Humankind Advancing January 2001

Theme: On Innovation

CONTENT

Editorial
Quote from Jones and from McDermott

Why We Think As We Do
Ornstein and Ehrlich (New World - New Mind; Synopsis)

The Birth and Infancy of Innovation
Jared Diamond (The Great Leap Forward; Review)
Quote from Graburn

Reflections (April 1990)

Struggling Toward Maturity
A Poem About Non-Acceptance (Anonymous)
Creating Learning Communities (Ron Miller) (Review)

Innovations Start With Dreams
An Appeal to All Leaders of Nations (Dr. Robert Muller)
They Succeed With Facts
Quote from Sperry
The Co-Evolutionary Research Ideology (based on work by Patricia Churchland)
Quote from G. Williams

List of material republished from earlier issues

Acknowledgments

References



Editorial:
A few weeks ago, while preparing my earliest quarterlies for the web site, I discovered material that is very relevant for a deeper understanding of the difficulties and possible solutions regarding the change from humanity's present mind set to a mind set that would safeguard and improve the future of our species. For readers who have not seen the early issues of Humankind Advancing, and for those who have forgotten their content, some of this material is therefore being republished, but rearranged such that the content of each one throws new light onto the others, and the combined impact is increased.

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The novelty of the aspirations he [the statesman] is articulating require him to use language in odd ways. An example is the stoic talk about a "universal city." As it stands, this is a simple contradiction, and must have seemed absurd to many literal-minded Romans -- as absurd as Galileo's talk, later on, about fixed stars that moved. But in a society dominated by a particular background structure, so that only small-scale political organizations seemed natural, how was someone to talk about this faintly perceived notion of a single word-wide society? Because the idea was new, there was no language to communicate it.

William T. Jones The Sciences and the Humanities

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How can thoughts that we do not yet know how to think be created, maintained, applied, and refined?

W. Basel McDermott Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada Division of Interdisciplinary Studies (Now retired in France)

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WHY WE THINK AS WE DO

Synopsis of NEW WORLD - NEW MIND
by Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich
In their recent book NEW WORLD - NEW MIND Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich explore the connection between the working of the human brain-mind and the dangers humanity faces at present.

Biological evolution has provided humankind with a means of decisionmaking suited to deal nearly exclusively with sudden dramatic events. The brain registers changes and relationships rather than actual facts. For instance, the visual system provides images of the outside world with the help of rods and cones situated behind a network of bloodvessels. The entire world is seen through this lattice of vessels, which are never perceived themselves, because they are always there. The brain simply does not register their existence.

The same happens if change is slow and imperceptible. Many of the developments that will ultimately lead either to the extinction or to a severe degradation of our species, such as the stockpiling of more and more nuclear weapons on earth, the unrestricted increase of population, pollution, resource depletion, detrimental changes of the environment, and so on, are met with complacency. None of these fatal trends leads to a sudden and drastic change in the average person's behavior, such as would be initiated through a comparatively minor shake-up of an individual's experience.

And why has nature provided human beings with such defective nervous systems? Because in what Ornstein and Ehrlich call the "old world," the world prior to the impact of human culture, no other arrangement was needed. For all practical purposes, the "old world" was static. Changes now visible in retrospect as having occurred over millions of years, did not need to concern any living being affected by it. Biological evolution, working with exceeding slowness, provided ample time for the emergence of more and more appropriate methods of behavior well adapted to new conditions. Though many inflexible species vanished as a result, neither they nor the companions of their era were able to perceive this loss -- and even if such perception would have occurred, none of these prehistoric organisms would have been able to intervene. There was no need in nature to encumber living beings with a more complicated apparatus of perception than its behavioral repertoire could make use of. Each animal evolved to make sense of only a minuscule part of its environment, the part sufficient for survival in its specific niche. Scientists estimate that the part even human beings can perceive is not more than approximately one-trillionth of reality. And even this minuscule part is incorrect and distorted. Some aspects of it are greatly exaggerated, other ones hardly noticeable.

