Scientific Revolution or Evolution?--Conquest vs. Consortium as the Future of Science

Elisabet Sahtouris gave a talk this week on the above topic at the London branch of the Scientific and Medical network

She convened the Hokkaido Symposium in summer of 2008 to create a convergence between those scientists that believe in a Living Universe and those conventional scientists that believe in a Materialist Universe.

Elisabet already got coverage for her symposium last year for in Hokkaido in the Kosmos Journal attached which kicked off the conversation above.

Quote from the article:

In a time of need to shift as quickly as possible from unsustainable lifestyles to sustainability around the globe, we ‘Hokkaido 8’—now calling ourselves an Evolution of Science Group—recognize this issue, to have key potential for facilitating that shift, especially as it concerns the relationship between consciousness and matter

So this symposium brought a number of PhD scientists including a Nobel Laureate, who believe in a Living Universe and the primacy of consciousness. Together they analysed materialist science to examine which were the key basic assumptions upon which this form of science is based.

Equally they then analysed their own belief system in a Living Universe and came up with a set of basic assumptions for this belief system. They have now are seeking
E50k to put a survey 5000 scientists throughout the world using an international surveying company in order to screen their underlying beliefs about nature of the universe. Elisabet feels this is much more useful than asking them if they believe in God!!

(article again)

In collaboration with international survey company, GlobeScan in London, a global survey of scientists’ deep-seated unproven assumptions—the foundational worldview beliefs upon which any science necessarily rests—is in the planning stages. The results of that survey, never before undertaken, are expected to reveal that the foundations of science are not as monolithic as commonly believed, and that therefore a diversity of sciences, with formally agreed upon methodological commonalities as outlined above may be not only desirable but almost mandatory in a peacefully globalized world

In the talk she stated that a lot of ancient cultures had scientific systems with specialist aspects Vedic Inca Taoist etc and envisaged a consortia of sciences balancing a materialist science worldview, with these ancient sciences but equally demanding these ancient sciences come up the mark of Western scientific methodology.

What was revealing for me was having all the basic assumptions mapped in one place, as they feel very familiar to me and yet not been fully specified articualted so accurately before in my view;

What follows below is what I remembered, and can manage to record, transcribed from my notes made during the talk.

Materialist Assumptions

Everything is constructed of matter
Darwinian Natural Selection explains evolution
Science as Practiced is the only means to understanding and knowledge
Reality is meaningless
Space and Time is the only context for reality
Psy phenomena are not real
There is no Higher Power
There is no non local causality
Life is a derivative of non life
Intuition is untrustworthy and unscientific


Living Universe Assumptions

Mind or Consciousness is of primary importance
Intelligence plays a role in biological and cosmological evolution
There are many avenues to True Knowledge
Reality lies outside of space time
Psy phenomena can be studied scientifically
A higher power exists
Non local causality is real
Life is fundamental to the Universe


The underlying assumptions are not really scientific of either position there are really just cultural beliefs

Another summary of the talk http://www.scimednet.org/localgroupscontents.php?action=Report&Control=London+Group

Integral Politics & London Integral Salon

My second offically published article was recently put online;

London Integral Salon Notes from the Field January 18, 2009

A Dialogue and Discussion on Integral Politics

With John Bunzl and Victor Anderson, Facilitated by Michael Herrick

Now Published on the Integral Leaderhsip Review website

http://www.integralleadershipreview.com/archives/2009-03/2009-03-notes-pendle.php

Rupert Sheldrake Visionary Scientist

I went a talk given by Rupert Sheldrake presented by the Gaia Foundation at Burgh House in Hampstead on Wednesday night.

The event was held in a unique and intimate setting. A buffet meal and wine is served beforehand in a flat on the ground floor of the Gaia Foundation’s office and then the talk is held for one and half hours in Burgh Hall just across the road. This is then followed by more food and wine back at the flat afterwards. The talk was titled Morphic Resonance, Collective Memory and Habits of Nature.

I arrived early to network yet ended up in the garden and was invited by Rupert to sit on the available chair next to him. So I found out what he is currently doing and thought to publish some of this on this blog.

He is currently republishing his books ‘A New Science of Life’ and the ‘Presence of the Past’ and updating them in terms of his own experiments plus the latest developments in current science. Whilst these developments stop well short of proving his theories he feels they are headed in the right general direction. I noted to him that he was lot more active giving lectures and talks recently and he said he was doing this to emphasise the importance and significance of his work on Morphic Fields and Morphic Resonance as his books of late had focused a lot more on his experiments.

The talk he gave was both beguiling and riveting and as usual he put everything into a huge philosophical context, pointing out some of the erroneous assumptions upon which most of materialist science is based. The latter part of the talk was full of the scientific examples and anomalies that point to his theory of Morphic Resonance.

There are three further points that were of most interest to me;

1) Creativity
Toward the end of his talk Rupert added a postscript about creativity, explaining that his theory of Morphic Resonance really has little to say about creativity as it describes habits which have been repeated and that which is repeatable. Science is essentially a study of habit. He felt creativity occurred in nature when the existing habits are blocked and this almost forces creativity to occur but this could not really be studied or understood by science.

I questioned him further on this as I felt happenings such as the ‘big bang of plants’ must require a fuller explanation. His response was to say some of these things were beyond the mind and therefore we lacked the capacity to know or understand them, he was aware of these ‘punctuated bursts of evolution’ and his best explanation he said drew from the realms of philosophy and theology. In actual fact he saw these occurrences as interventions from the Holy Spirit.

2) Consciousness
My recollection of this component is quite indistinct as it was a small fragment right at the end of the talk. However Rupert was answering a question about the space of emptiness and that of potentiality, when he alluded to the fact that everything that is created that is matter, which is studied by the science is arising in some sense out of the past.

Consciousness in contrast was arising out of the future and was looking backward at the past. I may not be expressing this exactly he meant and was fleeting moment in time but I thought this nano moment revealed something significant and different about his view of consciousness.

3) A Wager

Rupert is shortly about to publicise in the Economist I think, a bet he has constructed with Lewis Wolpert one his most eminent scientific detractors with whom he has conducted several public debates. In a recent debate Wolpert stated he was fully confident that within 20 years science would have discovered the totality of information that governed the development of the human organism.

Rupert challenged Wolpert’s ‘faith’ in science (he is a rabid atheist!) to produce this result and subsequently Wolpert changed his prediction to 100 years. To cut a long story short since the debate and after a lot of bargaining down by Wolpert, they have wagered a case of the finest port (which will matured to it’s peak by May 1 2029 in twenty years) that science will have discovered everything that it needs to know about the development of the nematode worm the simplest animal life form within those twenty years. Rupert is obviously betting against the likelihood of this happening. I may not have the exact terminology right here but I hope you get the sense of the wager!

Overall an inspiring mindstretching and very valuable evening.