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Beyond a Materialist Worldview Towards an Expanded Science TOWARDS AN EXPANDED SCIENCE 1 GALILEO COMMISSION REPORT BEYOND A MATERIALIST WORLDVIEW Towards an Expanded Science Harald Walach on behalf of the Scientific and Medical Network www.explore.scimednet.org 2 BEYOND A MATERIALIST WORLDVIEW THIS REPORT IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MARY MIDGLEY (1919-2018) “This whole reductive programme – this mindless materialism, this belief in something called ‘matter’ as the answer to all questions – is not really science at all. It is, and always has been, just an image, a myth, a vision, an enormous act of faith. As Karl Popper said, it is ‘promissory materialism’, an offer of future explanations based on boundless confidence in physical methods of enquiry. It is a quite general belief in ‘matter’, which is conceived in a new way as able to answer all possible questions. And that belief has flowed much more from the past glories of science than from any suitability for the job in hand. In reality, not all questions are physical questions or can be usefully fitted to physical answers.” BEYOND A MATERIALIST WORLDVIEW Towards an Expanded Science Harald Walach First published in 2019 by the Scientific and Medical Network © 2019 Harald Walach All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Designed by Liam Howard | Creative Cause CONTENTS Preface: Dr Peter Fenwick Introduction: An invitation to look through the telescope – David Lorimer Foreword: Science needs to be more scientific – Dr Iain McGilchrist Summary of argument Main Report 1. Purpose, Motivation, Background 2. Some Problems Created Directly or Indirectly by the Current Concept of Science • Exclusion of Important Experiences and Crystallisation of Contingent Views of the World • The Replication Crisis • The Ecological Crisis • The Crisis of Credibility • The Crisis of Meaning • The Crisis of Health • Example: Type 2 Diabetes 3. The Inescapability of Background Assumptions 4. The Most Important Background Assumptions of Current Science • Materialist Ontology and Reductionism • Ockham’s Razor or Parsimony • The Dominance of Binary Logic and the Analytical Strategy • The Problem of Values and the Foundation of Morality 5. The Limitations of the Current Background Assumptions • The Limitation of the Materialist Background Assumption • Causal Efficacy of Consciousness: Complex Emergentist Materialist Models of Consciousness and the Presumed Inefficacy of Will • Empirical Data that Challenge a Materialist Ontology • Non-Local Perception during Near Death Experiences • Children with Memories of Previous Lives and Corresponding Birthmarks • Non-locality in Anomalous Cognition • A Generalised Model of Nonlocality 6. Intermediate Summary: a Role for Consciousness • Holistic Concepts to Complement Analysis and Reductionism • Towards a Science of Introspective Knowledge • A Historical Reminder: Direct Introspection in Roger Bacon in the 13th Century • Inclusive Thinking and Classical Logic • Abductive Reasoning – The Scientific Equivalent to Direct Introspection • Towards a Science of Ethics and Values 7. Towards a New Science and a Culture of Consciousness Afterword – David Lorimer Glossary References Professor Harald Walach The Scientific and Medical Network Galileo Commission Advisers 1 BEYOND A MATERIALIST WORLDVIEW This was the time of William Sargent and his book Battle for the Mind, proposing, amongst other things, PREFACE the use of sedation for anxiety states so that two or three days of unconsciousness would allow the brain Dr Peter Fenwick, President of the Scientific to ‘re-boot’. It was also the time of leucotomy, when and Medical Network isolating large chunks of brain became fashionable as a treatment for schizophrenia and ‘bad behaviour’ - it had been found to tame and quieten monkeys. Schizophrenia was also treated by rendering patients almost comatose with insulin therapy, and by inducing grand mal seizures with ECT (Electro-Convulsive Therapy). Mind was regarded as simply a brain mechanism, its disorders to be treated mechanically. Not a glorious period for psychiatry. With the advent of the Maharishi, meditation and Eastern philosophy it was becoming clear that the limitations of western science and its insistence on a brain-based creation of consciousness were no longer tenable. By this time I had discovered the work of Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, and learned meditation in the tradition of the Shankaracharya Swami Shantanand Saraswati. The introduction to the West of transcendental meditation by the Maharishi meant that there was now a pool of meditation subjects who could be investigated, and it soon became apparent that meditation could produce very wide When I went up to Cambridge in 1954 to read Natural mental states which had some reflection in changes Sciences as my preliminary to a medical degree, I of brain physiology, but was much wider than that. had the good fortune to have Lord Adrian as Master Parapsychology was also