With such an imperfect nervous system, the human species is now involved in the endeavor to change the world. Slowly at first, but with more and more frightening speed, culture is changing our "old world" into a new one, a world for which our nature has left us unprepared. Like biological evolution, cultural evolution was at first slow, unconscious, haphazard and without a specific aim. Mistakes -- often horrifying ones -- were and could be made without eradicating humanity and more. As the speed of cultural evolution increases, however, that lack of direction threatens our survival. Ornstein and Ehrlich therefore demand "moving toward conscious evolution" (the subtitle of their book). (It is important to add that conscious cultural evolution is meant, not biological evolution which would be far too slow to save our species.)

To supply us with a "new mind" better suited for the "new world" we have created, the authors dedicate the last section of their book to suggestions on how to improve our methods of education to produce more farsighted, responsible attitudes in our children. Whether the suggested methods are feasible, whether they could take effect before it is too late, and whether preferable alternatives are available will be of great interest to the readers of this journal. The matter will be discussed and illuminated from different perspectives in the present and in following issues.
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The preceding is a synopsis of some of the major points made by Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich in NEW WORLD - NEW MIND: Moving Toward Conscious Evolution (New York: Doubleday, 1989). Much more valuable material is contained in the book itself.

Robert Ornstein, a brain researcher and author of several books on the subject, teaches at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco and at Stanford University. He is also President of the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge.

Paul Ehrlich, who has written on nature, earth, and extinction, is Professor of Biological Sciences and Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University.

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THE BIRTH AND INFANCY OF INNOVATION

Review of THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD
by Jared Diamond
Discover, 10(5):50-60. (May 1989).
Diamond compares the mental attitudes of Neanderthals with those of Cro-Magnon people (as far as these can be discerned from archeological findings) and describes the nature of a fundamental advance in thinking that occurred about 35 000 years ago.

Although the Neanderthals ranged from 130,000 years ago to 32,000 years ago in time, and from western Europe, through southern European Russia and the Near East, to Uzbekistan in Central Asia in space, no cultural differences, either in space or time, are evident, suggesting the absence of "that most human of characteristics, innovation". (P.55)

But they were human in other respects. They used fire, buried their dead, and took care of their sick and aged.

Their brain size was 10% greater than ours, yet their foreheads, over spectacular browridges, were sloping backward, and their protruding lower faces had no chins. Their muscular bodies contained strong bones, and their lower legs and forearms were comparatively short.

In contrast, a new kind of human being evolved in Africa about 100,000 years ago whose skull hardly differed from that of a modern person. -- Were the fossil remnants of these individuals accompanied by dramatic evidence of innovative differences in tool making? Did art appear? Surprisingly, that is not the case.

For the next 65,000 years, innovation was slow, timid, and hardly outstanding. Then, suddenly, 35,000 years ago, in France and Spain, the newcomers from Africa -- encountering robust Neanderthals and limits set by the Ice Age -- were faced with challenges that led to an explosive surge of innovation. Tools diversified, nets and fishhooks permitted the exploitation of new food sources, the arts were invented. -- Brains craved for stimulation; unused time became a source of dissatisfaction.

Most important, according to Diamond, was the refinement and perfection of rudimentary language. Language, he believes, turned Homo Sapiens into a truly human being. Furthermore, the life span of a Neanderthal person was about 40, few lived to 45; Cro-Magnons reached up to 60 years -- an additional advantage for the gathering and transmission of experience.

But not only in the north, in the south of Africa too ingenuity appeared. Cave excavations yield similar responses to the challenge of the Ice Age: new weapons together with bones of larger and more dangerous animals. -- Wherever the new African man advanced, previously unsurpassable barriers were conquered. No human being had ever set foot into the wide ranges of northern Europe, Siberia, Australia, and all of America before -- now all these regions were filled. Australia came first; already 50,000 years ago watercraft was invented capable of crossing from eastern Indonesia (60 miles). 20,000 years ago -- after the invention of needles, tailored clothing, stone lamps, houses and good fireplaces -- northern Russia and Siberia could be settled. From there, the crossover into America became possible and occurred 11,000 years before our time.

