Divided into eight sections, each with introductory essays, the selections offer rich and detailed insights into a diverse multinational philosophical landscape. Revealed in this pathbreaking work is the way in which traditional philosophical issues related to ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology, for instance, take on specific forms in Africa's postcolonial struggles. Much of its moral, political, and social philosophy is concerned with the turbulent processes of embracing modern identities while protecting ancient cultures.

. Although naturalistic perspectives are an important component of their accounts of divine action, most participants in the current dialogue between science and theology eschew a purely naturalistic model. They believe that certain events of divine providence require a special mode of divine action, over and above that inherent in naturalistic processes. The analogy of human providential action suggests, however, that a strong theistic naturalism can account for these events. This model does not depend on a particular notion of God's (...) relationship to time and is not inherently implausible from a scientific perspective. Although it can be interpreted deistically, the model also is consonant with a nondeistic theology that may be described as involving a pansacramental or incarnational naturalism. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of articles have appeared in the nursing literature proposing that the branch of modern physics known as quantum theory offers insights that may be useful in nursing practice and healthcare management. This paper critiques this literature in the light of key concepts in quantum theory. The conclusion is that quantum theory has been misunderstood and misapplied within the nursing journals. Quantum theory is essentially mathematical and is based on quantitative experimentation. To successfully apply this theory (...) to nursing practice, nurses will have to equip themselves with the necessary mathematical and experimental skills. (shrink)

Das Hauptargument dieses Buches ist die unleugbare Offenheit jedes Systems zum Unbekannten hin. Und die Grundfrage lautet: Was ergibt sich aus dieser Offenheit? Wir sind ein Teil des unendlichen Universums und eine Verkörperung seiner Ganzheit. Beides bedeutet für uns eine individualisierte Wirklichkeit, durch die sich das Universum ausdrückt und durch die es andererseits mit gebildet wird. Es bedeutet ebenfalls unsere Notwendigkeit, Wichtigkeit und Unzerstörbarkeit für die Gesamtheit seiner Verkörperungen. Die meisten Verbindungen untereinander sind uns kaum bewusst. Indessen gewährleistet die Infinitesimalstruktur (...) allen Bewusstseins nicht nur die logische Widerspruchsfreiheit dieser Verbindungen, sondern auch die unaufhebbare Wahlfreiheit jedes einzelnen Individuums. Unser Ziel kann jedoch keineswegs darin liegen, vollkommen bewusst zu entscheiden. Verantwortung schließt Spontanität beziehungsweise das Vertrauen auf ein sinnvolles Zusammenwirken der Kräfte ein. Wir werden unserer Rolle im Gesamtzusammenhang zunehmend gewahr und lernen, einen optimalen Beitrag zur Werterfüllung aller Individuen, einschließlich uns selbst, zu leisten. Jenseits der vermeintlichen Unterschiede zwischen objektiver und subjektiver Wirklichkeit begreifen wir, dass wir unsere Realität aus unserem tiefsten Innern heraus erschaffen. (shrink)

Philosophers, theologians, physicists, and psychologists join their efforts to reflect on the crucial issues of limit and infinity, time and eternity, empty space and material space. The volume offers an invaluable contribution to some of the most important issues of our times: questions on God and consciousness are discussed in parallel with quantum theory, black holes, the inflationary universe, the Big Bang, and string theory, from different perspectives and angles, ranging from neuroscience to AI.

Explores the interplay between artistic values and social, political, and moral concerns in writings by African American and Native American women.

A crucial question for a process view of life is how to identify a process and how to follow it through time. The genidentity view can contribute decisively to this project. It says that the identity through time of an entity X is given by a well-identified series of continuous states of affairs. Genidentity helps address the problem of diachronic identity in the living world. This chapter describes the centrality of the concept of genidentity for David Hull and proposes an (...) extension of Hull’s view to the ubiquitous phenomenon of symbiosis. Finally, using immunology as a key example, it shows that the genidentity view suggests that the main interest of a process approach is epistemological rather than ontological and that its principal claim is one of priority, namely that processes precede and define things, and not vice versa. (shrink)

This chapter argues that scientific and philosophical progress in our understanding of the living world requires that we abandon a metaphysics of things in favour of one centred on processes. We identify three main empirical motivations for adopting a process ontology in biology: metabolic turnover, life cycles, and ecological interdependence. We show how taking a processual stance in the philosophy of biology enables us to ground existing critiques of essentialism, reductionism, and mechanicism, all of which have traditionally been associated with (...) substance ontology. We illustrate the consequences of embracing an ontology of processes in biology by considering some of its implications for physiology, genetics, evolution, and medicine. And we attempt to locate the subsequent chapters of the book in relation to the position we defend. (shrink)

