Science is continually expanding the horizons of our knowledge. The growth in computing power is almost exponential and the brick wall of finite size of processing element may be tunneled through by the development of quantum computing. Our common consciousness is expanding at an incredible rate. Our awareness of this consciousness, our philosophy has lagged far behind. Now is the time to invest the resources of our greatest thinkers in the project of organizing and controlling this burgeoning library of knowledge. If not, rare nuggets of gold may be lost. The chance to engage large swathes of the populace in the project may equally be lost. There may be many very talented gold diggers out there not engaged in the enterprise. The aim is not to reach a goal faster but to ensure that humanity keeps a proper course. Finding that true course is the real aim of philosophy.
The true course of life remains hidden to humanity despite the many revelations of various religions. These revelations have played an important role in the evolution of societies but are now outmoded for a globally connected mobile society. The troubles at the interfaces of the pockets of set dogmas have led to most of the wars of mankind. There is need for dogma to be replaced by universal openness to the newly emerging paradigm of humanity in total as part of an island of consciousness in an otherwise lifeless cosmos. From this paradigm directions will emerge that lead in the direction of the true course. The directions won’t be from personal revelation but from myriad contributions of each part of the greater whole. In this way, if an individual develops a philosophy that is deviant or harmful to humanity in political, economic or social terms, then its impact will be diluted by the fact that it is only a small part or contribution to the whole. For substantial change in paradigm there will have to be very substantial change in the philosophies of the many as opposed to the few.
The focus of the true course has to be on the continuous change that is the essential feature of the cosmos. Time is change. All matter is subject to change. Change is at the heart of everything in the cosmos. Nothing stays the same. An object at any point in space is ruled by the dynamical laws of change. If subject to no net force then it maintains its course for all eternity. This is the correct course for this object. It is attained when the forces acting on it reach a counterbalancing equilibrium. A rock in the earth’s gravity field will fall at an increasingly faster rate until it hits the ground where the reaction force then counters the gravity and it assumes equilibrium. We say it is at rest but it is in fact in motion in the earth’s inertial field - it is moving at a constant velocity made up of the addition of the earth rotation, the earth orbit, the sun’s orbit around the galaxy, the galaxy’s motion around a great cluster of more massive galaxies and other unknown combined cluster motions. It is not at rest. It is at rest only in its local inertial frame. Everything is moving along with it. It is in effect in harmony with its environment.
On earth a rock, even after falling, does not stay in the same place but is subject to other forces such as water flow or wind pressure. These forces arise from the effect of the sun’s electromagnetic radiation on the earth. All macro objects in our local inertial frame- the earth, are subject to either the gravitational force or the electromagnetic force. Their state results from a balance of these forces. The normal state of a macro object in the inertial frame is relative rest which is the goal of the gravitational force. The electromagnetic radiation from without the system, from the sun’s rays, upsets this equilibrium and causes change. It is this change that is at the basis of all life on earth. It brings together objects that gravity would other wise have kept separated. The chance coming together of molecules with appropriate properties was the formation of the first memory unit that formed the basis of life. It was when the molecules were close enough that the electromagnetic force could have an even greater role in the sharing of electrons in various chemical bonds arising.
The two forces that dominate our patch of space-time, the gravitational force and the electromagnetic force, are both trying to make matter come together but in different ways. When matter is far apart it is only gravity that is effective even though it is incredibly weaker than the electromagnetic force. Gravity is more than a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion times weaker. Yet its impact, however infinitesimal, remains despite its decrease with the square of the separation distance. Left to its own devices over infinite time all matter would contract and form one gigantic ball. But nature has not left it to its own devices. When the ball of matter is large enough another counter force is unleashed, the nuclear force. This stops further contraction of the ball through the heat generated by nuclear fusion at the heart of what is now a sun. A new equilibrium is achieved between gravity and now the powerful nuclear force. The continuous battles release the waves of electromagnetic radiation that bathe the earth in warming glows and provide the local ammunition for negating gravity’s local impact.
