World View-Where it all starts                                                                             

A world view is the totality in which we live and to which we can relate ourselves in a meaningful way. The aesthetician Stephen Pepper recognized five ways of dealing with reality: formism, mechanism, contextualism, organicism and selectivism. These root metaphors, as he called them, were the use of one part of experience to illuminate another, to help us understand, comprehend, even to intuit, or enter into the other. Each was a distinct and perfectly plausible way of making sense of the world, but they were independent, and couldn't be mixed. Pepper formulated each root metaphor in his own way, but formism broadly corresponded to Platonism contextualism to Dewey's pragmatism and organicism to Hegel. Mechanism corresponded to the Anglo-American empiricist tradition: general laws that explain a world ultimately made up of sense impressions. Selectivism was introduced later, in Pepper's Concept and Quality of 1966, as the purposive act. Each level of analysis has its own inherent advantages and disadvantages. My favorite however is organicism. From this we get systems thinking which is a wholistic world view that recognizes the intricate interrelationships of phenomena rather than linear approaches such as formism or mechanism.

Your worldview "limits" how you perceive information, it bounds you to a certain perspective and can prevent you from seeing alternative explanations and view points. For instance, with a formistic worldview Anaximenes attempted to bring some order out of the myriad points of light in the sky. He argued that the earth is like a table-top floating in the air, the sun, moon, and planets float like leaves, the stars are as nail head fixed to the vault of the heavens. Further observation, in part guided by Anaximenes’ theory, led to anomalies. In a mechanistic worldview Aristotle incorporated these anomalies into a theory which explained them while retaining those elements which the Milesian had successfully interpreted. It turns out, however, that Aristotle’s system of crystalline sphere will not accommodate the intricate movement of the planets. Ptolemy (second century, AD) abandoned the crystalline sphere while retaining their circular motions. By manipulating these circular motions in various ways and adding epicycles, Ptolemy’s system could precisely describe the path of the heavenly bodies. In the sixteenth century Copernicus moved the sun to the center of the universe and further simplified the description of astronomical phenomena. Kepler even further refined the Copernican system and Galileo through the use of his new contraption, the telescope, garnered evidence which supported the Copernican view. Newton in the seventeenth century adds new systematic integrity of astronomy and even more importantly, integrated astronomy and mechanics into one inclusive system. The contradictions between theory and observation which remained in the Newtonian system were largely resolved by Einstein with an organic worldview.

Newton's Worldview

Newton for example exemplifies mechanistic thinking. For many years, Newton's laws portrayed a universe that ran like clockwork and much of our science and cultures have used a Newtonian worldview as its foundation. In recent times, as we have amassed more knowledge and revised our theories, in looking into the subatomic world Newton's laws have come apart at the seams. Much more chaotic and complex interrelationships abound once one changes their worldview. Thomas Kuhn would call this a paradigm shift.

Inextricably woven into Newton's universe was the influence of the Church. As time has passed, religious explanations have become more and more suspect as science has demonstrated fundamental errors in both the Church's teachings and science influenced by such. Hence, today's efforts to remove all religious explanations for the world around us abound. This is understandable, but fundamentally flawed in and of itself. The main problem is that most scientists have little or no knowledge of the Biblical text in its original languages, and unfortunately theologians suffer from the same malady and are also not trained in the scientific method.

Most of the debates between science and the Bible have stemmed from a misunderstanding of the book of Genesis, in particular the creation story. A successful communication process occurs when receiver of the message understands the message just as the sender understood it. Knowledge of the language of Hebrew is essential for understanding the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. When one looks closer at the Creation story in Hebrew, the ambiguous and abstract nature of Hebrew allows for much of what science says concerning creation and chronology. However, science is always changing its theories of genesis whereas the Hebrew text remains virtually unchanged for more than 3500 years.

Communication Process

There are many models theorized to capture the communication process, the linear model by Shannon and Weaver, the interactive model, and the transactive model. In all cases of communication, a successful communication process occurs when the receiver understands the message just as the sender understood it.

