Preliminaries
Editorial
Quote from E.O. Wilson; Note on Tinbergen
Quotes from E.O.Wilson, from Fox & Swimme, and from Brodie
Anti-Millennium Fever Medication
Editorial: Genius thinking and creativity are urgently needed to cope with global problems. While difficulties pursued from within the same mindset may seem insurmountable, they often yield to approaches from novel directions. An understanding of (though not agreement with) an opponent's point of view may open new worlds. The present issue is therefore designed to challenge the reader with contrasting perceptions in two areas of major concern for the human future.
In the first set of opposing views, a global vision wrestles with national patriotism and fear that freedom may be lost; the second one consists of a combat between rationality and mysticism.
If it is possible to approach both sides with an open mind -- and many of this journal's readers have that rare ability -- new insights will be achieved and new ground will be gained.
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The map of the material world, including human mental activity, can be thought a sprinkling of charted terrain separated by blank expanses that are of unknown extent yet accessible to coherent interdisciplinary research.
E.O.Wilson -- Consilience
We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.
And this much about wisdom: In the long haul, civilized nations have come to judge one culture against another by the moral sense of the needs and aspirations of humanity as a whole.
E.O. Wilson - Consilience
In the future global civilization, the power of human creativity will be valued as the greatest resource on the planet.
Fox & Swimme -- Manifesto for a Global Civilization.
"What kind of world would you like to live in?
Go out and make it happen!"
Richard Brodie
Anti-Millennium-Fever Medication:
"This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.
"
Western Union internal memo, 1876
HOW TO THINK LIKE A GENIUS
Relevant to the solution of global problems is Michael Michalko's claim, in a May 1998 Futurist article based on his book Cracking Creativity, that it is possible to learn how to think like a genius. Examples are cited of Nobel Prize winners' students, who applied their mentor's way of thinking with such success that they, too, earned Nobel prizes.
Eight different strategies are described, used by "the super-creative from Aristotle and Leonardo to Einstein and Edison." -- The surprising conclusion is that an unusually high IQ does not guarantee genius-thinking. Instead, the key-strategy of the genius consists in looking at a problem from many different perspectives.
Other strategies include thinking in opposites, thinking metaphorically (the telephone is the result of Alexander Graham Bell's comparison of the inner ear with a steel-moving membrane), forcing relationships (Leonardo da Vinci conceived sound waves when he connected the sound of a bell with waves produced by a stone hitting water), the creation of vivid thought images, and the constant combination and recombination of these images. Finally, geniuses are immensely productive (Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents, still the world record), yet are prepared to drop everything they do to pursue a chance discovery (the most well known example is the invention of penicillin).
What has to be avoided, Michalko says, is to solve problems with one single mind-set which has become a habit, even if it has worked in the past. "In nature, a gene pool that is totally lacking in variation would be unable to adapt to changing circumstances. In time, the genetically encoded wisdom would convert to foolishness, with consequences that would be fatal to the species' survival. A comparable process operates within us as individuals."
CREATIVITY AND VISION
It should be mentioned here that in 1981, Professor Jan Tinbergen, who had received the first Nobel Prize for Economics, recommended that Dr. Robert Muller [who defends the global vision in this issue] should receive the Nobel Peace Prize, "because everywhere in the world when [Tinbergen] met young people, they talked to him about Dr. Robert Muller."
Excerpts from:
Globalization and the Fate of the Nation-State
by Robert Muller
Former UN Assistant Secretary General
During my fifty years of global service with the United Nations I was particularly struck by the following factors in the world situation:
1) The accelerated development of the human species into a global species through the multiplication and extension:
of hands by machines
of legs by transportation
of eyesight by microscopes, telescopes, television
of hearing by telephone
of the nervous system by telecommunications
of the brain by the birth of a global brain (science, global knowledge, the United Nations, the media, computers)
Still missing or underdeveloped:
a global heart: love stops at the nation or at an ethnic group. Beginning of global love for peace, for nature and for preservation of the Earth.
a global soul: stops at religion. Not yet a global spirituality in which all humans would be in tune with the universe and eternity.
2) From 1945 to the early 1970's: a comprehensive, unprecedented period of Humanism (avoid wars, prevent early childhood deaths, eradicate epidemics, increase the well-being of all humans, defend universal human rights, put an end to colonialism and apartheid, increase literacy, longevity and good health, etc.)
