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What are Paradigms? They are Statements about the Nature of the larger reality and our relationship to it; as Whitehead has insisted no culture can extend beyond the Worldview upon which it is grounded. They have been few in number The emergence of each is apt to be unpredictable -in which the new is apt to dislodge and replace the old. They are breaks in the continuity of the endemic culture's self image Up to this point no paradigm has been able to hold its ground beyond a limited point in time; there has been Despite the new insights which each such brings with it, there has as yet been to convergence to a consensus Here is a brief listing of the more significant movements to date; it is filled out by the images scrolling by in the screen alongside. O A prolonged age of myth and culture O The Great Religions of the East O The Athens of Pericles O The Christian School of the Middle Ages O The Reformation O The Renaissance O The Golden Age of Systems Philosophy O The Enlightenment O The Secular Positivism of the Present Day Our present Weltanschauung is utterly bankrupt and the times cry out for a radical replacement
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What has happened is that the legitimate enterprise of disciplined empirical interrogation and eduction of the underlying Formal principles has decayed into a Cult. This that claims that the laws and categories of physics and its satellite disciplines which are reducible to them provide a sufficient description and account of the Larger Reality.
In so doing, science has vastly exceeded its mandate. Nothing whatever is to be found -within the Lex Naturalis upon which the discipline is grounded tell us anything whatever about the categories and modalities of Consciousness, Authentic Agency, or the vast realm of subjective 'meaning' with its affirmation of ethical proprieties. In its attempts to make do with the meager resources at its disposal, it has corrupted and degraded these domains beyond its legitimate ken; It is responsible for much of the alienation that so undermines the present culture.
It is found seriously wanting -even within its own territory. The phenomena manifest within the Organic Realm demand exotic extensions to the body of Natural law if they are to be fully accounted for
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Secular Modes Limited to Physics Atomistic Pluralistic Extrinsics Dominant Brain Dominant Behaviourist Psychology Neo-Darwinism Sufficient Creativity Denied |
Transcendental Categories-Complete Holistic Monistic ("Neutral") Intrinsics Dominant Mind Dominant Introspective Psychology Needed Entrance of Mind Gödelian Novelty Affirmed |
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Approaching the Creation of the New Paradigm |
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The Current 'Intellectual' Scrutinized
The problems with the current scene are not limited to Weltbild itself but extend to the mindsets entertained by its principle architects.
The mainstream science intellectual is ignorant, gullible, dogmatic and short-sighted. He is ignorant because of his trashing of large chunks of his lexicon; this leaves him without the ideas and concepts that he needs to pose the great questions correctly -let alone provide satisfying answers. His gullibility is beyond belief in his acceptance, for example of Neo-Darwinism as a sufficient explanation of evolution -especially of the astonishing cornucopia of life that has emerged. He has become as dogmatic as many a scholar of the Dark and Middle ages -though his implacability here is of another kind. Finally, he has no sense of perspective; he is incapable of contemplating a different order of things outside his Weltbild -let alone of taking up a new position. Yet these same men have come to regard themselves as paragons of open-mindedness and rationality.
This is why -whatever else- the New Paradigm that we so sorely need shall not come from him. Here -as has so often proved true in the past- those making the greatest contributions to the existing paradigm are the least able to contemplate a new order of things |
The Demands that Must be Met by All
It is absolutely essential that any candidate tackling this daunting task must start by bringing the right Mind Set with him. This means that he's doing to do a great deal more than to 'try his best'; he must entertain have reached the resolution that he is going to make it happen. Second he must have somehow acquired an immunity from infection from the current cult; for some reason, so very few are so blessed; there is no single factor which undermines otherwise competent professionals from getting started. Given this gift he must be in no doubt about the magnitude of an across the board sea change that needs to be made. There must be a completely new start that shall break free of all previous initiatives; emphatically it will be no way any extrapolation from the cult of the status quo. Finally, he must be a plain man first -someone standing upon the bedrock of commonsense- and an intellectual second.
Where skills and accomplishments are concerned what we most need is that of an architect -an architect of ideas- who can put together a coherent Systems Philosophy. But he must also have sufficient Existentialist gumption to avoid the cognitive myopia of the likes of Hegel. It is also essential that he follow in the footsteps of Descartes and Leibniz in recognizing that a problem in systems building is also one calling for inventions in Logic and mathematics. But the formalisms that we need will be those of a different order -broad enough to deal with all modes and categories. |