Out of all this a course for consciousness that emerged from the local space-time may be discerned eventually. Consciousness represents the state of creation of memory - a memory of the cosmos looking at its past in a local inertial frame or patch of space-time. Gravity by itself could never have created the circumstances for the evolution of memory except at the very crude scale of matter morphology. The necessary ingredient was the input from without of the sun’s radiation which was, in turn, the result of the temporary, albeit over a very long time, defeat of gravity at the hands of the mighty nuclear force.
If these are the ingredients of consciousness - a sun created by nuclear forces generating electromagnetic radiation that falls on a gravity created object at a certain distance apart - then it is not only probable but likely that pockets of consciousness or memory will pop up throughout the universe. Humanity is not the only life in the cosmos. This is the new paradigm. This reveals a sense of course for consciousness in our small patch. We are part of the evolution of consciousness in the wider universe. Not more special than others yet very special because we are the universe looking at itself, aware of itself. This is a startling new paradigm that presents a challenge to all of existing philosophy and all religions. The individual is placed on a cosmic footing. His life is a small contribution to the evolution of cosmic memory. This elevates rather than demeans the individual. It places him in space-time where his existence though brief is captured forever because the increasing power of cosmic consciousness at some far, far distant eon, trillions of years from now, will be able to recreate the past as well as foretell the future. All the huge manifold of the space-time bubble that is our own universe will have been explored just as we initially set out to explore our planet and succeeded, and are tentatively setting our sights on the solar system and beyond. These are journeys in space but consciousness will explore in the realm of space-time.
The course of cosmic consciousness is one of increase in the store of knowledge, of memory of past and unfolding of future. It is the goal of all life. Humanity is at the top of the evolutionary tree on earth because it has, alone, developed self-awareness. All the other life forms are either necessary steps on the course of homo sapiens evolution or past or future evolutionary cul de sacs in terms of developing their own self-awareness. The sixty five million years of the dinosaur age was one long fruitless experiment. There were millions of others unrecorded by geological history. It was not a progressive ascent but merely a chance event in the millions of experiments that came to being in the flowering of life on the planet. Humanity is at the top by rare occurrence rather than by design. But there at the top it is and the significance of this can not be ignored.
The laws of physics act blindly. They follow their own path unwaveringly and all inert matter follows accordingly in a docile manner. Only life can offer opposition to the fateful outcome of the laws. Life has the secret weapon of memory and this combined with inductive ability allows it to exercise a type of free will outside the overbearing power of the laws. Free will can sail within the laws but has the ability to choose a defined course. Lower life forms have a sense of free
will based on the extent of their memory structure. All structure is by definition memory. The lowest life form has structure and can to a limited degree exercise free will. The ant chooses his path in accordance with the memory structure of his biology. There is little or no past element to this and his exercise of free will is thus very limited to instinctual response to his immediate environment. He moves around in space rather than in space-time from his own perspective. Humans move in space-time because they carry their past with them and by exercising inductive skills they sculpt their own future. They in effect live in time. Use of inductive skills based on accumulated knowledge or memory allows the individual to mould the forces constraining his being to match his own desires. By accumulating a vast store of knowledge he can extrapolate the past into his future and ensure a better chance of survival. If a baby places a hand on a hot object and feels pain, it has the inductive power to avoid re-placing his hand on the object.
