I’m not always eager to promote Aristotle, but so far, no materialistic scientist has refuted the various forms of causation that Aristotle laid out for us.
The same thing here, with evolution. The utter freakout that Coyne and others experience when they hear about epigenetics or anything that even hints that “mind” or intelligence or consciousness may play a causal role in evolution has nothing to do with logic. They just KNOW in their hearts (biologist Richard Lewontin, by the way, actually admitted his adherence to materialism had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with hatred and fear of religion) that materialism is the only way to explain anything, and that is what scientists MUST adhere to.
But just as is the case with psi, whatever mind-evolution effects scientists will finally wake up to, those who insist on defying Aristotle and even the simplest most basic logical premises may, if they wish, defy the open-minded open-hearted spirit of science and continue to insist that all we need are mateiralist/physicalist premises.
The mechanists and organicists fought over this during the Renaissance. Unfortunately, the mechanists - aptly represented by those like Francis Bacon who characteristically spoke of nature as “She” (capital “S”) and called for his “fellow’ scientists to “rape” and “subjugate” “Her.” - won. And with Crick, Dawson, and other contemporary mechanists, they’ve been controlling the dialog since.
In the Coyne article I linked to, Coyne rages about science as “one way of knowing.” Well, sorry Jerry, it is only one - at least, the purely quantitative, life denying, the universe is as pointless and meaningless as it is dead and stupid type pseudo-science that passes for knowledge these days, is only one way of knowing. Very powerful for predicting and controlling (you might call it the “Trump” based kind of knowledge) but useless for understanding.
No, worse than useless, because it gives the illusion of understanding, whereas more than 2 millennia ago, the Vedantins understood quite well (the original Upanishadic Vedantics, not necessarily the Advaitins) that such superficial quantitative knowledge was the very essence of “Maya” (one of the translations being, “to measure” - another translation being “magic”).
It is a very dangerous Frankensteinian magic. The Jewish tale of the Golem alludes to this as well. There have been warnings about the asuric power of “number”, of “measurement” for thousands of years among the earth’s wise men and women.
We seem to be at a turning point. This power that comes from measure is destroying our climate, and may lead to the end of the human race. Jean Gebser, Sri Aurobindo, Duane Elgin, Iain McGilchrist and others have warned us, if we don’t put this mechanistic, quantitative form of knowing (which, in the political sphere, takes the form of abstract digital money taking precedence over life-giving care and kindness and compassionate service - a demonic form of power grabbing that was illustrated beautiful on the battlefield of Kurushetra in the Bhagavad Gita) in its rightful, secondary place.
McGilchrist borrowed from Nietzsche’s fable of the master and his emissary, the emissary (our quantitative mode of thought) stealing the place of the master (our intuitive, direct way of knowing) and thus leading to his ruin. McGilchrist masterfully analyzes the Icarus-like hubris of Western civilization in his book of the same name (The Master and His Emissary) and shows the truly horrific place we’ve come to (reflected in the world-wide, neoliberal/neo-conservative power structure that is almost entirely in control of the mechanistic science and technology of the 21st century (with the corollary take over of medicine by Big Pharma and the pushing of STEM in our educational sphere).
By the way, Jerry Coyne, one of the great high priests of fundamaterialism, once admitted, though with great reluctance, that epigenetic changes - even those caused by psychological phenomena - do in fact last for at least 4 generations - and hinted that it might actually be possible that they could lead to longer lasting or even permanent genetic changes.
It doesn’t take much to see that that could lead to a radical overview of what evolution really is. Add to that the irrefutable replicated psi studies, and recognizing that psi effects could be part of these epigenetic changes, particularly because of the lack of defined individuality in most animals leading to field-psi effects, and you at least begin to see the meaningfulness of evolution.
Add to that a revolution in the understanding of how so called “laws of nature” came about and how they could possibly persist (see Raymond Tallis and Steve Talbot on this; Talbot possibly being the best writer available on the net on the miserable failure of quantitative science to understand anything about anything), combine with a revolutionary understanding of psi (see James Carpenter’s “First Sight” theory, mix with Francisco Varela’s neurophenomenology) and place it all on a foundation of Ed Kelly’s panentheism (see Michael Murphy’s free article on the net) and Sri Aurobindo’s purna advaita (integral non dualism) and you have the first inklings of what science will be like in the 22nd century.
Patrik, Jerry Coyne is one of the biggest materialist fanatics on the net. He is absolutely impervious to reason when any of his physicalist fantasies are challenged.
There is not a single empirical finding that requires us to believe in the truly psychotic and ultimately incoherent faith of physicalism. Thus, when someone is an adherent of that faith, they have to not only believe crazy things, but attack all the sensible things that challenge their faith.
Auro.maa.org
4.1 Health – A Dynamic Equilibrium
Introduction
The past few decades have seen rapidly changing concepts of health. While the ancients could never view health in isolation and a human being as an egocentric special something, standing apart from the world, the last couple of centuries have become obsessed with the illness concept of health almost exclusively. The extreme reductionism of modern life sciences has also led to an overemphasis of such an isolation of ‘a part against the whole’, demanding an exclusive study.
All this has led to an extremely mechanistic or an almost a mechanistic view of life. According to this view, life is a machine, grossly physical with nuts and bolts to be replaced or overhauled, as and when wear and tear takes place. While the wisdom of the past had extended life not only to man’s immediate surroundings but also to the sun, the moon, the planets and the whole cosmos, the current preoccupation has been with a narrower and still narrower view of life. This has been further exaggerated by the modern tendency to specialise and overspecialize, whereby the same symptom means different things to different specialists and albeit even gets cured equally well or equally badly by them. Even among the super-specialists there is such a disagreement that it will be no exaggeration to say that the doctors today are becoming less comfortable with the living patient and are more at ease while dealing with dead tissues, observing their pathologies under the microscope. Let us examine some of these issues.
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