@duane
Active 2 years, 4 months agoForum Replies Created
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Ed–
You ask an interesting question: Is there “another word that would suitably describe the non-biological yet highly interconnected and interdependent matter of the universe . . .”? There are phrases that are evocative for me:
- Double-Aliveness or Doubly-Alive — Life is nested within Life. In Plato’s terms: the universe is uniquely alive as an integrated whole and, within its vast wholeness, there are countless, differentiated organisms with their unique expressions of life. The aliveness of biological systems is then seen as a subset of the doubly-alive (life within life) universe.
- Trans-Biological Aliveness — This phrase points explicitly beyond the realm of biology to another expression and realm of aliveness; for example, exploring the Earth as an integrated living system or the cosmos.
- Deep Aliveness — This phrase is based on the recognition that 95 percent of the known universe is invisible and this realm seems vitally important to the important attributes that we describe as “aliveness.” The “depth” of aliveness is unbounded and extends to the entire cosmos as an integrated system.
After going through this thought-exercise, I realized, even more clearly, how the words “aliveness” and “living” are very valuable in describing our relationship with the universe. In turn, I don’t want to give them up to be used only by biologists — particularly if biological life is viewed a subset of the aliveness of the larger universe. Perhaps the question is: “Is there another word that would suitably describe the expression of ‘aliveness’ found in highly differentiated and seemingly separate biological systems?”
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Ed–
Thanks for your discerning and insightful posting! I’m excited by the possibility that, after more than 400 postings, our learning community may be discovering important common ground. I am comfortable with the summary paragraph that you wrote, Ed, and I’m wondering if this offers common ground for Jon and Mike (and others) as well.
“Considering all of these arguments, here is my conclusion at this time which is the best “common ground” that I can muster. We must allow science the categories of “living organism” and “non living matter” for them to do their work. However there is also room for the “big philosophical view” of an interconnected universe where living and non-living matter (in the scientific sense) are inseparable and part of larger phenomena that we are only starting to understand.”
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Mike —
Thanks for the inquiry into common ground! I’m open to the possibility that exploring the aliveness of the cosmos is a non-sequitur — that the conclusion of aliveness does not follow from the attributes of our universe. Although plausible, I find this puzzling because scientific research increasingly describes the universe as: 1) a unified whole, 2) sustained by the flow through of tremendous amounts of energy, 3) with a knowing capacity or consciousness that fits the form and function of systems at each scale, 4) having the capacity for freedom of choice at the quantum foundations, and 5) in theory, able to reproduce itself. While not “proving” aliveness, because these are attributes of living systems, they seem to imply or point toward the universe as a living system.
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Michael—
Thank you for bringing the wisdom of Thomas Berry into this dialogue. I’d like to bring in a few quotes into this inquiry from his book, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988). An important aspect of Thomas’s dream for the Earth was that we progressively awaken to the creative power and presence of the universe. He wrote:
We bear the universe in our being
as the universe bears us in its being.
The two have a total presence to each other…
He recognized, however, our species has barely begun this great enterprise:
…the universe is so immediate to us, is such an intimate presence, that it escapes our notice, yet whatever authenticity exists in our cultural creations is derived from these spontaneities within us, spontaneities that come from an abyss of energy and a capacity for intelligible order of which we have only the faintest glimmer in our conscious awareness.
Importantly, wrote Berry, we are empowered to discover that, in our evolution
“(W)e are not left simply to our own rational contrivances. We are supported by the ultimate powers of the universe as they make themselves present to us through the spontaneities within our own beings.”
He further says that,
Our challenge is to create a new language, even a new sense of what it is to be human. . . . what we need, what we are ultimately groping toward, is the sensitivity required to understand and respond to the psychic energies deep in the very structure of reality itself. . . . I suggest that this is the ultimate lesson in physics, biology, and all the sciences, as it is the ultimate wisdom of tribal peoples and the fundamental teaching of the great civilizations.
Overall, in my understanding of Berry’s views, we live in a universe that represents a greater form of aliveness than the life-forms on Earth. He is in alignment with the view of Plato that our universe is a single living creature that contains all creatures within it. Berry sees the universe as a living, learning system that is forever emerging as a unified whole while simultaneously growing ever more diverse expressions of its aliveness.
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Dear Michael–
Thank you for the eloquent and poetic quotations from Thomas Berry! I agree with and celebrate his insights and artistry.
I have not purposefully used language in opposition with mainstream science. My interest is straightforward: Look at the attributes of living systems and ask whether those are attributes of our universe.
