[00:00:00 - 00:00:01]	 - Okey doke.
[00:00:01 - 00:00:04]	 (audience applauding)
[00:00:04 - 00:00:09]	 So can everyone hear?
[00:00:09 - 00:00:11]	 Yes?
[00:00:11 - 00:00:12]	 - Yes. - Good.
[00:00:12 - 00:00:16]	 Okay, well we'll strive to maintain
[00:00:16 - 00:00:18]	 a certain level of formality,
[00:00:18 - 00:00:23]	 although this is definitely an in-house family get together.
[00:00:23 - 00:00:27]	 I always say every time I'm at Will's
[00:00:27 - 00:00:32]	 that this feels like the home congregation.
[00:00:32 - 00:00:36]	 This is where we can let our hair down
[00:00:36 - 00:00:39]	 even when we speak from the pulpit.
[00:00:39 - 00:00:44]	 And I encountered Will a few weeks ago at a buffet
[00:00:44 - 00:00:48]	 and he said, "I'm glad to see you."
[00:00:48 - 00:00:50]	 And I said, "I'm glad to see you."
[00:00:50 - 00:00:52]	 He said, "This must mean we both need money."
[00:00:52 - 00:00:55]	 (audience laughing)
[00:00:57 - 00:00:59]	 Why don't we plan an event?
[00:00:59 - 00:01:05]	 But we needed a draw, so we thought probably
[00:01:05 - 00:01:09]	 we could lend some respectability to the enterprise
[00:01:09 - 00:01:14]	 by getting a British theoretical biologist
[00:01:14 - 00:01:17]	 to throw in with the plan.
[00:01:17 - 00:01:20]	 (audience laughing)
[00:01:20 - 00:01:27]	 Every year now for several years,
[00:01:27 - 00:01:31]	 the annual return of the Sheldrakes to Turtle Island
[00:01:31 - 00:01:36]	 has been a high point in the social calendar.
[00:01:36 - 00:01:39]	 And sometimes it happens in the spring
[00:01:39 - 00:01:41]	 and sometimes in the late summer,
[00:01:41 - 00:01:45]	 but it always is an excuse to suspend
[00:01:45 - 00:01:48]	 the ordinary rules of engagement
[00:01:48 - 00:01:52]	 and party down as much as we can
[00:01:52 - 00:01:55]	 with these wonderful people.
[00:01:55 - 00:01:58]	 And Rupert and I have not seen each other
[00:01:58 - 00:01:59]	 for 10 months or so.
[00:01:59 - 00:02:03]	 He flew in from Vancouver this afternoon.
[00:02:03 - 00:02:08]	 I saw he and Jill for the first time this evening.
[00:02:08 - 00:02:11]	 I have yet to see Merlin,
[00:02:11 - 00:02:15]	 who is the latest adumbration
[00:02:15 - 00:02:19]	 of the Sheldrakean morphogenetic compressants.
[00:02:19 - 00:02:20]	 (audience laughing)
[00:02:20 - 00:02:24]	 And I'm sure he lives up to the name.
[00:02:24 - 00:02:26]	 (audience laughing)
[00:02:26 - 00:02:30]	 So the way we conceived of this is I just think
[00:02:30 - 00:02:34]	 that what goes on in our living rooms
[00:02:34 - 00:02:38]	 is much more exciting even without the dope smoking
[00:02:38 - 00:02:43]	 than what goes on in the public lecture situation.
[00:02:43 - 00:02:48]	 So the idea was for Rupert and I to get together again,
[00:02:50 - 00:02:54]	 get to catch up again and to have you
[00:02:54 - 00:02:59]	 as part of the extended family participate in this.
[00:02:59 - 00:03:05]	 So on very short notice, I conceived this
[00:03:05 - 00:03:09]	 and called it Forms and Mysteries,
[00:03:09 - 00:03:13]	 Morphogenetic Fields and Psychedelic Experiences
[00:03:13 - 00:03:18]	 as a kind of effort to split the deck two ways equally.
[00:03:19 - 00:03:24]	 Although in the past, Rupert and I have participated
[00:03:24 - 00:03:27]	 at Esalen, we spent a very interesting afternoon
[00:03:27 - 00:03:32]	 talking about the theory of formative causation
[00:03:32 - 00:03:36]	 and what it might say about the psychedelic experience,
[00:03:36 - 00:03:40]	 pharmacologically, psychologically, historically,
[00:03:40 - 00:03:41]	 and so forth.
[00:03:41 - 00:03:47]	 Forms and Mysteries seemed to me a fitting title
[00:03:47 - 00:03:51]	 because of course form is a mystery
[00:03:51 - 00:03:55]	 that even science is willing to acknowledge.
[00:03:55 - 00:04:00]	 This is the great terra incognito of modern science,
[00:04:00 - 00:04:06]	 is the persistence and genesis of form.
[00:04:06 - 00:04:11]	 What is it, where does it come from, and what sustains it?
[00:04:11 - 00:04:15]	 And typical of the history of science,
[00:04:15 - 00:04:20]	 the more complex problems have been postponed historically
[00:04:20 - 00:04:25]	 until epistemological and analytical capabilities
[00:04:25 - 00:04:28]	 were sufficient to deal with the problem.
[00:04:28 - 00:04:32]	 This is why, for instance, linguistics was no more
[00:04:32 - 00:04:35]	 than a metaphor until the 20th century.
[00:04:35 - 00:04:40]	 And in a sense, I think probably morphogenesis
[00:04:40 - 00:04:42]	 was in the same situation
[00:04:42 - 00:04:47]	 because powerful mathematical tools have had to be invented
[00:04:47 - 00:04:53]	 to carry it out of the realm of mere theoretical discussion.
[00:04:53 - 00:05:00]	 Rupert has been, I think, the most radical
[00:05:00 - 00:05:05]	 of all the people who have proposed a revisioning
[00:05:05 - 00:05:10]	 of causality and by extension, the domain of science,
[00:05:12 - 00:05:17]	 what it is able to claim as its purvey.
[00:05:17 - 00:05:23]	 And I think that his position has been at first ignored
[00:05:23 - 00:05:28]	 and more recently with the publication
[00:05:28 - 00:05:31]	 of his second book, "Excoriated,"
[00:05:31 - 00:05:36]	 because this is no small matter.
[00:05:36 - 00:05:39]	 This is actually a question
[00:05:39 - 00:05:43]	 of fundamental epistemic importance
[00:05:43 - 00:05:46]	 to the entire scientific enterprise
[00:05:46 - 00:05:50]	 because what is being proposed in the theory
[00:05:50 - 00:05:55]	 of the morphogenetic field is a revisioning of causality.
[00:05:55 - 00:06:01]	 The second book, which if you haven't read it,
[00:06:01 - 00:06:04]	 you're certainly missing an intellectual adventure.
[00:06:04 - 00:06:07]	 It's like a chance to read the Principia
[00:06:07 - 00:06:10]	 when the person who wrote it is striding around town
[00:06:10 - 00:06:12]	 giving lectures.
[00:06:12 - 00:06:15]	 It's really a rare intellectual adventure.
[00:06:15 - 00:06:18]	 I haven't known that kind of excitement,
[00:06:18 - 00:06:23]	 reading theoretical biology since discovering L.L. White
[00:06:23 - 00:06:26]	 when I was a kid.
[00:06:26 - 00:06:30]	 But what is being proposed is a fundamental revisioning
[00:06:30 - 00:06:33]	 of how events happen in the world
[00:06:33 - 00:06:38]	 and very fundamental to the performance of science
[00:06:38 - 00:06:42]	 is the notion of experiment.
[00:06:42 - 00:06:47]	 And experiment rests on the relatively unexamined concept
[00:06:47 - 00:06:54]	 of the restoration of initial conditions.
[00:06:54 - 00:06:59]	 Well, the Sheldrakean cosmos would play havoc
[00:06:59 - 00:07:03]	 with the notion of the restoration of initial conditions
[00:07:03 - 00:07:07]	 because what it is saying is that the universe
[00:07:07 - 00:07:12]	 is a steadily accreting and self-defining
[00:07:12 - 00:07:15]	 set of interlocking habits.
[00:07:15 - 00:07:20]	 And that no, that slices into this
[00:07:20 - 00:07:26]	 waveform interference pattern of habit
[00:07:26 - 00:07:30]	 are therefore necessarily going to be time dependent.
[00:07:30 - 00:07:33]	 In other words, it looks different at each point
[00:07:33 - 00:07:34]	 in its history.
[00:07:34 - 00:07:38]	 It makes it very hard therefore to see
[00:07:38 - 00:07:40]	 how in an atmosphere like that,
[00:07:40 - 00:07:44]	 ordinary science can be prosecuted at all.
[00:07:44 - 00:07:50]	 So the interest that it holds for me then
[00:07:50 - 00:07:55]	 is that it seems to be a very calm, rational,
[00:07:57 - 00:08:02]	 attentive program of intellectual understanding
[00:08:02 - 00:08:08]	 which leads to the same radical conclusions
[00:08:08 - 00:08:13]	 that an emergence in the core experience of archaism,
[00:08:13 - 00:08:17]	 the psychedelic experience argues for.
[00:08:17 - 00:08:21]	 In other words, that all our intellectual constructs
[00:08:21 - 00:08:24]	 are in fact built on shifting sands
[00:08:24 - 00:08:28]	 and all knowledge is provisional at this stage
[00:08:28 - 00:08:30]	 in the epistemic enterprise.
[00:08:30 - 00:08:35]	 It doesn't mean that a more epistemically grounded knowing
[00:08:35 - 00:08:39]	 is not possible.
[00:08:39 - 00:08:44]	 It merely means that up to this point, it has not occurred.
[00:08:44 - 00:08:48]	 Science's claim to fulfill this function
[00:08:48 - 00:08:50]	 is now in serious trouble.
[00:08:50 - 00:08:52]	 It actually has been in some areas
[00:08:52 - 00:08:57]	 since the elaboration of quantum physics in the '20s,
[00:08:57 - 00:09:02]	 but Sheldrake is coming at it not from a realm
[00:09:02 - 00:09:05]	 of extremely arcane mathematical modeling,
[00:09:05 - 00:09:08]	 but in the biological realm with a model
[00:09:08 - 00:09:13]	 which is both simultaneously true to felt experience
[00:09:13 - 00:09:19]	 and confounding to the scientific paradigm
[00:09:19 - 00:09:24]	 as it has been waged since Bacon, essentially.
[00:09:24 - 00:09:27]	 So Rupert is with us tonight.
[00:09:27 - 00:09:32]	 He will tell you, I hope, the state of the art
[00:09:32 - 00:09:37]	 in terms of experiments and the public dialogue
[00:09:37 - 00:09:41]	 that attends these things, because make no mistake about it,
[00:09:41 - 00:09:45]	 the overturning of a scientific paradigm is a political act
[00:09:45 - 00:09:50]	 and it has to do with reputations and tenure and publication
[00:09:50 - 00:09:55]	 and people who have built their lives defending something
[00:09:55 - 00:09:59]	 that they now see under severe attack.
[00:09:59 - 00:10:04]	 What I believe is happening and that Rupert
[00:10:04 - 00:10:08]	 and my own fascination with the psychedelic experience
[00:10:08 - 00:10:13]	 and other phenomena in society all can be brought
[00:10:14 - 00:10:19]	 under the single umbrella of a resurgent vitalism,
[00:10:19 - 00:10:25]	 an awareness of the living vitality of form
[00:10:25 - 00:10:30]	 and organism and experience, and this is something
[00:10:30 - 00:10:34]	 that in order to do its work, the Newtonian model
[00:10:34 - 00:10:38]	 had to expunge all that, had to call these things
[00:10:38 - 00:10:42]	 secondary qualities, epiphenomenal, derivative,
[00:10:42 - 00:10:44]	 this, that, and the other.
[00:10:44 - 00:10:48]	 And yet these are the existential stuff
[00:10:48 - 00:10:52]	 of the felt world of being.
[00:10:52 - 00:10:57]	 So Rupert brings to biology a theory which links it back
[00:10:57 - 00:11:02]	 into physics and forward into psychology
[00:11:02 - 00:11:07]	 in a way that restores meaning, however much it may do damage
[00:11:07 - 00:11:12]	 to the somewhat infantile wish of the Cartesians
[00:11:12 - 00:11:16]	 to construct a closed tautology, which is really
[00:11:16 - 00:11:18]	 what they want to do, you know, and that's why
[00:11:18 - 00:11:21]	 they wanna get rid of all these troubling phenomena
[00:11:21 - 00:11:26]	 that are of such a complexity that it exceeds their model.
[00:11:26 - 00:11:30]	 Well, I'm a great fan of this theory.
[00:11:30 - 00:11:35]	 I could run on at length about it, but the man
[00:11:35 - 00:11:39]	 who invented it is here with us.
[00:11:39 - 00:11:42]	 He can lead us to a deeper understanding of it.
[00:11:42 - 00:11:47]	 Please welcome Rupert Sheldrake, the greatest biologist
[00:11:47 - 00:11:48]	 of the age.
[00:11:48 - 00:11:49]	 (audience laughs)
[00:11:49 - 00:11:52]	 (audience applauds)
[00:11:52 - 00:11:59]	 (Rupert laughs)
[00:12:08 - 00:12:11]	 Well, you see, it's a paradoxical situation.
[00:12:11 - 00:12:13]	 It's a difficult act to follow, and yet--
[00:12:13 - 00:12:14]	 (audience laughs)
[00:12:14 - 00:12:17]	 I've got somehow got to try after that buildup.
[00:12:17 - 00:12:20]	 I mean-- (laughs)
[00:12:20 - 00:12:21]	 It's...
[00:12:21 - 00:12:27]	 I think what Terence has, his explanation
[00:12:27 - 00:12:32]	 of how morphic resonance works is obviously eloquent
[00:12:32 - 00:12:36]	 and bardic, and I agree with it.
