Attending Brian Swimme's recent evening talk at the Schumacher College was an inspiring and uplifting and unusual experience. The man is so passionate about the evolution of the cosmos, tracking its deep time origins, tracing lightly over the mathematics, physics and the utterly immense scale of the whole process. Simultaneously his joy in the discovery of the Universe as self, transmits a degree of grounded positivity that you rarely encounter in the public sphere.
Swimme's enthusiasm for the evolutionary process opens the mind up to the miraculous formation of stars, the majesty of collapsing and spiralling galaxies, the might of gravitational waves plus the stupendous distances involved at every level. His ecstatic delivery shames conventional science and scientists for their desiccated approach to their subjects.
One particularly evocative moment occurred when he distinguished between the planetary bodies in our solar system. He characterised the mass of Jupiter as a planet of gases a planet body, that you could literally travel right through the centre of the vapours and emerge intact on the other side. Contrasting this with Mars which he said was dead inert rock, totally lifeless solid and impermeable.
The earth lies between the two and is in a state of balanced turbulence, it is fluid with a flaky crust. The centre fluctuates between a gaseous and solid state the movement of the core magma drives the plates ultimately generating life, it is swimming in a constant state of disequilibrium. That life evolved out of these elements in Swimmes view was more miraculous than anything narrated or described in any of the Holy Scriptures.
He described the Sun as igniting 600 million tonnes of Hydrogen gas every minute turning 596m into helium, the missing 4m tons is emitted as light energy which is what nourishes the earth. He portrayed this as an act of cosmic generosity.
He vividly described that pivotal and poignant moment when the first unicellular organisms having run out of food sources, had to invent a completely novel way of extracting energy from the environment. They evolved to capture and convert the energy of a photon inventing the process of photosynthesis, indicating that even at this basic level of life some form of consciousness must have been operational.
Outlining the evolutionary developments from amoeba to mammal and then to human life, Swimme swiftly switched focus to the quantum, the quark and most elementary levels of material reality. He described the appearance and disappearance of trillions quantum particles as generated out of the all nourishing abyss and at its root a ‘space time foam’.
After this part of the talk had finished I put a question to Brian on why so many interpreters of Thomas Berry’s work seemed to over emphasise the community of the earth at the expense of the importance of human self reflective consciousness and consequently generate an antipathy toward human presence on the planet.
He gave me a very cute response and asked me what proportion of people on the planet were awake to the dangers I guessed at about to 2% and then as I started to change my mind but he stopped me! He then said the alarmist messages about the state of planet had a place and needed to be communicated, as not enough people were awake to the real dangers.
However the flip side was everybody needed to be awake the fact that we were at a time of great opportunity and possibility and this was also a crucial part of the picture. Funnily enough he said that Thomas Berry used to get very depressed about the state of the planet and it was left to Brian to have to cheer him up!!
Monday, 6 July 2009
Saturday, 4 July 2009
LSE talk by Susan Neiman titled What Makes Heroes?
Susan Neiman is a moral philosopher and a distinguished scholar, she is director of the Einstein Forum and is used to asking big questions and making the tools of her academic discipline relevant to the average, thinking citizen.
She has authored a new book titled Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown Up Idealists and the topic of heroism is central to the book. I became enthused about her having read an interview with her in EnlightenNext magazine written by Elizabeth Debold.
In her talk at the LSE one of her central themes was to reconstruct our idea of heroism. For her Odysseus represents bears true hallmarks of heroism in contrast with the invulnerable Achilles who has been become our prevalent heroic archetype, modelling in her view, an infantilised hollow version of heroism. Odysseus is heroic because he uses his wits and guile and endlessly struggles to overcome he challenges and trials he faces. Unusually for a Greek myth he utilises no super powers or assistance of the Gods. It is these momentous efforts that make Odysseus heroic, this process moulds and shapes his humanity and character into one to which we should all aspire.
Another theme that emerged from her talk was that our most common heroes are usually ones that die, sometimes martyrs and almost always tragic and have generally tended to die for a noble cause. Nieman was emphatic that a dead hero was next to worthless because they let humans off the hook, if a hero dies their example is almost impossible to follow and therefore we consequently let go of our own aspirations to heroism.
