I am writing this thread question after reading Bertrand Russell's essay, ' Mysticism and Logic', which explores the relationship between the two contrasting approaches. He speaks of mysticism as involving 'belief in insight as against discursive analytic knowledge: the belief in a way of wisdom, sudden, penetrating, coercive, which is contrasted by a science relying on the senses'. Russell was writing in the twentieth century, and, in the twentieth first century, there is far more emphasis on the empirical basis of knowledge, especially in relation to scientific methods and evidence based research.

However, Russell was coming from a humanist perspective and this makes it different from the some mystical perspective which are based on assumptions about God and the supernatural. He traces mysticism back to the ideas of Plato and Parmenides. There is an emphasis on 'hidden wisdom' and the importance of intuition and its opposition with reason. He says,
'Instinct, intuition or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which reason confirms or confutes; but by the confirmation, where it gets possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realm, it is insight that first arrives at what is new'. He argues that logic was pursued by mystical philosophers but 'they usually took for granted the supposed insight of the mystic emotion, their logical doctrines were presented with a certain dryness..'

I am wondering about the role of intuition and mystical insight in the twentieth first century. Postmodern philosophy has broken down the metaphysics, especially in the form of the relativity of 'truth'. Wittgenstein has pointed to the limitations of language. Science is a major source of knowledge, although it can sometimes create a mystification of knowledge and expertise. What is the balance between empirical knowledge and imagination? How may the logical aspects of thought be understood and balanced effectively with other approaches to understanding, especially in the humanities? How may a full understanding of knowledge be gained, subjectively, intersubjectively and objectively, especially in connection with the opposition between mysticism, imagination in contrast to the understanding of empirical science?