[00:12:36 - 00:12:40]	 And the point that he's put to us now
[00:12:40 - 00:12:46]	 is the thing about the experimental tests.
[00:12:46 - 00:12:49]	 This coming down very much to Earth
[00:12:49 - 00:12:53]	 after this wonderful flight of Terence's imagination
[00:12:53 - 00:12:55]	 into those realms of the imagination
[00:12:55 - 00:12:57]	 that he leads us so easily.
[00:12:57 - 00:13:05]	 The tests so far have mostly been on human subjects,
[00:13:05 - 00:13:10]	 and those of you who've seen the new edition
[00:13:10 - 00:13:13]	 of A New Science of Life, which just came out
[00:13:13 - 00:13:15]	 two or three months ago in the United States,
[00:13:15 - 00:13:19]	 which was published about three years ago in Britain,
[00:13:19 - 00:13:22]	 that edition contains an appendix
[00:13:22 - 00:13:25]	 which brings you up to date on what had happened
[00:13:25 - 00:13:27]	 up until 1985.
[00:13:27 - 00:13:30]	 It contains a summary of the controversies
[00:13:30 - 00:13:33]	 and the discussions, including a reprint
[00:13:33 - 00:13:36]	 of the full Nature editorial attack,
[00:13:36 - 00:13:38]	 the book for burning article.
[00:13:38 - 00:13:42]	 And it also summarizes the experiments
[00:13:42 - 00:13:45]	 which were done in the realm of hidden images,
[00:13:45 - 00:13:47]	 puzzle pictures.
[00:13:47 - 00:13:50]	 I've talked about those before several times
[00:13:50 - 00:13:53]	 here and in San Francisco, so I'm not going to go into those,
[00:13:53 - 00:13:56]	 but those were roughly speaking experiments
[00:13:56 - 00:14:01]	 that involved showing pictures containing a hidden image
[00:14:02 - 00:14:06]	 or puzzle picture on television to millions of people.
[00:14:06 - 00:14:09]	 And the test was to find out whether more people
[00:14:09 - 00:14:11]	 in other countries could recognize it,
[00:14:11 - 00:14:15]	 could spot the hidden image in these puzzle pictures before,
[00:14:15 - 00:14:18]	 if more could date after it had been shown on TV
[00:14:18 - 00:14:20]	 in one country than before.
[00:14:20 - 00:14:23]	 So groups of subjects were tested in a variety of countries.
[00:14:23 - 00:14:26]	 The transmissions took place on British television,
[00:14:26 - 00:14:28]	 first on Thames Television, and then another experiment
[00:14:28 - 00:14:32]	 on the BBC involving about eight million people
[00:14:32 - 00:14:33]	 in the audience.
[00:14:33 - 00:14:36]	 And the tests in other countries were done
[00:14:36 - 00:14:38]	 by volunteer experimenters.
[00:14:38 - 00:14:44]	 The tests involved two puzzle pictures.
[00:14:44 - 00:14:47]	 People in other countries were shown both of these
[00:14:47 - 00:14:48]	 for 30 seconds each.
[00:14:48 - 00:14:51]	 They had to guess or say what they saw in it.
[00:14:51 - 00:14:54]	 They were either right or wrong, easy to mark.
[00:14:54 - 00:14:57]	 And whether they got the hidden image or not.
[00:14:57 - 00:15:00]	 And the same two pictures were tested
[00:15:00 - 00:15:03]	 on different subjects after the TV transmission.
[00:15:03 - 00:15:04]	 One of them was a control,
[00:15:04 - 00:15:06]	 the other one that was shown on TV.
[00:15:06 - 00:15:09]	 Anyway, these experiments,
[00:15:09 - 00:15:11]	 which were then repeated in Germany,
[00:15:11 - 00:15:14]	 gave interesting but variable results.
[00:15:14 - 00:15:16]	 The first one showed a large increase,
[00:15:16 - 00:15:19]	 well, large as a significant increase
[00:15:19 - 00:15:21]	 at the 1% level of probability
[00:15:21 - 00:15:24]	 and the recognition of the transmitted picture
[00:15:24 - 00:15:27]	 compared with the control picture, which remained constant.
[00:15:27 - 00:15:29]	 Very gratifying result.
[00:15:29 - 00:15:33]	 And so the experiment was done again on BBC
[00:15:33 - 00:15:35]	 with its larger audience.
[00:15:35 - 00:15:38]	 The second experiment showed a strong,
[00:15:38 - 00:15:40]	 positive effect in Western Europe.
[00:15:40 - 00:15:42]	 More people in Germany and other countries
[00:15:42 - 00:15:45]	 recognized the picture shown on TV in Britain
[00:15:45 - 00:15:48]	 and the control picture didn't change.
[00:15:48 - 00:15:52]	 But it showed no effect in North America.
[00:15:52 - 00:15:58]	 These results were very puzzling
[00:15:58 - 00:16:01]	 and it's the kind of thing that,
[00:16:01 - 00:16:03]	 what do you make of that?
[00:16:03 - 00:16:04]	 I don't expect morphic resonance to work
[00:16:04 - 00:16:08]	 by distance effect, which is the most obvious explanation.
[00:16:08 - 00:16:12]	 Could it be that somehow people in Europe
[00:16:12 - 00:16:14]	 are being in the same time zone
[00:16:14 - 00:16:16]	 and more in phase with each other
[00:16:16 - 00:16:19]	 than those in the US at six to nine hours shifted?
[00:16:19 - 00:16:21]	 If morphic resonance works as a resonance,
[00:16:21 - 00:16:23]	 then what phase people are in
[00:16:23 - 00:16:24]	 should be an important variable.
[00:16:24 - 00:16:27]	 So that's one possibility.
[00:16:27 - 00:16:30]	 And that's suggested by the results from South Africa,
[00:16:30 - 00:16:32]	 which is only one hour different from Britain
[00:16:32 - 00:16:35]	 and at least as far away as New York
[00:16:35 - 00:16:37]	 and other places it was tested,
[00:16:37 - 00:16:42]	 which showed similar results to the European ones.
[00:16:42 - 00:16:46]	 It wasn't distance, it was time zone
[00:16:46 - 00:16:48]	 that seemed to be the variable.
[00:16:48 - 00:16:51]	 Anyway, this experiment was then done again in Germany.
[00:16:51 - 00:16:52]	 Trans...
[00:16:52 - 00:16:53]	 The pictures were...
[00:16:53 - 00:16:56]	 New pictures, of course, in each experiment.
[00:16:56 - 00:16:59]	 And the pictures there were transmitted
[00:16:59 - 00:17:03]	 on a Sunday afternoon on a program there.
[00:17:03 - 00:17:05]	 And tests were done all around the world.
[00:17:05 - 00:17:08]	 Again, no effect in North America.
[00:17:08 - 00:17:10]	 A highly significant effect in Britain.
[00:17:10 - 00:17:14]	 But in Britain, there was highly significant
[00:17:14 - 00:17:16]	 and the control was no different.
[00:17:16 - 00:17:19]	 And the sample tested was something like 20,000 people.
[00:17:19 - 00:17:21]	 This was a huge sample.
[00:17:21 - 00:17:23]	 Probably the biggest experiment ever done
[00:17:23 - 00:17:25]	 in terms of the number of participants.
[00:17:26 - 00:17:29]	 The effect showed that the picture
[00:17:29 - 00:17:33]	 had become significantly harder to recognize in Britain
[00:17:33 - 00:17:35]	 after it had been seen by a lot of Germans
[00:17:35 - 00:17:37]	 on a Sunday afternoon.
[00:17:37 - 00:17:40]	 (audience laughing)
[00:17:40 - 00:17:50]	 Well, at this stage,
[00:17:50 - 00:17:54]	 I thought, well, this is too close
[00:17:54 - 00:17:57]	 to a kind of standard parapsychological experiment,
[00:17:57 - 00:17:59]	 a one-shot thing.
[00:17:59 - 00:18:00]	 I said to...
[00:18:00 - 00:18:02]	 I discussed it with Russell Togg,
[00:18:02 - 00:18:03]	 who I met at a conference.
[00:18:03 - 00:18:05]	 And he said, "I bet if you do this experiment,
[00:18:05 - 00:18:07]	 "you'll get all sorts of weird precognitive effects
[00:18:07 - 00:18:08]	 "and so on.
[00:18:08 - 00:18:10]	 "It's so like a parapsychology experiment.
[00:18:10 - 00:18:12]	 "You'll get the same kind of anomalies
[00:18:12 - 00:18:15]	 "and bizarre things that we get in ours."
[00:18:15 - 00:18:18]	 And I thought, well, maybe that was one way
[00:18:18 - 00:18:19]	 of looking at it.
[00:18:19 - 00:18:21]	 And thought...
[00:18:21 - 00:18:22]	 (audience laughing)
[00:18:22 - 00:18:23]	 Thought that probably I should do more
[00:18:23 - 00:18:25]	 what is more in the spirit of the hypothesis,
[00:18:25 - 00:18:30]	 namely try and test for the effect of repeated exposures,
[00:18:30 - 00:18:34]	 because it's a hypothesis of repetition leading to habit,
[00:18:34 - 00:18:35]	 not a kind of one-shot event.
[00:18:35 - 00:18:41]	 I wanted to look for where puzzle pictures, for example,
[00:18:41 - 00:18:43]	 could be seen many times.
[00:18:43 - 00:18:46]	 Well, at this stage, it turned out
[00:18:46 - 00:18:48]	 that the only way to do this feasibly,
[00:18:48 - 00:18:50]	 since I couldn't persuade a TV company
[00:18:50 - 00:18:51]	 to show the same puzzle picture
[00:18:51 - 00:18:55]	 and be the same test hundreds of times on their program.
[00:18:55 - 00:18:59]	 The obvious way to do that would be
[00:18:59 - 00:19:01]	 to have it in a TV commercial,
[00:19:01 - 00:19:06]	 or to have it in the advertising in hoardings.
[00:19:06 - 00:19:10]	 And at this stage, I entered into discussions
[00:19:10 - 00:19:12]	 with various leading members of the advertising industry,
[00:19:12 - 00:19:16]	 including some at the Think Tank here in San Francisco.
[00:19:16 - 00:19:18]	 And it seemed that they were indeed quite interested
[00:19:18 - 00:19:20]	 in this approach.
[00:19:20 - 00:19:22]	 And at that stage,
[00:19:22 - 00:19:28]	 then they sent me from their offices in Madison Avenue
[00:19:28 - 00:19:29]	 for some puzzle pictures
[00:19:29 - 00:19:32]	 and started doing some trial ones for a campaign.
[00:19:32 - 00:19:36]	 But at this stage, I began to get cold feet.
[00:19:36 - 00:19:39]	 I began to think, do I really want the first tests
[00:19:39 - 00:19:42]	 of morphic resonance to be done directly and completely
[00:19:42 - 00:19:45]	 as part of a kind of advertising stunt
[00:19:45 - 00:19:47]	 and as part of an advertising research project?
[00:19:47 - 00:19:50]	 And it's not, things should continue as they begin
[00:19:50 - 00:19:51]	 to some extent.
[00:19:51 - 00:19:54]	 And I thought it just wasn't a very auspicious beginning.
[00:19:54 - 00:19:58]	 And I didn't get too involved with that.
[00:19:58 - 00:20:01]	 I've sort of backed down on that one.
[00:20:01 - 00:20:05]	 They also had fears from their clients
[00:20:05 - 00:20:07]	 because anything to do with hidden images,
[00:20:07 - 00:20:09]	 advertisers are terrified of being accused
[00:20:09 - 00:20:12]	 of subliminal advertising.
[00:20:12 - 00:20:14]	 And so there's a kind of paranoia
[00:20:14 - 00:20:15]	 the minute hidden images come up.
[00:20:16 - 00:20:19]	 Anyway, so that experiments on the back burner.
[00:20:19 - 00:20:22]	 Several other projects are in the pipeline.
[00:20:22 - 00:20:25]	 A friend of mine has invented a puzzle in England,
[00:20:25 - 00:20:27]	 a nine piece geometrical puzzle,
[00:20:27 - 00:20:30]	 which is exceedingly hard to do.
[00:20:30 - 00:20:32]	 It took me hours and hours to solve it.
[00:20:32 - 00:20:36]	 It's got tens of millions of combinations
[00:20:36 - 00:20:38]	 and there's 148 possible answers,
[00:20:38 - 00:20:40]	 but they're very hard to find.
[00:20:40 - 00:20:44]	 He's planning to market this in the near future
[00:20:44 - 00:20:46]	 or in the more or less near future.
[00:20:46 - 00:20:48]	 So we're setting up an experiment that would go with that.
[00:20:48 - 00:20:51]	 If it is marketed, we'd monitor in other countries
[00:20:51 - 00:20:53]	 where it's been, where it's marketed,
[00:20:53 - 00:20:54]	 the rate at which people can solve it
[00:20:54 - 00:20:57]	 under standard conditions.
[00:20:57 - 00:20:59]	 And then measure at regular intervals in other countries
[00:20:59 - 00:21:01]	 before it's released there.
[00:21:01 - 00:21:04]	 To see whether millions of people or thousands
[00:21:04 - 00:21:06]	 or tens of thousands learning it in Britain
[00:21:06 - 00:21:08]	 affect these successes.
[00:21:08 - 00:21:11]	 It's like monitoring the ability of people
[00:21:11 - 00:21:12]	 to solve the Rubik cube.
[00:21:12 - 00:21:14]	 If you'd got in right at the beginning,
[00:21:14 - 00:21:15]	 it's that kind of thing.
[00:21:15 - 00:21:17]	 And on a smaller scale.
[00:21:17 - 00:21:20]	 Anyway, that's one thing in the pipeline.
