Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Right now, in 2005, we have several forces jockeying for worldview dominance.
1. The scientific world with physics still the king and committed to an implicitly reductionist worldview. Major unsolved problem is grand unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics - the solution of which would yield predictions on spacetime formation.
2. The deconstructive postmodern world with viewpoint relativism still holding sway. Not clear if there's a grand problem that needs to be solved.
3. The traditional religious world with Christian fundamentalism in the US at the helm. End times are near.
4. The spiritual/new age/new paradigm world which is still holding out for an 'Aquarian conspiracy' of some sort. Updated in a mature way by Ken Wilber and company into an integral worldview.
5. The emerging engineering/technological world which is seeking to get out from under the scientific worldview. Mainly driven by the need to solve 'impossible' problems - or problems labeled as impossible by science - such as automated language processing, vision, bioinformatics and finally consciousness.
My prediction for the not so distant future is that we'll have a synthesis of 4 and 5 and that the spiritual component in 4 will counterbalance the excessive pragmatism of 5 and vice versa. The spiritual/technological synthesis will allow for the possiblity of a World Spirit which is not skewed toward one of Christ/Krishna/Buddha/Allah etc. and will not allow its inherent technological optimism to be derailed by the pessimism of 1, 2 and 3. The way this synthesis will be reached will be via a sophisticated and updated panpsychist theory of consciousness coupled with a renewed determination for pragmatic problem solving with technology as an aid.
1. The scientific world with physics still the king and committed to an implicitly reductionist worldview. Major unsolved problem is grand unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics - the solution of which would yield predictions on spacetime formation.
2. The deconstructive postmodern world with viewpoint relativism still holding sway. Not clear if there's a grand problem that needs to be solved.
3. The traditional religious world with Christian fundamentalism in the US at the helm. End times are near.
4. The spiritual/new age/new paradigm world which is still holding out for an 'Aquarian conspiracy' of some sort. Updated in a mature way by Ken Wilber and company into an integral worldview.
5. The emerging engineering/technological world which is seeking to get out from under the scientific worldview. Mainly driven by the need to solve 'impossible' problems - or problems labeled as impossible by science - such as automated language processing, vision, bioinformatics and finally consciousness.
My prediction for the not so distant future is that we'll have a synthesis of 4 and 5 and that the spiritual component in 4 will counterbalance the excessive pragmatism of 5 and vice versa. The spiritual/technological synthesis will allow for the possiblity of a World Spirit which is not skewed toward one of Christ/Krishna/Buddha/Allah etc. and will not allow its inherent technological optimism to be derailed by the pessimism of 1, 2 and 3. The way this synthesis will be reached will be via a sophisticated and updated panpsychist theory of consciousness coupled with a renewed determination for pragmatic problem solving with technology as an aid.
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