The elements of the communication process are:

• Input. The sender has an intention to communicate with another person. This intention makes up the content of the message.
• Sender. The sender encodes the message, e.g. the idea of "piece of furniture to sit on." Thus he gives expression to the content.
• Channel. The message is sent via a channel, which can be made of a variety of materials. In acoustic communication it consists of air, in written communication of paper or other writing materials.
• Noise. The channel is subjected to various sources of noise. One example is telephone communication, where numerous secondary sounds are audible. Even a solid channel such as paper can be crushed or stained. Such phenomena are also noise in the communicative sense.
• Receiver. The receiver decodes the incoming message, or expression. He "translates" it and thus receives the
• Output. This is the content decoded by the receiver.
• Fields of Response. In the process, the relevance of a code becomes obvious: The codes of the sender and receiver must have at least a certain set in common in order to make communication work. That frame of reference is the sum of experiences in the form of each person's knowledge, beliefs and values. Our frame of reference is also greatly influenced by the culture to which we belong. On the basis of that body of personal knowledge, each member of the audience decodes the message. As members of the audience differ, so will their interpretations of what they hear.

Written communication such as ancient texts including the Bible is a linear process in which there is no feedback loop to allow for correction. Also, given the factors of culture, history, geography, and language, the more the receiver shares in these elements, the higher the probability of a successful communication process. When the sender and receiver do not share the same culture, historical time period, or geographical location, or language, the probability of a successful communication process is low.

Let's now put things into perspective. Ancient texts such as the Bible were written by those senders whose fields of experience are vastly different than modern receivers. We do not share the same history, geography, or language and there is no feedback given to the sender to allow for error correction. Noise is the enemy of information. For Shannon and Weaver, noise is more than an irritating sound or static on the line. It is anything added to the signal that’s not intended by the source. Here is where the effects of a translation come into play. A translation is a major source of noise, where unintended meanings have a high probability of occurring. It no wonder that there are so many understandings, sects, denominations, and wars due to this miscommunication process.

Successful Communication Process

A successful communication process occurs when the Receiver understands the message just as the Sender understood it.

As the fields of experience (language, culture, history, geography) overlap, a higher probability of a successful communication process occurs. It is incumbent upon the receiver to learn as much as possible about the field of experience of the ancient writers to best understand the message. This includes learning about the ancient histories, geography, and languages of the Biblical writers and to be able to work with the texts in their original languages assisted by cultural, historical, and geographical knowledge. This is a very formidable task.

British playwright George Bernard Shaw once quoted England and America are two countries separated by the same language. Recent events such as Tiger Wood's innocuous statement after the 2006 Master's referring to himself as a "spazz" and Ben & Jerry's "Black and Tan" ice cream demonstrates how important the fields of experience must overlap geographically, historically, and culturally despite having the same language.

Mokusatsu

The following example dramatically demonstrates the far reaching effects of a mistranslation. You have probably never heard of this word because it is a transliterated Japanese word. Frank Gibney, in his book Japan: The Fragile Superpower, refers to the confusion in last-minute negotiations, just prior to Pearl Harbor, between the U.S. Department of State and Japanese Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura, because the latter may have misinterpreted Cordell Hull's diplomatic politeness as a willingness to negotiate further.

In the summer of 1945, Premier Kantaro Suzuki responded to the Potsdam Declaration by issuing a noncommittal statement that was, in effect, a request for time. Suzuki's wording, however, was ambiguous, especially his use of the word "mokusatsu," whose shadings of meaning include such as "to pass over in silence," "to ignore," "to reject" and "to make no comment." It was the last of these shadings that Suzuki had intended to convey, but the Domei News Agency chose to translate mokusatsu as "to ignore," a translation which paved the way for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Darwin's Worldview

Now that Darwin no longer needs to be demonized, evolution remains the biggest leap for our understanding of the development of life on earth. His was one of an organic worldview which encompassed the interaction of environment, behaviors, and genetics (although he knew nothing of genes as the mechanism of transfer). The environment of an organism applies stresses or pressures on the survival of the organism. Those organisms possessing qualities that facilitated survival, passed those qualities on to their offspring genetically.

