The Hokkaido Foundations of Science Symposium

A Rationale for the Hokkaido Foundations of Science Symposium
Symposium Participants' Bios
Symposium Papers
Symposium Video Clips
Symposium Audio Clips

A Rationale for the Hokkaido Foundations of Science Symposium, July 2008

Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D., Co-Convenor
February 2008

Are planet Earth—and even the entire Universe—conscious and alive?

Most people think the answer to this question is "no" because science has proven that the universe is made of non-living matter/energy, accidentally evolving from a singular event called the Big Bang, and that planets are accidentally assembled stardust—our own being Earth, on which life evolved from non-life, intelligence from dumb mud and consciousness from brain matter.

This is indeed the Creation Story of western science, but has it been proven? Current debates, and even court trials, between Darwinians and Creationists have opened the story to question. The debate is framed as being a conflict between science and religion, but the story of science itself is changing and this sharp, publicized conflict may be solved from within science itself.

In fact, many western scientists, influenced by also studying eastern sciences and philosophies, have come to the startling conclusion that life does not come from non-life, that intelligence is already inherent in "dumb mud" and that planets, as well as people and their brains, evolve within a limitless universal consciousness that gives rise to everything we know as our universe.

Doesn't Science give us facts instead of beliefs?

How can they come to such conclusions in the face of scientific evidence to the contrary? The simple answer is that science has no evidence to the contrary. Science, like religion, is founded on a set of beliefs-beliefs that were arrived at through reason, rather than revelation, but unproven beliefs nevertheless. These beliefs are the fundamental assumptions of science, which, by agreement among scientists, are the most reasonable assumptions that can be made as a basis for scientific inquiry. Unfortunately, as philosophy of science in academia has been replaced by more "practical" or "realistic" courses, even scientists lack awareness of the difference between their beliefs and the enterprise of forming theories and performing research. Nevertheless, all theory, research and interpretation of results is colored by the unproven foundational beliefs.

Originally, western science and religion were merged in Descartes' belief of a universe created by a Christian Grand Engineer God who designed all of Nature as machinery and put a bit of God-mind into his favorite robot, man, so that he, too, could create machinery. This belief accounted for conscious intelligence as the root of all creation, but was later revised to exclude God-thus divorcing science from religion. This also eliminated all consciousness and purpose from Nature while keeping the concept of Nature as an assembly of machinery, clearly implying that "natural" machinery could and did create itself in accidental processes. This remains the current belief in biology, the study of life, although, somewhat ironically, physics has moved far beyond the mechanistic metaphor, if still divided on the primacy of consciousness.

Why are foundations of science a matter of interest to the world at large?

Every human culture has had a Creation Story to tell its people how Nature began and how to understand their human nature as a guide to their human lives. In some indigenous cultures and in the three powerful Abrahamic religious cultures—Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Creation was the intentional action of deity that remained as non-physical parental authority to humans, with priesthoods to maintain and enforce the relationship. Eastern religions, as well as some indigenous cultures, more philosophical in their bent, saw Creation as a naturally intelligent process of evolution within a cosmic sea or field of consciousness giving rise to material worlds. Thus the human world is divided by beliefs in what we might call external versus internal Creation, or a Creator agent versus an inherently creative universal process.

The European Enlightenment, while rooted in Christianity, led to the formation of secular states in which the alliance of economic power and science displaced the previous alliance of church and state. Therefore, the mandate for telling "official" creation stories shifted from religion to science. Scientific belief, though divorced intentionally from religion, would be classified as on the side of internal creation (with a small 'c' to distinguish it as accidental rather than intelligent), thus giving it some natural affinity with eastern philosophies, as so many western-trained scientists have discovered.

Authorship of the western scientific Creation Story is shared by physics and biology. Physics gives us the non-living accidental material universe originating in a Big Bang and then running down relentlessly by entropy (the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics), while biology adds that life swims upstream against this tide in an endless competitive struggle in scarcity (Darwinian evolution)-a struggle life loses eventually in the overall heat death of the universe. It is of interest that both Darwinian theory and the concept of Entropy date to the two decades between 1870 and 1890.

This depressing story—a mixture of foundational belief and research conducted and interpreted in the framework of those beliefs—gave rise to philosophies of meaninglessness and consumer societies we now find to be unsustainable, which means they must be changed to survive. Fortunately, as indicated above, the story no longer fits the data of science itself, and a scientific story antithetically filled with hope for a better future is possible.

The Hokkaido Seven Science Symposium

In July 2008, an international group of seven eastern philosophers and western scientists will meet to reconsider these fundamental assumptions of western science and begin to propose more appropriate alternatives for our times, with a long range view toward bringing western science and eastern science formally into alignment as a global science.

