Expanding the Scope of Science
How it all started…
David Lorimer introduces the Galileo Commission Report
GALILEO COMMISSION REMIT
The world today is dominated by science and by its underlying assumptions, which are seldom explicitly articulated. The Galileo Commission’s remit is to open public discourse and to find ways to expand science so that it can accommodate and explore important human experiences and questions that science, in its present form, is unable to integrate.
Following widespread consultation 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 and we encourage you to read it for yourself and spread the word among your professional network. Summaries of the argument are available in a number of languages.
Book of the month
Video of the month
Nisha Manek – Bridging Science and Spirit
In Bridging Science and Spirit, you’ll discover:
- An easy-to-understand overview of William A. Tiller’s most influential work
- Seven pillars that support the shared principles of science and spirit
- More than sixty drawings to clearly illustrate the core scientific concepts
- An exploration of the levels of consciousness and how they impact your relationship with reality
- An entertaining mix of history, physics, and spiritual anecdotes, and much, much more!
Bridging Science and Spirit is a simple guide for unlocking the capacity of human intention. If you like expert insights, complex scientific concepts explained in everyday language, and intellectually energizing material, then you’ll love Dr. Nisha Manek’s unprecedented resource.
Rupert Sheldrake on the Galileo Commission Report
Recent News
What is Scientism? – Thomas Burnett
It is one thing to celebrate science for its achievements and remarkable ability to explain a wide variety of phenomena in the natural world. But to claim there is nothing knowable outside the scope of science would be similar to a successful fisherman saying that whatever he can’t catch in his nets does not exist. Once you accept that science is the only source of human knowledge, you have adopted a philosophical position (scientism) that cannot be verified, or falsified, by science itself. It is, in a word, unscientific.
Imaginal Inspirations with David Lorimer – Iain McGilchrist
Iain McGilchrist is writer, lecturer and former Consultant Psychiatrist. He is committed to the idea that the whole of our physical and spiritual existence and wider human culture helps to mould, and in turn is moulded by, our minds and brains. His latest work, The Matter With Things, a book of epistemology and metaphysics, will be published by Penguin/Random House. You can read written pieces by Iain and watch videos of him on Channel McGilchrist.
Attention, Intention, and Will in Quantum Physics – Henry Stapp
How is mind related to matter? This ancient question in philosophy is rapidly becoming a core problem in science, perhaps the most important of all because it probes the essential nature of man himself. The origin of the problem is a conflict between the mechanical conception of human beings that arises from the precepts of classical physical theory and the very different idea that arises from our intuition: the former reduces each of us to an automaton, while the latter allows our thoughts to guide our actions. The dominant contemporary approaches to the problem attempt to resolve this conflict by clinging to the classical concepts, and trying to explain away our misleading intuition. But a detailed argument given here shows why, in a scientific approach to this problem, it is necessary to use the more basic principles of quantum physics, which bring the observer into the dynamics, rather than to accept classical precepts that are profoundly incorrect precisely at the crucial point of the role of human consciousness in the dynamics of human brains.
18/01/21 – Chris Roe – Sceptical of scepticism: an appraisal of the counter-advocate position
In this talk I’ll reflect on modern-day criticism to explore whether it is fit for purpose; to what extent are the criticisms justified and require a response from researchers in terms of modifying research designs or tempering claims, and to what extent are they rhetorical devices that seem persuasive but lack substance when scrutinised more closely.
Imaginal Inspirations with David Lorimer – Elisabet Sahtouris
Elisabet Sahtouris is an internationally known evolution biologist, futurist, professor and author. Her latest book Gaia's Dance: The Story of Earth & Us explores the earth not as a machine, but as a living being. She tells the story of its evolution over billions of years and includes research on bacterial cooperatives and maturation cycles. She has also written and spoken about the significance of imaginal cells and their transformative power.
Where Airy Voices Lead
The important point made by the author, though, is that there is no conclusive proof for any particular view, including the materialist scientific view. He further argues that rationality is present in views dismissed by materialists as irrational and unintelligible, since ‘they are all grounded in perfectly legitimate metaphysical philosophies about the nature of reality and how the world might work.’ He rightly highlights that the key issue is that psychic and transcendent experiences ‘do not fit into the materialist framework, which is only one of several possible worldviews’ – there is no unbiased standpoint without presuppositions from which one can arrive at an impartial view. Hence, he writes that the question of immortality ‘is not a clash of evidence, but of worldviews and their interpretation.’
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