Book Review

Nederlands

Consciousness and Modern Science

David Pratt

The book New Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, published by the Institute
of Noetic Sciences [1], is a significant contribution to the debate on the future of
science. It contains essays by scientists and philosophers from a wide range of
disciplines who all share the belief that science urgently needs to reexamine its implicit
assumptions about the nature of reality, since these have led to important areas of
human experience -- especially consciousness-related phenomena -- being neglected
or denied.

The approaches of the fourteen authors are very varied, but in his opening and closing
chapters, Willis Harman, president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), highlights
some of the common themes. He states that modern science is based on two main
assumptions: a) separateness -- of man from nature, mind from matter, organism from
environment, and the separability of the parts of a system or organism to understand
how it 'really' works; and b) that the scientific picture of reality should be based solely on
physical sense data. He calls for an 'extended science' or 'wholeness science', based
on two opposing assumptions: a) that everything is interconnected, that the physical
universe and consciousness, mind and matter, form a fundamental oneness or
wholeness; and b) that there are two windows for acquiring knowledge of reality: the
objective, through the physical senses, and the subjective, through the intuitive and
aesthetic faculties. He writes:

Certain aspects of the unity that is the Whole will continue to be quite
profitably studied by means of separateness science. That kind of science,
however, would, as only part of a more extended science, no longer have
the authority to insist that we are here, solely through random causes, in a
meaningless universe; nor that our consciousness is 'merely' the chemical
and physical processes of the brain. (p. 383)

While all our observations depend on our conscious self, the science constructed from
these observations seems to contain no place for a self. Scientific materialism has
traditionally reduced the mind to a byproduct of the brain and denied it any causal role.
One of the authors, the late neuroscientist and Nobel laureate, Roger Sperry, believes
that science has already largely corrected this error. As a result of the 'consciousness
revolution' of the 1970s, in which he played an important part, the prevailing view today
is that conscious mental states are 'emergent properties' of brain processes, and are
able to have causal effects, as in acts of free will; there is therefore 'downward'
causation from consciousness, in addition to 'upward' causation described by
reductionistic science. Sperry explains these 'emergent properties' in purely physical
terms; he says that they are associated with 'higher domains of brain processing' and
'operate as functional wholes in neural network dynamics', though he admits that
science has as yet no understanding of how these higher-level processes might work.
He calls this approach the 'new mentalism', but it would seem to be just a more
sophisticated version of the 'old physicalism'. He states that for a mentalist, phenomena
such as telepathy, clairvoyance, channeling, reincarnation, and psychokinesis are
'logical impossibilities', and warns against opening the doors of science to 'the
supernatural, the mystical, the paranormal, the occult, the otherworldly'. Harman, on the
other hand, says that most people who have taken the trouble to examine the subject
have been impressed by the evidence in favor of psychic phenomena, survival after
death, and reincarnation.

Another contributor, Richard Dixey, accepts the concept of 'emergent properties', but
believes that they are more than just the product of interactions between the parts of the
system concerned. In his view, the extra ingredient is 'information', which he says is
'potentially infinite' and 'binds itself' to matter, giving rise to the law-like behavior of
matter, and the new properties that emerge as matter is arranged in increasingly
complex forms. He does not say anything about the nature of this information, where it
comes from, or how it influences matter.

While Sperry maintains that consciousness can be understood without bringing in

quantum physics, Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne argue that quantum mechanical
concepts such as wave/particle complementarity, barrier penetration, and uncertainty
provide 'useful analogies' for understanding consciousness-related phenomena, both
normal and paranormal. Mae-Wan Ho adopts a similar stance, saying that
consciousness can be represented as a quantum wave function. However, quantum
physics takes us only one step beyond physical matter and processes to the underlying
quantum field, and still leaves us with a picture of the mind as inextricably bound up with
the brain. This approach therefore does not seem to allow room for survival after death
and reincarnation, since these are possible only if our conscious self is able to exist
independently of the brain. Another contributor, physicist Arthur Zajonc, refers to Rudolf
Steiner's view that humans have not only a physical body but also three subtler bodies:
an etheric body, responsible for form and life; an astral body, which gives rise to sentient
consciousness; and a selfconscious ego. However, Zajonc seems to regard these
'subtle bodies' as little more than metaphors, rather than as substantial but nonphysical
entities.