1970's: while the agendas of the preceding period were still unfulfilled and were overtaken by the world population explosion, a new major world concern came to the fore, namely the Environment (UNESCO's World Biosphere Conference in 1968 and the UN World Conference on the Environment in Stockholm in 1972), in other words: we humans on one side and the Earth and nature around us.
1980's: the new phenomenon of the depletion of the ozonosphere and menacing climate changes made the Earth priority No.1 of our concerns and reduced economic development to "sustainable economic development."
This represents a fundamental change in the evolution of this planet. From now on, the world will never be the same. This is why we should no longer speak of World Government, but of Earth Government, the wise management, saving, and preservation of our planetary home of which we are an integral part and whose further evolution now depends largely on us.
The UN Charter of 1945 does not use the words Earth, nature, natural resources and the environment. Why? Because at that time we considered the Earth to be unlimited in resources for a relatively small world population. The western countries also saw, and still see humanity as separate and superior to the natural world. This view has accomplished wonders for the human race. But humanity must now change its course, dominant objectives, values and institutions if we want to prevent disasters in the further evolution of the Earth and the human race.
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If the Earth could speak she would say:....why each day do 25,000 people die of water shortage and contamination? -- are ten tons of nuclear waste produced by a constantly increasing number of nuclear plants? -- do 25,000 tons of sulphuric acid fall as acid rain in the northern hemisphere, killing lakes and devastating remaining forests? -- are 60 tons of plastic packages and 372 tons of fishing nets dumped into the seas and oceans by commercial fishermen, killing fishes, sea birds and sea mammals? -- Why each day are tens of thousands of men rushing to skyscrapers around the world to produce more, to market more, to advertise more, to sell more, while only a few are concerned with my preservation? You cannot say, as you say for the population explosion, that each year that explosion diminishes somewhat. On the contrary I consider that it gets worse every day.... Yes, why, why, why... (To offer an alternative answer to the question "why", the printed journal inserted the section A DIFFERENT CONCEPTION OF ETHICS AND MORALS at this point and then resumed as below.)
Given the massive changes which have taken place since 1945, an organization created 53 years ago can simply not be adequate to deal effectively with the mounting, new and massive world problems of a new century.
The star-performance, often called "miracle" of the American States in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia 200 years ago which put an end to a similar political chaos in North America between numerous, sovereign independent states at the time, should be repeated. Such a convention of all nations would review the state of world democracy and would have to add to the system of balance of powers the new dominant power of business.
We should remember these lines which Franklin Roosevelt wrote in his own hand on the day of his death for a speech he was to deliver at the opening of the San Francisco Conference convened to give birth to the United Nations from the ashes and blood of the sixty million dead of World War II. "The work, my friends is peace: more than an end of war -- an end to the beginning of all wars. I ask you to keep up your faith. The only limit of our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith."
****
This paper was presented at the International Roundtable on Globalization and the Future of the Nation-State in Cagliari, Sardinia, 26-27 May 1998.
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ANNEX (by Dr. Robert Muller) (Excerpts): I feel it important to reproduce here this Declaration Proclaimed at Mount Vernon at celebrations of the 265th birthday of George Washington and 50th birthday of the World Federalist Association, to which I was invited to speak.
DECLARATION OF MOUNT VERNON
On February 21, 1997, many World Federalists and prominent people came to Mount Vernon to celebrate the 50th birthday of the World Federalist Association, founded by the United World Federalists, and the 265th birthday of George Washington, the father of the United States. Seeking a way to secure peace, justice, and human rights not only for the American people but for people of all nations they proclaimed this declaration:
George Washington's vision and leadership played a key role in transforming the weak United States of the Articles of Confederation into the strong United States which resulted from the adoption of the federal Constitution. That great transformation of American political institutions suggests a strategy for restructuring and empowering the weak United Nations of today. A strong, effective, and democratic United Nations would be in the national interest of the United States and of every other nation.
The United Nations has been an important and constructive force since it was founded in 1945. However, until it becomes stronger, more representative, and better funded, it cannot save humankind from the scourge of war and adequately promote human rights, social justice and protection of our global environment. To achieve those essential goals the existing United Nations Charter must be amended or replaced. The new Charter must give the organization the essential powers it lacks. It must also provide checks and balances to ensure that it does not abuse or exceed its delegated powers.