To me, the evidence points increasingly in the direction of aliveness and this has truly enormous implications for the foundational nature of reality and the human journey.
With love, gratitude, and Thanksgiving blessings to you and Connie (and all others on this thread),
Duane
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Michael– I strongly agree with your view that it is vital we treat nature with the same respect and honor that we give to a human person, we will self-destruct. I like the idea that nature is part of my “in-group.” In agreeing with Thomas Berry, do you regard the universe as “. . . a greater form of life than any particular form on the Earth”?
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Hi Angela, Thanks for the feedback on the “continuous creation” paper with its living systems view of the universe (available on my website). Also, I agree with you that it is too limiting to define the qualities of aliveness of our universe with the qualities of aliveness found in biological systems here on Earth. Your quote from Thomas Berry is powerfully relevant, describing the aliveness of the universe as a “greater form of life.”
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Karen–Thanks for sharing insights from Lee Smolin’s book, “The Life of the Cosmos.” I think he is correct in viewing the universe as a self-organizing system in a non-equilibrium condition. I am also intrigued with his suggestion that new universes form every time a star collapses into a black hole. So, please post more of what you found engaging in this pioneering book. I appreciate Smolin’s approach to cosmology—and how he regards the universe as a single, enormous system and encourages us to build theories that apply to the entire cosmos as an integrated system.
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Mike (and others) — This is such a rich conversation that I’m getting behind in responding to postings! I’ll try to catch up. In the meantime, I want to express my appreciation for Mike’s clarification of those taking a living systems perspective:First, we do not deny the validity of science or the scientific method. Second, we are not saying that life in the universe is identical to cellular life on earth. We suspect that it isn’t. Third we recognize that there is a creative energy force that seems to resemble characteristics of what we call life on Earth. Fourth we are dealing with a mystery.I also appreciated Mike’s hopeful observation:Earth is a very small part of the universe. So what is happening in the universe is also happening on Earth. If there is a “creative life force in the universe” there must also be a “creative life force on Earth”
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The Mental Universe, Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, Nature 436:29, 2005. The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not things. To see the universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things. . . . A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual.
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Manifesto for a Post-Materialist ScienceWe are a group of internationally known scientists, from a variety of scientific fields (biology, neuroscience, psychology, medicine, psychiatry), who participated in an international summit on post-materialist science, spirituality and society. The summit was co-organized by Gary E. Schwartz, PhD and Mario Beauregard, PhD, the University of Arizona, and Lisa Miller, PhD, Columbia University. This summit was held at Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Arizona, on February 7-9, 2014. Our purpose was to discuss the impact of the materialist ideology on science and the emergence of a post-materialist paradigm for science, spirituality, and society. We have come to the following conclusions:1. The modern scientific worldview is predominantly predicated on assumptions that are closely associated with classical physics. Materialism—the idea that matter is the only reality—is one of these assumptions. A related assumption is reductionism, the notion that complex things can be understood by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things such as tiny material particles.2. During the 19th century, these assumptions narrowed, turned into dogmas, and coalesced into an ideological belief system that came to be known as “scientific materialism.” This belief system implies that the mind is nothing but the physical activity of the brain, and that our thoughts cannot have any effect upon our brains and bodies, our actions, and the physical world.3. The ideology of scientific materialism became dominant in academia during the 20th century. So dominant that a majority of scientists started to believe that it was based on established empirical evidence, and represented the only rational view of the world.4. Scientific methods based upon materialistic philosophy have been highly successful in not only increasing our understanding of nature but also in bringing greater control and freedom through advances in technology.5. However, the nearly absolute dominance of materialism in the academic world has seriously constricted the sciences and hampered the development of the scientific study of mind and spirituality. Faith in this ideology, as an exclusive explanatory framework for reality, has compelled scientists to neglect the subjective dimension of human experience. This has led to a severely distorted and impoverished understanding of ourselves and our place in nature.6. Science is first and foremost a non-dogmatic, open-minded method of acquiring knowledge about nature through the observation, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. Its methodology is not synonymous with materialism and should not be committed to any particular beliefs, dogmas, or ideologies.7. At the end of the nineteenth century, physicists