Paying the Piper
The choices of subjects to which the scientific method is traditionally applied as a disciplined, rational practise in specialised social institutions, has always been determined by the utilitarian needs of the mercantile industrial civilisation which provides the economic support for them. Even what is observed can only make sense if patterns can be identified by induction which are then imposed on the sense data. Pre-existing abstract theory always precedes which patterns are identified as relevant “facts”.
Sociology teaches us that the objective observer is just a deceptive fiction since all human beings are role actors embedded in cultural matrices and have personal histories and biases, though this is frequently denied by skilful rationalisation or “spin”. Narcissistic post-modern sociologists influenced by Parisian spin doctors have lost the plot and can avoid personal accountability by denying that role actors with their rights and obligations even exist! Everything is social control by mysterious forces that no one but them can understand. It seems to me that becoming jargon-mongering celebrities is all that interests them, though their ideas should not be dismissed without critical examination.
Process-Relational Cosmology
I assume that the future lies in what is called Process Cosmology or Process-Relational Cosmology which avoids making a separation between the observer and what is observed and instead insists that what actually happens at all levels in the universe is “more real” than either abstraction. For example, choosing the term “experiencing” in preference to “observing” radically changes the disembodied and irresponsible quasi-divine observer into an embedded human participant in the cosmological process. Recognising the need to deduce intention at all levels of being, and not just divine or human, as a factor in all event processes is vital. It is also important to realise that the universe is not a chance-driven mechanism made up of abstract “objects” in abstract “space”, but is best understood to be self-creating and made up of multi-level, evolving, self-organising systems in complex relationships made up of control and feedback loops, sometimes resulting in sudden qualitative upgrading,
Such a radical reassessment of consciousness could only be possible if the traditional intellectual elites are faced with a political-economic, psychological and environmental crisis of massive proportions together with great improvements in communications technology as happened after the collapse of the Bronze Age civilization. Political-economic instability, the new cheap production of iron and expansion of written documents provided fertile soil for the last great qualitative evolution of consciousness. I am convinced that the present political-economic turmoil and the explosive spread of electronic communications, especially the decentralised world-wide network of the Internet, could provide the same facilitating service today.
