Humankind Advancing, Vol.8, No.1 January 1997

Theme: The Life Imperative and the Learning Imperative

"As a first step I would want to identify the four or five most pressing problems facing humanity at the present time, for example: (1) the unsustainable rate of population increase; (2) the role of the mass media in the degradation, brutalization, trivialization and homogenization of culture; (3) ongoing pollution of the physical environment; (4) accelerating tribalism; and (5) increasing inequality between the "winners" and "losers" within industrialized countries and the world at large. As a second step I would ask of every problem area, "How are everyday, individual choices contributing to this impending crisis?" and `What are the consequences of people's actions here, regardless of intentions?". Thirdly, I would want to pose the following question: What values and behaviors are actually being reinforced by the incentives that history has built into the systems involved?". Lastly, I would ask "How can the present incentive system be altered so as to achieve more fulfilling and constructive long-term ends for all concerned?'. Only after an analysis of this nature would we be ready to offer recommendations for carefully focused, limited changes with built-in evaluation procedures."

Pat Duffy Hutcheon
Professor of Sociology and Education

Stephen J. Pope
Associate Professor of Theology (Discussing the work of R.D.Masters)

Projects that are worthwhile come with no guarantees. Many will fail. But the ones which succeed will add to the store of knowledge and/or change the culture in worthwhile ways.

Robert Theobald (1)
Futurist and Social Innovator

Click Her for a review of A Review of Vital Dust by Christian de Duve 

Eric J. Chaisson
Space Scientist

The amount of information available continues to increase at incredible rates. This is normally seen as a benefit. I, on the contrary, see this as a profound problem because when information doubles, knowledge halves and wisdom quarters. We are overwhelmed by the sheer weight of data. Both individuals and organizations fail to make the time to process it. [Emphasis added.]

Robert Theobald (2)
Futurist and Social Innovator

Voices of Hope

Barbara Marx Hubbard developed a Guide to Evolutionary Circles, consisting of a video-audio cassette combination, assembled in an attractive book-like shell. Her intent is to further the transformation of human thinking patterns from ego-centered, confrontational attitudes to those of understanding, tolerance, and harmony. Groups of friends within private homes are invited to help one another with that inner change during weekly sessions guided by her tapes.

Ms. Marx Hubbard introduces herself through the video tape and explains the nature of `Evolutionary Circles' as "combining the inner work of spiritual growth with the outer work of learning the larger story of the evolution of our species, to help us fulfil our life purpose as conscious participants in the creation of our world." In the following four audio tapes, only her voice is heard, sometimes in a conversation-al tone, sometimes prophetic and hypnotic. The religious atmosphere may not attract everyone, but the content of the information is soundly based in science, and the emotional warmth pervading the sessions will very likely appeal to the majority of the population for whom the common language of science seems cold and repulsive.

For additional information please contact The Foundation for Conscious Evolution, P.O.Box 6397, San Rafael,CA 94903-0397, USA.

In science, a single truth counts for more than thousand mere opinions. 

Attributed to Galileo

On the pre-scientific level, we are often ourselves destroyed, eliminated with our false theories; we perish with our false theories. On the scientific level, we systematically try to eliminate our false theories -- we try to let our false theories die in our stead.

Karl Popper, Philosopher

The principle reason I think the current wave of paradigm shifts and new thinking in science is not apt to continue into a further stage of more extreme brand of metaphysical reality is that most of these recent trends can be traced to, and appear to be best viewed as outcomes of, the consciousness revolution that immediately preceded them. If this is so, they are then dependent upon an interactionist model of the mind-brain relation which would logically rule out the existence or transmission of conscious experience in a disembodied state....Conscious mental states are emergent properties from brain processes. As such, any separate existence apart from the living, functioning brain, of which they are dynamic properties, would seem to be a logical impossibility -- as would also their manifestation, expression, or transmission in phenomena such as telepathy, reincarnation, channeling, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and such like.