The combination of new brains and new challenges had led to a new way of thinking. Its impact changed our world. Diamond calls it "the most important innovation -- the capacity for innovation itself" and adds "To us, innovation is utterly natural. To Neanderthals it was evidently unthinkable." (P.58)

The challenges were there all the time; the brains to meet them were not. What distinguished them from those that had evolved previously? Diamond thinks it was only a 0.1 percent change in our genes -- the change that brought about the anatomical basis for spoken complex language." (P.59)

Behavioral changes did not follow immediately. Many thousands of years were needed, Diamond explains, to work out a usable medium of understanding, and to let intercommunication affect thought. Then only, the "tens of thousands of years of cumulative development" began which led to our present cultural achievements, achievements which turned us, as Diamond puts it, into "the first species, in the history of life on Earth, capable of destroying all life." (P.60)
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I think the "nature of human nature" is fairly clear and uniform, based on my readings and on my anthropological field experience having lived extensively among different kinds of peoples (Amer-indian/ Europeans/ North American/ Asians). The key ingredient that does not seem to have surfaced in your questions is the will to power, whether personal, political, familial, religious, etc., which pervades all the spheres which you mention. Unfortunately perhaps persons and societies without the will to power have not survived, but those who have it may not survive either.

Nelson H. Graburn Professor of Anthropology University of California at Berkeley

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REFLECTIONS
(originally written for the April 1990 issue of Humankind Advancing)

Reflections on the content of this issue lead to the realization that the major threat to our species is neither nuclear warfare nor environmental degradation. The dominant threat, underlying all others and preventing solutions to them, is the pervasive craving for power. (See Graburn.) Though not universal, that craving is strong enough to negate alternative aspects of human nature, such as humane sentiments and even reason itself.

How did that craving for power arise? It can be traced back through human history to the dawn of its beginning -- and from there throughout prehistory -- back to the time before any human being walked on earth. It is an aspect of life itself -- arising from eternal compulsive forces of inanimate matter. The craving for power is the driving force of evolution.

Are we therefore preprogrammed for species-suicide? We would be if not a new and stronger power were in the process of arising within humanity: the power of foresight, of insight, of wisdom.

Still, this power is weak and may fade from existence unless we become sufficiently aware of its importance. Our species is outstanding through its diversity. The insight of one single person may sway the fate of billions. -- Statistics of human beings slaughtered during wars and massmurders are horrifying; but worse is the thought that the savior of our species may have been among them.

Let us pray that he was not, and let us build altars to wisdom and foresight.

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STRUGGLING TOWARD MATURITY

During humankind's struggle toward maturity, many promising advances have been, and are being, silenced forever. The moving poem below describes a first-person experience of suffocated inner growth.

A POEM ABOUT NON-ACCEPTANCE He always wanted to say things -- But none understood He always wanted to explain things -- But no-one cared. So he drew. Sometimes he would just draw and it                wasn't anything. He wanted to                carve it in stone and write it                in the sky. He would lie out in the grass and                look up in the sky and it                would be only him and the sky                and the things inside him that                needed saying. And it was after that that he                drew the picture. He kept it under his pillow and                would let no-one see it. It was a beautiful picture. And he would look at it every                night and think about it. and when it was dark and his eyes                were closed, he could still                see it. When he started school he                brought it with him. Not to show anyone, but just to                have it with him, like a friend. It was funny about school He sat in a square brown desk                like all the other square                brown desks and he thought it                should be red, and his room                was a square brown room, like                all the other square, brown                rooms and it was tight and                close and stiff. He hated to hold the pencil and                the chalk with his arm stiff                and his feet flat on the floor,                stiff, with the teacher                watching and watching. And then he had to write numbers. And they weren't anything. They were tight and square. And he hated the whole thing. The teacher came and spoke to him. She told him to wear a tie like                all the other boys. He said he didn't like them and                she said it didn't matter. After that he drew. And he drew all yellow and it                was the way he felt about                the morning. And it was beautiful. The teacher came and smiled at                him. "What's this?" she                said, "Why don't you draw                something like Ken's                drawing?" Isn't that beautiful?" And it was all questions. After that his mother bought                him a tie and he always drew                airplanes and rocket ships                like everyone else. And he threw the old picture                away. And when he lay looking at                the sky, it was big and blue                and all of everything, but                he wasn't anymore. He was square inside and brown,                and his hands were stiff and he                was like everyone else. And the thing inside that                needed saying didn't need                saying anymore.                It had stopped pushing.                It was crushed.                Stiff.                Like everyone else.