[00:21:20 - 00:21:22]	 The other thing is the three experiments
[00:21:22 - 00:21:24]	 which won the Teleton Prize,
[00:21:24 - 00:21:27]	 which was awarded in June 1986
[00:21:27 - 00:21:29]	 for tests of morphic resonance.
[00:21:29 - 00:21:34]	 All involved experiments on the ability of human beings
[00:21:34 - 00:21:37]	 to learn things that millions of people had learned before.
[00:21:37 - 00:21:40]	 Again, I won't go into these in detail
[00:21:40 - 00:21:41]	 'cause they're all written up in my new book,
[00:21:41 - 00:21:43]	 "The Presence of the Past."
[00:21:44 - 00:21:47]	 Briefly, they involved the ability to learn
[00:21:47 - 00:21:52]	 or recognize words in languages unknown to the person
[00:21:52 - 00:21:53]	 in the written form.
[00:21:53 - 00:21:56]	 One involved Hebrew words written in Hebrew.
[00:21:56 - 00:21:58]	 The other involved Persian words written in Persian.
[00:21:58 - 00:22:00]	 These two experiments were very similar.
[00:22:00 - 00:22:02]	 They were done independently,
[00:22:02 - 00:22:05]	 one in the United States at Yale by Gary Schwartz,
[00:22:05 - 00:22:06]	 the other in Britain,
[00:22:06 - 00:22:10]	 by two people who both independently devised
[00:22:10 - 00:22:13]	 very similar tests to test for morphic resonance.
[00:22:13 - 00:22:16]	 It's often an interesting fact.
[00:22:16 - 00:22:23]	 These tests showed the ability of people
[00:22:23 - 00:22:24]	 to learn things more readily
[00:22:24 - 00:22:26]	 if they were things that other people had learned before.
[00:22:26 - 00:22:28]	 The third test was on Morse code.
[00:22:28 - 00:22:36]	 The main experiments that have been going on,
[00:22:36 - 00:22:38]	 apart from other ones planned in the human psychology realm,
[00:22:38 - 00:22:41]	 the ones that are actually going on right now
[00:22:41 - 00:22:42]	 are in the realms of chemistry
[00:22:42 - 00:22:44]	 and in fruit fly development.
[00:22:44 - 00:22:49]	 The experiment that's going on in Warwick University
[00:22:49 - 00:22:53]	 at this moment concerns protein folding.
[00:22:53 - 00:22:56]	 In my new book, I discuss this.
[00:22:56 - 00:22:59]	 If proteins are unfolded,
[00:22:59 - 00:23:02]	 then it may be that when they fold up again,
[00:23:02 - 00:23:04]	 which involves a complex morphogenetic process
[00:23:04 - 00:23:05]	 of the molecular level,
[00:23:05 - 00:23:10]	 which can be monitored using quite simple techniques.
[00:23:10 - 00:23:11]	 When they fold up again,
[00:23:11 - 00:23:13]	 they may be refolding in a way
[00:23:13 - 00:23:15]	 that they've not done in nature before.
[00:23:15 - 00:23:19]	 Especially, there are reasons why this would be so
[00:23:19 - 00:23:21]	 for certain particular enzymes.
[00:23:21 - 00:23:26]	 So, the more often they're refolded,
[00:23:26 - 00:23:28]	 they should learn how to do it, as it were,
[00:23:28 - 00:23:30]	 and the refolding process should take place
[00:23:30 - 00:23:32]	 measurably quicker.
[00:23:32 - 00:23:34]	 But we have an experiment going on to test for this,
[00:23:34 - 00:23:37]	 the refolding of enzymes,
[00:23:37 - 00:23:41]	 and then repeated refolding to see if it happens quicker.
[00:23:41 - 00:23:43]	 I don't know the results yet.
[00:23:43 - 00:23:44]	 It's still going on,
[00:23:44 - 00:23:46]	 and I'm not sure whether it would give
[00:23:46 - 00:23:49]	 conclusive results or not within the summer,
[00:23:49 - 00:23:51]	 which is when the project ends.
[00:23:51 - 00:23:55]	 The other ones on fruit flies
[00:23:55 - 00:23:56]	 and the development of fruit flies,
[00:23:56 - 00:23:58]	 following up results that already suggest
[00:23:58 - 00:24:00]	 that when fruit flies have developed
[00:24:00 - 00:24:02]	 in response to an abnormal stimulus,
[00:24:02 - 00:24:06]	 like ether or higher temperatures during pupation,
[00:24:06 - 00:24:09]	 that the percent abnormal flies,
[00:24:09 - 00:24:12]	 for example, flies with extra veins in their wings,
[00:24:12 - 00:24:16]	 a certain proportion are produced by this stress
[00:24:16 - 00:24:17]	 from the environment.
[00:24:17 - 00:24:20]	 But the more flies that have been exposed to the stress,
[00:24:20 - 00:24:22]	 the more that have become abnormal,
[00:24:22 - 00:24:24]	 the greater the abnormal response is
[00:24:24 - 00:24:27]	 when fresh ones are put into this stress.
[00:24:27 - 00:24:29]	 This has already been found,
[00:24:29 - 00:24:31]	 and it looks very much like a morphogenetic
[00:24:31 - 00:24:33]	 and morphic resonance effect.
[00:24:33 - 00:24:34]	 And some more experiments are going on
[00:24:34 - 00:24:37]	 to test the earlier results
[00:24:37 - 00:24:40]	 that showed this result to be the case.
[00:24:40 - 00:24:43]	 Again, this experiment's about halfway through
[00:24:43 - 00:24:44]	 at the moment.
[00:24:44 - 00:24:48]	 So these are some of the things that are going on
[00:24:48 - 00:24:49]	 to test the theory.
[00:24:49 - 00:24:53]	 I should perhaps mention one attempt
[00:24:53 - 00:24:55]	 to refute the theory that was being made
[00:24:55 - 00:24:59]	 and recently published in the Skeptical Inquirer.
[00:24:59 - 00:25:01]	 I don't know how many people here are readers
[00:25:01 - 00:25:04]	 of the Skeptical Inquirer, perhaps rather few.
[00:25:07 - 00:25:08]	 The Skeptical Inquirer, as you may know,
[00:25:08 - 00:25:13]	 is the house journal of Psycop, the debunking organization,
[00:25:13 - 00:25:16]	 and the one that's most famous for James Randi
[00:25:16 - 00:25:19]	 being among its activists.
[00:25:19 - 00:25:23]	 And this was published, it was a paper by Francisco Varela
[00:25:23 - 00:25:27]	 who claimed to have refuted the hypothesis
[00:25:27 - 00:25:29]	 of formative causation.
[00:25:29 - 00:25:30]	 And the experiment that he'd done
[00:25:30 - 00:25:33]	 involved programming a desktop computer
[00:25:33 - 00:25:35]	 to carry out a particular operation,
[00:25:35 - 00:25:38]	 measure the time it took to do it,
[00:25:38 - 00:25:41]	 and then repeat this operation millions of times,
[00:25:41 - 00:25:43]	 and then measuring the rate of it.
[00:25:43 - 00:25:45]	 And he found that the computer didn't do it any quicker.
[00:25:45 - 00:25:46]	 (audience laughing)
[00:25:46 - 00:25:50]	 So he concluded that this refuted the hypothesis
[00:25:50 - 00:25:52]	 of formative causation, and he first wrote this paper
[00:25:52 - 00:25:56]	 in 1983 and sent it to me,
[00:25:56 - 00:26:00]	 and suggested we had a public discussion on this,
[00:26:00 - 00:26:01]	 which I agreed to.
[00:26:01 - 00:26:02]	 So we had two or three exchanges,
[00:26:02 - 00:26:05]	 and the idea was to publish the papers together.
[00:26:06 - 00:26:09]	 I argued in my first exchange that it didn't test the theory
[00:26:09 - 00:26:13]	 because the theory only applies to indeterminate,
[00:26:13 - 00:26:16]	 quantum systems which contain enough indeterminacy
[00:26:16 - 00:26:19]	 for these probabilistic fields to get a grip on it,
[00:26:19 - 00:26:21]	 whereas computers are completely determinist
[00:26:21 - 00:26:22]	 in their functioning.
[00:26:22 - 00:26:24]	 There's nothing that the fields could do.
[00:26:24 - 00:26:27]	 Secondly, the computers are not self-organizing systems
[00:26:27 - 00:26:30]	 in the same sense that morphogenetic systems
[00:26:30 - 00:26:33]	 and cells, crystals, molecules, and atoms are.
[00:26:33 - 00:26:34]	 Rather, the program that's going on
[00:26:34 - 00:26:36]	 is not something that's created itself,
[00:26:36 - 00:26:39]	 but rather something which Varela had thought up
[00:26:39 - 00:26:40]	 and put inside the machine.
[00:26:40 - 00:26:44]	 There was nothing self-organizing about that.
[00:26:44 - 00:26:47]	 And therefore, this wasn't a test of the theory.
[00:26:47 - 00:26:49]	 Anyway, Varela didn't agree,
[00:26:49 - 00:26:51]	 and said that I couldn't maintain
[00:26:51 - 00:26:55]	 that living organisms were not machines like computers
[00:26:55 - 00:26:58]	 because both organisms and machines were machines,
[00:26:58 - 00:26:59]	 and that there was no difference--
[00:26:59 - 00:27:01]	 (audience laughing)
[00:27:01 - 00:27:03]	 Between computers and living organisms
[00:27:03 - 00:27:05]	 because they were all machines.
[00:27:05 - 00:27:08]	 So we got into this kind of argument,
[00:27:08 - 00:27:10]	 and I said I thought that was rubbish,
[00:27:10 - 00:27:13]	 and that it wasn't like that at all, and so on.
[00:27:13 - 00:27:18]	 Anyway, what happened then was that a physicist,
[00:27:18 - 00:27:20]	 the late Professor Michael Ovenden
[00:27:20 - 00:27:23]	 of the University of British Columbia,
[00:27:23 - 00:27:26]	 who was one of the judges of the Tarrytown competition,
[00:27:26 - 00:27:31]	 read Varela's paper, which was entered for the competition,
[00:27:31 - 00:27:33]	 and all four judges rejected as being
[00:27:33 - 00:27:35]	 a valid test of the theory.
[00:27:35 - 00:27:40]	 He pointed out to me that it didn't test the theory
[00:27:40 - 00:27:42]	 because the way computers work
[00:27:42 - 00:27:45]	 is that every microsecond or so there's a pulse,
[00:27:45 - 00:27:48]	 and the instructions are carried out pulse-wise.
[00:27:48 - 00:27:52]	 So a program with 30 steps in would take 30 microseconds
[00:27:52 - 00:27:56]	 'cause each step is pulsed by this internal clock.
[00:27:56 - 00:27:59]	 Well, roughly speaking, that seems to be
[00:27:59 - 00:28:01]	 what's going on in the computer.
[00:28:01 - 00:28:04]	 Varela's program with 30 steps took 30 microseconds
[00:28:04 - 00:28:06]	 for his computer to do.
[00:28:06 - 00:28:09]	 It's a computer that has a microsecond clock.
[00:28:09 - 00:28:10]	 And after millions of repetitions,
[00:28:10 - 00:28:13]	 it still took 30 microseconds.
[00:28:13 - 00:28:15]	 Well, all this shows is that the clock
[00:28:15 - 00:28:17]	 that pulses the things in the computer
[00:28:17 - 00:28:20]	 was pulsing the instructions at exactly the rate
[00:28:20 - 00:28:22]	 that the computer has to pulse them at,
[00:28:22 - 00:28:24]	 namely, one microsecond.
[00:28:24 - 00:28:25]	 And so it took 30 microseconds
[00:28:25 - 00:28:27]	 to run through these instructions.
[00:28:27 - 00:28:30]	 Even if the silicon chips had responded quicker
[00:28:30 - 00:28:31]	 to the pulses,
[00:28:31 - 00:28:35]	 then it wouldn't have shown up in this experiment
[00:28:35 - 00:28:37]	 'cause they would still have had to happen
[00:28:37 - 00:28:39]	 every microsecond.
[00:28:39 - 00:28:42]	 Anyway, this error
[00:28:42 - 00:28:45]	 in the basis of the experiment
[00:28:45 - 00:28:48]	 was pointed out to him.
[00:28:48 - 00:28:50]	 Anyway, he published the original paper,
[00:28:50 - 00:28:53]	 and I've now written a reply in the Skeptical Inquiry
[00:28:53 - 00:28:54]	 pointing out these issues.
[00:28:56 - 00:28:57]	 But when I sent this in to the editor
[00:28:57 - 00:28:59]	 of the Skeptical Inquiry,
[00:28:59 - 00:29:02]	 he wrote back to me saying that my paper,
[00:29:02 - 00:29:03]	 my reply probably wouldn't come out
[00:29:03 - 00:29:04]	 till the winter number,
[00:29:04 - 00:29:06]	 since the letter section of the fall number
[00:29:06 - 00:29:09]	 was already full of letters from other people
[00:29:09 - 00:29:10]	 pointing out the same error.
[00:29:10 - 00:29:14]	 (audience laughing)
[00:29:14 - 00:29:21]	 So that's the status of the refutation debate
[00:29:21 - 00:29:22]	 at the moment.
[00:29:22 - 00:29:24]	 And you'll be able to see these various things
[00:29:24 - 00:29:26]	 in the forthcoming next two issues
[00:29:26 - 00:29:28]	 of the Skeptical Inquiry.
[00:29:28 - 00:29:31]	 Should you ever see it around.
[00:29:31 - 00:29:37]	 There are quite a number of projects being planned
[00:29:37 - 00:29:41]	 in the realms of chemistry
[00:29:41 - 00:29:45]	 and developmental biology and experimental psychology.
[00:29:45 - 00:29:48]	 Some funding has become available
[00:29:48 - 00:29:49]	 for morphic resonance research,
[00:29:49 - 00:29:52]	 which is why these projects are going on right now.