She illustrated her argument with little known vignettes of what she regarded as true heroism what follows is one example. We all know about the man that lay in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square who was crushed, yet there was a more potent story in the background that got far less media exposure. A bus driver noting what was happening drove his bus forward to block the route of some the tanks and realising that the bus would be removed threw the keys of the bus away where they would not be found and remained by his bus.
Most of us worship Gandhi, Mandela, the Dalai Lama because they are distant and therefore safe and they personally, can have extremely little direct impact on our lives. Therefore there is very little impetus to desire for change. Philosophically she is deeply influenced by Kant and thus wants to reinvigorate ‘Enlightenment Heroism’. This includes having an awareness of ‘the difference between things as they are and things as they should be’.
This was a dense rigorously argued talk packed full of cultural philosophical and political references many of which were lost on me. However in addition to the authoritative call for a new type of heroism Susan thoroughly punctured many of the revered and jealously guarded tenets of postmodern culture. Heroes she argued inspire us to struggle to become more fully human. She is arguing for a re-evaluation of the terms good and evil honour and nobility because social theory has relegated the hero to the sterile term role model.
She has authored a new book titled Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown Up Idealists and the topic of heroism is central to the book. I became enthused about her having read an interview with her in EnlightenNext magazine written by Elizabeth Debold.
In her talk at the LSE one of her central themes was to reconstruct our idea of heroism. For her Odysseus represents bears true hallmarks of heroism in contrast with the invulnerable Achilles who has been become our prevalent heroic archetype, modelling in her view, an infantilised hollow version of heroism. Odysseus is heroic because he uses his wits and guile and endlessly struggles to overcome he challenges and trials he faces. Unusually for a Greek myth he utilises no super powers or assistance of the Gods. It is these momentous efforts that make Odysseus heroic, this process moulds and shapes his humanity and character into one to which we should all aspire.
Another theme that emerged from her talk was that our most common heroes are usually ones that die, sometimes martyrs and almost always tragic and have generally tended to die for a noble cause. Nieman was emphatic that a dead hero was next to worthless because they let humans off the hook, if a hero dies their example is almost impossible to follow and therefore we consequently let go of our own aspirations to heroism.
She illustrated her argument with little known vignettes of what she regarded as true heroism what follows is one example. We all know about the man that lay in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square who was crushed, yet there was a more potent story in the background that got far less media exposure. A bus driver noting what was happening drove his bus forward to block the route of some the tanks and realising that the bus would be removed threw the keys of the bus away where they would not be found and remained by his bus.
Most of us worship Gandhi, Mandela, the Dalai Lama because they are distant and therefore safe and they personally, can have extremely little direct impact on our lives. Therefore there is very little impetus to desire for change. Philosophically she is deeply influenced by Kant and thus wants to reinvigorate ‘Enlightenment Heroism’. This includes having an awareness of ‘the difference between things as they are and things as they should be’.
This was a dense rigorously argued talk packed full of cultural philosophical and political references many of which were lost on me. However in addition to the authoritative call for a new type of heroism Susan thoroughly punctured many of the revered and jealously guarded tenets of postmodern culture. Heroes she argued inspire us to struggle to become more fully human. She is arguing for a re-evaluation of the terms good and evil honour and nobility because social theory has relegated the hero to the sterile term role model.
Friday, 3 July 2009
Initial Impresssions from SDi UK Summit 26-27 June 2009 with Don Beck
This post was written in response to the summary of the UK Summit event posted by Keith Rice on his blog
Keith as you have done the 'fill in' so well on the facts I shall not blog my own summary!!
This leaves me with the luxury of just adding a few qualitative background comments to your informative structure.
I was struck to begin with how Don adapted his teaching style to be more inclusive of the group and how he initially surfaced everyone’s thoughts on the current LIFE conditions in the UK. Then how he followed this by highlighting the PRIORITY Codes of each meme system and finally focused on the common BELIEFS and Worldviews of each system over the passage of the two days
His use of Chariots of Fire film and particularly the scene in the Scottish Church hit me with a tsunami of overwhelming BLUE. When I first watched this film many years ago I would have enjoyed the propriety and Britishness of the characters but would have been glad not to been present for the stultifying suffocation of that age.
What was shocking was that despite how many conventional ritualistic and bureaucratic structures still being present in our social and other institutions, yet the rigour of these blue values has almost been entirely erased from the social and personal culture sphere(including mine!)
