What follows is from an article that proves I'm a nerd. WARNING! SPOILERS!
"Locke ended up being the one in the coffin (although he was one of three options; if any leaks escaped, two other endings were ready in the wings, one with Sawyer in the coffin, and one with Desmond). Locke is now confirmed to be Jeremy Bentham, another in the Lost list of Enlightenment philosophers. And he's an interesting choice: When forging his ideas of utilitarianism and legal positivism, Bentham forcefully broke from the theories natural rights and social contracts put forth by the philosopher John Locke. Island Locke's name change introduces a narrative and metaphysical break that gives rise to all kinds of fun new complications, particularly when it comes to island Locke's uncertainty between faith and reason. ...
Bentham is also the architect of the panopticon prison, designed in a round with back-lit cells so a lone guard could see all the prisoners and the prisoners never knew when they were being watched. It was a way of institutionalizing social control of the conscience through surveillance, which French social critic Michel Foucault saw as characteristic of modern civilization. This recalls the Pearl Station's surveillance of the Swan Station, Abaddon's visit to Hurley, the Others watching from the jungle, and other such moments that light the spark of paranoia in the Lostaways. ...
The Casimir effect proved vacuums existed at the subatomic quantum level; Kip Thorne and Stephen Hawking theorized that if you could get your hands on something called exotic material (virtual particles) and employ the Casimir effect, you could possibly create a wormhole and, yes indeedy, screw with spacetime. Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey (he wrote the book as Kubrick made the film), wrote that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. From that standpoint, the miraculous is just science not yet understood. Perhaps Locke's shift to Bentham will mark a shift from a pisteutic faith-based acceptance of phenomenon to reasoned analysis of what drives his mystical experiences.
So the mystical core of the island may, in fact, have a scientific explanation, but that doesn't mean its experience can't extend into something oceanic and mystical; it would be a fine way to bridge the divide between reason and faith. We saw the core of the island itself when Ben descended into its depths and turned what Cuse and Lindelof called the "frozen donkey wheel," which Ben uses to trigger some electromagic chain reaction popping the island out of spacetime."
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