discovered empirical phenomena that could not be explained by classical physics. This led to the development, during the 1920s and early 1930s, of a revolutionary new branch of physics called quantum mechanics (QM). QM has questioned the material foundations of the world by showing that atoms and subatomic particles are not really solid objects—they do not exist with certainty at definite spatial locations and definite times. Most importantly, QM explicitly introduced the mind into its basic conceptual structure since it was found that particles being observed and the observer—the physicist and the method used for observation—are linked. According to one interpretation of QM, this phenomenon implies that the consciousness of the observer is vital to the existence of the physical events being observed, and that mental events can affect the physical world. The results of recent experiments support this interpretation. These results suggest that the physical world is no longer the primary or sole component of reality, and that it cannot be fully understood without making reference to the mind.8. Psychological studies have shown that conscious mental activity can causally influence behavior, and that the explanatory and predictive value of agentic factors (e.g. beliefs, goals, desires and expectations) is very high. Moreover, research in psychoneuroimmunology indicates that our thoughts and emotions can markedly affect the activity of the physiological systems (e.g., immune, endocrine, cardiovascular) connected to the brain. In other respects, neuroimaging studies of emotional self-regulation, psychotherapy, and the placebo effect demonstrate that mental events significantly influence the activity of the brain.9. Studies of the so-called “psi phenomena” indicate that we can sometimes receive meaningful information without the use of ordinary senses, and in ways that transcend the habitual space and time constraints. Furthermore, psi research demonstrates that we can mentally influence—at a distance—physical devices and living organisms (including other human beings). Psi research also shows that distant minds may behave in ways that are nonlocally correlated, i.e. the correlations between distant minds are hypothesized to be unmediated (they are not linked to any known energetic signal), unmitigated (they do not degrade with increasing distance), and immediate (they appear to be simultaneous). These events are so common that they cannot be viewed as anomalous nor as exceptions to natural laws, but as indications of the need for a broader explanatory framework that cannot be predicated exclusively on materialism.10. Conscious mental activity can be experienced in clinical death during a cardiac arrest (this is what has been called a “near-death experience” [NDE]). Some near-death experiencers (NDErs) have reported veridical out-of-body perceptions (i.e. perceptions that can be proven to coincide with reality) that occurred during cardiac arrest. NDErs also report profound spiritual experiences during NDEs triggered by cardiac arrest. It is noteworthy that the electrical activity of the brain ceases within a few seconds following a cardiac arrest.11. Controlled laboratory experiments have documented that skilled research mediums (people who claim that they can communicate with the minds of people who have physically died) can sometimes obtain highly accurate information about deceased individuals. This further supports the conclusion that mind can exist separate from the brain.12. Some materialistically inclined scientists and philosophers refuse to acknowledge these phenomena because they are not consistent with their exclusive conception of the world. Rejection of post-materialist investigation of nature or refusal to publish strong science findings supporting a post-materialist framework are antithetical to the true spirit of scientific inquiry, which is that empirical data must always be adequately dealt with. Data which do not fit favored theories and beliefs cannot be dismissed a priori. Such dismissal is the realm of ideology, not science.13. It is important to realize that psi phenomena, NDEs in cardiac arrest, and replicable evidence from credible research mediums, appear anomalous only when seen through the lens of materialism.14. Moreover, materialist theories fail to elucidate how brain could generate the mind, and they are unable to account for the empirical evidence alluded to in this manifesto. This failure tells us that it is now time to free ourselves from the shackles and blinders of the old materialist ideology, to enlarge our concept of the natural world, and to embrace a post-materialist paradigm.15. According to the post-materialist paradigm:a) Mind represents an aspect of reality as primordial as the physical world. Mind is fundamental in the universe, i.e. it cannot be derived from matter and reduced to anything more basic.b) There is a deep interconnectedness between mind and the physical world.c) Mind (will/intention) can influence the state of the physical world, and operate in a nonlocal (or extended) fashion, i.e. it is not confined to specific points in space, such as brains and bodies, nor to specific points in time, such as the present. Since the mind may nonlocally influence the physical world, the intentions, emotions, and desires of an experimenter may not be completely isolated from experimental outcomes, even in controlled and blinded experimental designs.d) Minds are apparently unbounded, and may unite in ways suggesting a unitary, One Mind that includes all individual, single minds.e) NDEs in cardiac arrest suggest that the brain acts as a transceiver of mental activity, i.e. the mind can work through the brain, but is not produced by it. NDEs occurring in cardiac arrest, coupled with evidence from research mediums, further suggest the survival of consciousness, following bodily death, and the