Religion as an Evolutionary Adaptation

Cognitive psychologists are beginning to realize that perhaps such a pervasive and historical phenomenon as religion could have a biological underpinning. Studies into hunter-gatherer societies have shown that they have a fear of ancestral ghosts who they think are constantly watching them. It turns out that understanding the "messages" of unseen agents is directly related to how we comprehend the minds of other human beings. Once children are able to reason about the mental lives of others, developmental psychologists refer to them as possessing a theory of mind. Autistics behave the way that they do because they have an inability to formulate a theory of mind regarding the intentions and emotions of others. If it were evolutionarily advantageous for human beings to believe that omnipotent deities would punish them if they did wrong, they would always do right and conversely, that if they do not do wrong, the supernatural being will not punish them, tantamount to a contract complete with an offer, acceptance, and consideration.

Of course, another plausible explanation, but presently untestable and therefore not subject to disconfirmation (therefore a weak theory as far as science is concerned) is that the ability to communicate with a deity is an adaptation due to an external intervention by a deity.

Darwin vs. Religion

Evolution has been the biggest contributor to the tension between the worldviews of science and religion. In particular, the account in Genesis vs. the evolutionary process has been the biggest attention getter. Optimal thinking applied to this issue involves the fact that the account of the Creation in the first few chapters of Genesis were written before science was even developed. The Biblical text is in no way scientific. But more importantly, it was written not in English, but rather Hebrew. And it is to the Hebrew one must turn to in discussing any conflicts between science and the Bible. The Hebrew account of the genesis of the earth is fraught with ambiguity and abstractness. The English translations only proffer the simplistic meanings of the Hebrew and the nature of English is that it is much more precise. When one reads the account in Hebrew, it can accommodate what science says. An interesting insight is that science has had many versions of the genesis of life and yet the Hebrew can accommodate the many theories and yet has remained virtually unchanged for 3500 years. One can unequivocally say that there is absolutely no conflict between science and the Bible, once one correctly approaches the problem.

Anthropic Principle

Today, Scientists are exploring reality at the organicism level of analysis and some unanswerable questions have led to what is called the anthropic principle. According to Wikipedia: The term "anthropic principle" was first proposed in 1973 by theoretical physicist Brandon Carter in his contribution to a symposium titled "Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data" honouring Copernicus's 500th birthday. He took this opportunity to articulate the anthropic principle as the contrary of what has come to be called the Copernican principle (which Copernicus emphatically did not articulate), which denies that the position of human beings in the cosmological order is in any way privileged. (Just as Copernicus argued that the Earth is not the centre of the universe, we now know that the sun is a typical star located in a typical galaxy.) Carter's symposium paper, "Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology," included the statement: "Although our situation is not necessarily central, it is inevitably privileged to some extent."

Evolutionary Worldview

I have not touched on the problems with the theory of evolution such as no evidence yet offered for transformation of a lower form of life to a higher form of life across order lines. But as Kurt Lewin said, "there is nothing so practical as a good theory." So ignoring the problems of the origin of life that haunts evolution, let's look at its practicality. Evolution merely means change. It is demonstrable and measurable and lends itself to scientific verification. The theory is useful to explain many philosophical questions of the ages. For me, the theory not only provides a bedrock foundation for biology but psychology as well.

MentalOptima

Animals adapt to novel environments in the long run by random mutations of their genes that may or may not be beneficial, but do allow successful survival. Man adapts, in addition, by changing his environment to fit his genes. Unfortunately, there is now a mismatch between our ancestral and modern environments. The implications of this mismatch are of dramatic proportions. Paleopathologists tell us that the skeletons of Paleolithic humans reveal powerful beings with robust musculature and little evidence of "Western" or modern diseases such as osteoporosis, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular, etc. Probably the first synthesis of the implications of evolution and health only dates back to the 1970's. Based upon this recent "Worldview" what happened?