Over the two days I found the feedback from non UK nationals very refreshing and the objectivity of their reflection on the positivity of UK or British culture was both useful and uplifting. Because of the peculiar lack of value, I personally place on these positive characteristics, I found I appreciated the foreign perspective more highly than the Brits!!
On day two I was hugely affected by the statement from the MP read aloud by Lynn Sedgemore. This conveyed so utterly positively, our unique nationalistic qualities and history. The relationship to British identity was resoundingly unequivocal and at the same balanced informed and resolutely as well as pointedly anti extremist. Interestingly the writer’s sense of self was so fused with responsibility and appreciation for British identity that it also contained a clarion call for the need for all Brits to move forward together. I was therefore completely gobsmacked that the piece was written by a British Asian former MP and Justice Minister Shahid Malik. The appreciation of British values was so accurate and unambiguous it made me think that this is the direction from where the reconstruction of British identity might arrive!!
More to be posted here on the two day summit.
Keith as you have done the 'fill in' so well on the facts I shall not blog my own summary!!
This leaves me with the luxury of just adding a few qualitative background comments to your informative structure.
I was struck to begin with how Don adapted his teaching style to be more inclusive of the group and how he initially surfaced everyone’s thoughts on the current LIFE conditions in the UK. Then how he followed this by highlighting the PRIORITY Codes of each meme system and finally focused on the common BELIEFS and Worldviews of each system over the passage of the two days
His use of Chariots of Fire film and particularly the scene in the Scottish Church hit me with a tsunami of overwhelming BLUE. When I first watched this film many years ago I would have enjoyed the propriety and Britishness of the characters but would have been glad not to been present for the stultifying suffocation of that age.
What was shocking was that despite how many conventional ritualistic and bureaucratic structures still being present in our social and other institutions, yet the rigour of these blue values has almost been entirely erased from the social and personal culture sphere(including mine!)
Over the two days I found the feedback from non UK nationals very refreshing and the objectivity of their reflection on the positivity of UK or British culture was both useful and uplifting. Because of the peculiar lack of value, I personally place on these positive characteristics, I found I appreciated the foreign perspective more highly than the Brits!!
On day two I was hugely affected by the statement from the MP read aloud by Lynn Sedgemore. This conveyed so utterly positively, our unique nationalistic qualities and history. The relationship to British identity was resoundingly unequivocal and at the same balanced informed and resolutely as well as pointedly anti extremist. Interestingly the writer’s sense of self was so fused with responsibility and appreciation for British identity that it also contained a clarion call for the need for all Brits to move forward together. I was therefore completely gobsmacked that the piece was written by a British Asian former MP and Justice Minister Shahid Malik. The appreciation of British values was so accurate and unambiguous it made me think that this is the direction from where the reconstruction of British identity might arrive!!
More to be posted here on the two day summit.
Friday, 26 June 2009
Summary of the Faith and Science 21st Century mini meet up – 18 June 2009
Jay Lakhani opened the meeting eventually outlining his view on why Science and Religion were not two mutually exclusive spheres of human endeavour. He cited the influence of Wittgenstein, whose insistence that different models of belief could exist separately within their own universes, if they were internally self consistent with their own truths, as a key to why there has been some little integration between these two disciplines.
The resultant lack of reconciliation between Science and Religion has done untold damage both enterprises. Jay is extremely passionate about the benefits and achievements of Science which is the most enduring and widespread of all human systems. Science evolves by making hypotheses testing out theories and changing to encompass new discoveries. Scientific thought though is flawed with it’s fixation on matter. Religion though in comparison is stuck in a rut.
To understand the historical interpretation of religious experience Jay explained that the revelation of spirit or the absolute is always unchanging and transcendent in its nature yet has to be interpreted by the human experience through whatever the cultural filters and knowledge of the time. This explains the ancient tendency to create a personified aggrandised externalised God with superhuman attributes.
Today Science is struggling with the limitations of its own methodology; conceptually it is not generating notions with sufficient explanatory power to describe the phenomena that it is witnessing. As a quantum physicist Jay has been privileged to be taught by Roger Penrose and is very well acquainted with the key discoveries at the quantum level that challenge the underpinnings of scientific methodology.
Even Einstein as a physicist who was deeply committed to a rational material explanation of phenomena got himself into difficulties refuting the claims of Bohr Schrödinger and Heisenberg. Taking the group into the detail of quantum discoveries Jay demonstrated the limits of the materialist model to explain quantum entanglement and the uncertainty principle for example.