As we approach the task of strengthening the United Nations, we should reflect on the central events in the transformation of American political institutions two centuries ago: the drafting of the Constitution in four months and its ratification by the American people in less than a year. George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in the War of Independence, played a crucial role by serving as a delegate from Virginia and as president of the Constitutional Convention.
Each state legislature could veto any amendment to the articles of Confederation, making major changes in the articles all but impossible. To get around those vetoes, the delegates drafted a replacement constitution which would come into effect when ratified by popularly elected conventions in at least nine of the thirteen states.
The Virginia delegation came to the Constitutional Convention with the brilliant Virginia Plan for major changes in national political institutions. The plan, whose chief architect was James Madison, urged the establishment of a national government with its own executive legislature and judiciary....The Virginia plan sometimes went too far. For example, it provided for the use of force against recalcitrant states. However, George Mason, another Virginia delegate, insisting that national law should not be applied to states but should "directly operate on individuals," prevailed.
There is good reason to believe that many nations, large and small, rich and poor, would give an American plan the same consideration they gave to the Marshall Plan and other major American initiatives. We would not expect the world to endorse every part of that American Plan. Certainly, George Washington and his fellow Virginians did not expect the Constitutional Convention to endorse all of their Virginia Plan. But the Virginia Plan had a tremendous impact. It provided the basic framework for the US Constitution. A bold American Plan for a United Nations World Federation would bring hope to people everywhere.
* * * * *
Professor Roger W.Sperry, neuroscientist and Nobel Laureate, expressed his views on the subject as follows:
The time has passed when nations should be allowed to do as they individually wish with regard to global matters, each striving solely in its own interests....For the common good we need to frame and abide by a higher system of law and justice, designed with less national, more godlike perspectives for the preservation and welfare of the biosphere as a whole.
The problems of setting up and administering an effective, international force of this kind -- involving the first step toward world government -- can hardly be more grave, formidable, and insoluble than those we are destined to encounter on any alternative course.
Peoples of different faiths and cultures understandably tend to recoil at the thought of being governed by the values and believes of opposing ideologies....There seems little chance in the foreseeable future that all the different countries are going to be persuaded to give up their beliefs, so as to be united under the ethical principles and values of any ideology currently existing. One can, however, see a reasonable possibility that enough countries might be willing -- for purposes of nuclear control -- to compromise on a new, relatively neutral, moral and legal code, founded in the truth and worldview of science. -- Science here is not to be taken in the usual, traditional sense of referring to things that can be handled by numbers and measurements alone, and according to which everything in principle -- including the human psyche -- reduces to quantum mechanics. The reference, rather, is to the latest views in science, which brings a new philosophy and a new world view.
In the past, the choice has been between materialist explanations of natural science, on the one hand, or various mystical, supernatural schemes of religious faith, on the other. The new stance of science rejects both of these, in favor of a newly perceived third choice that integrates both the physical and metaphysical into a consistent view of ourselves and the world.* The new outlook manages to incorporate the empirical and the ethical, both what is objectively valid and what is subjectively valued. (Excerpted from the Los Angeles Times, Oct.5, 1986.)
*Editor's comment: Although I worked during nearly ten years for Professor Sperry and highly value his contributions, both to science and especially to a more encompassing world view, I believe that to combine both the physical and the metaphysical under the name "science" would severely dilute science's reliability and power. -- It is the restriction of science to what can be validated, which makes it such a valuable servant to humanity. That kind of science, embedded in, and empowering, a larger and more elevated vision, would indeed make agreements on long-range global policies possible. In short, science must attain a symbiotic relationship with human aspirations to turn them into realities, but it cannot be identified with them without losing its vigor. -- The "new stance of science" to which Sperry refers is not science at all, but something far larger: it is an urgently needed new perception of reality.
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A DIFFERENT CONCEPTION OF ETHICS AND MORALS
Why? -- Because a different conception of ethics and morals places patriotism and national independence above the long-range welfare of humanity as a whole. The fear that individual countries may lose their freedom is exploited, especially in the United States, where the Constitution is not conceived as a gift the Founding Fathers may have wanted to bestow upon all of humanity, but as endangered by the very people who yearn for it.