Technology has often radically altered the food we eat. Harnessing fire some half-million years ago not only meant cooked meat, it also meant that many vegetables that would've been inedible could now be eaten. We've found useable ovens from the preagricultural world of twenty thousand years ago. Another milestone was the widespread rise of pottery some 12,000 years ago. With pottery, we gained means for storing foods. Anthropologists tell us that there was a shift from hunter-gatherer around 10 to 14,000 years ago. When we turned from hunter-gatherers into farmers and settled down to live in one place, we ate more grain and dairy products. That led to using yeasts and fermentation to preserve food. We began baking leavened bread, making cheese, and brewing beer. In their book Ancient Inventions, Peter James and Nick Thorpe describe how the ancients ate. The great civilizations of the Mideast added the important element of vegetable oils to their diets -- corn oil, olive oil, rape seed and sesame seed oils. The use of sugar first became widespread among Arabs in the seventh century. But the use of honey and various fruit juices as sweeteners goes back into prehistory. Imported Oriental spices were already very popular in ancient Rome. They were used both to preserve food and to enhance its flavor.

Anachronistic Genome

Contemporary societies have been classified and ranked as more "primitive" or more "civilized" based upon technology and population growth and ostensibly, the above information concerning social progression seems innocuous. Being more civilized comes at a heavy price for our genome has not had enough time in 10,000 years to change our gut morphology or our psychology to successfully adapt to the sweeping environmental changes. Our modern bodies and our skulls house Stone Age minds, muscles, and organs. Many of our common physical and mental ills are attributable to this fact. But the best strategies so far are calorie restriction; reducing levels of insulinlike growth factor 1 (IGF-1)a protein; and preventing oxidative damage to the body's tissues. Although we cannot change our genome presently to match our newly created environment, we can change our personal environment to "switch on" our beneficial genes to dramatically improve our health and prolong our life. It was believed that once past a certain age, death genes start to do their dirty work. It is advantageous for organisms past their mating prime to die off. Now it seems rather that death is a wearing out of an organism and this can be slowed. Reduce your calories, slightly stress your body and allow the stress fighting genes to do their thing. Seems that reducing an individual's food consumption by 30 to 40 percent compared with what is considered normal extends your years. Various theories abound, such as the marshalling of Sirtuin enzymes, reduced metabolism, or the reduction of oxidants. Whatever the case, try and reduce your calories and eat only foods, not food products.

Mismatch Between Modern and Ancestral Environments

Beginning about 10,000 years ago, a tick in geological time, when the agricultural revolution started in the Middle East, in China, and in Mesoamerica, populations increased tenfold in density over those of hunter-gatherer societies. Families settled on small plots of land, villages proliferated, and labor was finely divided as a growing minority of the populace specialized as craftsmen, traders, and soldiers. The rising agricultural societies became increasingly hierarchical. As chiefdoms and then states thrived on agricultural surpluses, hereditary rulers and priestly castes took power. The old ethical codes were transformed into coercive regulations, always to the advantage of the ruling classes. This dramatic change has occurred too swiftly for genetic adaptation for it was not biologically driven, but was cognitive and cultural in nature.

Human life in the EEA (Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness-essentially the Pleistocene, the whole, long period lasting from 1.6 million years ago up until the shift to the Holocene with the invention of agriculture and large settlements 10,000 years ago) is still inherent in our cognitive makeup. Evolutionary Psychology says that the mind is a set of information-processing machines that were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. One concept is that the usual human social group was roughly 150 people, and groups of about a dozen males would go out to hunt, working together, while some females would gather fruits, nuts and vegetables. Without getting into discussions about details, the relevant implication here is that food was shared amongst everyone in the tribe of 150 (unlike in chimpanzee groups where individuals would gather food for themselves). In the EEA, human females chose male partners on the basis of their ability to provide for her and her offspring. This was the environment and its adapted behaviors for the majority of human existence.