Jay drew the group’s attention to the fact that when you peered beyond the current limited scientific explanations all matter seems to be an appearance and also everything is inextricably interconnected. The deep introspection and contemplation of the mystics describe the essence of everything as non material consciousness.
Jays passionate evocation of the non material essence of reality, created a very receptive atmosphere for his claim that a new spiritual humanism was required, to embody the both the discoveries of Science and Religion.
Jay Lakhani opened the meeting eventually outlining his view on why Science and Religion were not two mutually exclusive spheres of human endeavour. He cited the influence of Wittgenstein, whose insistence that different models of belief could exist separately within their own universes, if they were internally self consistent with their own truths, as a key to why there has been some little integration between these two disciplines.
The resultant lack of reconciliation between Science and Religion has done untold damage both enterprises. Jay is extremely passionate about the benefits and achievements of Science which is the most enduring and widespread of all human systems. Science evolves by making hypotheses testing out theories and changing to encompass new discoveries. Scientific thought though is flawed with it’s fixation on matter. Religion though in comparison is stuck in a rut.
To understand the historical interpretation of religious experience Jay explained that the revelation of spirit or the absolute is always unchanging and transcendent in its nature yet has to be interpreted by the human experience through whatever the cultural filters and knowledge of the time. This explains the ancient tendency to create a personified aggrandised externalised God with superhuman attributes.
Today Science is struggling with the limitations of its own methodology; conceptually it is not generating notions with sufficient explanatory power to describe the phenomena that it is witnessing. As a quantum physicist Jay has been privileged to be taught by Roger Penrose and is very well acquainted with the key discoveries at the quantum level that challenge the underpinnings of scientific methodology.
Even Einstein as a physicist who was deeply committed to a rational material explanation of phenomena got himself into difficulties refuting the claims of Bohr Schrödinger and Heisenberg. Taking the group into the detail of quantum discoveries Jay demonstrated the limits of the materialist model to explain quantum entanglement and the uncertainty principle for example.
Jay drew the group’s attention to the fact that when you peered beyond the current limited scientific explanations all matter seems to be an appearance and also everything is inextricably interconnected. The deep introspection and contemplation of the mystics describe the essence of everything as non material consciousness.
Jays passionate evocation of the non material essence of reality, created a very receptive atmosphere for his claim that a new spiritual humanism was required, to embody the both the discoveries of Science and Religion.
Sunday, 21 June 2009
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: The Extended Mind, Morphic Resonance and Spiritual Experience
Notes based on a joint conference held by the Alister Hardy Trust and the London Science and Medical Network group at Kensington Unitarian Church 6th June 2009.
Rupert gave a perfectly organised and cohesive talk on this topic straying into areas that he does not frequently cover in public forums. Interestingly he talked about the use of psychedelics to catalyse religious experiences throughout the history of spirituality and also divulged the positive lasting impact of his own personal experimentation with these drugs. He included this comment within a comprehensive categorisation of the types of activity that induce or generate religious experiences.
He followed this by describing three theories of mind; the materialist view which he claims has failed to prove its case, those metaphysical theories that are in essence platonic because they claim that there are laws outside of nature that govern the mind. Finally he explained his own theories and evidence for what he terms the extended mind.
He then talked about his appreciation of religious place, ceremony and ritual observance, commenting on how acts of ceremony and liturgy repeated consistently over time provide us with a direct ancestral connection. Those identical acts performed by our forbearers have set up a sympathetic field of Morphic resonance that is so embedded in sacred spaces that they can induce spiritual experiences in people simply by entering them.Rupert also extrapolated on his recent musings on the nature of consciousness and the past as well as the realm of possibility.
In the plenary session he depicted his own views of the 'credit crunch of materialist science'. He states that conventional science has constantly offered promissory notes on it’s conviction that a complete explanation of various phenomena in scientific terms is not far off. He stated it was time to insist on an end to these promised explanations. Especially because these scientists have cornered all the available funding using just one modality of scientific research.
He proposed a Littlewoods football pools betting exchange, whereby scientists had to declare specific dates and then bet their personal finances on these predictions! Furthermore he proposed an ‘ecumenogenesis’ of western life sciences in order to properly pool information to create a more convincing explanation of the unexplained and conveniently ignored gaps in the current scientific model .