This article is an amendment to Drengson (2011) that offers examples from fieldwork and reporting of practices influenced by the technocratic paradigm. Specifically (1) Krippner's work with Brazilian shamans and the theft of their tribal knowledge by the biotechnology industry that Krippner refers to as ecopiratism. (2) Hitchcock's field research with indigenous populations in the northwestern Kalahari Desert region of southern Africa and his documented assault of these indigenous peoples by private companies that Hitchcock refers to as developmental genocide. And (...) (3) Walker's summary of Monsanto's patenting of seeds, and her warning of the health and environmental problems associated with genetically modified organisms. These examples offer support for the hypothesis that the eco-crisis is born of conscious agency. Beyond documenting and diagnosing these symptoms of the eco-crisis, this article puts forth the thesis that a transformation of consciousness would change the conditions of our present situation by providing the opportunity for different solutions to be found through the creation of a new mind set to make the necessary decisions for change. Many refer to the emerging field concerned with developing approaches to this transformation of consciousness as ecopsychology that Schroll prefers to call transpersonal ecosophy. (shrink)

The concept of complexity has become very important in theoretical biology. It is a many faceted concept and too new and ill defined to have a universally accepted meaning. This review examines the development of this concept from the point of view of its usefulness as a criteria for the study of living systems to see what it has to offer as a new approach. In particular, one definition of complexity has been put forth which has the necessary precision and (...) rigor to be considered as a useful categorization of systems, especially as it pertains to those we call living. This definition, due to Robert Rosen, has been developed in a number of works and involves some deep new concepts about the way we view systems. In particular, it focuses on the way we view the world and actually practice science through the use of the modelling relation. This mathematical object models the process by which we assign meaning to the world we perceive. By using the modelling relation, it is possible to identify the subjective nature of our practices and deal with this issue explicitly. By so doing, it becomes clear that our notion of complexity and especially its most popular manifestations, is in large part a product of the historical processes which lead to the present state of scientific epistemology. In particular, it is a reaction to the reductionist/mechanistic view of nature which can be termed the Newtonian Paradigm. This approach to epistemology has dominated for so long that its use as a model has become implicit in most of what we do in and out of science. The alternative to this approach is examined and related to the special definition of complexity given by Rosen. Some historical examples are used to emphasize the dependence of our view of what is complex in a popular sense on the ever changing state of our knowledge. The role of some popular concepts such as chaotic dynamics are examined in this context. The fields of artificial life and related areas are also viewed from the perspective of this rigorous view of complexity and found lacking. The notion that in some way life exists at the edge of chaos is examined from the perspective of the second law of thermodynamics given by Schneider and Kay. Finally, the causal elements in complex systems are explored in relation to complexity. Rosen has shown that a clear difference in causal relations exists between complex and simple systems and that this difference leads to a uniquely useful definition of what we mean by living. Rosen makes it very clear that the class of systems which are complex is a much larger class than those which we call living. For that reason, the focus of this review will be on complexity as a stepping stone towards the deeper question of what makes a system alive. (shrink)

The philosophy of mind concerns much about how novelty occurs in the world. The very recent progress in this field inspired by quantum mechanics indicates that symmetry restoration occurs in the mind at the moment when new creative thought arises. Symmetry restoration denotes the moment when one’s cognition leaves ordinary internalized mental schemes such as conceptual categories, heuristics, subjective theories, conventional thinking, or expectations. At this moment, fundamentally new, original thought may arise. We also predict that in older age, symmetry (...) restoration is less likely to occur as internalized mental schemes become more rigid in the elderly. Furthermore, the present study demonstrates that symmetry restoration may occur not only individually, in one’s mind, but also collectively, during collaborative creative activities, e.g. during small-group brainstorming sessions or creative improvisational performances. The possibility of collective symmetry restoration interacts well with the ideas in the field of relational ontology. Relational ontology highlights an important ontological role of relations. The ontological primacy is not given to individual entities, as in traditional metaphysics, but to relational structures and transformative relational processes (interactions). When accepting this assumption, we cannot imagine the situation when the actor’s mind could act absolutely independently and leave all of its relations as assumed in the compatibilist theory of free will. We argue that creative free action can be performed even in the case when the actor is entangled within their material, environmental, and social relational structures. (shrink)

Bohm and Hiley suggest that a certain new type of active information plays a key objective role in quantum processes. This paper discusses the implications of this suggestion to our understanding of the relation between the mental and the physical aspects of reality.