R. W. Sperry, Neuroscientist

Chased Back Into the Cave
Tenessee [proposed a bill] aimed at the dismissal of any teacher who presents evolution as a scientific fact....Such ignorance, unfortunately, does not confine itself within the borders of this Southern State. According to a poll of recent years, 55% of American adults do not accept evolution as the best explanation of how humans came to be on the planet....Part of the problem, indeed, has to do with the way some of our leading biological scientists are [writing] with smug and reductive certainty.

Robert Schaible (1996)

Knowledge, Insight and Wisdom
The growth of knowledge gave [humans] tremendous power and equally great worries. The age of naive confidence ended rather abruptly and humans were left facing their greatest threat -- themselves....Have we been wrong to believe that the development of intelligence is a positive fact? Not necessarily. Evolution, after all, is the outcome of the interplay between vital dynamism and obstacles. [Emphasis added.]....The more we understand, the more the world reveals itself as a totality made up of interdependent entities, which is a system....The very success of the analytic method brought us to the realization of the limitations of this method and thus to the threshold of a revolutionary paradigm shift in knowledge. We now understand that henceforth analytic perspective will have to be supplemented by and combined with a holistic approach. This in turn means that the knowledge of measurable, (i.e. quantitative aspects of reality) will have to be supplemented by the knowledge of qualities and values.

Jerzy A. Wojciechowski (2),  Professor of Philosophy

Discussion by Erika Erdmann of

Reflections

Great ideals, over time, have the power to help create the conditions of their own possibility.

Frederick Ferré, Research Professor of Philosophy

The ideal I am promoting and am trying to help bring about is the complementation and mutual enhancement of the work and thinking of outstanding individuals. Unfortunately, it sometimes seems as if, in their striving toward the zenith, many gifted persons try to overshadow and erase other worthwhile accomplishments. Differences are emphasized out of proportion, similarities disregarded. As a result, urgently needed changes of attitudes cannot be achieved, and the glory that no-one wants to share remains absent entirely.

I am concerned here especially with the struggle to devise the best learning theory, as described by Dr. Hutcheon. Why has, throughout history, each step out of the cave been reversed again? Why could no cumulative effort be achieved? The lack of a comprehensive overview (she now provided) is one explanation, but it is not the whole story.

In his book Behind the Mirror, Konrad Lorenz looks at the problem from another side. He explains that no theory is best for all kinds of learning and thoroughly elucidates the advantages of diverse theories. Pavlov's reflex theory based on his work on conditioned reflexes is ideally suited for animal learning and certain rudimental human learning. Skinner's operant conditioning, the fact that consequences of behaviour affect future behaviour, is of most importance for a more advanced stage of learning, but here it is irreplaceable. Freud's attention to the subconscious effects on conscious thought, neuroscientists' investigations of brain function, research confirming that cognitive maps or thinking patterns, formed in early childhood, are nearly as indestructible as genetic influences, the acquisition of new insights through experiences and reflections in later life -- all these are most important at certain levels of development, but none excludes the other one. "Each of them, reflex theory, operant conditioning, Freud's unconscious, cognitive theory, etc. is right in itself; but all of them are wrong in their generalizations and their condemnation of the others." (Quoted from memory.)

Thus if Pavlov maintains that "true religious and moral impulses are the highest form of conditioned reflexes" (Hutcheon, 1996, p.184), when Skinner consistently dismisses the discoveries of neuroscience and behaviorists translate the richness of human experience into stimulus-response language, when biological naturalists speak with smugness and condescension, and when ridicule and insensitivity to what is experienced as sacred is the hallmark of secular humanism, blocks are established against the acceptance of even the most relevant and most valuable work of human pioneers. It is not so much the facts that are rejected, as it is the language in which they are presented.

Lorenz points also to the need of each innovator to see his or her discovery as more important, and more generally applicable, than it is. (Darwin was an exception.) That must be so, he explains, to sustain the nearly superhuman effort going into the completion and support of one's own contribution, and to fend off numerous and often vicious enemies.