Psychological Implications

The mismatch between our modern and ancestral environment has not only physical but psychological implications as well. Psychologically speaking, the anthropologist Robin Dunbar has done some of the most interesting research in this area. Dunbar's argument is that as brains evolve, they become larger in order to handle the unique complexities of larger social groups. Humans socialize the largest social groups because we have the largest cortex. Dunbar has developed an equation, which works for most primates, in which he plugs in what he calls the neocortex ratio of a particular species - the size of the neocortex relative to the size of the brain - and the equation gives us the maximum expected group size for each species. For humans, the max group size is 147.8, or about 150. This figure seems to represent the maximum amount of people that we can have a real social relationship with - knowing who another human is and how they relate to us.

Dunbar has gone through anthropological literature and found that the number 150 pops up over and over again. For example, he looked at 21 different hunter-gatherer societies around the world and found that the average number of people in each village was 148.4.

In contrast, modernly we live in urban settings exposed to thousands or even millions of people in polluted environments. We are bombarded by stimuli such as traffic jams, advertising, easily obtainable foods, leisure technologies, etc. that have no analog in our ancestral environment.

Adapted mechanisms such as the limbic system are ancient in design and enabled us to survive in ancient environments. The limbic system is the seat of the emotions and exhibits psychological pain, anxiety, depression, fears, phobias, jealousy, anger, and upsets. Each served us well in context: such as sexual coercion (psychological pain), inhabiting a subordinate position in the social hierarchy (depression), spousal infidelity (jealousy), and strategic interference (anger). Unfortunately, these emotions are overtaxed in today's modern environment requiring therapy and drug treatments.

Unhealthy Responses

People who cope with long-term stress by engaging in unhealthy behaviors and lifestyle, may very well alleviate symptoms of stress in the short term, but end up creating significant health problems in the long run. Americans engage in unhealthy behaviors such as comfort eating, poor diet choices, smoking and inactivity to help deal with stress, according to a new national survey. These of course, are just the opposite responses needed. People experiencing stress are more likely to report hypertension, anxiety or depression and obesity. In particular, women report feeling the effects of stress on their physical health more than men. The survey results seem to tie in with what research shows, that 43 percent of all adults suffer adverse health effects from stress. We cannot possibly stem the tide of society or technological advancement, but we can individually make an effort to reduce the mismatch between our ancestral and modern environment. Approximate the 150 person limit by increasing your closeness to extended kin and develop deep friendships. Reduce subjective distress by selecting a mate that is similar and compatible on as many levels as possible thereby reducing jealousy and infidelity and divorce. Cooperation and reciprocity can reduce competitive drives inherent in our psyche. We don't react well in tit-for-tat scenarios. Just as unhealthy physical behaviors can switch on "bad" genes at the protein level, so can unhealthy mental activities. The best term is reciprocal determinism. Genes, environment and the resulting behavior in turn affect us epigenetically which in turn affects behavior and so on. Linear models give way to non-linear understandings of the how and why of behavior and their interactions and dependencies.

Mental Fitness

The general principle: genes that dish out pleasure in ways that have helped propel them through the generations are the genes that are with us today. So the laws governing happiness were designed not for our psychological well-being but for our genes' long-term survival prospects. That fact, when pondered at length, can induce unhappiness. What is one to do?

Not only operating on the environment produces benefits, but also how one operates on the internal environment of the mind. The result: an explosion of research on happiness, optimism, positive emotions and healthy character traits. The positive psychology movement, founded in part by Martin E.P. Seligman, PhD, former APA President, focuses on enhancing what's good in life rather than fixing what's wrong. Twenty traits have been considered as personality characteristics that may be the "roots of a positive life," including the capacity to love and be loved, altruism, spirituality, creativity, courage and wisdom. Researchers in the field are studying the types of experiences that make people feel good, the personal traits that make up happiness and ways to create positive institutions. Empirical results are now becoming available corroborating the influence that positive psychology can have. It is important to work on social skills, close interpersonal ties and social support in order to be happy. That involves working on the three components of happiness--getting more pleasure out of life (which can be done by savoring sensory experiences), becoming more engaged in what you do and finding ways of making your life feel more meaningful.