[It has not been possible to trace the author of this poem, but it is known that he committed suicide when he was 16 years old.]
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This poem was found in the New Environment Bulletin, the organ of the New Environment Association, 270 Fenway Drive, Syracuse, N.Y. 13224. U.S.A. I am grateful to its editor, Harry Schwarzlander, for informing me upon request that he had reprinted the poem from an "unidentified overseas source."

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Review of CREATING LEARNING COMMUNITIES

Models, Resources, and New Ways of Thinking
About Teaching and Learning
Edited by Ron Miller
This entire 378 page long work is pervaded by the desire to grow and bring to full blossoming new talents and thoughts inherent in humanity, rather than to stifle them and let them wither away, as, in the belief of the contributors, traditional ways of teaching do. The book is a collection of 42 different reports from a large variety of authors with diverse experiences and perspectives, united only by the common concern to prepare our world for a less ruthless, less competitive and less destructive way of thinking.

For the first time in my life it has become impossible for me to read a book thoroughly from cover to cover before reviewing it -- the information in it is too rich, the points of view too divergent. But what I read was impressive.

The chapter on "Community Life-Long Learning Centers" by William N. Ellis (who was actively involved in the editing of the book and the selection of its content) stands out through the clarity and impact of his writing as well as through his insistence that learning be life-long, mutual, and concentrate on responsibility toward ones fellow-beings and the Earth. In his subchapter on "Cooperative Community Life-Long Learning Centers," the kind he endorses preeminently, he explains that "`cooperative' implies that all the programs, supplies, and facilities are cooperatively owned by the member families they serve;" and that `community' is not imposed by the place where we are born, but by the common goals we pursue. It is an association of friends that links family members with the outside world and provides the context which makes learning an enjoyable experience. "`Life-long learning' is the growing necessity of the information age" and "`Centers' implies a library-like service center." Most of all, Ellis points out, "learning is an act of self-volition. It is a self-actuated process of creating skills, discovering knowledge, and satisfying ones own natural curiosity. It is built on, and it teaches, the inherent right and responsibility of every individual to set her or his own standards. It honors the diversity of evolution....Learning replaces the materialism and consumerism that is so much part of today's society with a deeper love. It is the love of learning for the sake of learning -- of gaining a sense of being rather than having -- of valuing knowledge more than things." (Pp.17-19)

The editor, Ron Miller, contributes a chapter on "Philosophies of Learning Communities," in which he deals with the controversial subject of "transformation," the ability of a person or a culture to transform itself into a new self with (hopefully superior) new qualities. Throughout my life-long study of humankind, I have seen the idea of transformation ridiculed and judged impossible. We are born with pre-human animal instincts which cannot be changed, it is said. Culture is just a thin veneer, pierced at the slightest touch. Ron Miller, however, explains that "`transformation' occurs when people are able to see through their own cultural conditioning and limited ego identities, and realize their connections to the unfolding universe itself1 (however this might be experienced or described). Education should be practised in such a way as to encourage young people to pursue this understanding." (Pp.203/204) This places again, as I think it should, a heavy responsibility for our future and our fate onto the shoulders of persons who are older and wiser than the average peer and media dominated teenagers, who are such easy targets for money-oriented manipulators without conscience.