An Eagle Forum Special Television Report, titled "Global Governance" (and hosted by Phyllis Schlafly) for instance, makes heroic defense of justice abroad appear as an evil. The quotes below are from a flyer about the program:
"In Part One, you'll see the [present American] Administration's dramatic push to ratify United Nations treaties that will effectively grant non-American organizations control over human behavior, our national economy, and even our land, private property, and natural resources. You'll learn...how American Senators were deceived into nearly ratifying a dangerous treaty on the environment..."
"In Part Two, you'll see how United Nations conferences are intentionally designed to deceive nations into accepting a radical social agenda..."
"Global Governance: The Quiet War Against American Independence is a powerful new television documentary that reveals the truth about the greatest untold story of our lifetime. It is news that every American must see if we want to keep our independence."
As the foregoing shows, creativity and vision are not always perceived as blessings. Each bold step into a new direction causes counter-reactions, esp. in the realm of ideals, where cool rationality easily gives way to passionate exaggerations, until war seems unavoidable. In the face of this danger, it takes uncommon sensitivity, courage and wisdom to help guide the fate of humanity.
* * * * *
The Center for the New American Dream shows an advanced and more responsible face of America to the world. Their quarterly report Enough! deplores the consumption-oriented culture in the United States and argues for a simpler and more meaningful lifestyle. A new kind of behavior is not "forced upon" the Western Hemisphere by other nations, it is rediscovered from within -- and it is more compatible with the ideals of the Founding Fathers than some of the irresponsibilities presently promoted in the name of freedom.
"Surveys show that many [Americans] believe materialism is ruining
the country, perverting our values, and damaging our children."
(Quoted in Enough from The Overspent American by Juliet Schor, 1998).
The Centers address is 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 900, Takoma Park, Maryland 20912, U.S.A. -- Its directors and advisors include Donella Meadows, Vicki Robin, Lester Brown and Alan Durning.
* * * * * *
In memory of Ralph Wendell Burhoe
The March and June 1998 issues of ZYGON, the organ of IRAS (Institute on Religion in an Age of Science) contain a series of articles in memory of Ralph Wendell Burhoe, co-founder of IRAS and ZYGON, and one of the first persons who clearly recognized the need to perceive science and higher human aims (which he believed embodied in religion) in a symbiotic relation with one another.
Hefner points out that "the key factor to be noted in this ontogenesis is the emergence of the human brain as a fully biological organ. Here in the brain something extraordinary occurs -- genetic information gives rise to an organ that also generates cultural information. The interaction between genes and culture came to be the centre of Burhoe's scientific concern."
Peters writes: "For Burhoe the hope that religious diversity could be creative and constructive lay not with religion but with science. He saw science, its methods and its findings, as providing the common ground for a global culture. As each different tradition came to terms with science in its own way, reforming itself to express its wisdom in terms compatible with scientific understanding, Burhoe hoped for more cooperation across cultures even as each culture preserved its own integrity."
Cavanaugh never met Burhoe, but was deeply influenced by his thinking. "Burhoe believed it is important to keep talking with one another, not so much with those who agree with us, but with those who disagree with us. It is these people who keep our thoughts most active and fertile, and correct many basic misunderstandings in fields outside our own."
* * * * *
IN THE LIGHT OF REASON
A Review by Pat Duffy Hutcheon of
Higher Superstition
The Academic Left and its Quarrel with Science Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, 313 pages.
Gross and Levitt have courageously tackled a subject which many worried academics have avoided studiously in the vain hope that it would somehow quietly go away. The issue is the rising tide of hostility within universities to the disciplined scientific approach to knowing. As the authors demonstrate, this hostility has been gaining ground for almost three decades -- and in the very place where the ordinary, trusting citizen would least expect it. It appears that a major source of what now amounts to a virtual epidemic of relativism and irrationalism is the very institution that has been assigned the privileged role of bastion of reliable knowledge and instigator of informed and reasoned inquiry: the university system of the industrialized West. Readers unfamiliar with what has been happening may find some of what they encounter in this important and timely book so incredible that they will be inclined to discount it. But anyone concerned about the future of our universities -- and, indeed, of the society they serve -- would be well advised to read Higher Superstition carefully and to consider the implications of its message.