[00:29:53 - 00:29:57]	 Owing to the generosity of three or four individuals
[00:29:57 - 00:29:59]	 and then smaller subscriptions
[00:29:59 - 00:30:02]	 through the Fund for Morphic Resonance Research
[00:30:02 - 00:30:06]	 from individuals who have been good enough
[00:30:06 - 00:30:07]	 to try and help this process along.
[00:30:07 - 00:30:09]	 And this money really has helped us along
[00:30:09 - 00:30:12]	 because it has made it possible to hire people
[00:30:12 - 00:30:14]	 to do these experiments in labs, in universities.
[00:30:14 - 00:30:17]	 And there are quite a number of universities
[00:30:17 - 00:30:18]	 ready and willing to do them.
[00:30:18 - 00:30:20]	 And the only limiting factor at the moment
[00:30:20 - 00:30:23]	 is money to hire the people to do them.
[00:30:23 - 00:30:26]	 We're hiring students in the summer vacation
[00:30:26 - 00:30:28]	 to do these projects because that way
[00:30:28 - 00:30:30]	 we can get a three to four month project
[00:30:30 - 00:30:33]	 down to $1,500.
[00:30:33 - 00:30:36]	 Yes.
[00:30:36 - 00:30:39]	 I don't know if I'm the only one in the audience
[00:30:39 - 00:30:41]	 who really doesn't grasp what the theory
[00:30:41 - 00:30:43]	 of morphogenetic resonance is,
[00:30:43 - 00:30:46]	 but I appreciate a couple of sentence descriptions.
[00:30:46 - 00:30:47]	 Yes, quite right.
[00:30:47 - 00:30:49]	 Well, I should have said that at the beginning.
[00:30:49 - 00:30:50]	 All right.
[00:30:50 - 00:30:52]	 Both of those, thanks.
[00:30:52 - 00:30:54]	 The theory, sorry about that.
[00:30:54 - 00:30:56]	 I was assuming that most people did know
[00:30:56 - 00:30:58]	 and I should have realized that not everybody would
[00:30:58 - 00:30:59]	 and maybe most didn't.
[00:30:59 - 00:31:02]	 Something intrigues me about it, but I don't grasp it.
[00:31:02 - 00:31:07]	 Well, it's hard to grasp in its detailed forms.
[00:31:07 - 00:31:08]	 (audience laughing)
[00:31:08 - 00:31:11]	 That's what our dialogue was going to be about
[00:31:11 - 00:31:12]	 in some of these things.
[00:31:12 - 00:31:14]	 But basically what it's saying is that
[00:31:14 - 00:31:17]	 the so-called laws of nature are like habits,
[00:31:17 - 00:31:19]	 that things happen the way they do
[00:31:19 - 00:31:21]	 because they've happened that way before.
[00:31:21 - 00:31:24]	 The way crystals crystallize depends
[00:31:24 - 00:31:25]	 on the way similar compound,
[00:31:25 - 00:31:28]	 the same compound is crystallized in the past.
[00:31:28 - 00:31:30]	 The way rats learn a new trick depends
[00:31:30 - 00:31:33]	 on whether other rats have learned it before.
[00:31:33 - 00:31:35]	 If rats in another place have already learned it,
[00:31:35 - 00:31:37]	 then it'll be easier to learn somewhere else
[00:31:37 - 00:31:41]	 for subsequent rats by the process called morphic resonance.
[00:31:41 - 00:31:44]	 So there's a kind of collective memory in nature
[00:31:44 - 00:31:48]	 in different species, in different kinds of things.
[00:31:48 - 00:31:53]	 And this collective memory is transferred
[00:31:53 - 00:31:54]	 from the past to the present
[00:31:54 - 00:31:56]	 by the process I call morphic resonance.
[00:31:56 - 00:31:58]	 That means that in general,
[00:31:58 - 00:32:00]	 think new things which happen repeatedly
[00:32:00 - 00:32:02]	 should happen more and more easily
[00:32:02 - 00:32:04]	 or more and more quickly and more and more probably
[00:32:04 - 00:32:07]	 as time goes on because of the effect,
[00:32:07 - 00:32:09]	 the buildup of this morphic resonance.
[00:32:09 - 00:32:14]	 And this theory is controversial as Terence pointed out
[00:32:14 - 00:32:16]	 because it's not the way that scientists
[00:32:16 - 00:32:18]	 usually think about these things.
[00:32:18 - 00:32:22]	 And the issue that I've just been discussing
[00:32:22 - 00:32:24]	 is various experimental ways to test it
[00:32:24 - 00:32:28]	 because this theory says when proteins fold up
[00:32:28 - 00:32:31]	 a new way and do it repeatedly, they should do it quicker.
[00:32:31 - 00:32:33]	 And when some people have learned something
[00:32:33 - 00:32:36]	 in one country like on television in a hidden image,
[00:32:36 - 00:32:39]	 it should make it easier for others to spot it elsewhere.
[00:32:39 - 00:32:43]	 Or if fruit flies have developed in a particularly,
[00:32:43 - 00:32:46]	 in a new way, for example, with extra veins
[00:32:46 - 00:32:47]	 in their wings, then the more that do it,
[00:32:47 - 00:32:49]	 the easier it should get for others to do it,
[00:32:49 - 00:32:51]	 other things being equal.
[00:32:51 - 00:32:54]	 And that's the point of all these experiments
[00:32:54 - 00:32:55]	 I've been describing.
[00:32:55 - 00:32:57]	 They're all designed to test this theory
[00:32:57 - 00:32:59]	 to see whether there is in fact
[00:32:59 - 00:33:02]	 this kind of memory or habit in nature.
[00:33:02 - 00:33:05]	 There's one more aspect of the theory
[00:33:05 - 00:33:09]	 that I should mention, which is that it leads
[00:33:09 - 00:33:13]	 to a completely new interpretation of memory.
[00:33:13 - 00:33:16]	 And it says that ordinary memory,
[00:33:16 - 00:33:19]	 our ordinary memories of what we've done depend
[00:33:19 - 00:33:23]	 not on traces or physical material changes
[00:33:23 - 00:33:26]	 stored in the brain like traces on a tape recorder
[00:33:26 - 00:33:29]	 or recordings in a hologram.
[00:33:29 - 00:33:32]	 It doesn't depend on a material storage system in the brain.
[00:33:32 - 00:33:35]	 Rather, memory depends on tuning in
[00:33:35 - 00:33:38]	 to our own past directly by morphic resonance.
[00:33:38 - 00:33:41]	 And the brain's more like a tuning system
[00:33:41 - 00:33:44]	 than a storage system.
[00:33:44 - 00:33:45]	 Damage to the brain can interfere
[00:33:45 - 00:33:47]	 with the tuning or the reception,
[00:33:47 - 00:33:50]	 and so you can get loss of memory through brain damage,
[00:33:50 - 00:33:52]	 but the memory isn't in the brain.
[00:33:52 - 00:33:54]	 And just as we tune into our own memories
[00:33:54 - 00:33:59]	 from our own past, so we also tune into the memories
[00:33:59 - 00:34:01]	 of large numbers of other people,
[00:34:01 - 00:34:03]	 and this is similar as a notion
[00:34:03 - 00:34:06]	 to what Jung called the collective unconscious.
[00:34:06 - 00:34:09]	 So that's a summary of what it's all about.
[00:34:09 - 00:34:12]	 And the experiments I've just been talking about
[00:34:12 - 00:34:16]	 were in response to Terence asking for an update
[00:34:16 - 00:34:19]	 on the experimental test situation.
[00:34:19 - 00:34:24]	 So that's more or less what's been going on so far
[00:34:24 - 00:34:26]	 in the way of experimental tests.
[00:34:26 - 00:34:31]	 And more in the pipeline,
[00:34:31 - 00:34:35]	 and the limiting factor at the moment is funds,
[00:34:35 - 00:34:37]	 and some funds are becoming available.
[00:34:37 - 00:34:40]	 So that's where we are from that point of view.
[00:34:40 - 00:34:45]	 - Yes, I might say about all this,
[00:34:45 - 00:34:49]	 to my mind, the criticism of the theory
[00:34:49 - 00:34:54]	 has to this point been fairly inane
[00:34:54 - 00:34:56]	 and largely carried out by people
[00:34:56 - 00:34:59]	 who didn't really understand the theory.
[00:34:59 - 00:35:04]	 That doesn't mean that it is not open to criticism.
[00:35:06 - 00:35:09]	 The reason I have such an interest in it
[00:35:09 - 00:35:12]	 is because it solved a lot of what I felt
[00:35:12 - 00:35:17]	 were outstanding problems in my own model-building efforts,
[00:35:17 - 00:35:22]	 but it certainly raises other questions.
[00:35:22 - 00:35:26]	 In the first paragraph of "The Presence of the Past,"
[00:35:26 - 00:35:31]	 Rupert condenses the theory into a slogan
[00:35:32 - 00:35:36]	 which could be shouted in a theater or a parade.
[00:35:36 - 00:35:40]	 It's that things are as they are
[00:35:40 - 00:35:43]	 because they were as they were.
[00:35:43 - 00:35:47]	 And that, in essence, is what this theory is saying.
[00:35:47 - 00:35:52]	 Well, now notice that this is as conservative
[00:35:52 - 00:35:57]	 a point of view as one could possibly imagine.
[00:35:58 - 00:36:03]	 The problem, if you believe things are as they are
[00:36:03 - 00:36:06]	 because they were as they were,
[00:36:06 - 00:36:09]	 then your problem is to account
[00:36:09 - 00:36:13]	 for anything new or novel ever happening.
[00:36:13 - 00:36:16]	 How in a world where things are as they are
[00:36:16 - 00:36:18]	 because they were as they were
[00:36:18 - 00:36:21]	 are you ever going to get creative advance?
[00:36:21 - 00:36:25]	 It seems to preclude it from the outset.
[00:36:25 - 00:36:30]	 Well, what drew me originally to Rupert
[00:36:30 - 00:36:36]	 or what drew us together was I had a theory
[00:36:36 - 00:36:40]	 that was entirely about accounting for novelty.
[00:36:40 - 00:36:46]	 And that was what it delivered on,
[00:36:46 - 00:36:51]	 was a model of how new things could come into being.
[00:36:51 - 00:36:55]	 Rupert's theory is a model of how structure is conserved
[00:36:55 - 00:36:57]	 and perpetuated through time.
[00:36:57 - 00:37:00]	 So my thought was you could bring these together
[00:37:00 - 00:37:03]	 and if they were not mutually exclusive
[00:37:03 - 00:37:08]	 then you would find out why there was persistence of form,
[00:37:08 - 00:37:12]	 why there was this overwhelming presence of the past,
[00:37:12 - 00:37:17]	 and yet why there could still be apparently free will
[00:37:17 - 00:37:21]	 and novel situations arise.
[00:37:21 - 00:37:26]	 And you really participate when you participate
[00:37:26 - 00:37:32]	 in this idea in an intellectual adventure
[00:37:32 - 00:37:35]	 upon which the curtain has only risen.
[00:37:35 - 00:37:40]	 No one can stride to a blackboard this afternoon,
[00:37:40 - 00:37:44]	 this evening and write the equations
[00:37:44 - 00:37:46]	 of the morphogenetic field.
[00:37:46 - 00:37:49]	 We are a long, long way from that.
[00:37:49 - 00:37:54]	 This is basically at the level of parlor room discussion.
[00:37:54 - 00:38:01]	 But if the morphogenetic field is written,
[00:38:01 - 00:38:05]	 then if the equations are written,
[00:38:05 - 00:38:10]	 then it will flower into who knows what
[00:38:10 - 00:38:13]	 in the same way that when the electromagnetic equations
[00:38:13 - 00:38:16]	 were finally written by Clerk Maxwell,
[00:38:16 - 00:38:20]	 suddenly radio, television, all of these things
[00:38:20 - 00:38:24]	 became a possibility.
[00:38:24 - 00:38:28]	 I think that accounting for form
[00:38:28 - 00:38:33]	 is the great unsolved problem that science has put off
[00:38:33 - 00:38:36]	 for about 500 years.
[00:38:36 - 00:38:41]	 Accounting for novelty is a somewhat newer problem
[00:38:41 - 00:38:44]	 that is not even addressed by science
[00:38:44 - 00:38:48]	 until you get to the theory of evolution in the 1850s,
[00:38:48 - 00:38:52]	 and then only addressed in the biological realm.
[00:38:52 - 00:38:57]	 The theory that I originally elaborated had novelty
[00:38:57 - 00:39:03]	 as the downsloping part of a fractal wave
[00:39:03 - 00:39:06]	 and the up-moving part of that wave
[00:39:06 - 00:39:09]	 I called entropy or disconnectedness,
[00:39:09 - 00:39:11]	 or I can't even remember.
[00:39:11 - 00:39:16]	 And it was Rupert who said you should call it habit.
[00:39:16 - 00:39:22]	 And you should see then that the world is an ebb and flow
[00:39:22 - 00:39:26]	 of habit versus novelty,
[00:39:26 - 00:39:31]	 of temporal situations of varying durations
[00:39:31 - 00:39:36]	 in which the presence of the past is so overwhelming
[00:39:37 - 00:39:42]	 that basically the past is replayed
[00:39:42 - 00:39:45]	 in that space-time domain.
[00:39:45 - 00:39:48]	 And yet there are other space-time domains
[00:39:48 - 00:39:51]	 where the way in which causality
[00:39:51 - 00:39:54]	 and formative causation come together
[00:39:54 - 00:39:57]	 creates novel connection.
[00:39:57 - 00:40:00]	 And these novel connections come into being
[00:40:00 - 00:40:03]	 with their own morphogenetic field,
[00:40:03 - 00:40:08]	 with their own ability to be a past present
[00:40:08 - 00:40:12]	 in a future yet to be realized.
