Expanding the Scope of Science
ORIGINS
David Lorimer introduces the Galileo Commission Report
REMIT
The Galileo Commission was founded in 2017 with a view to expanding the worldview of science beyond its limiting materialistic assumptions, which are seldom explicitly examined. A central and widely held assumption is that the brain generates consciousness and is therefore extinguished at death.
Following widespread consultation in 2018 with 90 advisers representing 30 universities worldwide, we have published the Galileo Commission Report, written by Prof Dr Harald Walach and entitled Beyond a Materialist Worldview – Towards an Expanded Science. The report has been widely endorsed as a groundbreaking document, so we encourage you to support our movement by joining the Galileo Commission either as a Professional Affiliate or a Friend. There is also a Summary Report and a Layman’s Report, and a brief summary of the argument is available in a number of languages. We encourage you to read and support Dr Athena Potari’s Call for a Renaissance of the Spirit in the Humanities and to read our edited book Spiritual Awakenings, which documents the transformative experiences of 57 scientists and academics.
A Call for a Renaissance of the Spirit in the Humanities
The “Call for a Renaissance of the Spirit in the Humanities”, written by Dr Athena D. Potari, is a pioneering project aiming to raise awareness regarding how the prevailing paradigm of materialism affects the ways in which knowledge is approached within the context of the Humanities. In line with the Galileo Report, which discusses the importance of liberating the positive sciences from the limitations of the paradigm of scientific materialism, this Call aims at making the case for the Humanities as well. The Call explores how recent developments in scientific studies on consciousness, and the ensuing understanding that consciousness is primary and unified, can inform our understanding of what it means to be “human” with correspondingly appropriate epistemologies, as well as how we approach key areas of human activity, including ethics, politics and the environment.What people say…
Featured book
Featured podcast
Spiritual Awakenings – Marjorie Wollacott & David Lorimer (Eds)
Scholars share the experience of their own spiritual awakening and journey, including encountering challenges to their credibility in academia, if they shared these experiences. Their comments about transformation in values, beliefs, and approaches toward life are very moving, expressing a deep inner wisdom and connection, not only with humanity, but with the earth and cosmos.
Recent News
Philip Comella – A Mind is Always Present: Materialism’s Fatal Flaw
But a mind is always present, either out in the world organizing the dream, or in the mind of the theorist imagining how mindless stuff evolved into a world. One view takes mind out of the world and imagines how the world can create itself from nothing and then, on its own power, organize itself to the limit of mathematical order. The other approach put mind in the world and realizes that the world itself reflects the imagination — and power — of the mind. One view imagines the impossible occurred; the other view knows the impossible is occurring.
Imaginal Inspirations with Monica Gagliano
In collaboration with various disciplines across the Sciences and the Humanities, her research aims at expanding our perception of animals, plants and more generally Nature. In the process of learning how to do this, she has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics and extended the concept of cognition to plants, re-igniting the discourse on plant subjectivity, sentience and ethical standing.
AK Mukhopadhyay – Humanities and Spirit in Cell Science
Molecules, although, form the basis of behavior, the cell operates with non-observable human faculties such as information, mind, self, and ‘life’, and the operational attributes of consciousness such as will, cognition, and emotion/feelings. Hints to the solutions to several complex big issues that humanity has been facing such as violence, free will, dark energy, and the parallel universe, could be obtained from the intelligent behavior of a cell. The protoplasm of a cell, psychoplasm of the psyche, and ‘plasm’ of multiple universe(s) are brought into focus and suggested to operate in continuity.
Meaningful Coincidences: How and Why Synchronicity and Serendipity Happen
Join Tasha Simms as she speaks with Bernard Beitman, M.D., the first psychiatrist since Carl Jung to systematize the study of coincidences. A graduate of Yale Medical School, he did his psychiatric residency at Stanford University. The former chair of psychiatry of the University of Missouri-Columbia medical school for 17 years, he writes a blog for Psychology Today on coincidence and is the coauthor of the award-winning book Learning Psychotherapy. The founder of The Coincidence Project, he lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
David Lorimer – Experiment and Experience: Complementary Approaches to Truth
I believe that it is possible for science, and especially the science of consciousness to deepen into what Nasr calls scientia sacra. Here the mind is not divorced from the heart: ‘the eye of the heart perceives the unity that is at once the origin and end of the multiplicity perceived by the mind and the mind’s own power to analyse and know discursively. The light with which the mind is seeking to discover is itself a ray of the Light of God’. We return to that earlier remark by Eckhart: ‘The eye with which I see God is the same eye as God sees in me’.
Imaginal Inspirations with Howard Eisenberg
On the ‘left brain’ side, he’s a Physician with post-graduate training in both Psychology and Psychiatry, and is one of the international pioneers in both the clinical & organizational aspects of Stress Management... On the ‘right brain’ side – Dr. Eisenberg earned his medical degree and master’s degree in Psychology simultaneously!