existence of other levels of reality that are non-physical.f) Scientists should not be afraid to investigate spirituality and spiritual experiences since they represent a central aspect of human existence.16. Post-materialist science does not reject the empirical observations and great value of scientific achievements realized up until now. It seeks to expand the human capacity to better understand the wonders of nature, and in the process rediscover the importance of mind and spirit as being part of the core fabric of the universe. Post-materialism is inclusive of matter, which is seen as a basic constituent of the universe.17. The post-materialist paradigm has far-reaching implications. It fundamentally alters the vision we have of ourselves, giving us back our dignity and power, as humans and as scientists. This paradigm fosters positive values such as compassion, respect, and peace. By emphasizing a deep connection between ourselves and nature at large, the post-materialist paradigm also promotes environmental awareness and the preservation of our biosphere. In addition, it is not new, but only forgotten for four hundred years, that a lived transmaterial understanding may be the cornerstone of health and wellness, as it has been held and preserved in ancient mind-body-spirit practices, religious traditions, and contemplative approaches.18. The shift from materialist science to post-materialist science may be of vital importance to the evolution of the human civilization. It may be even more pivotal than the transition from geocentrism to heliocentrism.* The Manifesto for a Post-Materialist Science was prepared by Mario Beauregard, PhD (University of Arizona), Gary E. Schwartz, PhD (University of Arizona), and Lisa Miller, PhD (Columbia University), in collaboration with Larry Dossey, MD, Alexander Moreira-Almeida, MD, PhD, Marilyn Schlitz, PhD, Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, and Charles Tart, PhD.** For further information, please contact Dr Mario Beauregard, Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. Email: [email protected]*** We considered two ways of referring to the emerging paradigm presented in this Manifesto: the hyphenated version (post-materialism) and the non-hyphenated version (postmaterialism). The hyphenated form was selected for the sake of clarity for both scientists and lay people.**** The Summary Report of the International Summit on Post-Materialist Science, Spirituality and Society can be downloaded here: International Summit on Post-Materialist Science: Summary Report (PDF).We invite you, scientists of the world, to read the Manifesto for a Post-Materialist Science and sign it, if you wish to show your support.Manifesto AuthorsMario Beauregard, PhD, Neuroscience of ConsciousnessLaboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health, Dept of Psychology, University of Arizona, USAAuthor of The Spiritual Brain and Brain WarsLarry Dossey, MD, Internal MedicineIndependent Scholar and Executive Editor, ExploreAuthor of Recovering the Soul, USALisa Jane Miller, PhD, Clinical PsychologyEditor, Oxford Handbook of Psychology & Spirituality, Editor-in-Chief, Spirituality in Clinical PracticeProfessor & Director, Spirituality & Mind Body Institute, Columbia University, USAAlexander Moreira-Almeida, MD, PhD, PsychiatryAssociate Professor, Universidade Federal de Juiz de ForaFounder & Director, Research Center in Spirituality and Health, BrazilMarilyn Schlitz, PhD, Social AnthropologyFounder & CEO, Worldview EnterprisesPresident Emeritus & Senior Fellow, Institute of Noetic Sciences, USAGary Schwartz, PhD, Psychology, Neurology, Psychiatry & SurgeryProfessor, University of ArizonaDirector, Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health, USARupert Sheldrake, PhD, Biochemistry, Developmental Biology, Consciousness StudiesFellow, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Fellow, Schumacher CollegeAuthor of A New Science of Life, UKCharles T Tart, PhD, Transpersonal PsychologyCore Faculty Member, Sofia UniversityProfessor Emeritus of Psychology, University of California, USA
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Here’s a lengthy article that I appreciated: “What Does It Mean To Raise A Spiritual Child?” It includes the following quote:
Natural spirituality is a direct sense of listening to the heartbeat of the living universe, of being one with that seen and unseen world, open and at ease in that connection.
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Hi Brandon–
In order to say where Big History is “from,” it is first important to say what Big History “is.” If it is about the story of a universe that is non-living at its foundations and without meaning, purpose, or consciousness, then I think it would be accurate to say it is “from” David Christian, Eric Chaisson, and others connected with the current dogma of the IBHA (International Big History Association). In contrast, if Big History is drawn from a living systems perspective with meaning, purpose, and consciousness as an integral aspect of the universe, then I think it would be accurate to say it is “from” the work of scholars such as Arnold Toynbee, Joseph Campbell, and Thomas Berry. I presented a paper on these two perspectives at the last meeting of the IBHA in 2014 titled, “Deep Big History: A Living Systems Paradigm.” Although I described the living systems perspective as a “provisional paradigm,” it has been rejected by IBHA and they refuse to publish any article in their newsletter with this perspective. Given this explicit censorship of a living systems perspective by IBHA, it will be very difficult to say with confidence where Big History is “from.”
Here is the URL for the essay on “Deep Big History”: http://duaneelgin.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/DEEP-BIG-HISTORY-A-Living-Systems-Paradigm.pdf
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