coming of age, with studies of my College, (Trinity). Lord Adrian won the Nobel on telepathy, remote viewing and psychokinesis. Ian Prize in 1932 for his work on the electrophysiology Stevenson even produced good scientific data by of the brain and the connection between neurones. suggesting that past lives might have some basis in Sir Andrew Huxley, my tutor, had also won a Nobel reality and could not always be explained on the basis Prize in 1952 for defining the characteristics of the of false memory. neural membrane, and how neural impulses were transmitted along the fibre. As quantum mechanics became more widely understood, the classical view of physics no longer So we all had a sound grounding in learning how held for the very small and the very large, and with to use the current scientific theories, firstly to define the recognition that every particle in the universe is problems and secondly in our analysis of the data. But influenced by every other particle, the then position of there was no mention of consciousness. Neither did physics with its isolated effects required modification. our course, Natural Sciences, have any lectures on the history of science or how it arose at the time of the It became apparent that there were two camps, enlightenment. That was part of the course on the the materialists, who defined consciousness as History and Philosophy of Science, not provided for arising from the brain and did not look beyond budding scientists, let alone budding doctors, perhaps this. Theirs was a clockwork universe with joy, love, on the unspoken grounds that it was in fact Unnatural, ecstasy, friendship, just being the action of neurones or at least Unnecessary Science in a crowded course. within the brain. Daniel Dennett, who holds this view strongly, once said to me at a conference, Of course as we came to our clinical work and learned “When we understand the function of the neurones about Freud, Charcot and other philosophers of mind, completely, there will be nothing left to explain about consciousness could no longer be avoided as a topic. consciousness.” This hard materialistic view became But just as hysteria had been thought of as due to the mainstream in many branches of medicine and wandering of the womb in women, consciousness was science. At this level of science there was no mention seen as arising from and created by the brain. This of consciousness. Any suggestion that consciousness view was clearly unsatisfactory, and it also led to some might be a different substance, indeed some would very unsatisfactory methods of psychiatric treatment. go so far as to say, the basic substance, rather TOWARDS AN EXPANDED SCIENCE 2 than material, would automatically be attacked by the brain accounts for the mind, it comes as a surprise materialists, so negating that stream of thought. now to discover, during this final examination of the evidence, that the dualist hypothesis [separation of As Church attendances fall, and people become more mind and brain] seems the more reasonable of the two reluctant to accept articles of faith uncritically, a new possible explanations. Mind comes into action and religion is arising, the religion of materialism. But goes out of action with the highest brain-mechanism, materialism, like any religion, has its own strongly it is true. But the mind has energy. The form of that held faith and its reluctance to admit any evidence energy is different from that of neuronal potentials that which does not fit in with its belief structure. Its travel the axone pathways. There I must leave it.” mechanistic view of the world and of human kind has led to an impoverished society where mechanical- Having a science which is limited only to material driven models of human behaviour – beings with no things ignores a whole spectrum of human consciousness, no soul - degrade our societies and experience. It is destructive because it does not the planet. take into account the fundamental nature of the human, conscious being. The desperate attempts of This pervasive scientific view has led to university materialists to limit consciousness to the brain is nicely departments refusing to employ scientists who summed up by Bernard Kastrup, a computer scientist: think outside the materialistic box. When I became interested in near-death experiences and their very “Here we have consciousness trying to wide-reaching conscious state, I was confronted trick consciousness into believing that it doesn’t exist.... by materialists who suggested this state was just The motivation behind eliminative materialism is another brain malfunction. When it was shown clear: if we deny the very existence of consciousness, that these arose at the time when, following cardiac presto, we no longer need to explain it!” arrest, brain function was absent, the materialist explanation was that even if no activity is seen on Bernardo Kastrup. Brief Peeks Beyond. Winchester, the surface of the brain – flat EEG – there were secret UK: iffBooks; 2015:60-61.
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