New Science/New Paradigms September 3-9, 2009

Pari Center for New Learning

Tuscany, Italy

“The Future Has an Ancient Heart” Carlo Levi

F. David Peat

 
Stay in a medieval village in beautiful Tuscany while exploring some of the groundbreaking ideas that have transformed our vision of reality. The course, given by F. David Peat,  will also explore the various ways in which these new paradigms are influencing our lives, society and values.

The course will open by tracing the changes in thought from the early Middle Ages, through the Renaissance and on to the watershed year of 1900. The development of quantum theory and the debates between Neils Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger will be discussed in a non-technical way. As the theory’s founders attempt to create a coherent interpretation of this “veiled reality”, they must come to terms with quantum uncertainty, the indivisible wholeness between observer and observed, Schrödinger’s Cat Paradox and Einstein’s objection that “God does not play dice with the world.”

We shall also explore chaos theory with its notions of self-organization, fractals, strange attractors and the famous “butterfly effect”, as well as examining its implications for economics, ecology and society in general. In particular we shall look at Peat’s notion of “Gentle Action”.

We shall investigate the nature of consciousness and perception, the role of language in creating views of reality, and the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. We shall ask if mathematics is truly the language of nature, face Eugene Wigner’s question about its “unreasonable effectiveness”, and ask what limitations to the dream of artificial intelligence have been revealed by Gödel’s theorem. We shall also explore alternative world views such as that of the Blackfoot of North America.

We shall ask what role religious faith plays in the lives of scientists and is there room for the notion of the sacred in science. In particular we will explore the examples of Michael Faraday and Louis Pasteur.

The course will also examine the life and work of two exceptional individuals. One, David Bohm, believed that a radically new order was required in science, which he called the Implicate Order. His work also suggests that a form of proto-mind exists, even at the level of the electron itself. The other is the physicist Wolfgang Pauli who proposed that deep links could be made between psyche and matter and argued that our age stands at the threshold of “the resurrection of spirit in matter”.

The course is taught in the medieval hilltop village of Pari, a location of spectacular views and walks. Pari is situated some 30 km south of Siena, and is easily reached from airports at Rome, Florence and Pisa. A particular feature of the stay in Pari will be the excellence of the food that is served during the course.

Liverpool born F. David Peat carried out research in theoretical physics at the National Research Council of Canada and became a close friend of the physicist David Bohm whom he met during a sabbatical with Roger Penrose. Peat has organized roundtables with artists and scientists and, with Leroy Little Bear, a dialogue between Native American Elders and Western Scientists. In 1996 Peat moved to the village of Pari and four years later opened the Pari Center for New Learning. He is the author of over twenty books.

Full information on the course and the Pari Center can be found at www.paricenter.com/programs/courses/newscience5.php.

For additional information email to  info@paricenter.com.