science. She tells us, “ I knew thePrinciple of all harmonious Mind-action to be God, and that cureswere produced in primitive Christian healing by holy, uplifting faith;but I must know the Science of this healing, and I won my way toabsolute conclusions through divine revelation, reason, anddemonstration” (S & H 109:16).Realizing as she did that the system she had discovered was spiritualScience, it became possible to use scientific method both in itsteaching and in its practice. As commonly understood, scientificmethod is inductive, reasoning from numerous material observationstowards a general principle. Here we are brought up against thequestion, how, in spiritual things, can one deploy scientific methodwhen traditionally it rests upon the measurement of matter? Theanswer is that the divinely scientific method starts not fromobservation but from revelation. Scientific as to method andterminology, it is spiritual in subject and purpose. It is primarily47