Welcome to the SMN Blog
If you are a member of the SMN, you can become a contributor to the blog. To be added to the list of official blog contributors, contact Dr Olly Robinson on: olly@scimednet.org
Currently the blog contains 106 entries.
Enlightened Prince
Prince Charles has now declared himself an enemy of the Enlightenment http :// www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7013764.ece . He doesn’t say which of its fruits he dislikes; whether it be free speech, modern science, liberal democracy, human rights (abolition of slavery), women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights or the constitution of the United States; and neither does he say with what he would replace reason as the guiding principle – except perhaps some vague concept of ‘holism’, too ill-defined to be capable of being judged rational or not. But he thinks that the time has come for Enlightenment ideas, now two hundred years old, to be re-examined (never mind that those of hereditary monarchy are even older).
What I doubt that he realizes though is that these ideas are being examined and developed by a lot of serious people. As one example, I would commend http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0 This was an event that took place a couple of years ago, and involved over thirty world-class speakers. The introductory blurb says the following:
The aim of Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0 is to invite participants to undertake together an ongoing reconnaissance of Enlightenment ideas in the light of advances in primarily cognitive neurosciences, evolutionary biology, physics etc. though not by any means scanting history, philosophy, law. The word reconnaissance is used advisedly. The hope is to explore our current sense of Reason, Truth, Belief, Human Nature, Progress, Virtue and the Good Life in this light. It could be argued that the Enlightenment was not quite the disaster that some critics have suggested, and that version 2.0, and subsequent releases, could conceivably be a dynamic improvement if we set our minds to it, guided by that eudaemonic impulse.
It was a three day event, so will require stamina to watch it all, but just dipping in would be worthwhile.
Lecture for the Society For Psychical Research - Thursday 4th February 2010
Some of you may have read the review of my book "The Daemon - A Guide To Your Extraordinary Secret Self" in the latest edition of Network Review. If this has interested you in my "angle" on things you may be interested to know that the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) are also intrigued by the implications of my "Cheating The Ferryman" hypothesis and have invited to give a talk for them in the lecture room at Kensington Central Library. This will take place tomorrow (Thursday 4th February 2010) starting at 1835. I will be talking for about an hour and then there will be the opportunity for questions and a short mingling session over tea and biscuits. This will finish at 21:00. This is a fully "open" event so if you have nothing better to do why not pop along?
Is nuclear fusion our best hope?
While climate change and energy reform campaigners focus on the potential of renewable energy sources that come direct from nature, such a wind and solar power, scientists have been quietly making huge strides towards the possibility of nuclear fusion and its potential as an energy source. In the climate change and environmentalist movements, there tends to be a back-to-basics, nature-based sensibility that can prevent focusing on cutting-edge technological breakthroughs as real solution to the energy and environmental crisis. Yet, a news item emerged last week that, for a change, was genuinely GOOD news.
What's wrong with the world?
Stephen Hester, group chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, stands to pocket £10million this year. British aid to Haiti is £6.1million. This world is not OK.
Idealism East and West - Keith Ward
Keith Ward speaks articulately in this free podcast on idealism - the philosophy that the underlying and fundamental reality is conscious, mental, spiritual. There are parallel traditions of idealism in the East and West, and Ward here discusses their respective nature and their influences on one another. Interestingly, not only did Enlightenment philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Hegel admit to being influenced by Indian philosophy, but Indian philosophy has been influenced by German idealism too - "Neo-Vedanta" is a school of Indian philosophy that has been influenced by this European empirical tradition.
Is Dawkins softening up?
On Sunday 27th, a programme entitled Tsunami: Where Was God? was broadcast on Channel 4. It was an engaging documentary putting a contemporary spin on the arguments surrounding God, religion and suffering. Mark Dowd, the presenter, is a Catholic, and so is arguably not the most impartial of commentators. However overall, he presented an interesting and clear-speaking take on the issue. Towards the end of the programme, he interviews Richard Dawkins, who I was expecting to be as intransigent as ever in his hard-edged atheist position, so I was surprised when Dawkins said:
The World As I See It - Albert Einstein
The World As I See It - Albert Einstein C A Watts 1935
I came across this copy in a second-hand bookshop and was heartened to read in the entry "Religion and Science" that Einstein had a very contemporary opinion on this subject.
He observes society moving from a primitive fear based "understanding of causal connections"
"I am speaking now of the religion of fear. This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilised by the formation of a special priestly caste which sets up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on this basis."
"Social feelings are another source of the crystallisation of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence who protects, disposes, rewards and punishes........"
He sees "the development from a religion of fear to moral religion as a great step in a nation's life. That primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilised peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The truth is that they are all intermediate types, with this reservation, that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates."
"Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. Only individuals of exceptional endowments and exceptionally high-minded communities, as a general rule, get in any real sense beyond this level. But there is a third state of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form and which I will call cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to explain this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it."
He expands on the historical conflict between science and religion ... "it is therefore easy to see why the Churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees. On the other hand, I maintain that cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest incitement to scientific research."
"The individual feels the nothingness of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvellous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. He looks upon individual existence as a sort of prison and wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole."
He goes on to make a case for the scientist who "is possessed by the sense of universal causation... whose religious feeling takes the form of rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work .... it is closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages."
Robert de Vos, Cape Town, South Africa
Reclaiming conscious agency
This reviews a recent paper by Alexander Batthyany, which looks at the implications of experiments by Benjamin Libet and more recently C.S. Soon, for the existence or otherwise of freewill. Libet's subjects were asked to make voluntary finger movements. The experiments showed that a readiness potential was detected in the brain 350 milliseconds before a movement, while the subjects were aware of their conscious intention to act only 200 ms before the movement. Therefore, neuronal activity preparatory to movement happened 150 ms before conscious awareness of the intention to act.
Religious eclecticism and pluralism in America
A recent survey in the USA has suggested a high percentage of Americans hold 'non-traditional' religious beliefs in which eastern and western beliefs are mixed eclectically. Meanwhile, a very high percentage endorse the idea that many religions can embody truth. A survey by the polling organisation Pew, reported in USA today, highlights these surprising statistics:
Copyright © 1996-2010
| The Scientific and Medical Network - SMN, PO Box 11, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, GL56 0ZF, England
| www.scimednet.org
eMail: info@scimednet.org,
Tel: +44 (0) 1608 652000, Fax: +44 (0) 1608 652001
| UK Charity No. 1101171 | Company Ltd by Guarantee No. 4544694