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
03/02/2021 – Tom McLeish on The Rediscovery of Contemplation Through Science
ISSR is pleased to announce that the 2021 Boyle Lecture will be given by Professor Tom McLeish, Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of York, on the subject of “The Rediscovery of Contemplation Through Science”. The lecture will be given at 6.00 pm on Wednesday 3rd February 2021. However, due to the ongoing global pandemic, this year’s lecture will be available only online.
Imaginal Inspirations with David Lorimer – Marilyn Schlitz
Marilyn Schlitz is a social scientist, author, and speaker. Her clinical, laboratory and field-based research centres on consciousness, human transformation, and healing. Her latest book Death Makes Life Possible was accompanied by a film of the same title and explores the idea that facing our mortality inspires us to live our lives more fully.
Anthony Judge – Reframing Fundamental Belief as Disinformation
How is misinformation to be distinguished from any information with which authorities disagree or prefer to have suppressed?
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.