1) Dr. Robert Muller founded a series of schools worldwide pursuing that aim. Children learn first about their relation to the cosmos and the earth, last about their nation.
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Another remarkable chapter, "Learning to Become: Creating Evolutionary Learning Community through Evolutionary Systems Design," has been contributed by Kathia C. Laszlo and Alexander Laszlo, close relatives of Ervin Laszlo, the widely known Systems Theorist. "When we think of the kind of world we wish to bequeath to future generations," the authors start, "we imagine one in which we finally have found ways to live in harmony with each other and the other inhabitants of this planet, and are consciously and ethically engaged in the most fascinating explorations of our human potential." (P.231)

It is also pointed out that the striving for a sustainable world is a necessary, but not a sufficient, part of becoming. A sustainable world can be static, without further evolution, without the spark of a vision toward which to strive. Kathia and Alexander Laszlo place the vision first and show how it directs and concentrates the mind of the learner. Moreover, they show the relevance of Systems Theory for a full understanding of the way evolution progresses. The evolving world -- whether cosmic, biological, or cultural -- is a constant process of dynamic co-adaptation. Likewise, Evolutionary Learning Communities "do not adapt their environment to their needs, nor do they simply adapt to their environment. Rather they adapt with their environment in a dynamic of mutually sustaining evolutionary co-creation." (P.236) -- A full understanding of this process would eliminate the disastrous results of revolutions, and yet lead to a steady advance to a more desirable state of affairs.

Many other chapters of this valuable and thought-provoking book, a project of the Coalition for Self Learning, are well worth discussing, but space is limited.

Please contact the publisher, THE FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATIONAL RENEWAL, INC.,P.O.Box 328, Brandon, VT 05733, phone 1.800.639.4122 -- http://www.PathsOfLearning.net

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INNOVATIONS START WITH DREAMS

AN APPEAL TO ALL LEADERS OF NATIONS
for their meeting at the United Nations
from 4 to 10 September 2000

by Dr. Robert Muller
Chancellor Emeritus of the UN University for Peace
Former UN Assistant Secretary General
Lifelong Honorary President of the World Peoples' Assembly

Reproduce freely and distribute widely.
I joined the United Nations world service in 1948 as a young man who had been in a German Gestapo prison, a French Resistance fighter and had seen the most horrible atrocities of war and destructions. I came from Alsace-Lorraine, a province of France bordering Germany, where my grandparents knew three wars and changed nationality five times between France and Germany, without leaving their village. I was a very pessimistic young man. If this had happened between two highly civilized countries, how could I expect white and black countries, communists and capitalists, rich and poor nations, thousands of religions and ethnic groups to be able to live together and cooperate in peace? Surely there would be an incident which would trigger off another world war within twenty years. Well, there was no third world war.

In an emptied war factory in Lake Success where the United Nations was first located, a British delegate asked me what I was doing there. I answered: "I came here to work for peace, because I do not want my children and grandchildren to know the horrors I saw in the war." He answered: "I pity you, because you will lose your job. This organization will not last more than five years." Well, it celebrates in the year 2000 its fifty-fifth anniversary.

I was also told in Lake Success that decolonization was the priority item on the agenda of world affairs and that it would take the United Nations from one hundred to one hundred fifty years to solve the problem. Well, the UN did it in forty years. I was told the same about racism, apartheid, women's rights, human rights, indigenous people, the cold war, and I could cite other examples.

I have been involved in the creation of several new specialized agencies and world programs in the economic and social fields, including the world-wide United Nations Development Program where I was one of the first two UN officials working with Paul Hoffman, the former Administrator of the Marshall Plan. The UN listened to me when I suggested to channel to the poor countries the surplus foods which the rich countries used to burn, and created the World Food Program. The World Bank listened to my idea to give low-interest loans to infrastructure projects in the poor countries and created the International Development Agency. When I look at the list of the 32 UN specialized agencies and world programs, I am astonished that I played a role in the creation of eleven of them!

I have seen the UN system assemble information on practically every aspect of our Earth and of the human family. Who remembers that until 1952 we did not even know how many people lived on this planet? Today a world population census takes place world-wide in all countries in the same year. Future generations will appreciate the statistical work and global information of the UN as a true turning point in human history.