[00:40:12 - 00:40:16]	 So though I think that the attacks
[00:40:16 - 00:40:20]	 that have been mounted so far have been trivial,
[00:40:20 - 00:40:24]	 the real challenge for the morphogenetic field
[00:40:24 - 00:40:27]	 is to formalize itself,
[00:40:27 - 00:40:31]	 to aim toward mathematical expression,
[00:40:31 - 00:40:34]	 and to construct itself in such a way
[00:40:34 - 00:40:39]	 that the self-evidence of novelty is not sacrificed
[00:40:39 - 00:40:42]	 in the way that the Newtonian model
[00:40:42 - 00:40:47]	 had to sacrifice the self-evidence of primary experience,
[00:40:47 - 00:40:49]	 of felt experience.
[00:40:49 - 00:40:54]	 So you and I haven't talked about this this much,
[00:40:54 - 00:40:56]	 but I would love to hear you talk
[00:40:56 - 00:40:59]	 about the conservation of novelty
[00:40:59 - 00:41:03]	 in a universe ruled by formative causation
[00:41:03 - 00:41:06]	 and how you see that.
[00:41:06 - 00:41:08]	 And perhaps the way in which it plays
[00:41:08 - 00:41:12]	 into the psychedelic issue
[00:41:12 - 00:41:16]	 is that we can take the word habit very generally
[00:41:16 - 00:41:21]	 and realize that one of the curious things
[00:41:21 - 00:41:24]	 about ourselves as higher animals
[00:41:24 - 00:41:28]	 is our susceptibility to habituations.
[00:41:28 - 00:41:33]	 I define habituation as unexamined obsessive behavior.
[00:41:33 - 00:41:36]	 (audience laughs)
[00:41:36 - 00:41:37]	 Seems reasonable.
[00:41:37 - 00:41:41]	 And we are, more than any other creature,
[00:41:41 - 00:41:44]	 we seem to fall into behavioral loops
[00:41:44 - 00:41:49]	 of television watching, snack consuming,
[00:41:49 - 00:41:52]	 fascist voting patterns,
[00:41:52 - 00:41:53]	 (audience laughs)
[00:41:53 - 00:41:58]	 tasteless, tonsorial tendencies and so forth.
[00:41:58 - 00:42:01]	 (audience laughs)
[00:42:01 - 00:42:05]	 What precisely, if you see my notion,
[00:42:05 - 00:42:08]	 again to try and unite the psychedelic thing
[00:42:08 - 00:42:10]	 with what Rupert is doing,
[00:42:10 - 00:42:14]	 my notion of a new model of the psychedelic experience
[00:42:14 - 00:42:19]	 is to call these things morphogenetic field amplifiers.
[00:42:21 - 00:42:25]	 And to say, this is why in the presence
[00:42:25 - 00:42:29]	 of a psychedelic experience,
[00:42:29 - 00:42:33]	 one can hold an object in their hand
[00:42:33 - 00:42:36]	 and visualize its past states.
[00:42:36 - 00:42:40]	 This is how shamans determine who stole the hen
[00:42:40 - 00:42:44]	 or who's sleeping with who.
[00:42:44 - 00:42:48]	 Actually, the morphogenetic field,
[00:42:48 - 00:42:53]	 if sufficiently amplified to sufficient clarity,
[00:42:53 - 00:42:58]	 is nothing more or less than a record of the past history
[00:42:58 - 00:43:00]	 of whatever is being examined.
[00:43:00 - 00:43:04]	 So that suddenly, instead of being focused
[00:43:04 - 00:43:09]	 in a kind of atomized present
[00:43:09 - 00:43:13]	 with a receding past and an anticipated future,
[00:43:13 - 00:43:17]	 we lose our particulate nature
[00:43:17 - 00:43:22]	 as the individual as meat object,
[00:43:22 - 00:43:25]	 and we enter into ourselves
[00:43:25 - 00:43:28]	 defined as a morphogenetic field,
[00:43:28 - 00:43:33]	 as a body of wave mechanically maintained information
[00:43:33 - 00:43:39]	 about past and future states of time.
[00:43:39 - 00:43:44]	 And you may be sure that these theories,
[00:43:44 - 00:43:47]	 like the theory of formative causation,
[00:43:47 - 00:43:49]	 like the theory of relativity,
[00:43:49 - 00:43:52]	 like the theory of Newtonian mechanics,
[00:43:52 - 00:43:55]	 eventually filter down into the realm
[00:43:55 - 00:43:59]	 of everyday experience and common models
[00:43:59 - 00:44:01]	 of ordinary consciousness.
[00:44:01 - 00:44:06]	 And if the morphogenetic field theory or idea
[00:44:06 - 00:44:11]	 was to become empowered as the model
[00:44:11 - 00:44:14]	 for millions and millions of people,
[00:44:14 - 00:44:19]	 then the past and the future would change
[00:44:19 - 00:44:26]	 in their connotation to our existential dilemma.
[00:44:26 - 00:44:29]	 It is, I think, probably the ultimate legacy
[00:44:29 - 00:44:31]	 of the transition from a particulate
[00:44:31 - 00:44:36]	 to a wave mechanical point of view.
[00:44:36 - 00:44:40]	 It binds us to the past at the same time
[00:44:40 - 00:44:44]	 that it exercises the terror of the future,
[00:44:44 - 00:44:49]	 and it really empowers the notion of doubt.
[00:44:49 - 00:44:53]	 So it is not far removed
[00:44:53 - 00:44:56]	 from the realm of our immediate experience.
[00:44:56 - 00:45:01]	 But how can we preserve the self-evident fact of novelty
[00:45:01 - 00:45:04]	 and still get all the good stuff
[00:45:04 - 00:45:07]	 out of formative causation?
[00:45:09 - 00:45:11]	 Well, I think there's a simple answer in a way,
[00:45:11 - 00:45:16]	 which is that the entire evolutionary cosmology
[00:45:16 - 00:45:18]	 of which formative causation is part,
[00:45:18 - 00:45:22]	 it makes sense because if we live
[00:45:22 - 00:45:23]	 in an evolutionary universe,
[00:45:23 - 00:45:26]	 then it makes sense for the regulative principles
[00:45:26 - 00:45:29]	 of all things to evolve rather than be fixed
[00:45:29 - 00:45:30]	 as eternal laws.
[00:45:30 - 00:45:32]	 And the standard view, of course,
[00:45:32 - 00:45:35]	 is that the regularities of nature
[00:45:35 - 00:45:38]	 are all governed by unchanging laws of nature,
[00:45:38 - 00:45:40]	 which were totally eternal
[00:45:40 - 00:45:42]	 and all there before the Big Bang.
[00:45:42 - 00:45:45]	 Well, that's the standard cosmology.
[00:45:45 - 00:45:48]	 But if one moves into the Big Bang cosmology,
[00:45:48 - 00:45:50]	 which is what I'm trying to do
[00:45:50 - 00:45:52]	 with this idea of an evolutionary universe
[00:45:52 - 00:45:55]	 and habits, the laws of nature's habits,
[00:45:55 - 00:45:57]	 is to say that everything evolves,
[00:45:57 - 00:45:58]	 even the regularities of nature,
[00:45:58 - 00:46:03]	 then the very basis of the Big Bang cosmology
[00:46:03 - 00:46:05]	 is the driving force of evolution,
[00:46:05 - 00:46:07]	 which is one of expansion.
[00:46:07 - 00:46:10]	 The Big Bang is the initiation
[00:46:10 - 00:46:13]	 of an ongoing expansion of the universe.
[00:46:13 - 00:46:15]	 And the entire cosmology we have
[00:46:15 - 00:46:17]	 tells us that the universe is expanding,
[00:46:17 - 00:46:19]	 the red shift to the galaxies and so on.
[00:46:19 - 00:46:21]	 The whole of modern cosmology is based
[00:46:21 - 00:46:24]	 on underlying expansion of the universe.
[00:46:24 - 00:46:26]	 And it's this expansion which, first of all,
[00:46:26 - 00:46:29]	 allowed the Big Bang to cool down enough
[00:46:29 - 00:46:32]	 so that nuclear particles could form,
[00:46:32 - 00:46:35]	 and it then cooled enough for atoms to form
[00:46:35 - 00:46:37]	 and then enough for molecules to form.
[00:46:37 - 00:46:39]	 And the emergence of form,
[00:46:39 - 00:46:42]	 the progressive emergence of form
[00:46:42 - 00:46:43]	 in the subatomic and the atomic
[00:46:43 - 00:46:46]	 and the molecular and the chemical realms,
[00:46:46 - 00:46:49]	 and through the forms of stars and galaxies,
[00:46:49 - 00:46:51]	 and then ultimately of planetary systems,
[00:46:51 - 00:46:53]	 the emergence of all this form
[00:46:53 - 00:46:55]	 has only been made possible
[00:46:55 - 00:46:58]	 by a progressive cooling process,
[00:46:58 - 00:47:00]	 which is the other side of the expansion process,
[00:47:00 - 00:47:02]	 because forms such as you and me
[00:47:02 - 00:47:06]	 couldn't exist at 25 billion degrees centigrade,
[00:47:06 - 00:47:07]	 which is how the universe began,
[00:47:07 - 00:47:09]	 and nor could anything else here,
[00:47:09 - 00:47:12]	 nor could the solid rocks of the Earth.
[00:47:12 - 00:47:13]	 I mean, there's a cooling process
[00:47:13 - 00:47:17]	 which is linked to the universal expansion,
[00:47:17 - 00:47:20]	 which one could regard as the primary cause
[00:47:20 - 00:47:23]	 or of the novelty wave.
[00:47:23 - 00:47:25]	 I mean, there's going to be novelty
[00:47:25 - 00:47:26]	 if the universe is always expanding,
[00:47:26 - 00:47:28]	 if there's always new space, new territory,
[00:47:28 - 00:47:30]	 new possibilities.
[00:47:30 - 00:47:33]	 The new space creates new possibilities
[00:47:33 - 00:47:35]	 in some kind of literal way.
[00:47:35 - 00:47:37]	 And the creation of new space and new possibilities,
[00:47:37 - 00:47:39]	 which is happening both at the physical
[00:47:39 - 00:47:42]	 and the metaphorical and at the imaginal levels,
[00:47:42 - 00:47:44]	 if we have a view of evolution
[00:47:44 - 00:47:46]	 which where everything's evolving,
[00:47:46 - 00:47:49]	 the mind matters, but it's all part of one process.
[00:47:49 - 00:47:51]	 It's a great evolutionary process.
[00:47:51 - 00:47:53]	 Then the creation of new space,
[00:47:53 - 00:47:55]	 new possibilities, and new expansion
[00:47:55 - 00:47:59]	 means there's an ongoing novelty
[00:47:59 - 00:48:01]	 going to be there as an inbuilt feature
[00:48:01 - 00:48:03]	 of any universe of this general kind,
[00:48:03 - 00:48:07]	 an expanding universe, like in our Big Bang cosmology.
[00:48:07 - 00:48:08]	 It has to be there.
[00:48:08 - 00:48:10]	 The cosmology demands it.
[00:48:10 - 00:48:15]	 So that's an accepted, a given.
[00:48:15 - 00:48:18]	 So for me, the problem isn't the existence of novelty
[00:48:18 - 00:48:19]	 through the expansion.
[00:48:19 - 00:48:21]	 I mean, that's the basis of the whole cosmology.
[00:48:21 - 00:48:23]	 The problem would be in such a universe
[00:48:23 - 00:48:26]	 how to account for the stabilization of novelty
[00:48:26 - 00:48:28]	 so that it's just not swept away
[00:48:28 - 00:48:30]	 by this onrush of expansion and change,
[00:48:30 - 00:48:33]	 which is the underlying process of evolution.
[00:48:33 - 00:48:35]	 So I would see morphic resonance
[00:48:35 - 00:48:39]	 as providing a way in which the novelty of things,
[00:48:39 - 00:48:41]	 when new forms come into being,
[00:48:41 - 00:48:44]	 that persistences, habits can build up,
[00:48:44 - 00:48:46]	 'cause otherwise, pure novelty
[00:48:46 - 00:48:48]	 without any persistence would be chaos.
[00:48:48 - 00:48:52]	 I mean, chaos is precisely that
[00:48:52 - 00:48:54]	 which no regularity emerges.
[00:48:54 - 00:48:56]	 - Otherly unpredictable.
[00:48:56 - 00:48:58]	 - And pure novelty, novelty alone,
[00:48:58 - 00:49:00]	 the novelty wave alone without stabilization
[00:49:00 - 00:49:04]	 would be chaos, endless chaos,
[00:49:04 - 00:49:07]	 and expanding chaos, but nothing more.
[00:49:07 - 00:49:11]	 And so I think that the two ideas
[00:49:11 - 00:49:13]	 are completely complementary.
[00:49:13 - 00:49:15]	 But the thing that's just occurred to me
[00:49:15 - 00:49:17]	 as you were talking is that if the novelty wave
[00:49:17 - 00:49:21]	 applies to novelty in general, as I think is its claim,
[00:49:21 - 00:49:22]	 not just in the human mind,
[00:49:22 - 00:49:26]	 not just in cockroaches and ecosystems,
[00:49:26 - 00:49:29]	 even in this planet, but to the whole universe.
[00:49:30 - 00:49:31]	 Yes? - Yes.
[00:49:31 - 00:49:34]	 - Well, then I deduce from that
[00:49:34 - 00:49:37]	 that the universe is not expanding at a steady rate,
[00:49:37 - 00:49:39]	 the usual theory given by the idea
[00:49:39 - 00:49:41]	 of Newtonian absolute time
[00:49:41 - 00:49:44]	 simply cranked onto the new cosmology.
[00:49:44 - 00:49:46]	 But rather, the expansion of the cosmos
[00:49:46 - 00:49:48]	 is taking place at a rate
[00:49:48 - 00:49:51]	 which is determined by the novelty wave.
