Creating Consilience: a non review--I am aghast

PUBLISHER:

redshirt

Shaun Johnston:
In modern times we've made two revolutionary discoveries. One is, how changes in physical matter can be accounted for in terms of physical laws that can predict precisely what will happen next. Having given rise to science (how this can be studied) and industry (how it can be applied) this revolution is well under way.

The second revolution is, how emergence of species of living creatures can be accounted for in terms of them evolving from one another. This revolution, despite its promise of how much it could tell us about ourselves, remains stillborn through the mistaken application to it of principles coming out of the first revolution--reductive physicalism.

For this second revolution to advance it should be taken from under the wing of science and studied on its own terms. Tip: one recent product of evolution is creatures with minds. Minds are better studied through methods of the humanities than through those of science. Tell me, does this interest you?

Details: Written by Shaun Johnston Shaun Johnston; Published: December 7, 2011 December 7, 2011; Hits: 3827 3827

Feeling infuriated on reading just the introduction, I don't think I can go on. l am aghast at the promotion of reductionism as a goal in itself, rather than as a utility in the service of the true meaning of life, which is for me almost the opposite. The business of science is reductionism, the business of the humanities is to take the output from reductionism and build it back up into--what?

The word I want would mean enrichment of conscious experience. What is the opposite of reductionism? Inductionism? No. The closest I have come up with so far is "transcendence." This has supernatural overtones though its root "transcend" is close to what l want.

Here's an example: Freud analyzed (reduced) unconscious motivations into such as denial, repression, projection and sublimation. We can transcend events, and that in ourselves likely to react predictably to those events, by incorporating awareness of these mechanisms into the resources available to consciousness. We enrich the experience of consciousness by incorporating into it the fruits of reductionism.

Thus, the role of science is reductionism (maybe). The role of the humanities is what I am labeling transcendence. Barbarism lies in favoring one over the other. For reductionism barbarism lies in denying that conscious experience is the ultimate goal of study. For more on consilience select "Humanities & Evolution" in menubar above.