This paper explores the theme “quantum approaches to consciousness” by considering the work of one of the pioneers in the field. The physicist David Bohm not only made important contributions to quantum physics, but also had a long-term interest in interpreting the results of quantum physics and relativity in order to develop a general world view. His idea was further that living and mental processes could be understood in a new, scientifically and philosophically more coherent way in the context of (...) such a new world view. This paper gives a brief overview of different – and sometimes contradictory - aspects of Bohm’s research programme, and evaluates how they can be used to give an account of topics of interest in contemporary consciousness studies, such as analogies between thought and quantum processes, the problem of mental causation, the mind-body problem and the problem of time consciousness. (shrink)

The main argument in this book is the undeniable openness of every system to the unknown. And the fundamental question goes: What does this openness produce? We are a part of the infinite universe and an incorporation of its wholeness. Both for us means an individualized reality, through which the universe expresses itself and on the other hand through which it is built up with. It also means our necessity, importance and indestructibility for the sum of its incorporations. Most connections (...) among ourselves are hardly conscious for us. Meanwhile the infinitesimality structure of all consciousness guarantees not only the logical lack of inconsistency of these connections but also the freedom of choice of every individual. Our goal by no means can be to decide completely consciously. Responsibility contains spontaneity or rather trust in a meaningful working together of the forces. We increasingly become aware of our role in the entire relationship and we learn to contribute optimally to the value fulfillment of all individuals, ourselves included. Beyond the supposed differences between objective and subjective reality, we at some point of awareness comprehend that we create our reality out of our innermost depths. (shrink)

What happens to the inner light of consciousness with the death of the individual body and brain? Reductive materialism assumes it simply fades to black. Others think of consciousness as indicating a continuation of self, a transformation, an awakening or even alternatives based on the quality of life experience. In this issue, speculation drawn from theoretic research are presented. -/- Table of Contents Epigraph: From “The Immortal”, Jorge Luis Borges iii Editor’s Introduction: I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day, Gregory (...) M. Nixon iv-xi Research Essays The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument Teed Rockwell 862-881 Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology, Steve Bindeman 882-899 The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death, Bernardo Kastrup 900-909 Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon—A Hypothesis, Eva Déli 910-930 The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death, Bryon K. Ehlmann 931-950 Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathway, Contzen Pereira & J Shashi Kiran Reddy 951-968 On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death, Massimo Pregnolato & Alfredo Pereira Jr. 969-991 Science and Postmortem Survival, Edward F. Kelly 992-1011 Explorations ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics, Chris H. Hardy 1012-1035 Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? Radivoj Stankovich (with Micho Durdevich) 1036-1050 Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death, Ken Bausch 1051-1063 Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm, Ronald Peter Glasberg 1064-1077 Living With Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness, Donald Brackett 1078-1098 Mysticism, Consciousness, Death, Mike Sosteric 1099-1118 What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James, Jonathan Bricklin 1119-1140 Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? Roger Cook 1141-1153 It’s the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World, James P. Kowall & Pradeep B. Deshpande 1154-1208 Statements A Feminine Vision for the World Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology, Lorna Green 1209-1217 The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife, Iona Miller 1218-1228 Are We Really “such stuff as dreams are made on”? Chris Nunn 1229-1225 Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not), Deepak Chopra 1226-1230 Life After Death? An Improbable Essay, Stuart Kauffman 1231-1236. (shrink)

The present book discusses all aspects of paraconsistent logic, including the latest findings, and its various systems. It includes papers by leading international researchers, which address the subject in many different ways: development of abstract paraconsistent systems and new theorems about them; studies of the connections between these systems and other non-classical logics, such as non-monotonic, many-valued, relevant, paracomplete and fuzzy logics; philosophical interpretations of these constructions; and applications to other sciences, in particular quantum physics and mathematics. Reasoning with contradictions (...) is the challenge of paraconsistent logic. The book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers working in mathematical logic, computer science, philosophical logic, linguistics and physics. (shrink)