Through the United Nations I have seen the seas and oceans, the moon and outer space be declared the commons of humanity. I have seen the birth of first concerns for the environment, a word coined in the UN when it convened the first world conference on the environment in Sweden in 1972. And the UN did the same for the world's waters, deserts, oceans, climate, atomic energy, children, women, the aging, the handicapped, etc.

I entered the UN as an intern and was privileged to rise over the years to Assistant Secretary General working directly with three Secretaries General. When I look back, I feel that I owe the UN a truly magical life.

And retirement was not the end. It turned into a 'refirement'! Three days before I retired from the UN in 1986, after 38 years of service, Rodrigo Carazo, the President of Costa Rica, a man whom I greatly admire, proposed that I should become the one-dollar-a-year chancellor of the recently created UN University for Peace in Costa Rica of which I was his co-founder. I accepted with delight to continue to work for a UN agency and to spend the rest of my life in a demilitarized country to which I would give the highest mark for its initiatives and successes at the UN: the creation of the post of High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Nobel Peace Prize to President Oscar Arias, the celebration of the International Day of Peace and the world cease-fires obtained by Costa Rica for the World Olympics and the week of the fiftieth anniversary of the UN.

And how could I have ever dreamt that I would be some day appointed member of a world commission of eminent persons on the funding of the UN and co-chairman, with Dr. Karan Singh of India, of a World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality? And that all borders between fifteen western European countries, including in my hometown in Alsace-Lorraine, would be suppressed and a European Union created? -- And that there would be in the world 34 Robert Muller Schools providing the right education I received from the United Nations after the nationalistic mis-educations by France, Germany and the United States? And that the World Peoples' Assembly in Samoa would declare me its Lifelong Honorary President?

Yes, from a very pessimistic young man after World War II, I have been transformed by the UN into an optimistic elder who believes in the success of humanity. I am infinitely grateful to the UN for having taught me that planet Earth is my home, that humanity is my family and that it was worthwhile to devote my entire life with passion, enthusiasm and faith to the great objectives for which this Organization, a truly unprecedented, ominous meta-biological organism of the Earth and of humanity was created. In the face of colossal obstacles and the shortsightedness of some nations, the UN has performed many miracles.

And now, as I look to the future and further progress, I am told that proper Earth government is impossible! I make this prediction: within twenty years we will have a proper government and administration of planet Earth and of humanity. Why? Because the current troubles, injustices, wastes and colossal duplications of national expenditures, especially on armaments and the military, of 188 nations will force us to. It is inevitable. The salvation of this planet and survival of the human species depend on it. Noone can for long go against evolution. Nation-states must adapt or they will disintegrate, even the biggest one, the United States. Unknown forces will force them to.

During my long world service I had this habit: whenever I receive numerous letters from people around the world pointing at a new challenge or necessity whose time has come, I open a file: within a few years these signals of humanity's global brain become a major trend. -- Well, since the 50th anniversary of the UN, my mail abounds with letters calling for proper Earth government, a world federation of states, proposals of other systems for a better global management of this planet. I have therefore decided to return to the dream of my youth, when after World War II I wrote an essay on world government which opened to me the doors of the United Nations. At the age of 77 I have decided to make proper Earth and human government the last and greatest priority of my life. The Earth's survival requires an enormously strengthened second generation United Nations, or a UN transformed progressively into a world union on the model of the European Union, or a United States of the Earth on the pattern of the great precedent of the United States. On the eve of a new century and millennium it is a matter of life or death for the Earth and humanity.

May the heads of states meeting in the UN General Assembly 2000 hear this appeal. I speak in the name of all my school-mates of the class of 1939-40 of the Lycée of Sarreguemines in Alsace-Lorraine who were killed in French or German uniforms. I plead with you, I beg you, I implore you to change the course of the world into permanent peace, justice and well-being. God, all the saints in heaven, all the souls of tens of millions of people, including mothers and children killed in so many wars will thank you. Please make the World Assembly 2000 one of the most unique, memorable events in all human history. Please lay the foundations for a permanently peaceful, wonderful, well administered unique planet Earth circling in a fathomless universe of billions of stars and galaxies.

