REPLACING METHODOLOGICAL NATURALISM Richard Dawkins, during a recent interview about his new book, The God Delusion, proclaimed “[T]he big war is not between evolution and creationism, but between naturalism and supernaturalism.”1 I agree with Dawkins to the extent that naturalism, whether we are talking about metaphysical naturalism or methodological naturalism, is one of the primary…
Foreword Mircea Eliade, the great historian and philosopher of religions, did not consider the present ‘desacralization’ of modern life as the desirable ending of a necessary progress. “The ‘sacred’ is an element in the structure of consciousness and not a stage in the history of consciousness” (Eliade 1978: xiii). In his view, it is rather…
There are a number of issues raised by the assertion around which this year’s conference is organized: “the challenge of the 21st century will be to integrate or synthesize the outcomes of the exponential growth in human knowledge into meaningful wholes.” One issue concerns clarity of intent. If the yearning for transdisciplinarity and the unity…
This paper concerns some specific aspects of the combined research promoted by the Iberia-Network of LSI. A general scheme of the combined research was already presented in Metanexus Conference, June 2006: “Human Evolution – Script for Research Project to be carried out by the LSI and the Iberia-Network in Spain.” This is a restricted research…
Throughout history and around the globe, religious people who seem to be of sound mind have reported incredible encounters with non-human sentient beings, both visible and invisible. The “religious experiencer” and the scientist have different ways of evaluating what has occurred and what can be known from these experiences. The sense of encounter or union…
Examining several attempts to change the way in which science is taught in the K–16 levels.
That we have lost a shared cultural foundation in the unity of knowledge is by now a commonplace observation. As knowledge and information grow exponentially, this knowledge becomes further and further fractionated and dispersed, leaving us with a sense of less coherence and greater isolation. In addition, many would say that our increasingly detailed knowledge,…
Introduction Human freedom seems to be a natural phenomenon. It is an important issue for individuals, and for nations that define inalienable human rights. Who confers these inalienable rights? Is it God? Is it the state? Is it the result of a social contract by which humans pledge themselves to respect each other’s rights? Or…
“I believe we need to open ourselves up to exchange. Just as Asia opened itself up to Westerntechnology…History tells us that we have to reckon with the improbable…” – E. Morin 1. Prolegomena to an epistemology of transdisciplinarity in education “History tells us that we have to reckon with the improbable…” Indeed, one of the…
Note to the Reader: The following article is a theoretical abstraction that intends to draw you, the reader, to awareness of an experiential place that we are using the term “ontological encounter” to describe. Therefore, we ask you to engage the article both intellectually and experientially. Although the conceptual abstractions we use are laden with…