In physics, free will is debated mainly in regard to the observer-dependent effects. To eliminate them from quantum mechanics, superdeterminism postulates that the universe is a computation, and consciousness is an automaton. As a result, free will is impossible. Quantum no-go theorems tell us that the only natural phenomenon that might be able to account for every bit of freedom in the universe is quantum randomness. With randomness in Nature, the universe could not have been predetermined completely in the sense (...) that it should be impossible in principle to compute from the big bang or at any later moment whether live and conscious observers might or might not appear there. After all, superdeterminism comes to be either self-inconsistent by assuming randomness, at least, at the initial conditions of the big bang, or untestable and mysterious by pushing every bit of freedom in back to the prerequisites of the universe “designed” in the big bang. (shrink)

Attention has often been seen as a selective process in which the mind chooses which already‐formed objects to focus on. However, as Merleau‐Ponty and others have pointed out, this ignores the complexity and ambiguity of sensory information and imposes on it a set of already‐formed objects in the world. Rather, attention is a process by which objects in the world are constituted by the perceiving subject. Attention thus involves a process of mutual negotiation with the environment. There are connections between (...) this and the process of attente described by Simone Weil, in which the perceiving subject suspends the dominant preoccupations of the ego in order to become more aware of an independent reality. This, in turn, expresses in a more modern idiom what early Christian teachers had to say about the role of attentive looking in the contemplative life. (shrink)

The notion of order as a universal and fundamental conceptual category is discussed as being based on sets of similar differences and different similarities. A discussion of relationships between order and disorder is followed by a proposal for a mathematical theory based on non-ordinality which could also have relevance for indistinguishables in physics.

The subject of (ir)reducibility in biochemistry has resurfaced recently in the literature. Along with it comes a renewed emphasis on the organizational complexity of the living state and, more broadly, concern over the unity of the sciences.

As with many aspects of David Lewis’s work, it is hard to provide a better summary of his views than he provided himself. So the following introduction to what the Humean Supervenience view is will follow the opening pages of Lewis (1994a) extremely closely. But for those readers who haven’t read that paper, here’s the nickel version.

Holistic perception is an antidote to the subject–object divide, a divide that leads to a mechanistic understanding of the world and can see human beings only in terms of parts, without a robust articulation of wholeness. In this piece, I argue that philosopher of science Henri Bortoft offers an empirically grounded theory, based on consciousness studies, which recasts the problem of the many and the one, offering insight into just such a holistic perception. I further argue that Samuel Taylor Coleridge's (...) philosophy of unity and multiplicity agrees in many respects with that of Bortoft. However, Coleridge draws further implications of his philosophy for Trinitarian theology. I will argue, in line with Bortoft and Coleridge, that perception is a hinge point in this discussion, allowing the move between the discussion of wholeness, subjectivity, and identity. I conclude that a holistic perceptual shift reconstitutes the human person in a way that is theologically significant, especially with respect to Christian Trinitarian doctrine. (shrink)

India now constitutes approximately 17% of the world’s population and has a high proportion of younger people. Philosophy for school children aims to create better citizens of the future. In this article, I establish the need to teach philosophy to children in schools, especially in India. Subsequently, I discuss the readiness of Indians to accept philosophy in the school curriculum, their conundrum in understanding the need for philosophy in a school setting, and the East-West dilemma concerning the teaching of philosophy (...) in schools. The concept of self-realization is important in education. Socrates claimed that an unexamined life is not worth living. However, the self-realization concept of the West differs from that in India. While the former perceives self-realization as a way to construct a good individual, the latter has always emphasized the cessation of the individual and focused on the incomprehensible truth human languages cannot capture. Western philosophy is concerned with questioning, inquiry, and the problems of philosophy. The East is concerned with bringing such questioning to an end. Matthew Lipman focuses on increasing curiosity, accelerating the thinking process, teaching logic and formal reasoning, and the intellectual enhancement of children. Indian philosophy, yoga, and meditation are all concerned with the cessation of consciousness. The key question concerns the approach one may choose to adopt in teaching philosophy – accelerating or decelerating the thought processes of children? Indian parents are the primary decision-makers in their children’s education, and sometimes throughout their careers and lives. Unless clarity emerges in the Indian and global community regarding this issue, there is no clear starting point for teaching philosophy to children in India. This article aims to raise critical awareness among global citizens regarding this conundrum in the collective Indian psyche. Unless the world’s psyche is inserted into the place of the Indian psyche, the great barrier between the West and the East regarding philosophy in the school curriculum cannot be bridged. (shrink)

Creatively operationalizing Claude Lévi-Strauss’ predicament that food is good to think with, I initiate a methodological conceptualization of food by exploring the ways in which it is apt to study Sri Lankan domestic and collective village life. Food is approached as an assemblage that is an emergent resultant of heterogeneous aspects with which it is deeply entangled and by way of which it turns into a potent agent shaping life. More specifically, I explore the vibrancy of these different components that (...) co-create the overall soundscape of food that as such becomes the conductor of Sri Lankan life. Food shapes domestic life by way of its preparation and consumption, and through its cultivation also conducts the collective rhythms at the village level. The conceptualization of food as an assemblage seeks to develop it as a methodology that opens up for a holistic integration and interdisciplinary collaboration. (shrink)

A study is made of the general principles and theories pertaining to evolution, among which the definition, the evidences, the philosophical roots , the three models , and a further development of the last-mentioned model.