[00:49:51 - 00:49:54]	 And that there should be a variable rate
[00:49:54 - 00:49:57]	 which should have all the fractile ripples
[00:49:57 - 00:49:58]	 and features of the novelty wave,
[00:49:58 - 00:49:59]	 if your theory is correct.
[00:49:59 - 00:50:01]	 Now, where would we look
[00:50:01 - 00:50:05]	 for a trace of this?
[00:50:05 - 00:50:08]	 - I don't know, but I mean, the trace,
[00:50:08 - 00:50:13]	 what gives the measure of the universal expansion
[00:50:13 - 00:50:15]	 is the cosmic microwave background radiation.
[00:50:15 - 00:50:17]	 - That's right, and there's argument
[00:50:17 - 00:50:20]	 about whether it's uniform or inhomogenous.
[00:50:20 - 00:50:22]	 - That's right, but the reason why
[00:50:22 - 00:50:24]	 it's such a very long wavelength
[00:50:24 - 00:50:26]	 is because it's relic light,
[00:50:26 - 00:50:29]	 it's fossil light from the Big Bang.
[00:50:29 - 00:50:31]	 And since the universe has been expanding
[00:50:31 - 00:50:33]	 ever since the Big Bang,
[00:50:33 - 00:50:36]	 light which remains light from that first moment,
[00:50:36 - 00:50:39]	 which has never yet been intercepted by matter.
[00:50:39 - 00:50:40]	 Because when light's intercepted by matter,
[00:50:40 - 00:50:43]	 it stops being light, it's absorbed,
[00:50:43 - 00:50:44]	 unless it's reflected.
[00:50:44 - 00:50:46]	 But this light is light from the original.
[00:50:46 - 00:50:47]	 But since the universe was X,
[00:50:47 - 00:50:50]	 I pass on a very, very small start with.
[00:50:50 - 00:50:52]	 The light was at very high energy,
[00:50:52 - 00:50:55]	 the wavelength was very, very, very, very short.
[00:50:55 - 00:50:56]	 But as the universe expands,
[00:50:56 - 00:50:58]	 the same light you see gets sort of stretched out,
[00:50:58 - 00:51:01]	 and the wavelength goes longer and longer and longer.
[00:51:01 - 00:51:05]	 And this 3.5 K is the result of this stretching process.
[00:51:05 - 00:51:09]	 It's light cooled down to that wavelength
[00:51:09 - 00:51:12]	 corresponding to 3.5 degrees above absolute zero.
[00:51:12 - 00:51:15]	 But nevertheless, it should show irregularities
[00:51:15 - 00:51:16]	 in its wavelength.
[00:51:16 - 00:51:19]	 Irregularities in the change of its wavelength,
[00:51:19 - 00:51:21]	 which reflect the novelty wave.
[00:51:21 - 00:51:25]	 - Well, it is true that both at its beginning and its end,
[00:51:25 - 00:51:28]	 the novelty wave undergoes at its beginning
[00:51:28 - 00:51:32]	 a series of balloon-like expansions,
[00:51:32 - 00:51:36]	 which is what these new cosmologies are calling for.
[00:51:36 - 00:51:39]	 Instead of a smooth big bang,
[00:51:39 - 00:51:42]	 they're calling for tremendous expansions
[00:51:42 - 00:51:46]	 very shortly after the beginning of the universe
[00:51:46 - 00:51:49]	 in a series of successive stages.
[00:51:49 - 00:51:54]	 So in that sense, you may be right.
[00:51:55 - 00:51:59]	 I, we were talking before we came on stage tonight,
[00:51:59 - 00:52:01]	 and I was saying that to my mind,
[00:52:01 - 00:52:06]	 in the 10 months since I've seen Rupert,
[00:52:06 - 00:52:10]	 and but have read "The Presence of the Past,"
[00:52:10 - 00:52:15]	 I've come to wonder about conceiving of
[00:52:15 - 00:52:19]	 what we're trying to talk about as a field exactly.
[00:52:19 - 00:52:24]	 That what it is is its theory of formative causation
[00:52:25 - 00:52:30]	 the morphogenetic field is just an image
[00:52:30 - 00:52:32]	 of trying to understand how this
[00:52:32 - 00:52:36]	 preformative causation could work.
[00:52:36 - 00:52:41]	 And one thought that has occurred to me about it
[00:52:41 - 00:52:46]	 is the big bang is basically tremendous energy,
[00:52:46 - 00:52:53]	 free energy, which as Rupert described,
[00:52:53 - 00:52:56]	 goes through a series of coolings,
[00:52:56 - 00:53:00]	 and as it cools and energy dissipates
[00:53:00 - 00:53:05]	 and is lost as heat, form emerges.
[00:53:05 - 00:53:08]	 First the form of nuclear chemistry,
[00:53:08 - 00:53:12]	 then organic chemistry, then molecular chemistry,
[00:53:12 - 00:53:13]	 so forth and so on,
[00:53:13 - 00:53:16]	 but progressively more and more complex form
[00:53:16 - 00:53:21]	 as you move toward the point of the arrow of time.
[00:53:21 - 00:53:26]	 Well, rather than visualizing this as a field
[00:53:26 - 00:53:32]	 in which previous states, the presence of the past,
[00:53:32 - 00:53:37]	 where previous states are impacting on successive states,
[00:53:37 - 00:53:41]	 another way you could think of it is energy
[00:53:41 - 00:53:46]	 enters the universe in which at a very great distance
[00:53:47 - 00:53:52]	 ahead of time's arrow, there is a plenum of form,
[00:53:52 - 00:53:58]	 a kind of form of forms, if you want.
[00:53:58 - 00:54:03]	 And if the causality that operated within this form of forms
[00:54:03 - 00:54:08]	 was a two-way causality, then what you would have
[00:54:08 - 00:54:13]	 is the expanding shell of energy that is the universe
[00:54:13 - 00:54:18]	 slowly being influenced essentially
[00:54:18 - 00:54:22]	 by information flowing backward from the future.
[00:54:22 - 00:54:26]	 And so it isn't so much the presence of the past
[00:54:26 - 00:54:30]	 that puts the stamp of form onto things,
[00:54:30 - 00:54:35]	 but that form is an intimation of a future state
[00:54:35 - 00:54:38]	 that is a kind of maximizing of form
[00:54:38 - 00:54:42]	 into a kind of metaphysical hypostatization
[00:54:42 - 00:54:45]	 beyond our ability to conceive.
[00:54:45 - 00:54:51]	 Have you ever considered this possibility?
[00:54:51 - 00:54:53]	 We should have rehearsed.
[00:54:53 - 00:54:56]	 (audience laughing)
[00:54:56 - 00:55:04]	 Well, I think so.
[00:55:04 - 00:55:07]	 I mean, if I take your description,
[00:55:07 - 00:55:09]	 you seem to be very like,
[00:55:09 - 00:55:12]	 I don't know if you like this or not, the similarity,
[00:55:12 - 00:55:15]	 but like the omega point of Tyrdas Chardin,
[00:55:15 - 00:55:17]	 which he sees as the goal or attractor
[00:55:17 - 00:55:19]	 of the entire universe.
[00:55:19 - 00:55:22]	 If there is to be a model of morphogenetic fields,
[00:55:22 - 00:55:24]	 to come back to one of your earlier points,
[00:55:24 - 00:55:28]	 it has to be in terms of dynamics of some kind.
[00:55:28 - 00:55:30]	 And the interesting thing about modern dynamics
[00:55:30 - 00:55:33]	 is that it's based on the idea of attractors.
[00:55:33 - 00:55:35]	 Systems are attracted towards states
[00:55:35 - 00:55:38]	 which from their point of view lie in the future.
[00:55:38 - 00:55:40]	 So these morphic attractors,
[00:55:40 - 00:55:43]	 which are the basis of the kind of dynamical models,
[00:55:43 - 00:55:46]	 including in chaotic dynamics that are emerging now.
[00:55:46 - 00:55:49]	 And so that gives the idea
[00:55:49 - 00:55:51]	 as morphogenetic fields have to have,
[00:55:51 - 00:55:54]	 is the idea of containing the goal or form
[00:55:54 - 00:55:56]	 or final state of something within themselves.
[00:55:56 - 00:55:59]	 The morphogenetic field of the oak tree
[00:55:59 - 00:56:02]	 contains in some sense the form of the fully formed oak
[00:56:02 - 00:56:05]	 and draws the growing seedling towards it.
[00:56:05 - 00:56:09]	 This is like the Aesthetelian system of final causes.
[00:56:09 - 00:56:13]	 And so if the entire nature of morphic fields
[00:56:13 - 00:56:15]	 is to have attractors,
[00:56:15 - 00:56:18]	 this is what the only way to model them mathematically
[00:56:18 - 00:56:22]	 that we have something that hints towards it at the moment
[00:56:22 - 00:56:26]	 is in terms of dynamics, including chaotic dynamics.
[00:56:26 - 00:56:31]	 The idea of non-stable endpoints or dynamic endpoints.
[00:56:31 - 00:56:33]	 And if one has a model of the universe based on those,
[00:56:33 - 00:56:35]	 and if one has also as one does
[00:56:35 - 00:56:38]	 in this kind of organismic holistic universe,
[00:56:38 - 00:56:42]	 the idea that the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm,
[00:56:42 - 00:56:44]	 that the part in some sense mirrors the whole.
[00:56:44 - 00:56:49]	 So each system is in some way related to the whole.
[00:56:49 - 00:56:52]	 Then the morphic field of the entire universe
[00:56:52 - 00:56:55]	 must have a kind of cosmic attractor
[00:56:55 - 00:56:56]	 from that point of view,
[00:56:56 - 00:56:59]	 which is drawing the universe towards something.
[00:56:59 - 00:57:01]	 So instead of this would then you see lead to the view
[00:57:01 - 00:57:05]	 that even the flux of energy has another side to it,
[00:57:05 - 00:57:07]	 because we normally think of the big bang
[00:57:07 - 00:57:09]	 as pushing matter out from behind,
[00:57:09 - 00:57:12]	 everything being pushed from the past.
[00:57:12 - 00:57:15]	 And the big bang is certainly that model as an explosion,
[00:57:15 - 00:57:17]	 as the original impetus of the explosion,
[00:57:17 - 00:57:20]	 which is pushing the galaxies and the whole universe apart.
[00:57:20 - 00:57:25]	 But the idea of an attractor is that it's not being pushed,
[00:57:25 - 00:57:26]	 it's being pulled.
[00:57:26 - 00:57:32]	 And so the energetic causation as we know it
[00:57:32 - 00:57:34]	 is based on a pushing principle,
[00:57:34 - 00:57:38]	 and formative causation is based on a pulling principle
[00:57:38 - 00:57:43]	 towards a kind of goal or form or an attractor.
[00:57:43 - 00:57:47]	 - So placing it in the future is not that inappropriate.
[00:57:47 - 00:57:51]	 - Well, you see, if one has the idea
[00:57:51 - 00:57:54]	 that the universe as a whole has a morphic field,
[00:57:54 - 00:57:55]	 which has a morphic attractor
[00:57:55 - 00:57:58]	 for the evolution of the entire universe,
[00:57:58 - 00:58:01]	 then what could that attractor be?
[00:58:01 - 00:58:02]	 And we don't know what it is.
[00:58:02 - 00:58:06]	 It might be a kind of ever-receding attractor,
[00:58:06 - 00:58:08]	 so the universe would just go on expanding
[00:58:08 - 00:58:10]	 forever and forever and forever
[00:58:10 - 00:58:13]	 with an endless creation of new forms with no end.
[00:58:13 - 00:58:17]	 That's one possible kind of attractor.
[00:58:17 - 00:58:19]	 - That's one possible view.
[00:58:19 - 00:58:21]	 - But if there's an end, which is what
[00:58:21 - 00:58:23]	 the entire Judeo-Christian myth of history
[00:58:23 - 00:58:24]	 leads us to believe,
[00:58:24 - 00:58:28]	 we're within the field of a Judeo-Christian myth of history,
[00:58:28 - 00:58:30]	 whether we like it or not,
[00:58:30 - 00:58:32]	 the whole cult of progress depends on it.
[00:58:32 - 00:58:35]	 And the idea that there's some kind of end
[00:58:35 - 00:58:39]	 or goal of history is deeply rooted in our entire culture.
[00:58:39 - 00:58:43]	 It comes out in some forms, you know,
[00:58:43 - 00:58:46]	 Star Wars and these kinds of visions of the future,
[00:58:46 - 00:58:48]	 of the alternate nuclear war,
[00:58:48 - 00:58:52]	 and mostly images drawn from the Book of Revelation.
[00:58:52 - 00:58:55]	 These are things that happen at the end of ordinary history
[00:58:55 - 00:58:57]	 before the coming of the millennium.
[00:58:57 - 00:59:02]	 Plagues, famines, seas and rivers turning red to blood,
[00:59:02 - 00:59:07]	 fire from heaven, and finally the Great War in heaven.
[00:59:07 - 00:59:12]	 Signs of the end, which many of us
[00:59:12 - 00:59:14]	 can easily find very plausible.
[00:59:14 - 00:59:19]	 The approaching of a new millennium
[00:59:19 - 00:59:21]	 means we're absolutely bound to have
[00:59:21 - 00:59:24]	 a vast outbreak of millenarian prophecy,
[00:59:26 - 00:59:30]	 of which you're one of the earlier exponents.
[00:59:30 - 00:59:31]	 (audience laughing)
[00:59:31 - 00:59:33]	 - Thank you very much.
[00:59:33 - 00:59:38]	 - I mean, you're ahead of your time,
[00:59:38 - 00:59:40]	 but since the millennium's only 12 years away,
[00:59:40 - 00:59:42]	 you can't possibly be more than 12 years ahead of it,
[00:59:42 - 00:59:47]	 because the crescendo of prophets is going to grow,
[00:59:47 - 00:59:53]	 obviously, as we approach December, January the 1st, 2000.
