The Science of the Future: Liberation from the Cartesian Prison

 

Mike Lydon

 

ABSTRACT: 

 

This presentation aims to trace the roots of the modern scientific paradigm, and argues that the scientific revolution was not the product of a dispassionate search for truth, but rather, at least to some extent a reaction to witchcraft hysteria, superstitious thinking, and that it was a legitimization of the power of the church and state at the turn of the 17th century. The reason that science has so much bias against psychic phenomena, and also the study of consciousness per se, is due to metaphysical biases that have nothing to do with the scientific method or the current amassment of empirical data. All scientific investigations are necessarily about our experience of the world, and are thus internal on some level, as they reflect our view (or consciousness) of the world, and never arrive at anything purely objective or a “view from nowhere.” Given that all events have internal and external components, this points towards a uniformity in consciousness concomitant to the uniformity in nature. If there is uniformity in human consciousness as much as there is uniformity in nature, and consciousness is the basis from which we arrive at facts in nature, what would then preclude us from saying that the other more internal contents of consciousness as well as other states of consciousness are intersubjectively coherent and that they can be studied scientifically? The experience of a laboratory is based in the same overall framework of consciousness in which psychic and transcendental experiences occur, but these types of experiences are seen as taboo for scientific investigation, for arbitrary reasons based on outdated metaphysics. This lecture aims to shed light on the fact that we are actually already engaged in a science of consciousness, and examines why most of us don’t realize it, and why others are reluctant to.

 

Keywords: science, philosophy of science, Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm, phenomenology, experience, consciousness, intersubjectivity

 

 

 

Michael Graham Lydon

Writer, Independent Consciousness Researcher

Science of Self at Queens College

 

Education

Undergraduate in Philosophy and Psychology, Queens College

Awarded Distinguished Honors in Philosophy at Queens College

Member, PSI CHI, Psychology Honors Society at Queens College

 

Extracurricular

Volunteer and teacher-in-training, International Academy of Consciousness, New York, NY

Founder / President, Science of Self Club, September 2004, Queens College at CUNY

Officer, Queens College Philosophical Society

Lecturer, Penn State University UNIV-CON 2004

 

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mlydon@usa.net

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