Though written some 70 years ago, it is valid even today

Re: Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies - I by Rich on Tue 05 Dec 2006 08:18 AM PST Profile Permanent Link Well certainly I think we all can agree that there are other forces both known and unknown abetting the evolution of consciousness, than just reason. However, setting aside at present the unknown which is in the domain of metaphysics, I think we could all agree that the most fundamental instrument of evolution is biology. So this begs the question, if human reason is developing instrumentation to alter our very biology, and the biological mutations which are the result of this alteration, become the adaptive mechanism of the future evolution (of human consciousness), then the phenomena which emerges from the intervention of reason, becomes something greater than, the sum of its parts (e.g. reason) does it not?

by RY Deshpande on Tue 05 Dec 2006 09:14 PM PST Profile Permanent Link Aren’t there too many unknowns even in our knowns to make the search frustrating? If we can think of the knowable unknown—not resting in the domain of metaphysics—then there could be a possibility of developing instrumentation for its investigation or study. But can reason posit anything about this kind of “knowable unknown” to pursue our inquiry in order to open out new lines of exploration. I wonder. Of course it is futile to talk about unknowable of any kind—known or unknown. If we have to extend the list of tools given in the Synthesis-passage we should also include in it the Mind-sense, Manas, used by reason. And then to quote a passage from the Letters:

“Science itself has come to the conclusion that it cannot, as it once hoped, determine what is the truth of the things or their real nature, or what is behind physical phenomena; it can only deal with the process of physical things and how they come about or on what lines men can deal with and make use of them.”

Though written some 70 years ago, it is valid even today. And about Manas:

“Manas, say our philosophers, is the sixth sense. But we may even say that it is the only sense and that the others, vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste are merely specialisations of the sense-mind which, although it normally uses the sense-organs for the basis of its experience, yet exceeds them and is capable of a direct experience proper to its own inherent action.”