Lawrence C. Katz, PhD, a professor of neurobiology at Duke University says his easy-to-perform "neurobic exercises" help the brain to not only maintain connections between nerve cells--and thus preserve memory recall--but aid in developing new connections. Those exercises are at the heart of his book "Keep Your Brain Alive," (Workman, 1999) co-authored by Manning Rubin. "The mental decline most people experience is not due to the steady death of nerve cells," says Katz. Rather, it is the atrophy of connections between nerve cells in the brain. Contributing to such atrophy, he says, are routine behaviors, many of them almost subconscious, that require little brainpower. "It's startling to realize just how predictable and free from surprises our everyday lives really are," he says. Neurobics is based on two principles, he says: "Experience the unexpected and enlist the aid of all of your senses during the course of the day." For instance, he suggests listening to a piece of music while smelling a particular aroma. Or turning the photographs on your desk or the clock on your wall upside down to completely engage your attention. Or take a completely new route to work to break your routine. In developing his exercises, Katz says it was important not to set a single standard for everyone, "Because some people would give up after repeated failure," he explains. "The important thing is not to force people to do things that they can't do, or to provide exercises that bore them." Thus, he stresses the offbeat and the element of fun. In other words, non-linear chaotic patterns that emulate our EEA.
"Do something that challenges and engages your mind," he says, "not because it's difficult, but because it's different from what you normally do." Meanwhile, memory loss isn't the only age-related decline that can be reversed. So, too, can the frailty of old age, says Robert Kahn, PhD, 81, of the University of Michigan. Kahn, co-author of "Successful Aging" (Pantheon, 1998) says that most older people, even the very old and weak, "have the capacity to increase their muscle strength, balance, walking ability and overall aerobic power." Many older people tout the value of a daily exercise regimen in maintaining their positive outlook on life and physical health. But, in fact, says Kahn, a major benefit of pursuing a physical exercise program is for its influence on memory. "Physically active people are most likely to maintain sharp mental ability," he says. Memory enhancement also appears to be a potential benefit of a balanced diet, says new research. While it's been widely proven that good nutrition enhances overall health, research recently conducted at Tufts University, for example, found that men aged 50 and older who had low levels of the B vitamins folate and B12 were not as good at performing memory tests as those with higher levels of vitamin B. Other research in the past several years has linked mental dexterity to vitamins C, E and beta carotene: These antioxidants may prevent damage to the brain's neurons.


 

Evolutionary Fitness

Inextricably interwoven with the shift from hunter-gatherer to farmer-rancher, is the change in physical activities. Movements became less random and intense to repetitive and patterned. Technology has now allowed the few to feed the many not requiring any exertion on our part to obtain sustenance. Furthermore, the National Institutes of Health has identified hyperinsulinism and hypoexertion as our top health threats and is termed "Syndrome X." From all that I can glean from my research, our bodies are adapted and we get the best results from short duration (10-20 minutes), high intensity physical exertion on a diet consisting of animal (fish, chicken, beef) protein, vegetables (those that can be consumed in a natural or raw state...but not that you have to eat them raw), fruits, and nuts. Anything else such as breads, pastas, etc. are "food products" and not true food and should be avoided. Other foods to avoid are corn and beans and grains, especially wheat. The beans contain lectins and the wheat contains gluten. Both wreak havoc on the body. Intake of food should include calorie restriction by intermittent fasting such as eating fully one, two, or three days then scant to none the next, or one to three meals a day with a long period of no intake of around 15 hours. This is not easily done because culturally we have developed a fixed schedule of 3 meals a day as well as that our economy consists of a vast food product industry that will never concede. Consider that for thousands of years, humans hunted on the Savannah Plain, exerting highly intense movements and only then feasting after much hard work. Now think about today's modern settings with easily obtainable food "products," highly processed and laden with preservatives that not even bacteria will subsist on.

