Unifying Unifications

And excuse my excitement, but I do think we should be celebrating.

Because your push for the recognition of the "divine imagination" is a pretty revolutionary stance, whether you give it that label or not. It is the direct opposite of the plain "realism" that has generally informed the development of today's sciences. And one which must be pursued to its full implications, because you can't have one portion of reality understood "as it would be without us" and another "as is". Nature is a unity, and it is definitely not "in our absence". You can't be a part-time realist.

This has nothing to do with the destruction, or dismantling, or dismissing, or "transcending" of science. Science continues as science is. What changes is how we (regular people, scientists, everybody,) think about the universe, the Earth, and our place in it.

Agreed. What needs transcending is the ontological lens through which we interpret today's science, and continue the new science. This creates a new myth, and definitely new areas of research, new concepts, new questions. For all intents and purposes, a new "paradigm".

"Science" does not need to "prove" the fact that the world of our perceptions exists by virtue of our perceiving. It is simple logic, a conclusion made possible by the divine human quality of self-awareness.

All you need to do "science" is concepts and a methodology. And when we say that "subjectivity" is real, that this internal experience-of-world is an actual substance of the reality we seek to understand, then a completely new view of biological evolution, human history, and the scientific endeavor itself comes into being ("new" in terms of the scientific perspective), and entirely new areas of research, or at least approaches to existent research in biology, behavioral ecology, cognitive science, psychology, sociology.

I am with you on the misuse of quantum theory, and my points do not hinge on this. So you might want to fold up all the new ager, esotericist, superstition talk and leave it out of our exchange.

And thanks for the Haramein rejection. I did see some extravagant claims, and that's probably why I haven't made the time to dig through his stuff.

Peace

Let's do some Conscious Science!

That "matter is imaginary" was a continuation, in your terms, of your logic:

"This is where science and spirituality really unite. Not in bulldozing science, but in realizing that the imaginary is real, and we need to reassess how we think about what is imaginary."

Don't be deceived by turning it against me, and please review my claims lest you keep fighting imaginary (...) windmills.

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On the life-less universe, or the problem of no observers.

We could say that this inert, perceiver-independent hypothetical world is the bedrock of the "realist" picture. But it is nothing objective, cannot be tested (we cannot observe non-observation), and is filled with inconsistencies.

The image of lifeless rocks purposelessly floating around in space is strictly a human construction, made up of our concepts, assumptions, and limitations. It is a projection of a subjective conception. We run into problems like, how fast does time pass in this "objective" reality? Is there in fact such a thing as sound or just vibration? Surely the word and human understanding of "vibration" would not exist as such, so who's vibration, the particles' experience? What would this universe look like? Any idea of what the world would be without us is a product of our subjective understanding, our perceptual abilities.

Not to say it is not a valid and useful exercise, but we can see it's fundamental problem: it is trying to imagine what no imagination looks like. I nearly puked one night thinking about this when I was 12. We cannot escape perception, and the real question is, why are we trying to?

But still we must declare: our galaxy existed before there was organized intelligence. Yeah, but how? Everything we can and do say about the galaxy is contingent on our perception. If we take away the perceived human world, then you have all other animals' subjective worlds. If you take away all animals' experience, then you have the plants' (and how fast does time pass for plants?). If you take away all reproducing organisms, then you have the matter from which they came.

It is arbitrary, and to my judgment, not very logical to say that perception began when particles started reproducing. And when time is contingent on/relative to perception, then the beginning of time is also the beginning of perception.

As you say, this is of course an assumption. Just like the notion of inert matter, it is speculation. And science, as you've said, is not necessarily concerned with absolute truths; it goes with what works. It's like the crossroads is, do we keep trying to escape the fact of perception, or do we finally affirm and introduce it into even our concept of matter, the previously inert fundamental substance of the modern scientific picture?

I opt for the latter. My starting assumption is that I am a physical body, and I perceive. In my terms, I would never say that "matter is imaginary", perhaps that matter is imaginative. Life works better when we assume other physical bodies do have this same invisible, immeasurable, irreducible experience, so why don't we do the same in science? Then we can study perception as a natural phenomenon, as a fact of "reality", and see ourselves as more than ego, as parts of nature, as belonging here. While "realists" just seem like a-toms (in-dividuals) insisting on the non-existence of their perception.

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I'm working on an article with my ideas for the new paradigm/myth/story, which will probably answer some of the other questions. It will surely be influenced by your input, and I think you might like it.

Cheers

Let's do some Conscious Science!