[00:59:54 - 00:59:57]	 And harmonic convergence was only the beginning
[00:59:57 - 00:59:59]	 of a beginning of a dress rehearsal
[00:59:59 - 01:00:02]	 for what's going to be a mammoth revisioning.
[01:00:02 - 01:00:06]	 And this sense of a culmination in time,
[01:00:06 - 01:00:07]	 and of goals and ends,
[01:00:07 - 01:00:10]	 is something very hard to escape from in our civilization.
[01:00:10 - 01:00:13]	 The idea of it just going on and on and on and on forever
[01:00:13 - 01:00:15]	 isn't very attractive.
[01:00:15 - 01:00:19]	 The tire of the Chardin view of an omega point
[01:00:19 - 01:00:22]	 is the idea of there being an end or goal to history.
[01:00:22 - 01:00:25]	 And then, of course, there's the pessimistic session of this,
[01:00:25 - 01:00:28]	 which is always associated with the postulation
[01:00:28 - 01:00:33]	 of dark matter, which, dark matter, dark mother, Kali,
[01:00:33 - 01:00:36]	 I mean, it's the dark one who is going to destroy all,
[01:00:36 - 01:00:38]	 the destructive aspect, by having enough dark matter
[01:00:38 - 01:00:41]	 undetectable by any instruments,
[01:00:41 - 01:00:43]	 which will cause the expansion to slow down
[01:00:43 - 01:00:45]	 into this dark matter in the universe,
[01:00:45 - 01:00:48]	 and then to contract until everything ends
[01:00:48 - 01:00:51]	 in the final implosion, the big crunch.
[01:00:51 - 01:00:56]	 Well, this is one cosmology on the market, you see.
[01:00:56 - 01:01:00]	 Then, of course, the return to the great cycle cosmologists
[01:01:00 - 01:01:02]	 who welcome that, because they see that if it's the big
[01:01:02 - 01:01:05]	 crunch of this universe, it could be the big bang of the next.
[01:01:05 - 01:01:08]	 And then you get back to endless cycles forever,
[01:01:08 - 01:01:12]	 which is back in the realm of archaic cosmology,
[01:01:12 - 01:01:15]	 eternal laws, it's where the whole tradition of our science
[01:01:15 - 01:01:18]	 rooted in Greek cosmology feels comfortable,
[01:01:18 - 01:01:21]	 the idea of an eternal cyclic universe with eternal laws.
[01:01:21 - 01:01:26]	 So, but if we have this idea of an evolutionary universe,
[01:01:26 - 01:01:30]	 then it seems to me the main choice is between these,
[01:01:30 - 01:01:32]	 either it's all going in reverse,
[01:01:32 - 01:01:35]	 or coming to a sticky end model, the big crunch,
[01:01:35 - 01:01:37]	 or that it just goes on and on and on forever,
[01:01:37 - 01:01:40]	 and there's no end, there's no final form,
[01:01:40 - 01:01:41]	 in some sense, pulling things forward,
[01:01:41 - 01:01:44]	 except pure diversity for its own sake,
[01:01:44 - 01:01:48]	 a kind of universal free economy that goes on forever.
[01:01:48 - 01:01:53]	 - Okay, so is what you're saying since there obviously
[01:01:53 - 01:01:56]	 was a big bang since we're here,
[01:01:56 - 01:02:01]	 you're more comfortable with placing the morphogenetic
[01:02:01 - 01:02:07]	 causality as something which moves from the past
[01:02:07 - 01:02:10]	 toward the future, rather than from the future
[01:02:10 - 01:02:14]	 toward the past, because the hypothesized final end state
[01:02:14 - 01:02:16]	 we have no evidence for.
[01:02:16 - 01:02:19]	 - Well, there are two things, that if the influence
[01:02:19 - 01:02:23]	 from the future in some sense influences creativity,
[01:02:23 - 01:02:26]	 if that in some sense causes new forms to come into being,
[01:02:26 - 01:02:31]	 once they've come into being, I think that they take on
[01:02:31 - 01:02:34]	 a life of their own, and there's this kind of memory aspect.
[01:02:34 - 01:02:37]	 I think memory is so intrinsic a part of our own life,
[01:02:37 - 01:02:40]	 so obviously a part of all life,
[01:02:40 - 01:02:45]	 so undeniably the basis of all our experience,
[01:02:45 - 01:02:47]	 that any view of the universe that doesn't take memory
[01:02:47 - 01:02:51]	 seriously as an influence from the past,
[01:02:51 - 01:02:53]	 and tries to substitute in its place an influence
[01:02:53 - 01:02:56]	 from the future is going to be inadequate.
[01:02:56 - 01:02:58]	 And if there's an influence from the future,
[01:02:58 - 01:03:01]	 I don't think it can work in the realm of memory
[01:03:01 - 01:03:03]	 and habit phenomena, which we know very well
[01:03:03 - 01:03:04]	 depends on the past.
[01:03:04 - 01:03:08]	 Rather it may work in the realms of the as yet,
[01:03:08 - 01:03:10]	 in the realms of the possible, which are the realms
[01:03:10 - 01:03:13]	 into which we're always moving, and they're the realms
[01:03:13 - 01:03:15]	 which in fact consciousness inhabits.
[01:03:15 - 01:03:17]	 I mean consciousness is the realms of the possible
[01:03:17 - 01:03:18]	 as far as I can see.
[01:03:18 - 01:03:23]	 - Well I think one way to think about information
[01:03:23 - 01:03:28]	 coming from the future is to imagine that ordinarily
[01:03:28 - 01:03:34]	 this is not allowed, but to make a quantum mechanical
[01:03:34 - 01:03:39]	 metaphor, you can imagine bits of information that tunnel
[01:03:40 - 01:03:45]	 into the past in the way that particles overcome
[01:03:45 - 01:03:49]	 energy transitions by magically appearing on the other side
[01:03:49 - 01:03:52]	 of them without ever having gone over them.
[01:03:52 - 01:03:56]	 And it's possible to imagine that a very small amount
[01:03:56 - 01:04:00]	 of information actually leaks into the past,
[01:04:00 - 01:04:04]	 and that this information becomes the province
[01:04:04 - 01:04:09]	 of seers and shamans and visionary thinkers of all sorts.
[01:04:09 - 01:04:14]	 That creativity is this appetition, you know there's a word
[01:04:14 - 01:04:20]	 in Gaelic, hereia, which means simultaneously nostalgia
[01:04:20 - 01:04:24]	 for the past and the future.
[01:04:24 - 01:04:28]	 And it seems to me that kind of nostalgia for the past
[01:04:28 - 01:04:33]	 and the future is what drives great creative spirits,
[01:04:34 - 01:04:39]	 poets and visionaries, and it has this enchanted,
[01:04:39 - 01:04:44]	 this fey kind of aura about it, because information
[01:04:44 - 01:04:48]	 from the future is necessarily magical.
[01:04:48 - 01:04:53]	 It exists and yet it cannot exist, because in its existence
[01:04:53 - 01:04:58]	 is implicitly, is a paradox.
[01:04:58 - 01:05:04]	 - Well I think there are two ways that information
[01:05:04 - 01:05:06]	 from the future works.
[01:05:06 - 01:05:08]	 One isn't really so much information from the future,
[01:05:08 - 01:05:10]	 it's what I'd think of as the primary cause
[01:05:10 - 01:05:14]	 of the whole thing, which is the attraction of the attractor.
[01:05:14 - 01:05:18]	 There's something in the future which draws us,
[01:05:18 - 01:05:22]	 for example, forwards, and what we experience the future as
[01:05:22 - 01:05:25]	 is not as definite information, not even as exactly
[01:05:25 - 01:05:29]	 concrete plans, but more in the experience of hope,
[01:05:29 - 01:05:32]	 and more consciously in the experience of faith.
[01:05:32 - 01:05:35]	 And faith is basically a vision of the future
[01:05:35 - 01:05:40]	 which we believe in, and believe is the right one for us
[01:05:40 - 01:05:41]	 and to which we're attracted.
[01:05:41 - 01:05:45]	 So people who have, as we read in thousands of books
[01:05:45 - 01:05:47]	 on how to get on in business, if you have faith
[01:05:47 - 01:05:50]	 that you're going to succeed, you really believe
[01:05:50 - 01:05:52]	 that you're going to be rich, then the chances are
[01:05:52 - 01:05:54]	 you may well be so.
[01:05:54 - 01:05:56]	 Whereas if you don't actually want to be rich,
[01:05:56 - 01:05:58]	 and if you don't have faith in it, and if you don't keep
[01:05:58 - 01:06:01]	 putting out that kind of image, and you don't have that hope
[01:06:01 - 01:06:04]	 and so on, then the chances are you won't be rich.
[01:06:04 - 01:06:09]	 So there's also the kind of religious faith
[01:06:09 - 01:06:12]	 that drew the pilgrim fathers to the United States,
[01:06:12 - 01:06:14]	 and it was the faith from the Judeo-Christian heritage,
[01:06:14 - 01:06:18]	 the faith in the promised land, the promise of a land
[01:06:18 - 01:06:23]	 in the future or somewhere else, which will be flowing
[01:06:23 - 01:06:26]	 with milk and honey, where there will be bounty,
[01:06:26 - 01:06:29]	 prosperity, the land will yield up its riches,
[01:06:29 - 01:06:32]	 the land of course, the original promised land
[01:06:32 - 01:06:35]	 wasn't empty, it had inhabitants in it,
[01:06:35 - 01:06:38]	 but they were killed off, and their land was appropriated.
[01:06:38 - 01:06:41]	 And this was the promised land was that,
[01:06:41 - 01:06:45]	 and it's America, and that dream of the promised land
[01:06:45 - 01:06:48]	 which drew everybody here to America or their ancestors
[01:06:48 - 01:06:51]	 is this kind of hope, this drawing, this attraction
[01:06:51 - 01:06:54]	 is what actually we know from our own experiences
[01:06:54 - 01:06:56]	 how this attraction works, it works through faith,
[01:06:56 - 01:07:00]	 through vague mythic hopes, through sense of promises
[01:07:00 - 01:07:02]	 as yet unfulfilled and so on.
[01:07:02 - 01:07:05]	 - So the disturbing thing about that then
[01:07:05 - 01:07:10]	 is what you referred to, this utter conviction
[01:07:10 - 01:07:13]	 in the approaching end of the world,
[01:07:13 - 01:07:18]	 which motivates vast numbers of people caught up
[01:07:18 - 01:07:22]	 in this monotheistic myth system.
[01:07:22 - 01:07:26]	 All the major monotheistic religions appoint
[01:07:26 - 01:07:31]	 an end to the world, and for several of them, it's soon.
[01:07:31 - 01:07:36]	 - But you see, I think we're in a worse way
[01:07:36 - 01:07:41]	 than you may think, because if we say, all right,
[01:07:41 - 01:07:44]	 let's not bother so much with these monotheistic religions,
[01:07:44 - 01:07:46]	 what are the models, since I think that
[01:07:46 - 01:07:49]	 if morphic resonance works, then it means that
[01:07:49 - 01:07:51]	 our collective unconscious, and particularly
[01:07:51 - 01:07:54]	 our cultural unconscious, contains elements
[01:07:54 - 01:07:57]	 which we've, they're so deep down,
[01:07:57 - 01:08:00]	 they influence us much more deeply than we know.
[01:08:00 - 01:08:03]	 And the Anglo-Saxon race, the English language,
[01:08:03 - 01:08:07]	 its cultural roots in Germany, the Germanic gods,
[01:08:07 - 01:08:10]	 the whole Germanic mythology is that the whole age
[01:08:10 - 01:08:13]	 will end in the twilight of the gods.
[01:08:13 - 01:08:15]	 And one of the problems that Hitler had
[01:08:15 - 01:08:19]	 in reviving the German gods is that that entire theology
[01:08:19 - 01:08:22]	 of those gods, the entire pagan system of the Germanic gods
[01:08:22 - 01:08:24]	 is one that comes to an appalling end
[01:08:24 - 01:08:25]	 in the twilight of the gods.
[01:08:25 - 01:08:29]	 Even the gods die out in the twilight of the world,
[01:08:29 - 01:08:32]	 when there's a destruction of all things, Ragnarok.
[01:08:32 - 01:08:36]	 So even if we look to pagan mythic sources,
[01:08:36 - 01:08:38]	 as well as the Judaic ones, and even if we look
[01:08:38 - 01:08:43]	 to the Hindu mythic sources, the idea of the Kali Yuga
[01:08:43 - 01:08:46]	 at the end of every age, where there's this densification
[01:08:46 - 01:08:50]	 of time, and finally the entire universe is dissolved,
[01:08:50 - 01:08:53]	 and then the Brahma, it's the inhaling of the breath
[01:08:53 - 01:08:55]	 of Brahma, and then a new universe is created
[01:08:55 - 01:08:57]	 or breathed out.
[01:08:57 - 01:09:01]	 It seems to me that a great many of these have this view
[01:09:01 - 01:09:04]	 that would lock into the idea of an end to time.
[01:09:04 - 01:09:09]	 - Yes, well, or an end to history.
[01:09:09 - 01:09:10]	 - Or an end to history.
[01:09:10 - 01:09:15]	 - It's occurred to me recently in thinking about this,
[01:09:15 - 01:09:20]	 my own model of time comes to an abrupt end
[01:09:20 - 01:09:24]	 for all of its prophecies to work.
[01:09:24 - 01:09:26]	 There has to be an end date assigned,
[01:09:26 - 01:09:30]	 and it only works when the end date is assigned
[01:09:30 - 01:09:34]	 very close to the end of the Mayan calendar,
[01:09:34 - 01:09:38]	 which is 24 years in the future.
[01:09:38 - 01:09:42]	 So I've spent a great deal of time trying to imagine
[01:09:42 - 01:09:47]	 how the world could end in 24 years.
[01:09:48 - 01:09:53]	 How is such a thing possible without just God Almighty
[01:09:53 - 01:09:56]	 descending in a chariot of flame?