Individually, an evolutionary diet and exercise program promotes health and prevents disease and reduces the effects of our environmental mismatch. I would rather die with an equal amount of quality and quantity of years. Prevent hyperinsulinism by reduced carbohydrate intake and hypoexertion by regular exercise. Our brains require 120 grams of carbohydrates for normal functioning, by limiting intake of carbs to less than this amount daily insures utilization of all dietary carbs and low insulin levels. High intensity short duration physical activity develops fast twitch muscle fiber, promotes the production of Human Growth Hormone, and does not overstress the immune system.

Epigenetic (Non-DNA chemical expression) Ethics

Although we have not had enough time for our genome to adapt to our radically altered environment and physical patterns of movement, we can reduce the mismatch between our modern and ancestral environments and a remarkable byproduct is that we can "switch" on optimal gene expression. It seems that genes are the hardware and epigenetics are the software. What we eat, drink, (nutrigenomics) how or whether we exercise can switch genes on or off and our behavior can even affect the DNA of our offspring. This implies an ethical responsibility to eat and exercise optimally not only for ourselves, but for our children as well. Behaviors of young men such as smoking at puberty can result in overweight babies. Identical twins can turn out very unidentical years later due to variation in behavior. An evolutionary diet and fitness lifestyle should promote optimal gene expression by optimal stressors both physically and mentally. Conversely, the genes that promote health are also highly subject to disease promotion due to poor diet and lack of physical activity.

These implications are a part of a long history of debates by philosophers concerning the difference between what is and what ought to be. In Principia Ethica (1903), G. E. Moore, the founder of modern ethical philosophy, said moral reasoning cannot invade psychology and the social sciences in order to locate ethical principles, because those disciplines yield only a causal picture and fail to illuminate the basis of moral justification. So to reach the normative ought by way of the factual is is to commit a basic error of logic, which Moore called the naturalistic fallacy. But as E.O. Wilson argues from a biological empiricist viewpoint, rather than Moore's Transcendentalist viewpoint, "What have been thought of as moral sentiments are now taken to mean moral instincts (as defined by the modern behavioral sciences), subject to judgment according to their consequences. Such sentiments are thus derived from epigenetic rules -- hereditary biases in mental development, usually conditioned by emotion, that influence concepts and decisions made from them." In other words the naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy and is merely the naturalistic objection.

Dissenting Viewpoint

The Third Wave

Alvin Toffler made his fame in the 1970's with the publication of "Future Shock" in which he stated: "We may define future shock as the distress, both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of the human organism's physical adaptive systems and it's decision-making processes. Put more simply, future shock is the human response to over-stimulation". Toffler's main argument is that humanity, as of 1970, was in the midst of an enormous shift from an industrial society to a super-industrial society. This new society will be characterized by such things as an acceleration of images, words, ideas, and technologies that could possibly overwhelm mankind. Mankind will suffer a serious disconnect when these new ideas reach their fruition. This disconnect is "future shock," an inability to process the enormous amounts of information and change associated with the super-industrial revolution. Toffler likens future shock to the same sort of disorientation that a person experiences when he moves to a new area, or a new country, and suffers a severing of all he has known. While some people can adjust with seeming ease to this kind of dislocation, most of us suffer various maladies from this "shock." Toffler ends up attributing most of societies ills to this jarring social shock. Crime, drug use, the disintegration of society, the burgeoning of quasi-religious movements: all of these are symptoms of a society that can no longer cope with the vast amounts of information and change that technology is bringing about. I call this the mismatch between our modern and ancestral environments; a clash between our anachronistic genes and our ability to transform our environment.