The dialogues among the participants will focus on the reconsideration of foundational assumptions of western science: how each participant sees them, their implications for science and society, what changes in those assumptions are now in the air among ever increasing numbers of scientists trained in the western tradition, and what can be done to publicize this evolutionary trend among students and practitioners of science and to the international public at large, since the fundamental stories of science regarding the nature of the universe, our planet and humanity within that greater context affect worldviews inside and outside the practice of science as indicated above.

In a time of need to shift as quickly as possible from unsustainable lifestyles to sustainability around the globe, we recognize this issue, especially as concerns the relationship between consciousness and matter, to have key potential for facilitating that shift. Pending the success of this initial symposium for seven distinguished participants, there will be a larger, more inclusive symposium in 2009 and a continuing public relations campaign to ensure that the issue gets beyond inspiring conversations and into an effective campaign to enlist as many like-minded scientists and supporters as possible in the very near future.

The current situation to consider in PR strategy

For academic and research scientists: Very few scientists are even aware that the entire edifice of science rests on a set of unproven beliefs about our universe and ourselves, such as that the universe is non-living, that humans can study this universe objectively, that physics can describe this universe adequately, that our consciousness is an emergent product of matter, etc. So the first task is to bring this awareness to science itself, and show that alternative sets of assumptions may fit the actual data of science better and lead to whole new fields of inquiry. For example: If the assumptions of Vedic science that consciousness is universally primary and gives rise to matter (the exact opposite of the belief than matter gives rise to consciousness) fit better as a foundation for western science, the implications would be enormous. And exactly this is the conclusion many western-trained scientists, including the symposium participants, have come to believe.

For the public: The dominant world culture, lives within the western scientific creation story that tells them the universe is accidental, meaningless matter running down relentlessly by entropy and that life is a competitive struggle in scarcity against this downward slide-as stated above, the most depressing creation story any culture has ever told and one not even fitting the results of scientific research itself. Living under it has driven our consumer society as comfort in that bleak scenario, only to reveal now how very unsustainable it is. Threatened not only by economic but by climate disaster, the world is desperately in need of a better, more inspiring story to live by....and science, mandated to write our creation story, is now in a position to open its mind, reassess its foundational beliefs, and give us that new story filled with hope and promise. As that story will also be compatible with spiritual beliefs and development, it could also go far to reduce the tensions between science and religion and among the religions themselves.

The Hokkaido Foundations of Science Symposium Participants

Brian David Josephson

Physicist, Professor of Physics, University of Cambridge; 1973 Nobel Laureate in Physics

Publications: Consciousness and the Physical World (co-editor);The Paranormal and the Platonic Worlds

Elisabet Sahtouris

Evolution Biologist, Futurist, Business Consultant

Publications: EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution; A Walk Through Time: from Stardust to Us; Biology Revisioned (with Willis Harman)

Enoé Texier

Anthropologist, Doctor of Social Sciences

Publications: "Creadores por Tradición"; Ímpetu Sagrado; Redes de Comprensión; Educar en Valores es Educar para la Paz.

Manjir Samanta-Laughton

Holistic Medical Doctor

Publications: Punk Science: Inside the Mind of God

Osman Bakar

Philosopher of Islamic Thought, Philosopher of Science, Professor of Islamic Thought and Civilization, International Islamic University of Malaysia; Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Science, University of Malaya

Publications: Tawhid and Science: Islamic Perspectives on Religion and Science; The History and Philosophy of Islamic Science; Asian Islam in the Twenty-First Century (co-edited with John Esposito and John Voll); Environmental Wisdom for the Planet Earth: The Islamic Heritage.

William A. Tiller

Physicist, Material Scientist, Professor Emeritus, Department of M.S.E., Stanford University; Chairman and Chief Scientist, William A. Tiller Foundation for New Science

Publications: Science and Human Transformation: Subtle Energies, Intentionality and Consciousness; Conscious Acts of Creation: The Emergence of a New Physics; Some Science Adventures with Real Magic; Psychoenergetic Science: A Second Copernican-scale Revolution

Yasuhiko Genku Kimura

Transhumanist Philosopher, Buddhist Priest, Scholar, and Translator, Corporate Consultant

Publications: Think Kosmically Act Globally; The Book of Balance (Tao Teh Ching), Alignment Beyond Agreement; The Third Enlightenment; Further Reaches of Human Consciousness

The Hokkaido Foundations of Science Symposium Papers

Brian David Josephson

Elisabet Sahtouris

Enoé Texier

Manjir Samanta-Laughton

Osman Bakar

William A. Tiller

Yasuhiko Genku Kimura

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