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…
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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
Featuring Lorna Green – #15: Ideas
The problems we have created for the Earth and ourselves, owe to ideas. And so, we need to rethink ourselves from the ground up. And the hope for the Earth plane is new ideas. These new ideas are in fact coming in everywhere.
The Folly of Scientism – Austin L. Hughes
Of all the fads and foibles in the long history of human credulity, scientism in all its varied guises — from fanciful cosmology to evolutionary epistemology and ethics — seems among the more dangerous, both because it pretends to be something very different from what it really is and because it has been accorded widespread and uncritical adherence. Continued insistence on the universal competence of science will serve only to undermine the credibility of science as a whole. The ultimate outcome will be an increase of radical skepticism that questions the ability of science to address even the questions legitimately within its sphere of competence. One longs for a new Enlightenment to puncture the pretensions of this latest superstition.
Featuring Lorna Green – #14: And so, where are we now?
That the problems now facing both Americans and the whole world are so great that they require everyone to go beyond Democrats vs Republicans, I would call it simply: People helping people, people helping the Earth.
Comments on Pinker’s view of the Paranormal – Prof Brian Josephson
I have not been attempting here to respond to a request that has been made that I provide convincing proof of the reality of the paranormal, since ‘being convinced’ is a matter of psychology, as much as it is of data. My aim has been purely to discuss the psychology and sociology involved in the relevant belief process.
Featuring Lorna Green – #13: Some Scenarios for What is Coming Down on Us
And so, the greatest hope of all: Ideas, it is all about ideas, the old ideas that have brought us to this crisis point in our relationship to the Earth and one another, the new ideas that will enable us to move into a new civilization based Love and Truth. And my conviction is that if we can know the truth about what is now happening on the planet, and its sources, we can know how to deal with it. The human race is resourceful. If we can honestly face the crisis we have created for both ourselves and the Earth, then we can find our way forward.
What is Real and What Isn’t – And why meditation is not the answer to all our world’s problems – Avigail Abarbanel
People don’t realise it but materialism, our dominant paradigm, is not backed by any scientific evidence, and it never has been. It is nothing more than a belief system that emerged as a reaction to religion and faith, and that is associated with the rise of ‘modern science’.