SO HELP US GOD

May 2000, Mt. Rasur, Costa Rica

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The original appeal contains excerpts from Dr. Muller's 2000 Ideas and Dreams for a Better World, which cover a vast array of topics. Since Dr. Muller is not able to attend all conferences to which he is invited each year, he prepared and offers for republication various pamphlets with excerpts from his Ideas and Dreams, ranging in length from two to fifty-eight pages of concrete, forward-thinking suggestions for definitive action to facilitate the emergence of a peaceful, productive society on a healthy, abundant planet Earth.
His writings are available from the UN Bookshop
(tel: 1.800.553.3210), or from
MEDIA 21 v Global Public Relations
Barbara Gaughen-Muller
7456 Evergreen Drive, Santa Barbara, CA 93117 USA
Fax: 1.805.968.5747
E-mail: barbara@rain.org


No copyright. On the contrary, copying and networking is exhorted.

* * * * *
Innovations start with dreams...

THEY SUCCEED WITH FACTS
Peoples of different faiths and cultures understandably tend to recoil at the thought of being governed by the values and beliefs 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 world view 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...[a] new outlook [that] manages to incorporate the empirical and the ethical, both what is objectively valid and what is subjectively valued.

R.W.Sperry (Neuroscientist, Nobel Laureate)

* * * * *
THE CO-EVOLUTIONARY RESEARCH IDEOLOGY
Contrasting basic assumptions lie at the root of many unresolvable conflicts. -- Do we have a tool, a science, or anything of this kind that deals with the correction of erroneous basic assumptions?

I believe that the "co-evolutionary research ideology" as described by the philosopher of science, Patricia Churchland (1986), comes closest to what we need to overcome both a blind forward rush into unforeseen dangers and resignation to unfortunate developments we can foresee.

The "co-evolutionary research ideology," which has greatly contributed to the success in science, encourages the approach of two opposing theories toward a common position closer to the truth than any of the former. It works through a method in which successful research results in the pursuit of one of these theories elicit new insights, adjustments, and research designs in the opposing one. These new findings, in turn, illuminate and adjust the former, and so on, until the best possible approach to the truth is reached. Often, none of the original theories has to be abolished, but each is enriched and enlightened by the opposing one.

An example is the theory that poverty and slums cause diseases vs. the theory that diseases are caused by germs -- two views which about 100 years ago were fighting each other fanatically. We now know that poverty and slums cause diseases because germs proliferate under these conditions. There is no reason left why one of these theories should be defended against the other one.

If such methods could be applied to solve political and ideological disagreements, wars will become unnecessary and humanity will have made an immense step forward.

* * * * *

SEEING WHAT IS REALLY THERE

The solution to many problems seems so simple once it is pointed out. The solution was always there to see, but only when we tuned in to it does it become so obvious. It is often a matter of asking the right question.

Gary Williams, Australia

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Material from earlier issues:

From Vol.1, No.2 (April 1990) -- Reflections
From Vol.1, No.3 (July 1990) -- The Co-evolutionary Research Theory
From Vol.2, No.1 (January 1991) -- Quote from W.B. McDermott Review of Jarred Diamond's "The Great Leap Forward"
From Vol.2, No.3 (July 1991) -- Synopsis of "New World - New Mind" by Ornstein and Ehrlich
From Vol.4. No.3 (July 1993) -- Quote from R.W. Sperry

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Acknowledgments: I wish to thank Dr. Robert Muller for sending me his Appeal to All Leaders of Nations, as well as Bill Ellis and The Foundation for Educational Renewal, Inc. for sending a review copy of Creating Learning Communities.

REFERENCES

Anonymous Poem -- Found in The New Environment Bulletin, May 15, 2000. (P.6)

Churchland, P. Smith -- Neurophilosophy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 1986.

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