Ideas and processes based on a deep appreciation and understanding that all 'parts' (people, employees) within any whole (community, organisation) are interdependent, and jointly responsible for the combinate circumstances.

Can Science and Religion be Integrated?

by Prof. Amit Goswami (August 10, 2008)

Can science and religion be integrated? What comes to mind immediately is that religions themselves cannot agree with one another whereas science is basically monolithic. How can there even be trade between the two, let alone integration?

First, it is only a perception that religions are pluralistic and science is not. Science is monolithic only so far as science of matter–physics and chemistry–is concerned. Psychology, the science of the psyche, has three different paradigms–behavioral-cognitive consisting of hard science orientation, depth psychology consisting of Freudian psychoanalysis and Jungian analytical psychology and their derivatives with psychotherapy orientation, and humanistic-transpersonal-yoga psychology with positive mental health orientation. Both the later paradigms of psychology acknowledge downward causation and subtle bodies in some form or other. Medicine has the conventional allopathic medicine and also alternative medicine practices that complement it. A prominent part of alternative medicine is Eastern medicine that emphasizes subtle energies called variously as prana, chi, and ki. And biology is in transition right now. The materialist biology is highly developed but with some unsolved (maybe unsolvable) problems. Alternative biology is biology that sees life as the handiwork of a purposive designer with the power of downward causation; but at present it is so poorly developed that hardly anyone can call it a genuine alternative biology.

Moving beyond a 2,450-year-old era

The Art and Science of Blinking

Around 2,450 years ago the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea was perhaps the first to methodically question a simple fact of life - how do we physically move, such as when blinking an eye, running, or simply falling down?

Culturally we are about to fall off a philosophical cliff. Fortunately, a safe landing in a far more compassionate, sane and exciting world awaits those who come to the edge with the understanding of how to fly.

His questions and arguments, which have become widely known as Zeno's Paradoxes, pointed to the seemingly logical impossibility of the everyday experience of physical movement.

His considerations have perplexed and troubled philosophers and scientists even since. Various assumptions that underpin our modern technologies and sciences were taken for granted. We take for granted that there is always a physical cause for every physical effect - as exemplified by scientists researching to find physical cures for disease, cancer and viruses; and to find the physical genes or brain cells responsible for thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and the experience of love, creativity and joy. 

Now, with the advances in the field of quantum physics, we know that a 2,450 year era is nearing its end .. an era in which it has been assumed that our physical brains, bodies and the entire physical universe is continuously existent. An era in which each part (atom, virus, cell, organ, person, planet) was assumed to be continuously existent and functional, with every part contributing to the running of, or dysfunction of, the machinery of life.

We stand at the edge of a grand new understanding of our universe, and ourselves. As Visa International founder Dee Hock foretells, a new era

is struggling to be born -- a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality, liberty, community, and ethics such as the world has never known, and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed."

 

New Concepts of Matter, Life and Mind

[Reprinted with permission, 25 November, 2013 - 8.13pm]

by Dr Ervin Laszlo

In light of the current, revolutionary advances in the natural sciences and in the study of consciousness, the concepts of matter, life, and mind have under-gone major changes. This paper outlines some basic aspects of these changes, taking in turn the emerging concept of matter, of life, and of human mind and consciousness.

The concept of matter

Process Physics: Modelling Reality as Self-Organising Information

[ Reprinted by Stephen Pirie, with permission, 18 March 2011.
Original PDF version
Published in The Physicist, 37(6), 191-195, 2000.

[Preview of Process Physics: The Limits of Logic and the Modelling of Reality; in preparation]

Reginald T. Cahill, Christopher M. Klinger and Kirsty Kitto
School of Chemistry, Physics and Earth Sciences
Flinders University
GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, Australia

Abstract

The new Process Physics models reality as self-organising relational information and takes account of the limitations of logic, discovered by Gödel and extended by Chaitin, by using the concept of self-referential noise. Space and quantum physics are emergent and unified, and described by a Quantum Homotopic Field Theory of fractal topological defects embedded in a three-dimensional fractal process-space.

Profitable Sustainability

"Sustainability" is one of those loaded terms that is usually taken to mean "living smaller" - of having to ride bicycles to work, reducing our lifestyle, and cutting back on overseas travel ... which all means less choice, freedom and fun!

The expectation that sustainable business practices will reduce profitability is likewise often assumed. Not much fun in that.