the hidden connections INTEGRATING THE BIOLOGICAL, $ COGNITIVE, AND.SOGIAL DOUBLEDAY New Tork London Toronto. Sydney Auckland \ Fritjof CapraA division of Random House, Inc. 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036 DouaLepay is a trademark of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc Book design by Nicole Ferguron Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publiation Data Capra, Frito “The hidden connections integrating the biological, cognitive, and social dimensions of lie into science of sustainability / Fritjof Capra. —tst ed, poem. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1, New Age movement. 1. Tile, [BPGOS.N48 C365 2002 toi—deat 2002023352 ISBN 0.385.094718 Copyright © 2002 by Frigjof Capea All Rights Reserved PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA September 2002 1357908642 To Elizabeth and Juliette32 the hidden connections membrane-enclosed bubbles of “minimal life,” began long before the emergence of the first living cell; and that the roots of life reach deep into the basic physics and chemistry of these protocells. We also identified three major avenues of evolutionary creativity — mutation, gene trading and symbiosis—through which life unfolded for over three billion years, from the universal bacterial ancestors to the emergence of human beings, without ever breaking the basic pattern of its self generating networks. ‘Tocextend this understanding of the nature of life to the human s0- cial dimension, which is the central task of this book, we need to deal with conceptual thought, values, meaning and purpose—phenomena that belong to the realm of human consciousness and culture. This means that we need to include an understanding of mind and con- sciousness in our understanding of living systems. ‘As we shift our focus to the cognitive dimension of life, we shall see that a unified view of life, mind and consciousness is now emerging in which human consciousness is inextricably linked to the social world of interpersonal relationships and culture. Moreover, we shall discover that this unified view allows us to understand the spiritual dimension of life in a way that is fully consistent with traditional conceptions of spirituality. MIND AND CONSCIOUSNESS %y, ne of the most important philosophical implications of the O new understanding of life is a novel conception of the nature of mind and consciousness, which finally overcomes the Cartesian division between mind and matter. In the seventeenth cen- tury, René Descartes based his view of nature on the fundamental divi- sion between two independent and separate realms—that of mind, the “thinking thing” (rer cogitans), and that of matter, the “extended thing” (res extensa). This conceptual split between mind and matter has haunted Western science and philosophy for more than 300 years. Following Descartes, scientists and philosophers continued to think of the mind as an intangible entity and were unable to imagine how this “thinking thing” is related to the body. Although neuroscientists have known since the nineteenth century that brain structures and ‘mental functions are intimately connected, the exact relationship be- tween mind and brain remained a mystery. As recently as 1994, the editors of an anthology titled Consciousness in Philosophy and Cognitive Neuroscience stated feankly in their introduction: “Even though every- body agrees that mind has something to do with the brain, there is still ‘no general agreement on the exact nature of this relationship.”!