In the break I commented to Rupert that his musings on consciousness the past and possibilities had move forward since the time he had spoken on the topic, he replied by stating that it was constantly on his mind as he tried to come up with a coherent explanation for the relationship between past present and future.
Rupert gave a perfectly organised and cohesive talk on this topic straying into areas that he does not frequently cover in public forums. Interestingly he talked about the use of psychedelics to catalyse religious experiences throughout the history of spirituality and also divulged the positive lasting impact of his own personal experimentation with these drugs. He included this comment within a comprehensive categorisation of the types of activity that induce or generate religious experiences.
He followed this by describing three theories of mind; the materialist view which he claims has failed to prove its case, those metaphysical theories that are in essence platonic because they claim that there are laws outside of nature that govern the mind. Finally he explained his own theories and evidence for what he terms the extended mind.
He then talked about his appreciation of religious place, ceremony and ritual observance, commenting on how acts of ceremony and liturgy repeated consistently over time provide us with a direct ancestral connection. Those identical acts performed by our forbearers have set up a sympathetic field of Morphic resonance that is so embedded in sacred spaces that they can induce spiritual experiences in people simply by entering them.Rupert also extrapolated on his recent musings on the nature of consciousness and the past as well as the realm of possibility.
In the plenary session he depicted his own views of the 'credit crunch of materialist science'. He states that conventional science has constantly offered promissory notes on it’s conviction that a complete explanation of various phenomena in scientific terms is not far off. He stated it was time to insist on an end to these promised explanations. Especially because these scientists have cornered all the available funding using just one modality of scientific research.
He proposed a Littlewoods football pools betting exchange, whereby scientists had to declare specific dates and then bet their personal finances on these predictions! Furthermore he proposed an ‘ecumenogenesis’ of western life sciences in order to properly pool information to create a more convincing explanation of the unexplained and conveniently ignored gaps in the current scientific model .
In the break I commented to Rupert that his musings on consciousness the past and possibilities had move forward since the time he had spoken on the topic, he replied by stating that it was constantly on his mind as he tried to come up with a coherent explanation for the relationship between past present and future.
Monday, 8 June 2009
Integral Parenting
My close friend Patrick Bryson recently gave a pioneering presentation at the June salon of the London Integral Circle on the topic of Integral Parenting. What follows is the post I put together on the groups Yahoo forum summarsing the flow of his talk;
An engaging evening devoted to Integral Parenting was enjoyed by the group in Hampstead last Wednesday evening
Patrick Bryson took us on a brief but intriguing journey into what integral parenting might look like. Not claiming to be an expert in integral theory, Patrick presented several examples of integral interventions he made whilst raising his fourteen-year-old daughter. These actions revealed the potential of adopting a conscious and integral approach to parenting, which he believed was allowing his daughter to find and experience an authentic identity, independent of the hypnotic pull of her peers and the prevailing materialistic culture. In relating to the topic of ‘Why parenting is already an integral issue’, Patrick put forward to the group that parenting was already an integral issue because the level of the parent’s consciousness was automatically the level of consciousness adopted by the child.
Patrick was insistent that the key factor in promoting his daughter’s welfare was his work with other students of Andrew Cohen on developing a new reference point for the self within the intersubjective, as guided and informed by his teacher Cohen. This equipped him to step back from some of his conditioned parenting impulses and be sensitive to critical moments in his daughter’s development. The focus of Cohen and Wilber and that of Spiral Dynamics on the stages of individual and cultural growth had been extremely useful in understanding and responding to his daughter’s experience.
One particularly mind-blowing event occurred when his daughter was around the age of seven and began asking profound and meaningful questions about life. They had been walking through some beautiful parkland when they spotted a deer. His daughter asked the question ‘Where did the first deer come from?’ and Patrick was able to answer her by explaining the deep time cosmological development of human consciousness in terms she understood. Furthermore, he witnessed her awaken to her own experience of the evolution of the universe within her own consciousness as they spoke! The consequences of this event are still unfolding today as she moves toward adulthood. These naturally occurring deep questions are frequently dismissed or ignored by parents, and the opportunity to develop depth is almost always wasted.
