Forgotten Truth: The Spiritual Vision Science Can’t Explain

Huston Smith’s "Forgotten Truth" philosophical argument is that the world’s religions share a universal, hierarchical vision of reality that modern science has obscured. Smith distinguishes between the quantitative measure of science and the qualitative "Great Chain of Being" found in traditional wisdom, which organizes existence into graded levels of being and worth. He utilizes the symbolism of the three-dimensional cross to illustrate how the Infinite—a spaceless, timeless center—acts as the source for all manifest planes of existence. By examining the terrestrial, intermediate, and celestial realms, the source posits that reality is far more expansive than the physical world captured by scientific instruments. Ultimately, Smith asserts a microcosm-macrocosm isomorphism, suggesting that these higher ontic levels are mirrored within the human selfhood. This recovery of "forgotten truth" aims to resolve the postmodern crisis of meaning by reconnecting humanity with a transcendent, unified totality.