Hand-out-paper

Erland Lagerroth

Science World view

 Way of Thinking

Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World, 1981

David Ray Griffin (ed), The Reenchantment of Science, 1988

Max Weber: "die Entzauberung der Welt"

Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 1980. Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis. The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, 1990

Fritiof Capra, The Turning Point, 1982; The Web of Life, 1996

Aristoteles’ philosophy - magic, alchemy - mechanistic thinking. Church and state both prefer mechanistic thinking.

Stability and security searched for after the Thirty Years’ war. The same with logical empiricism after the second World War (Toulmin).

 Francis Bacon (1561-1626): The New Atlantis 1624: Salomon’s house -> Royal Society (Merchant). Make experiments (inductive method, empiricism). Nature to be "put in constrain" to "torture her secrets from her". Witch trials. To know nature, treat it mechanically; but then your mind must behave mechanically as well. (Capra 40 f, Berman 18)

Galilei (1564-1642): experiments to find the laws of nature to be expressed in mathematical language (Capra 39 f). "That which cannot be measured and reduced to numbers is not real." (Goldsmith, The Way)

Descartes (1596-1652): geometry, mathematics, logic, rationalism. Subdivide, measure, combine. Analytical reductionism. Body and soul. (Berman 18-21)

Newton (1642-1727): combined rationalism and empiricism into an atomistic system. His pathological need for (mathematical) security a model for the European mind. (Berman 29-33, 109-112, 124)

Analysis - reductionism - dualism - mechanism - determinism - positivism - materialism - atheism

Not analysis in itself that is dangerous, but to see reality as the result of analysis: fragments.

He who asks for fragments, also is answered in fragments (David Bohm).

The world is a heap of gravel or a mechanistic machine to take advantage of.

The world becomes silent, knowledge is mechanized and turned into mathematics.

Einstein’s theory of relativity is a continuation of Newton on gravity: not why but how. Quantum physics is a continuation of Descartes: divide, reduce, even if it would lead you to the gates of hell.

There is no place for Newton, Einstein and Niels Bohr in their own world views.

Many alternatives and new ideas to-day. A fan of them are spread out in my book Världen och vetandet sjunger på nytt (part II), still more in my coming book Från kaos till kosmos - och tillbaka igen eller Två sorters vetenskap. But here I am going to talk on what I experience and believe is the most important contribution. For two reasons: it has the validity of the old science and it concerns both Man and Nature, life and materia, soul and body. Natural science and humanities are one-sided and a little dull each of them for itself, but the relations between them are fascinating.

Thermodynamics: Steam engine. Fluids, gas; volume and pressure.

1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics: energy, entropy, exergy; dissipation of energy

Riddle of the ending 19th century: Entropy death contra Darwin's theory of evolution?

Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, La nouvelle alliance, 1979;Order out of Chaos, 1984

Erich Jantsch, Die Selbstorganisation des Universums 1979; The Self-Organizing Universe, 1980;

The Evolutionarv Vision (ed), 1981

1. Equilibrium or near equilibrium. 2. Far from equlibrium

Static equilibrium / dynamic equlibrium, an act of balance, homeostas

Wholeness < structure - process - system - function > wholeness

Dissipative (process)structures or self-organizing systems (dissipater = throw apart, disperse)

Eddy, whirlpool: open, process, mode of existence

Top treated with a whip: when energy runs low, the dynamic balance is lost, the top falls, dies

Candle light: feed back, metabolism, parasites on the environment

The circulation of the heat of the sun, wheather, climate, the circulation of water and elements, ecological systems up to "Gaia", cities, societies; spiritual processes and systems; to read and understand, to speak freely, to create.

Life: all kinds of life, all functioning systems in our bodies, including the cell

For the first time a theory, a way of thinking, a world view that includes both matter and life, including the scientist himself. Prigogine the Newton of our time.

Alan Watts: theory of the skin-enclosed ego

Meditation experience

Kafka's existential debt. Life parasites, but everything above entropy costs

Criterias, conditions, phases:

Far from static equilibrium

Open for penetration of energy and matter

The thrust that starts it all: invitation to dance

Organizes itself

Feed back, self reference, autocatalysis (Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach)

Autopoiesis, self-production, self-regulation (Maturana and Varela). Also spiritually: Sartre.

Fluctuations from outside or inside. Instability threshold, point of bifurcation: the system stands

trembling, in trepidation, on the edge of chaos. Beyond the threshold, provided there is energy enough to dispose of, it exceeds itself and creates a new régime, a new mode of existence in accordance with the new conditions. Order through fluctuation (Jantsch), order out of chaos (Prigogine). Little turf often upsets big load. Need is the mother of inventions.

A theory of the wonder of creation. The only one there is.

My experience in the waiting room of the x-ray department in Lund: Prigogine is wrong.

Take a car motor to pieces, put them in the grass, point to them and say: there it is, the whole motor. No.

Principles of function. Invisibilia. Neural mind, memory etc. and metabolic. To live is to learn. Aspects of the system, the whole that we cannot see.

Riddles:

Entropy law contra Darwin’s theory of evolution, the heavy heritage from the 19th century.

Second law of thermodynamics a paper tiger?

With Prigogine we get a new theory of evolution, covering not only life but also matter.

The dicotomy matter / life dissolves, when life is seen as a continuation of the activity of matter.

The mountain that bore a rat - the greatest wonder of all!

The world gets whole again and the world and science can sing again.

Erland Lagerroth, Världen och vetandet sjunger på nytt. Från en mekanisk värld till ett kreativt universum, 1994.