His daughter also went through a period of time during which she had become highly insecure because of intense competition among her peers. It was ‘a battlefield of best friends’. The dynamics of this competition caused her much torment. During this time both her parents did not get too drawn into the day-to-day drama of her suffering but held a larger integral context for her. Slowly, she was able to disentangle herself from these dynamics and discover within herself, a distaste for the unhealthy competition. In doing so, she had made her suffering an object and became disidentified from the causes of her suffering. This was the process, Patrick noted, through which consciousness always evolves. His daughter has now developed a level of autonomy within the peer group and is able to stand her own ground. She can question and challenge behaviours which make her unhappy. In the last few months she is starting to relate to her potential, thinking of the future, making her own plans, and shining in her studies.
Patrick also touched on the simple guidance offered to him by Andrew Cohen related to raising children by teaching them respect and demonstrating that life is positive. On the subject of respect, Patrick also spoke about the postmodern parenting context in which parents are reluctant to exercise their authority with children and, rather, seek friendship and equality with their offspring. The necessity to provide structure and guidance is frequently neglected and leads to scenes of the child-parent insanity we frequently witness in our streets and shops.
A lively back-and-forth discussion ensued. Challenges and responses to the issues raised by integral parenting were explored by the group. It was clear that such an implicating issue provoked deeper and wider engagement in the group than is usually the case!!
An engaging evening devoted to Integral Parenting was enjoyed by the group in Hampstead last Wednesday evening
Patrick Bryson took us on a brief but intriguing journey into what integral parenting might look like. Not claiming to be an expert in integral theory, Patrick presented several examples of integral interventions he made whilst raising his fourteen-year-old daughter. These actions revealed the potential of adopting a conscious and integral approach to parenting, which he believed was allowing his daughter to find and experience an authentic identity, independent of the hypnotic pull of her peers and the prevailing materialistic culture. In relating to the topic of ‘Why parenting is already an integral issue’, Patrick put forward to the group that parenting was already an integral issue because the level of the parent’s consciousness was automatically the level of consciousness adopted by the child.
Patrick was insistent that the key factor in promoting his daughter’s welfare was his work with other students of Andrew Cohen on developing a new reference point for the self within the intersubjective, as guided and informed by his teacher Cohen. This equipped him to step back from some of his conditioned parenting impulses and be sensitive to critical moments in his daughter’s development. The focus of Cohen and Wilber and that of Spiral Dynamics on the stages of individual and cultural growth had been extremely useful in understanding and responding to his daughter’s experience.
One particularly mind-blowing event occurred when his daughter was around the age of seven and began asking profound and meaningful questions about life. They had been walking through some beautiful parkland when they spotted a deer. His daughter asked the question ‘Where did the first deer come from?’ and Patrick was able to answer her by explaining the deep time cosmological development of human consciousness in terms she understood. Furthermore, he witnessed her awaken to her own experience of the evolution of the universe within her own consciousness as they spoke! The consequences of this event are still unfolding today as she moves toward adulthood. These naturally occurring deep questions are frequently dismissed or ignored by parents, and the opportunity to develop depth is almost always wasted.
His daughter also went through a period of time during which she had become highly insecure because of intense competition among her peers. It was ‘a battlefield of best friends’. The dynamics of this competition caused her much torment. During this time both her parents did not get too drawn into the day-to-day drama of her suffering but held a larger integral context for her. Slowly, she was able to disentangle herself from these dynamics and discover within herself, a distaste for the unhealthy competition. In doing so, she had made her suffering an object and became disidentified from the causes of her suffering. This was the process, Patrick noted, through which consciousness always evolves. His daughter has now developed a level of autonomy within the peer group and is able to stand her own ground. She can question and challenge behaviours which make her unhappy. In the last few months she is starting to relate to her potential, thinking of the future, making her own plans, and shining in her studies.
Patrick also touched on the simple guidance offered to him by Andrew Cohen related to raising children by teaching them respect and demonstrating that life is positive. On the subject of respect, Patrick also spoke about the postmodern parenting context in which parents are reluctant to exercise their authority with children and, rather, seek friendship and equality with their offspring. The necessity to provide structure and guidance is frequently neglected and leads to scenes of the child-parent insanity we frequently witness in our streets and shops.
A lively back-and-forth discussion ensued. Challenges and responses to the issues raised by integral parenting were explored by the group. It was clear that such an implicating issue provoked deeper and wider engagement in the group than is usually the case!!
Saturday, 23 May 2009
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:
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 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
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
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