The book is organized into chapters which include the following: 1) a brief review of the history and politics relevant to the topic at hand; 2) a general overview of the defining features of the "cultural constructivist" attack on science; 3) an introduction to "postmodernism" -- identified as a sort of "catch-all" phrase for a specific cultural constructivist approach pioneered within literary theory and subsequently enveloping the general field of cultural studies; 4) a critique of fundamentalist feminism (a radical branch of the women's movement which seems to have assumed all the "perspectivist" premises and postures of postmodernism); 5) a critique of anti-science environmentalism; and 6) a discussion of a
number of versions of social activism which have become impatient and disillusioned with the fact that science cannot create immediate Utopias. The latter include some currents within the AIDS movement, the extremist proponents of "animal rights," and the Afro-centrism which has become so popular in American universities.
In spite of the subtitle, this is not a matter of left versus right as usually defined in the political arena of the larger society. Gross and Levitt make this point themselves, recognizing that any scholars seriously committed to solving social problems would seem to be deliberately crippling their own enterprise -- and betraying their deepest traditions -- if they forsake the scientific mode of inquiry for the New Age and "postmodern" doctrines now dominating the social sciences and humanities. They remind us that, throughout history, authoritative scientific inquiry -- far from being the enemy of social progress -- has invariably been the most powerful of weapons against exploitative authoritarianisms, whether social or intellectual. They also recognize that one of the two influential anti-science currents in the larger society today is led by the Creationists, who are right-wing in the traditional sense of the term.
As Gross and Levitt explain the issue, "We are using academic left to designate those people whose doctrinal ideosyncrasies sustain the misreadings of science, its methods, and its conceptual foundations that have generated what nowadays passes for a politically progressive critique of it" (9). They suggest that the term "left-wing" is justified because many of these people are former Marxists who have sought a congenial ideological home within the modern university. "Marxism, as understood by the American Left," they say, "has mutated from a revolutionary program driven by a strong sense of economic forces, to a philosophical impulse that mixes with other strains -- feminist, deconstructionist, Foucaldian, Laconian, ecological, and so forth -- to create the eclectic view of postmodern radicalism" (221).
However, the authors caution that no designation of the proponents of today's anti-science current within academia can be hard and fast. "Each practitioner assembles his or her arsenal from favorite polemical bits and pieces -- a little Marxism to emphasize the twinship of science with economic exploitation, a little feminism to arraign the sexism of scientific practice, a little deconstruction to subvert the traditional reading of scientific theory, perhaps a bit of Afro-centrism to undermine the notion that scientific achievement is inevitably linked to European cultural values" (11). The movement is joined by one common purpose, however, as Gross and Levitt make clear time and again in the examples they bring to bear on the argument. It is to "demystify" science, to undermine its authority and to assign priority to competing and incompatible modes of knowing. We are reminded that this is not a new theme. "The notion that science is poisoned knowledge, the fruit of the Faustian bargain, has been with us for a long time, and its cry has more often come from reactionaries than from progressives" (219).
The authors present a lucid summary of the history of the scientific method of inquiry, noting two major nineteenth century roots of today's "postmodernism." They trace the left-wing version of anti-science to the seductive Romantic exaltation of understanding over reason, as well as to Karl Marx's successful conscription of the prestige (minus the substance) of science to his own polemical ends. They look to more recent history to account for the prevalence, within modern departments of humanities and social/cultural studies, of academics with an anti-scientific mind set. A virtual "ball of exponential growth" in this direction was set rolling, they say, with the influx of doctrinaire militants during the late sixties, when North American universities were expanding rapidly. For anyone familiar with the power structure of the university, it is not difficult to accept the argument that, during the following twenty-five years, the entire process of recruitment into academic careers -- and that of "peer review" in academic journals, and the tenure and promotion tied to all this -- underwent alteration in a direction that selected and rewarded those with a vaguely mystical anti-scientific, holistic and "perspectivist" frame of reference.
