It’s not often that human society goes through a radical change in world view. In fact, that last time it happened was about 400 years ago. Then, as now, most people were completely oblivious to the transformation while it was happening but within just a few generations people were looking at the world quite differently.
At that time, of course, Copernicus, and after him Galileo, were demolishing the idea that the Earth was the center of the Universe. But that by itself was not the major change. The radical change was the invalidation of Scholasticism, in which truth was established by reference to the opinions of authority figures, and replaced by the process of observation and experiment, which we call the scientific method.
What was so important about this was that over time it changed the way everyone looked at truth, not just scientists. And it was made possible by the contribution of Descartes, who “solved” the Church/science conflict by proposing that science deals with matter, and the Church deals with spirit/mind, and they don’t overlap, therefore they don’t conflict.
So the Church could go its merry way as Scholastics, appealing to the authority of ancient mythic documents and the Church leadership, and the scientists (and the rest of society) could use observation and experiment.
But there was one hitch in this idea of parallel realms of truth, and that was the mind. It was declared by the Church to be a part of the soul, spiritual and intangible, untouchable by science. But it was declared by science to be nothing more than something that happens when a brain gets complicated enough. The mind was just an “epiphenomenon” arising out of the matter of the brain. The common thread in the beliefs of both the Church and science was that the mind and matter didn’t interact (unless it was a “miracle.”)
The duality of Decartes was maintained via these assumptions for almost 400 years. And for most science it worked quite well. We’ve learned a great deal about the physical universe using a strict materialist perspective. But starting about 100 years ago discoveries on the leading edge of physics began casting doubts on the ability of materialism to explain everything.
Enter the Observer……
You can see my previous post on Consciousness and Physics for a summary of what’s happened since. But I believe that we’re in the middle of a shift in world view that will not only unify science and mind, but eventually affect the way that all of society thinks in a radical transformation similar to the Copernican revolution. And that’s a good thing.