Biologist and Nobel laureate George Wald argues that mind, rather than being a very
late development in the evolution of living things, restricted to organisms with the most
complex nervous systems, has always existed, and that the universe is life-breeding
because the pervasive presence of mind has guided it to be so. Biologist Brian
Goodwin, on the other hand, opposes the idea that vital or spiritual forces play any role
in evolution. He also criticizes orthodox biology for trying to explain organisms solely in
terms of their 'genetic program'. He states:

A genetic program can define the molecular composition of the developing

organism at any moment in its development, but this is insufficient to explain
the processes that lead to a heart, a nervous system, or other morphological
features of the organism. (p. 223)

The new biology, he says, needs to recognize that organisms are 'self-organizing
wholes', generated by 'dynamic principles', and intimately connected with their
environment. The parts of an organism are ordered by a developmental field or
morphogenetic field, which he describes as the 'dynamic spatio-temporal organization'
of an organism and which he understands in standard physical and chemical terms.
Like Sperry's 'mentalism', Goodwin's 'holistic science of qualities' is still essentially
materialistic.

Harman claims that quantum theory has shown that the consciousness of the observer
is essential to the existence of the thing being observed because only when an
observation is made are the probability functions of quantum mechanics 'collapsed' into
actualities. Harman is here following a variant of the conventional interpretation of
quantum physics, but fails to mention, let alone justify, the assumptions on which it is
based, nor does he indicate that there are alternative interpretations.

A quantum system, such as a subatomic particle, is represented mathematically by an

equation known as the wave function, which can be used to calculate the probability of
finding a particle at any particular point in space. When a measurement is made, the
particle is of course found in only one place, but if the wave function is assumed to
provide a complete description of a quantum system -- as it is in the conventional
interpretation -- it would mean that in between measurements the particle dissolves into
a 'superposition of probability waves' and is potentially present in different places
simultaneously. Then, when the next measurement is made, this wave packet is
supposed instantaneously to 'collapse', in some random and unexplained manner, into a
localized particle again.

Some physicists have gone even further and claim that a measurement alone is not
enough; a wave function collapses only when the measurement is registered in the
mind of a human observer. This appears to be the view favored by Harman. This
position has recently been put forward by physicist Amit Goswami, who states that
physical objects, such as the moon, do not exist in space-time unless a conscious
observer is looking at them, and that human beings are the center of the universe since
they bring it into being and give it meaning. He remarks: 'If this sounds as if we are re-
establishing an anthropocentric view of the universe, so be it' [2]. One can sympathize
with Roger Sperry when he writes:

I take a realist position that assumes a world exists out there regardless of
whether I or anyone else happens to perceive it. The laborious excavation of
a giant ammonite or a large dinosaur femur from its cretaceous matrix
leaves little patience with a philosophy that these and their world did not
exist until our observation. (p. 113)

An alternative, more sensible interpretation of quantum theory has been developed by

David Bohm and his associates, such as Basil Hiley, John Bell, and Jean-Pierre Vigier
[3]. It is referred to briefly, but approvingly, by Arthur Zajonc and Mae-Wan Ho, though
they also endorse elements of the conventional interpretation which are incompatible
with it. Bohm takes the view that quantum theory in its present form is incomplete; the
wave function does not provide a complete description of quantum systems, and there
is therefore no need to introduce the ill-defined notion of 'wave-function collapse' (and
all the paradoxes that go with it). Instead he proposes that, although we cannot
measure their exact motion, particles nevertheless follow causal trajectories,
determined not only by conventional physical forces but also by a subtler force, the
quantum potential, which operates from a deeper, implicate, more mindlike level of
reality. Although he believes that human consciousness does not bring quantum
systems into existence, and does not significantly affect the outcome of a measurement
(except in the case of genuine psychokinesis), he argues that consciousness is not
simply a byproduct of matter but is rooted deep in the implicate order, and is therefore
present to some degree in all material forms. He suggests that there may be an infinite
series of implicate orders, each having both a matter aspect and a consciousness
aspect. In Bohm's words, 'everything material is also mental and everything mental is
also material, but there are many more infinitely subtle levels of matter than we are
aware of' [4].