This model that has gained such political success in the hothouse of academia is one that interprets the scientific world view as merely a product of the ideology controlling the society in which research is being conducted. Far from being a fruitful method of building reliable knowledge, science is, according to the postmodernists, "rather a parable, an allegory, that inscribes a set of social norms and encodes, however, subtly, a mythic structure justifying the dominance of one class, one race, one gender over another" (46). Scientific verification is a matter of political/social authority only. Most amazing at all, the authors say, postmodernists disregard the obvious fact that science works, and that the propositions flowing from their own garbled obfuscations have been shown time and time again to have "all the explanatory power of the Tooth-Fairy Hypothesis" (47).
To many scientists, perhaps the most amusing aspect of the posturing of postmodernists is their use of scientific concepts and authorities as grist for their ideological mills, even though they seem to lack elementary understanding of the premises, theories, and bodies of knowledge involved. As an example of this, Gross and Levitt refer to the mountains of relativistic nonsense that have been written about Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle." They note wistfully that all this might have been avoided if Heisenberg had chosen a less emotive term. I would suggest that the same can be said about "chaos" theory. Nietzsche is (rightly) cited as an earlier prototype of the type of dangerously muddled, solipsistic and magical thinking that we find in today's postmodernism. The authors point out that Godel (another postmodernist saint) turns out -- on closer scrutiny -- to be an unadulterated Platonist, apparently believing that "an eternal `not' was laid up in heaven where virtuous logicians hope to meet it hereafter" (102).
The last section of the book raises a number of important questions. For example: What about the responsibility of scientists to ensure that university courses labelled as sciences are, in fact, teaching legitimate empirical methodology and reliable facts? What about the responsibility of all academics to be vigilant about the standards of excellence, and of evidence, applied throughout the university in the performance of its cultural function of providing intellectual and moral leadership? And finally, is it possible that the situation has now regressed so far that the only solution will be a schism within the system, with colleges of science providing their own courses in the humanities and the social/cultural studies?
This book will be sad reading for theorists and researchers in the exact sciences. For scientifically oriented social scientists like myself, however, it is much worse. It amounts to a tragic confirmation of personal experience. Gross and Levitt speak of attempting to recover lost territory for the scientific approach -- of physical scientists standing up for those of their colleagues in the social disciplines who are fighting the battle against relativism and irrationality. It is true that, for some time now, the struggle of a minority of social scientists to maintain scientific integrity within their professional communities has been a lonely one. It has been especially lonely for those, like myself, who have been attempting to define and justify an alternative approach to that of postmodernism. In Leaving the Cave I have proposed the scientific model of evolutionary naturalism -- built upon reliable knowledge from the life sciences and insights from the soundest work available in the social sciences, and incorporating the open-ended, self-correcting method of disciplined scientific inquiry.
I believe it is necessary to demonstrate what the various versions of cultural constructivism offer is merely a grotesque metaphor for the real thing: scientific cultural studies capable of producing compelling evidence about the causes and consequences of human behaviour. It is the absence of reliable knowledge that makes our social problems appear so intractable that "Cargo Cult" delusions can be peddled to gullible students as attractive options. The popularity of postmodernism today is, more than anything, a measure of the failure of the social sciences during the twentieth century.
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Dr. Pat Duffy Hutcheon is a retired Canadian Professor of Education.
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GENIUS AND MYSTICISM
A Wall Street Journal review (by Jim Holt, early in 1998) of an Isaac Newton biography written by Michael White reports about startling new evidence regarding Newton's preoccupation with magic and mysticism. "For two centuries after his death in 1727, Newton's image grew ever purer and more exalted. He was the supreme scientist, cool and objective; the Monarch of the Age of Reason; the begetter of the scientific and the industrial revolutions, of modernity itself." Then, in 1936, an accumulation of journals and notebooks, written by Newton himself, was discovered, concealed so long because they were "of no scientific value." These "secret writings" revealed that "during the crucial period of Newton's scientific career -- the two decades between his discovery of the law of gravity and the publication of his masterwork, the `Principia Mathematica' - his consuming passion was alchemy." Fervently desiring to find the elusive "philosopher's stone," the secret for transforming lower metals into gold, he devoured tomes of occult literature. Not only did he study alchemy, but also numerology, Rosicrucianism, and other mystical writings. Such a discovery must be devastating for any serious scientist. No wonder this intimately personal side of Newton was kept secret for so long.