Such a skill presupposes the ability to control movement. All life forms have this ability to some extent. The energy for this movement comes ultimately from the sun’s electromagnetic radiation. Free will is thus an outcome of memory and movement both of which owe their origin to the sun’s radiation, the electromagnetic waste from the nuclear burning at its core. Free will is as such encoded into consciousness by the very fact of a common origin. Free will is consciousness’s weapon for survival. Free will allows the choice of a less dangerous future which is essential for survival. Individual freedom should thus be at the heart of all philosophies. Without it survival itself is threatened. Yet this freedom must be constrained in some way so as to ensure survival of consciousness as a whole. The exercise of these constraints has to be chosen by consciousness in a deliberate manner with the long term survival in mind. There is no reason to assume that local consciousness may not decide to kill itself by the exercise of its free will. There is no onus on humanity to survive. The cosmos will, and most probably has, thrown up millions and millions of local consciousness forms throughout the universe. Our untimely demise will not affect the overall survival which will persist by virtue of chance due to the vast size of space-time. Yet humanity’s desire for survival is implicit because without it we would not exist - that we are here at all demonstrates the will to survive. That we have survived demonstrates that we have free will over and above the constraining laws of nature.
Knowing the ground of free will, philosophy has to relate the actions of the individual towards himself, to those of his fellow humans, to other life forms and ultimately to the local patch of space-time we call the earth.
The actions of a small piece of consciousness towards itself should obviously be such as to promote chances of survival. Some actions automatically are not oriented towards that end. Self harm, in terms of bodily or mental abuse due to drugs, poor diet, lack of mental or physical exercise, is obviously not geared to survival. The ultimate self-harm is suicide. Self harm is minimized by the exercise of self restraint. The ability to control biological desires to eat, keep warm, to rest and sleep are the main determinants of how much an individual self-harms. We all self harm to some extent - the religious concept of sin comes to mind. The idea that we are all born with original sin has grounding in the fact that we are born with no constraints on our need to eat and sleep. These are our consuming desires. We demand their fulfillment without any scruples. As we get older we learn that there must be some control of these desires. The world is not a limitless store ready to satisfy our every need. We learn to reign in our desires. This is part of normalizing our world to that of the world outside. Some never manage to learn adequate control and become psychopathic or social misfits. Some few others make the control a lifelong habit and goal and become recluses or monks. Between these polar points there are many socially accepted norms depending on the society concerned. This is as it must be because to impose any one strict norm leads to survival fragility to changes in the environment. What societies try to engineer is a distribution of personal restraints that always has a peak nearer to the ascetic end of the scale. To achieve this, higher stress and value is accorded to monk-like behaviors. Self control is venerated and seen as something desirable. The sportsman, the adventurer or the artist, are all set on a pedestal by society because, to achieve their high aims, they must learn the strictest form of self restraint. They are the modern monks of the monasteries.
But self restraint and prevention of self harm is not enough for a person embedded as a unit of a diverse society. Interpersonal relations, unless one is a hermit or a cloistered nun, are equally important for survival. All threat comes either from the physical environment or from our fellow human beings. The latter always present the greater threat. There are those who distrust their fellow man no matter what. As a strategy this ensures that they will never be caught unawares but it leads to a barren life. There are others who have total trust in others. This total trust that is the normal state for the young child is one from which we grow out of as we experience the small knocks of living. This necessary maturation is part of a healthy evolution of the individual. The total spectrum of trust goes from the childish total trust to that barren place of total skepticism. The central peak of the distribution in this case should be closer to the trust end of the spectrum. Society is ultimately based on trust. Philosophy must make the case for trust across the diverse societies of the planet. Each individual society with its own religious dogma has developed local trust but it is at the confluences of societies that the common trusts don’t translate and conflict results. Universal trust must emerge if wars and more importantly nuclear wars are to be ultimately avoided. Universal trust is founded on the broad acceptance of a wide variety of views. The world will never shrink to one single religion or political philosophy. It may, and perhaps must, shrink to a general philosophy that is broad enough to encompass all the creeds, nationalities, societal and political norms of a multi-cultured, globalized, mobile world.
