Darkness in the Contemporary Scientific Imagination and its Implications

In recent years there has been a growing interest and reporting in the popular press and scientific literature on the topics of dark energy and dark matter. The mysterious, unknown nature of these entities has captured the cultural imagination. However, very little psychological reflection has been offered on the attention given to these phenomena. A brief overview of the human fascination with (and fear of) the dark is presented as a backdrop to the current interest being given to realms of darkness in modern cosmology. Beginning with the hypothesis of dark matter in the 1930s based on astronomical observations of galaxies, this fascination has grown. More recently the even more mysterious dark energy, a repulsive force opposite of gravity that creates regions of void, has come to the forefront of cosmological studies. This dark energy is purported to be one of the shaping elements in the evolution of the large scale structure of the universe. The psychological significance of the scientific imagery generated by these studies is heightened when a comparison with neural patterns in mammalian brains is made. Furthermore, the model of the universe emerging from these studies has striking parallels with certain schools of Buddhism, especially those that value nothingness as the key to reality. Jungian psychology is shown to be well positioned to appreciate the paradigm shift represented by the confluence of these visions

On the Topology of the Noosphere

As a young child I had a certain set of dreams, the enigma of which remained mysteriously hovering in my memories to this day. In one of these earliest dreams of my life, I am playing hide-and-seek with my friends, but am observing myself from an external third-person perspective, just as all my dreams had regularly been until then. I remember that the next morning, my waking conscious mind had noticed this split between self and observer and judged it unusual, and so in the following night’s dream, I somehow willed my observer self to merge into the body of my self that was being observed. In this apparently spontaneous lucid experience, I forced myself into what I deemed to be a proper first-person subjective experience. My dreams have never been the same since then. I began to miss the third-person view and wonder why I did what I had done to get rid of it, and in general puzzle over the deeper meaning of these events

On the Topology of the Noosphere

As a young child I had a certain set of dreams, the enigma of which remained mysteriously hovering in my memories to this day. In one of these earliest dreams of my life, I am playing hide-and-seek with my friends, but am observing myself from an external third-person perspective, just as all my dreams had regularly been until then. I remember that the next morning, my waking conscious mind had noticed this split between self and observer and judged it unusual, and so in the following night’s dream, I somehow willed my observer self to merge into the body of my self that was being observed. In this apparently spontaneous lucid experience, I forced myself into what I deemed to be a proper first-person subjective experience. My dreams have never been the same since then. I began to miss the third-person view and wonder why I did what I had done to get rid of it, and in general puzzle over the deeper meaning of these events

No Solace in Quantum: Indeterminacy and Collapse of the Wave Function Do Not Explain Consciousness

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Quantum Technologies and Society: Towards a Different Spin

Due primarily to technological advances over the last decade, quantum research has become a key priority area for science and technology policy all over the world. With this manifesto, we wish to prevent quantum technology from running into fiascos of implementation at the interface of science and society. To this end, we identify key stumbling blocks and propose recommendations

A.I., Cyborgs, Shamans and Transcendence Configuring the ISO and the Mythopoeic Sacred in Tron: Legacy

This essay explores the role of cyberspace in the 2010 film Tron: Legacy as an expression of the enduring relevance of religious symbolism and humanity\u27s innate search for transcendence in modern technologies. Cyberspace is investigated as a sacred space of infinite possibilities in which humanity is redefined at the intersection of the digital, fantasy and consciousness. In the examination of the film’s religious symbolism as a modern-day creation myth and its roots in shamanic cosmology, artificial intelligences in the movie depicted as highly complex humanoid information systems are proposed as a blueprint for an advanced mode of consciousness which integrates the worlds of science, spirituality and the fantastic. The “imaginative consciousness” will be proposed as the key means by which this may occur – the archetype of the ‘woman-child’ in the cybernetic figure of the ‘ISO’ in the movie is argued to represent a blueprint for the cellular and cognitive advancement of the human species, to a unique state of spiritual purity

Visions visualised? On the evidential status of scientific visualisations

‘Visualisations play an important role in science’, this seems to be an uncontroversial statement today. Scientists not only use visual representations as means to communicate their research results in publications or talks, but also often as surrogates for their objects of interest during the process of research. Thus, we can make a distinction between two contexts of usage here, namely the explanatory and the exploratory context. The focus of this paper is on the latter one. Obviously, using visualisations as surrogates for their objects of depiction presupposes the assumption that the former can tell us something relevant about the latter. Thus, a particular referential relation between object and image has to be assumed that can transfer the relevant information. Furthermore, as science is a collaborative enterprise – a social activity – this information has to be intersubjectively accessible and stable. Nonetheless, philosophers of science still quarrel about the epistemic and ontological status of such visualisations. After all, they are means to visualise theoretical entities, such as the Higgs Boson, i.e. entities that are principally not observable with the unaided eye. Especially the significant reliance on information technology devices to access this world of the unobservable provokes a lot of suspicion with regard to the referential status of such visualisations. In this sense, quite a few philosophers adopt social constructivism as an explanatory hypothesis. A particular image is constructed with the aid of instruments and theoretical assumptions; hence it does not refer to an entity outside this system. In this paper, I will critically analyse this assumption and try to argue for an alternative point of view

The Fourth Social Change Wave: Mastery or Misery?

One of the great values of social science has been its ability to identify and interpret useful themes and patterns that have shaped historical human behavior. In particular, understanding broad patterns of strategic social and technological change offers the opportunity to gain valuable insight into the present and provide potentially practical guidance for the future. This paper advances the concept of social waves of change, originally presented by futurist Alvin Toffler, as a frame work to think about what is now and what might be coming. It also provides several visions for a changed world, explores what it all might mean, offers beneficial lessons learned thus far, discusses what could really matter, and proposes some summary conclusions