However, the book's author explains that this personal side provides a most important key to Newton's genius. None of his great contemporaries, neither Descartes nor Leibnitz, could imagine that bodies influence one another by anything but mechanical pushes and pulls. "What enabled Newton alone to make the leap to this occult-seeming `action at a distance'? Precisely his intimate acquaintance with alchemy!"
* * * * *
Editor's note:
White's book must be a god-sent for everyone favouring magic and mysticism over science. -- And yet, without men of reason, it would have been Newton's genius that remained hidden.
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The International Humanist and Ethical Union, 47, Theobald's Road, London WCIX 8SP, U.K. selects the best from 90 member organizations in over 30 countries around the world.
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Reflections on the struggle between reason and mysticism:
Chet Raymo wrote an excellent book, entitled Skeptics and True Believers, which revolves around the image of scientific knowledge as an island in a boundless ocean of mysticism. He explains that the island consists of well-established and verified knowledge, which is solid, sound, but relatively sterile. The ocean consists of irrational assumptions and beliefs -- a dangerous and chaotic expanse without ground or foundation. New knowledge is acquired, and genius thinking occurs, all along the shoreline where the waves of the ocean thunder against solid land. It is here where questioning is most fruitful, where unsubstantiated beliefs are sifted and sorted, and where new land is gained and the island of sound knowledge is constantly enlarged.
It is important to realize, however, that without careful scientific scrutiny and the elimination of unsubstantiated beliefs, the entire island is in danger of sinking back into the ocean. Reflections on the struggle between global and nation-centred views
"There have to be some very far reaching changes in the international system, otherwise we can just go to hell."
Elisabeth Mann Borgese
Two prerequisites are necessary to prevent the flare-up of a terminal war: 1) Full knowledge of the danger of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons; 2) the insight that exceptionally valuable human beings are not confined to any one single nation, religion, or ethnic group.
The sudden demise of our species, however, is less likely than a slow deterioration of both the Earth's biosphere and the human character: its habituation to crimes against humanity, to media glorification of criminals as heroes, to assaults on our life support system in the name of progress, and to the incessant coercion to buy what is not needed -- while mounting population pressure increases stress and friction. Once the quality of our lives and our attitudes has deteriorated far enough, even responsible humans will think of our species' demise as a blessing.
To avoid that fate, and to launch humanity on a new upward course, outstanding men and women recognize the need for, and encourage, a global ethic that instills a sense of responsibility for the long-range cultural evolution of humankind. I am convinced that these efforts will succeed if they are anchored in the truth and neutrality of science and if they precede the breakdown of fenced-in allegiances (but not that of cultural identities). Without a unifying superior aim firmly in place, the tearing down of national, ethnic, and religious walls is indeed frightening.
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Acknowledgments:
I wish to thank Robert Muller for sending, and permitting me to use excerpts from, his May 1998 speech at Cagliari, as well as his footnote re Tinbergen in his private diary. -- I am grateful to Pat Duffy Hutcheon for contributing her review of Gross and Levitt's book, to Norma Sperry for extending her husband's permission to use quotes and excerpts from his work, and to Terry Schansman for sending the book review on Newton.
REFERENCES
Brodie, R. -- Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme. Integral Pub., Box 1030, Lower Lake, CA, 95457, USA. 1996.
Eagle Forum Special Television Report (Recent). Eagle Forum, P.O.Box 618, Alton, Illinois, 62002, U.S.A.
Fox, M. and Swimme, B. -- Manifesto for a Global Civilization.
Santa Fe: Bear & Company. 1982.
Gross, P.R. and Levitt, N. -- A Review of Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrel with Science. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Hefner, P. -- Ralph Burhoe's Evolutionary Theory of Religion. ZYGON, 33 (March 1998) pp.165-169.
Mann-Borgese, E. -- as quoted by Mary Gooderham in: "Enlightened World View." The Globe and Mail, Saturday, March 3, 1990; D1.
Michalko, M. -- Thinking Like a Genius. The Futurist, May 1998, pp.21-25
Muller, R. -- Globalization and the Fate of the Nation State. Paper presented at the International Roundtable on Globalization and the Future of the Nation State, in Cagliari, Sardinia, 26-27 May 1998.
Newton, I. -- see White, M.
Peters, K.E. -- The Open-Ended Legacy of Ralph Wendell Burhoe. ZYGON, 33 (June 1998), pp 313-321.
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