Humanity’s relations with other life forms, once so pivotal for physical survival, have relegated them to that of food provision, leisure aids or mere pests. The hunter and prey relation that has formed so much of our evolution has long ago disappeared. We have lost the connection with our fellow life forms. Their continued existence is always under threat and thousands of species are extinct - never to be seen again on a planet that gave them life and existence. Many are extinct for reasons that are outside the influence of humanity but all the current survivors are subject to the power of homo sapiens. It is the great tragedy of life that one form has the capability to destroy all others. Man has systematically destroyed the habitats of living creatures. The western world is bereft of wildlife. The increasing development of the third world is continuing the process. Soon the only wildlife remaining will be in urban zoos and wildlife parks. Philosophy has been strangely silent on this mass extermination. The relationship of man and animal has not been a major theme on the philosophical agenda. Is this because the issue has no importance for the existence of humanity? The key to the survival of the remaining wildlife is to establish the value they bring to the human existence. Each life form is on a journey of evolution, one that may be summarily terminated at any arbitrary point. Like our own existence they are efforts of the cosmos to become aware of itself. They too have developed an, albeit limited, memory such that unlike a barren rock they can mould the laws of physics to suit their ends. They are the flowerings of the cosmos and they reveal something of its mystery. They are different from us mainly in terms of their memory capability but biologically are very similar. As yet we have no idea of the potential interconnection between the various life forms. Just as we failed to recognize the importance of forests for the stability of the troposphere before it was too late and we had chopped them all down for raw material for our human needs, so too we may destroy the last remaining wildlife only to later realize a value that we had ignorantly missed. The cosmos is speaking to us through the variety of life forms and we are as yet unawa
re of this. This potential value of wildlife alone should be enough to make us want to save them from extinction.
Mobile life forms such as humanity and animals represent only an infinitesimal fraction of the biological life on the planet. By far the greater mass or volume comes from trees and plants both terrestrial and aquatic. Humanity has already wreaked havoc on this legacy by destroying most of the natural forests on the planet. The increasing advance of agricultural land has wiped out whole ecosystems of diverse plant species. Plants like animals are messages from the cosmos. They are pockets of memory that have evolved and are evolving on a journey that has or will be tragically foreshortened. Unlike the case for animals there is a popular sense of loss associated with this widespread destruction. Many potential drugs and substances thrown up by the chemical lab of evolution have already been lost. The huge positive impact of the large swathes of forest on environmental equilibrium has only too late been discovered. Here too philosophy has sat on the fence. It has not developed an ethics of man’s interaction with his environment. It was there to exploit as a seeming endless resource. It had no intrinsic value other than an economic one. It was left to poets and landscape artists to explore the deeper values of our physical environment.
Maybe the starting point should be an awareness that humanity is living in a small patch of space-time called earth. Because it is a flowering of consciousness of the cosmos, it has a very special position in this local space-time. It has the ability to look at its own existence. This has allowed it over the last hundred years to stretch this view far beyond the solipsistic view to encompass the fellow man, fellow creatures and the living environment. One of the most sublime photographs has to be that of the planet earth taken from space. It allowed man for the first time see the blue rock that is his home. This image, more than any, has reset the paradigm of humanity. It gave us for the first time a sense that we are all in this together. The planet is our only place to live and our relationship with it as the only conscious life form was now the central relationship. This resetting of relationship has yet to seep into the philosophical norms. It can only do so when planet, humanity and all life forms are all considered as one whole, a tiny patch of space-time on the outer arm of a galaxy in a potentially infinite cosmos.
Humanity is the leading edge of consciousness, the cosmos looking at itself. From a tiny corner of the universe a ship has set sail just as the Beagle set sail in years gone by. It sets off to explore new worlds, to increasingly reveal more of itself to itself. Like the Beagle there is a determined crew to chart its course through unknown waters. The scientific community is that crew working with determination to chart the unknown. Yet the voyage of the Beagle would have passed un-remarked by history had not it on board a person called Darwin. Darwin was the person who stood back from the enterprise of geographical charting but instead just observed and drew conclusions. The voyage of consciousness through the universe has philosophy as its Darwin. Philosophy sits back and observes and extracts meaning. The philosopher although he must understand the terrain need not be a navigator but must be a keen observer constantly shaping the questions that the new discoveries reveal and drawing out the meaning of the ever increasingly strange landscape.