In this article first some general aspects of near-death experience will be discussed, followed by questions about consciousness and its relation to brain function. Details will be described from our prospective study on near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest in the Netherlands, which was published in the Lancet in 2001. In this study it could not be shown that physiological, psychological, or pharmacological factors caused these experiences after cardiac arrest. Neurophysiology in cardiac arrest and in a normal functioning brain (...) will be explained. Finally, implications for consciousness studies will be discussed, and how it could be possible to explain the continuity of our consciousness. Scientific study of NDE pushes us to the limits of our medical and neurophysiologic ideas about the range of human consciousness and mind-brain relation. (shrink)

Food and life are intimately entangled. To grasp the underlying complexity of this seemingly simple statement, this article first introduces the approach to food/eating as an assemblage enacted by various heterogeneous components, and further develops it by engaging with actor network theory and material semiotics. Thereafter the focus turns to ‘entanglement’, as inspired by quantum physics, to elicit the basic dynamics of the entanglement of food and more-than-human beings, conceived of as involving mutual and differential becomings within and among assemblages. (...) The article illustrates these entangled becomings by drawing upon examples from Sri Lanka, which in an intercultural philosophical fashion serve to establish an articulation (in the sense of a connection) between the proposed abstract approach to food and some basic premises of Buddhism and Ayurveda, a South Asian health system. Overall, the article crafts a conceptual toolbox and performs ontological groundwork wherein food and human beings as entangled assemblages provide a productive, refined, and sensitive research apparatus for the intimate study of more-than-human life and organization while also spurring novel theorizations through food/eating. (shrink)

The concept of biological mimicry is viewed as a ‘process of life’ theory rather than a ‘process of change’ theory—regardless of the historical interest and heuristic value of the subject for the study of evolution. Mimicry is a dynamic ecological system reflecting the possibilities for mutualism and parasitism created by a pre-established bipartite signal-based relationship between two organisms – a potential model and its signal receiver (potential operator). In a mimicry system agency and perception play essential, interconnected roles. Mimicry thus (...) describes emergent biologically meaningful relationships based on synergy, and is not an object-based theory. Biosemiotics offers a particularly valuable discipline for analysing the dynamics and nuances of mimicry systems, and can thus pave the way for a better and more complete understanding of how mimicry has evolved in the past, and how it might evolve in the future—presented here with special reference to the need for an integrated, ‘third way of evolution’ approach to biological relativity. A revised definition of mimicry is proposed. (shrink)

In the past few hundred years, science has exerted an enormous influence on the way the world appears to human observers. Despite phenomenal accomplishments of science, science nowadays faces numerous challenges that threaten its continued success. As scientific inventions become embedded within human societies, the challenges are further multiplied. In this critical review, some of the critical challenges for the field of modern chemistry are discussed, including: (a) interlinking theoretical knowledge and experimental approaches; (b) implementing the principles of sustainability at (...) the roots of the chemical design; (c) defining science from a philosophical perspective that acknowledges both pragmatic and realistic aspects thereof; (d) instigating interdisciplinary research; (e) learning to recognize and appreciate the aesthetic aspects of scientific knowledge and methodology, and promote truly inspiring education in chemistry. In the conclusion, I recapitulate that the evolution of human knowledge inherently depends upon our ability to adopt creative problem-solving attitudes, and that challenges will always be present within the scope of scientific interests. (shrink)