The central premise of Toffler’s work is that human history can be seen to fit into very broad patterns. The pattern he has focused on takes the shape of three great advances or waves. The first wave of transformation began about 10,000 years ago when the age of agriculture began; its significance was that people moved from nomadic hunter-gatherer pathways and began to settle into villages and develop culture and worked the soil by muscle. The second wave was an expression of machine over muscle. The Industrial Revolution began in the 1700s and gathered steam after America’s Civil War. People began to leave the rural culture of farming to come to work in city factories. It culminated in the Second World War, a clash of freedom, fascism, and the explosion of the atomic bombs over Japan. Shortly after the War we began to receive signs of a new third wave, based not on muscle but on the  mind. It is what we call the information or knowledge age, and while it is powerfully driven by information technology, it has co-drivers as well, among them social demands worldwide for greater freedom and individuation.

Each wave has taken shorter amounts of time for transformation. The curve follows a natural power law.

What are the implications of these changes in decreasing amounts of time? The futurist Barry B. Hughes has condensed contemporary views on these issues into two main schools of thought which he has labeled the MODERNIST and NEO-TRADITIONALIST approaches.

Modernist ideology is based on the theory of Progress. This concept of a steadily improving world, guided by human discovery and invention, is at the heart of Western civilization. By using science and technology, man has the opportunity, perhaps even the duty, to transcend and master nature. When it comes to the future, emerging technologies will allow us to resolve our material needs and reshape the surrounding environment to our liking. After all, what nobler purpose does our planet have than that of supporting human life?

Neo-traditionalists, on the other hand, believe that mankind is a part of nature and should seek to fit in rather than overpower the environment. They view nature as a complex web of interdependence that is exceedingly difficult to understand, let alone be manipulated by human hand. When man tries to play God, such as by diverting rivers, draining swamps, or eradicating animal "pests," unforeseen ecological disasters usually follow. Thus, in this view, if we hope to survive, we must learn to respect nature's restraints and live in a way that does not disturb the delicate balance.

The clash between Modernists and Neo-traditionalists is more than just a scuffle between developers and conservationists. It's ultimately a debate about the proper role of science and technology.

Singularity-The Fourth Wave?

If the Modernists win the clash, and I think they will, then the next 40 years may see change unlike anytime in human history. In the March-April 2006 issue of The Futurist magazine, in the article: Reinventing Humanity: The Future of Machine–Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil, author and inventor, Kurzweil sees a radical evolution of the human species in the next 40 years. What he envisions makes Future Shock look like forgotten memories.

With the convergence of nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics human existence will see a quantum leap in evolution. Human scientific progress is exponential and what took a 100 years pace of change of the 20th century will now occur in 20 years by the year 2000's pace. Another 20 years of change will occur by 2014 and another 20 years of change by 2021. Another way of putting this is we will likely see 20,000 years of change in the 21st century or progress of about 1000 times greater than was achieved in the 20th century.

Possibilities of Singularity regarding genetics includes reprogramming our biology to eliminate disease, dramatic expansion of human potential, and radical life extension. Nanotechnology will allow us to redesign and rebuild our bodies and brains one molecule at a time. Robotics and AI will surpass biological intelligence.

These changes will bring both improvements and problems in human existence. Social systems will have to be redefined and adaptable to the sweeping changes. Time will tell whether the Modernists or the Neo-traditionalists were correct.

In Summary

The point of my opening page is that one’s worldview will color your whole perception of all other data that you process. If you take an organic worldview that is non-linear, you recognize that knowledge is multifaceted and linear thinking just does not explain the world as we know it. I then talked about the tension between religion and evolution, and that tension is due to a lack of understanding of both theologians and scientists of how to correctly approach the problem from a socio-historical textual approach. The Hebrew scriptures are ambiguous enough to accommodate what science says, but science has not said the same thing in the last 200 years, whereas the Hebrew text has remained unchanged for 3500. Now that we have dispensed with objections to accept evolution, then it is a useful theory to explain the modern psychological and physical problems that plague our modern world and solutions (lessening the mismatch between our ancestral and modern environments). It takes many thousands of years for natural selection to select genetic characteristics to facilitate an optimal environmental fit, and it looks as if nanotechnology may allow us to bypass the normal long drawn out process. But, until then, you have to tackle the problem with the best we know now, eat and exercise in an evolutionary manner to live an optimal life.

Andy