This is a new model for the philosopher. To bring this about the training of the young apprentice has to change to enable him to be of use on the Beagle. He still needs the traditional philosophical baggage but he now needs another special trunk – a heavy trunk that is filled with the necessary apparatus to be able to observe and understand the new landscape. The use of this apparatus is complicated and will require many years training before the philosopher is readily equipped to start his observation. The young apprentice needs grounding in the areas of modern mathematics and physics not at the intensity of the science practitioner but at a level that enables him to understand the world he is about to enter. This is the new world in which a new philosophy will emerge.
Many conservatives may balk at such a proposition. The turgid tomes of ancient philosophy should be the basis of all new entrants to the cult. If a philosopher does not know of the historical revelations of his predecessors then he is handicapped from the start. Maybe those conservatives should be allowed their views and consign their apostles to reading the history of philosophy. They will become historians rather than philosophers. Philosophers must live in the present and try and influence their own times using the best knowledge available to them. If the efforts to study the history of all the philosophy generated by the great pantheon of the past takes all the energies of a practitioner then there is little room left to take on board the even greater advances in the voluminous knowledge of the modern era. The school of modern philosophy will have classes in history but will be focused on the present. It too will have many classes in mathematics, physics, astrophysics, cosmology, cosmogony, and the great monsters of current knowledge quantum theory and string theory. These tools are necessary to enter the world of modern consciousness. This is where consciousness is pushing at boundaries. New revolutionary ideas are emerging constantly, changing the paradigm at rates that were never seen before. This world is couched in a language of its own. The current languages cannot describe it as it describes a world totally different from our everyday world yet one which is the basis of our normal realities. The philosopher has to learn the rudiments of this language. Having done so, he can explore this emerging new world and observe philosophically rather than scientifically. The scientist asks the mechanical ‘why’. The philosopher must ask the existential ‘why’.
In a way this is going full circle back to ancient times when Pythagoras was all of mathematician, scientist and philosopher. In classical Greece it was possible to be all three because the sum total of all human knowledge was very much within the grasp of the individual. This gave Greek philosophy its power that has never waned over the millennia. The slow development of philosophical thought, post the classical period, was paralleled by the barren period for science throughout the Middle Ages. When philosophy re-birthed after the dark period it was again the alliance with the great scientific thinkers such as Descartes and Leibnitz that it found its rejuvenation. The onset of the modern period, with first the work of Einstein and later the great quantum theorists, was a time marked by a separation of the historical partners. The pace of change and the complexity of the theoretical basis of science left its partner behind. Philosophy had not stood still but had of itself developed many great thinkers but the linkage with the ongoing development of consciousness had been broken. Philosophy began to look inward for its ideas. It began to cannibalize itself not realizing that its role was to eat the knowledge being provided by others. It found its own knowledge more appetizing. It developed a way of thinking and writing that became turgid to all except the initiated and the dedicated. It lost touch with the reality it was chasing. In a way it became solipsistic and fed off its own dialogue. Its relevance to the external world declined. Ask anybody to name a modern philosopher and you will get a blank look and a shrug. Philosophy! Who cares?
To become more relevant philosophers have to engage. This engagement cannot be at the level of current dialogue found in philosophical works where the over-reliance on logic and language lose the audience in resigned boredom. Certainly dialogue must be precise and strictly defined but to allow this constraint to smother the message undoes any gain. The primary goal of philosophers must be to communicate ideas to the populace, to effect an influence over their proceedings and deliberations. This is what made philosophy so relevant in ancient Greece. Socrates was not interested in writing down his thoughts. He spoke to the people. He taught his ideas to students. He influenced his society profoundly with his thoughts. Philosophy needs a modern Socrates. Philosophy needs its own Einstein.
Eleven
Interlude