This article draws parallels between the representations of the classics of Eurasianism and their contemporaries, namely N. K. Roerich, H. I. Roerich and Y. N. Roerich, on the peculiar mid-world that is formed by Russia within and around it. It is indicated that the concept of interrelation of biogeosystems with peoples and civilizations inhabiting them, defined by the Eurasian term “developmental site”, is familiar from natural-philosophic concepts of the earlier period. In the era of the development of the ideas of (...) noospherism, it obtained natural-scientific substantiation and new interpretation not only in L. N. Gumilyov original theory of ethnogenesis, but also in representations of the Russian cosmism, which can be correlated with the scientific-philosophical, literary-artistic heritage of the Roerichs. Unlike geosophy of the Eurasians, the holistic views of Roerichs imparted a rather synthetic character to the historical science. At the same time, Y. N.Roerich distinguished geopsychology as a research instrument for cross-civilizational dialogue. One of the most remarkable episodes in implementation of the Eurasian vision by the Roerichs was their Central Asian expedition and peacekeeping activity, associated with unification of the peoples of Eurasia on the basis of broad cooperation. The article demonstrates the possibility of synthesizing Eurasian theories, spiritual-ethical teachings, and natural scientific research within the framework of integral philosophy for elaboration on the concept of sustainable development. Besides the need for international cooperation, the cultural-philosophical heritage of the Roerichs, which includes “Living Ethics or the Teaching of Life”, infeasibility of evolution of mankind detached from the planet and Cosmos also received its ontological substantiation. Such an in-depth consideration of the fate of Eurasia by the Roerichs, associated with the civilizational foundations of the crossing “Russia — Mongolia — China — India” and the leading role of Siberia in the future, allows filling the gaps in the construction of the classics of Eurasianism and utilize sociocultural potential of Eurasia to the fullest. (shrink)

When Darwin's theory of natural selection threatened to put Paley's Designer out of a job, one response was to reemploy God as the author of the evolutionary process itself. This idea requires an account of how God might be understood to act in biological history. I approach this question in two stages: first, by considering God's action as creator of the world as a whole, and second, by exploring the idea of particular divine action in the course of evolution. As (...) creator ex nihilo God acts directly in every event as its sustaining ground. Because God structures the world as a lawful order of natural causes, God also acts indirectly by means of creatures. More controversially, God might act directly within the world to affect the course of events; this action need not take the form of a miraculous intervention, if the natural order includes the right sort of indeterministic chance. In each of these ways God's purposes can shape evolutionary processes. (shrink)

Abstract Die moderne Physik besteht nicht nur aus neuen Entdeckungen und Erfindungen durch die Relativitätstheorie und durch die Quantenphysik. Sie besteht auch aus völlig neuen Sichtweisen und flexiblen Denkweisen von Zusammenhängen und Verschränkungen zwischen den Dingen. Die moderne Physik hat sich von dem Klischee des Schwarz-Weiß-Denkens verabschiedet, für das es nur getrennte Dinge, ohne fließende Übergänge gibt. Solche unbeweglichen, dogmatischen schwarzweißen Denkweisen können wir zurückverfolgen bis zu dem griechischen Philosophen Aristoteles. In der Zeit der Klassischen Mechanik hatten sie einen überwältigenden (...) Erfolg. Galilei behauptete, das Buch der Natur sei in der Sprache der Mathematik geschrieben. Das war die sehr kurzgefasste Formulierung der Klassischen Mechanik. Die moderne Physik hat sich keineswegs von der Mathematik verabschiedet, ganz und gar nicht. Doch der heilige Ernst und der starre und absolute Dogmatismus hat nachgelassen. Moderne Denkweisen in der Physik können mit den Begriffen von fließenden Übergängen, von Zwischenstufen, von Zusammenhängen zwischen den Dingen und von Schwingungen gekennzeichnet werden. Seit Faraday und Maxwell hat sich eine Verschiebung der Untersuchungsobjekte ergeben: Seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, seit ca 1850, drehen sich die Denkmodelle der modernen Physik nicht mehr um getrennte, isolierten Körper, die im Nichts schwimmen, sondern um die Zwischenräume zwischen den Körpern und um die flexiblen Beziehungsgeflechte zwischen den Dingen und um die Netzwerke, die die Dinge umgeben. Das sind ganz neue physikalische Denkweisen, die durchaus Dunkelzonen und Zweifel und Ungewissheiten kennen, die den Bereich der Exaktheit überschatten. Neue Beiträge der physikalischen Denkweisen sind auch durch eine Flexibilität bei der Bildung von Begriffen gekennzeichnet. Sie lassen sich nicht auf einige wenige Begriffe oder auf eine starre und exakte Festlegung der Wortwahl festnageln. -/- „Jede Philosophie bezieht ihre Farbe von der geheimen Lichtquelle eines Vorstellungshintergrunds, der niemals ausdrücklich in ihrenGedankenketten auftaucht“ (Whitehead) (1) . (shrink)