Harman places great emphasis on Bell's theorem of nonlocality, which is said to have
been confirmed by experiments performed by Alain Aspect in 1982. These experiments
apparently demonstrated that if two particles interact and then move apart, their
behavior is correlated in a way that cannot be explained in terms of signals traveling
between them at or slower than the speed of light. These connections are described as
'nonlocal', but there is no consensus on how to interpret them. Harman believes that
they are an example of instantaneous 'action at a distance' and do not involve the
transmission of any sort of signals. He writes: 'with the "oneness" assumption, action at
a distance does not pose a particular problem; there is no necessity to hypothesize
fields or particle exchanges to account for it' (p. 382).

An alternative view is that while all things are one in essence, they nevertheless interact
through an interplay of forces of many different kinds, nonphysical as well as physical.
Bohm and Hiley have pointed out that future technology might make it possible to
demonstrate experimentally that quantum nonlocal connections are not propagated
instantaneously (infinitely fast) but merely faster than light, through a 'quantum ether'
[5]. Theories which suggest that signals which travel faster than light would travel
backwards in time obviously need some adjustment!

It might be objected that if the ether also consists of particles, the transmission of forces
between them would still involve action at a distance. And even if we posit an infinite
series of finer and finer ethers, since infinity is never actually reached, no particles ever
come into contact and we are still left with the puzzle of action at a distance. This leads
Harman to say: 'In the broadest sense, there is no cause and effect; only a whole
system evolving' (p. 377). But unless we suppose the parts of this 'whole system' to be
separated by gaps of absolute nothingness, it must really be a seamless plenitude, in
which everything is interlinked by a continuum of energy-substance of endlessly varied
grades -- even though our finite minds can never hope to apprehend this limitless
spectrum of energies in all its richness and fulness. Causation is therefore ultimately
unfathomable, but this is no reason to jump to the conclusion that, beyond the physical
structures and causal factors currently measurable by science, there are no further
levels of structure and causal agents, but only absolute oneness and instantaneous
connectedness.

A more concrete framework for understanding mind-matter interaction, reincarnation,

paranormal phenomena, and the purposeful nature of evolution is provided by the
ancient wisdom, which teaches that the physical world is only one octave of an infinite
spectrum of consciousness-substance, and is interpenetrated by innumerable other
worlds, some denser and some more ethereal than our own, which are imperceptible to
our physical senses. And just as the physical world is organized and coordinated by
inner worlds -- astral, mental, and spiritual -- so the physical body is animated and
organized by inner energy-fields or souls. In this view, 'self-organization' mainly
operates from within outwards, and 'holistic' or 'emergent' properties arise from the fact
that the more complex an organism's outer structure, the greater its ability to receive
and express influences ('information') from the inner levels of its constitution.

The aim of New Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science is to open up a dialogue

on the changing scientific worldview both within the scientific community and among the
public at large. Due to the academic style and rather technical nature of many of the
essays, the general reader will find the book heavy going in places, but it provides
interesting glimpses of the direction in which some scientists are moving. We are clearly
witnessing a shift away from a fragmented, mechanical, non-purposive conception of
the world toward a more holistic, organic, and purposive conception. However, the
assumptions of the 'new emergent science' naturally need to be scrutinized just as
critically as those of the old science. The future direction of science is of great concern
to us all for, as Willis Harman says, 'the modern scientific worldview is inherently flawed
and misleading in ways vital to the well-being of individuals and societies, and inimical
to the future viability of human civilization' (p. 392).

References

1. Edited by Willis Harman with Jane Clark, 1994.

2. The Self-Aware Universe, Tarcher/Putnam, 1993, pp. 59-60, 141.
3. See 'David Bohm and the implicate order'; D. Bohm & F.D. Peat, Science, Order &
Creativity, Routledge, 1989, pp. 88-10l, 172-90.
4. R. Weber, Dialogues with Scientists and Sages: The Search for Unity, Arkana,
1990, p. 151.
5. D. Bohm & B. Hiley, The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of
Quantum Theory, Routledge, 1993, pp. 293.

November 1997. Original article published in Sunrise, Feb./March 1996.

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