[01:09:56 - 01:09:59]	 But how could it happen without that?
[01:09:59 - 01:10:04]	 Could there be a plausible scenario created
[01:10:04 - 01:10:09]	 that would have our world utterly end in 24 years
[01:10:09 - 01:10:10]	 in a happy way?
[01:10:10 - 01:10:16]	 And it occurs to me that the way in which
[01:10:16 - 01:10:21]	 this is to be accomplished is staring us in the face.
[01:10:21 - 01:10:29]	 It is simply this, that in the close,
[01:10:29 - 01:10:34]	 in shortly after the first few years of the next century,
[01:10:34 - 01:10:38]	 a technology will begin to be developed,
[01:10:38 - 01:10:42]	 the purpose of which will be to transmit
[01:10:42 - 01:10:45]	 a message forward into time.
[01:10:46 - 01:10:51]	 And unbeknownst to the technocrats who will create
[01:10:51 - 01:10:54]	 this massive governmental project to communicate
[01:10:54 - 01:10:58]	 with the future will be certain paradoxes
[01:10:58 - 01:11:02]	 which are built into the effort to do this.
[01:11:02 - 01:11:05]	 One of the things that will be discovered is
[01:11:05 - 01:11:10]	 if you invent a time communicator that can send a message
[01:11:10 - 01:11:14]	 into time, into the future,
[01:11:14 - 01:11:19]	 then anyone in the future can send a message back to you,
[01:11:19 - 01:11:26]	 but no message can go further back into the past
[01:11:26 - 01:11:30]	 than the moment of the invention of the first time machine.
[01:11:30 - 01:11:33]	 Do you follow?
[01:11:33 - 01:11:35]	 So suddenly in human history,
[01:11:35 - 01:11:40]	 an absolute membrane for information is established.
[01:11:40 - 01:11:45]	 Before time communicator, all causality moves from the past
[01:11:45 - 01:11:46]	 to the future.
[01:11:46 - 01:11:51]	 After time communicator, causality moves both directions
[01:11:51 - 01:11:55]	 and consequently more advanced states,
[01:11:55 - 01:11:59]	 states thousands, millions, hundreds of millions of years
[01:11:59 - 01:12:04]	 in the future will diffuse through the entire temporal
[01:12:04 - 01:12:07]	 medium like heat through a gas.
[01:12:07 - 01:12:11]	 And at that point, what you will suddenly find is
[01:12:11 - 01:12:15]	 the moment the switch is thrown on the first time
[01:12:15 - 01:12:20]	 communicator, the future end state of evolution
[01:12:20 - 01:12:26]	 on this planet will appear one microsecond later
[01:12:26 - 01:12:29]	 because the entirety of the future will be forced
[01:12:29 - 01:12:32]	 to happen all at once.
[01:12:32 - 01:12:36]	 I'm not sure you're with me.
[01:12:36 - 01:12:39]	 (audience laughing)
[01:12:39 - 01:12:40]	 What?
[01:12:40 - 01:12:42]	 That's pretty good, keep going.
[01:12:42 - 01:12:47]	 Well, so basically it's simply a technological innovation
[01:12:47 - 01:12:52]	 which would be like a whistle for calling almighty God
[01:12:52 - 01:12:54]	 into the historical process.
[01:12:54 - 01:12:58]	 The first person to invent a device which communicates
[01:12:58 - 01:13:03]	 with the future will discover that all of the future
[01:13:03 - 01:13:06]	 is suddenly communicating with them.
[01:13:06 - 01:13:11]	 And this will be experienced as a very radical
[01:13:11 - 01:13:16]	 sort of transition in the way we maintain our homes
[01:13:16 - 01:13:17]	 and businesses.
[01:13:17 - 01:13:20]	 (audience laughing)
[01:13:20 - 01:13:25]	 Well, I don't know, I think we've run past intermission time
[01:13:25 - 01:13:28]	 maybe we should have an intermission and then all these
[01:13:28 - 01:13:33]	 people who are burning to ask questions should come back.
[01:13:33 - 01:13:34]	 How do you feel about that?
[01:13:34 - 01:13:35]	 Yeah.
[01:13:35 - 01:13:36]	 Yeah.
[01:13:36 - 01:13:37]	 (audience laughing)
[01:13:37 - 01:13:38]	 Who whines behind the line?
[01:13:38 - 01:13:40]	 (audience laughing)
[01:13:40 - 01:13:41]	 Just wanna respond.
[01:13:41 - 01:13:43]	 How about a couple of questions?
[01:13:43 - 01:13:45]	 I don't care, fine.
[01:13:45 - 01:13:46]	 You.
[01:13:46 - 01:13:52]	 If that were true, we'd already be affected by that though
[01:13:52 - 01:13:53]	 wouldn't we?
[01:13:53 - 01:13:55]	 Well, 'cause when that switch got thrown
[01:13:55 - 01:13:58]	 and the future kind of falls back onto that moment,
[01:13:58 - 01:14:01]	 the past is gonna pile up behind it with momentum.
[01:14:01 - 01:14:03]	 Well, but we haven't reached that moment
[01:14:03 - 01:14:05]	 when the switch is thrown.
[01:14:05 - 01:14:06]	 Somebody has.
[01:14:06 - 01:14:13]	 But the future cannot go any further into the past
[01:14:13 - 01:14:14]	 than that moment.
[01:14:14 - 01:14:19]	 Absolutely, the past is still like a pile up upon that point
[01:14:19 - 01:14:22]	 because the past is in the cause and the mode, right?
[01:14:22 - 01:14:24]	 First one thing, then another and another.
[01:14:24 - 01:14:26]	 Well, don't you think that's what's making the world
[01:14:26 - 01:14:27]	 so crazy?
[01:14:27 - 01:14:27]	 It may well.
[01:14:28 - 01:14:32]	 It's that we are running smack into another dimension
[01:14:32 - 01:14:34]	 and that's what's creating the shock wave
[01:14:34 - 01:14:39]	 of cultural effects that we call the 20th century.
[01:14:39 - 01:14:42]	 But which, once we get through all this,
[01:14:42 - 01:14:46]	 it will be known as the bow shock of transition
[01:14:46 - 01:14:50]	 to the millennial eschaton or whatever it was.
[01:14:50 - 01:14:54]	 (audience laughing)
[01:14:54 - 01:14:57]	 I've been storing questions on that.
[01:14:57 - 01:15:00]	 The most recent one was about the nature of time
[01:15:00 - 01:15:04]	 and whether in fact it's linear and, you know.
[01:15:04 - 01:15:10]	 I had a talk with a couple of people,
[01:15:10 - 01:15:12]	 Mark Miller and Roger Gregory
[01:15:12 - 01:15:16]	 who run Project Zonitor for Universal in the Royal Library
[01:15:16 - 01:15:19]	 and they told me one of these great cosmic secrets.
[01:15:19 - 01:15:21]	 They told me about a month ago
[01:15:21 - 01:15:24]	 that time is in fact asymptotic
[01:15:24 - 01:15:26]	 and that we are approaching the asymptote
[01:15:26 - 01:15:29]	 and at that moment this point is known as
[01:15:29 - 01:15:30]	 the naked singularity.
[01:15:30 - 01:15:33]	 And so we're entering this asymptotic curve now
[01:15:33 - 01:15:37]	 and this is when the quote unquote the weirdness
[01:15:37 - 01:15:38]	 is about to begin.
[01:15:38 - 01:15:41]	 It's apparent that synchronicity begins piling up
[01:15:41 - 01:15:43]	 on synchronicity.
[01:15:43 - 01:15:46]	 I wonder if this fits in with what you were saying.
[01:15:46 - 01:15:49]	 Well, I think that this asymptotic thing
[01:15:49 - 01:15:51]	 that you're talking about,
[01:15:51 - 01:15:55]	 how you perceive it depends on where you stand in time.
[01:15:55 - 01:15:57]	 There is a certain point of view
[01:15:57 - 01:16:02]	 where only a few moments after the Big Bang
[01:16:02 - 01:16:06]	 the asymptotic weirdness began to set in.
[01:16:06 - 01:16:09]	 It was interesting a few weeks ago
[01:16:09 - 01:16:14]	 I was visited in Hawaii by none other than Carl Sagan
[01:16:14 - 01:16:21]	 and he had a number of things on his mind but.
[01:16:21 - 01:16:24]	 (audience laughing)
[01:16:25 - 01:16:28]	 One of the things that he was at great pains
[01:16:28 - 01:16:30]	 to point out to me was I said something
[01:16:30 - 01:16:35]	 about this asymptotic approach to the end of history
[01:16:35 - 01:16:38]	 and he said, "Well, my dear boy,
[01:16:38 - 01:16:40]	 "you just have it all wrong.
[01:16:40 - 01:16:45]	 "The speed of information transfer reached the speed of light
[01:16:45 - 01:16:47]	 "with the invention of radio.
[01:16:47 - 01:16:51]	 "It's been absolutely flat ever since.
[01:16:51 - 01:16:54]	 "The largest thermal nuclear blast ever detonated
[01:16:54 - 01:16:56]	 "was in 1958.
[01:16:56 - 01:17:01]	 "There hasn't been a bigger one for 30 years.
[01:17:01 - 01:17:06]	 "The fastest human object ever built was launched in 1967.
[01:17:06 - 01:17:09]	 "There hasn't been a faster one since."
[01:17:09 - 01:17:14]	 So this nonsense about ever increasing this, that,
[01:17:14 - 01:17:16]	 and the other just doesn't hold water.
[01:17:16 - 01:17:18]	 But you're dealing with the cybernetic.
[01:17:18 - 01:17:22]	 Well, what is increasing asymptotically
[01:17:22 - 01:17:25]	 is density of connectedness.
[01:17:25 - 01:17:29]	 And obviously at a certain point
[01:17:29 - 01:17:34]	 you reach maximum density of connectedness in the present.
[01:17:34 - 01:17:40]	 The only way you can then continue to densify connection
[01:17:40 - 01:17:45]	 is if the connections begin to move outward in time
[01:17:45 - 01:17:47]	 into the future and into the past
[01:17:47 - 01:17:50]	 and you undergo this transition
[01:17:50 - 01:17:55]	 from particulate Cartesian Newtonian existence
[01:17:55 - 01:18:00]	 to this wave mechanical shamanic,
[01:18:00 - 01:18:03]	 both present in the past, present in the future,
[01:18:03 - 01:18:06]	 present in the present kind of existence.
[01:18:06 - 01:18:09]	 This is what I meant about the social implications
[01:18:09 - 01:18:13]	 of integrating Rupert's paradigm.
[01:18:13 - 01:18:18]	 It is permission to feel this new way
[01:18:18 - 01:18:23]	 and to know that it is a more correct mirroring
[01:18:23 - 01:18:27]	 of the greater cosmos than the model
[01:18:27 - 01:18:32]	 that had us as the citizen, the ego, the individual,
[01:18:32 - 01:18:34]	 all of that sort of thing.
[01:18:34 - 01:18:38]	 Well, we think all the threshold of major changes
[01:18:38 - 01:18:40]	 in our information universe,
[01:18:40 - 01:18:43]	 I mean, some hypertext and so forth,
[01:18:43 - 01:18:46]	 which would allow us to go on.
[01:18:46 - 01:18:49]	 Well, see, I think it's something
[01:18:49 - 01:18:51]	 much more profound than that.
[01:18:51 - 01:18:56]	 Let's take my example about the time communicator
[01:18:56 - 01:19:00]	 for a moment and let's tell a little science fiction story
[01:19:00 - 01:19:03]	 to make it more understandable what I'm talking about.
[01:19:03 - 01:19:05]	 Let's pretend it's not a time communicator,
[01:19:05 - 01:19:08]	 it's a real time machine.
[01:19:08 - 01:19:10]	 Now, we're going to send somebody
[01:19:10 - 01:19:14]	 into the far-flung reaches of the future
[01:19:14 - 01:19:16]	 and we've never done this before.
[01:19:16 - 01:19:20]	 And so we load them into the jeweled device
[01:19:20 - 01:19:22]	 that we've built in our laboratory
[01:19:22 - 01:19:27]	 and we pass out the champagne and we have a brief countdown
[01:19:27 - 01:19:30]	 and then we throw the switch
[01:19:30 - 01:19:35]	 and our lab chief sails off into the future.
[01:19:35 - 01:19:38]	 Well, now what do the rest of us sitting there
[01:19:38 - 01:19:41]	 see what happens at that moment?
[01:19:41 - 01:19:45]	 Well, at first I thought what would happen
[01:19:45 - 01:19:48]	 is suddenly all over the world,
[01:19:48 - 01:19:51]	 time travelers would begin arriving
[01:19:51 - 01:19:53]	 from the far-flung reaches of the future,
[01:19:53 - 01:19:58]	 having come to witness the first voyage into time.
[01:19:58 - 01:20:04]	 Obviously, a great thing to see if you're a time traveler.
[01:20:04 - 01:20:06]	 It's like if you had a Cessna airplane
[01:20:06 - 01:20:10]	 that you could fly to Kitty Hawk in 1906,
[01:20:10 - 01:20:12]	 wouldn't you fly there and see?
[01:20:12 - 01:20:15]	 (audience laughing)
[01:20:15 - 01:20:18]	 But it kept nagging at my mind
[01:20:18 - 01:20:23]	 that there was some paradox in this
[01:20:23 - 01:20:26]	 or something was wrong with this idea.
[01:20:26 - 01:20:28]	 And then I said, aha, I see.
[01:20:28 - 01:20:32]	 What it is is that it's the kill-your-own-grandfather problem.
[01:20:32 - 01:20:36]	 If time travelers could travel backward into the past,
[01:20:36 - 01:20:41]	 even as far as only the invention of the first time machine,
[01:20:41 - 01:20:44]	 one of them might conceive one from many centuries
[01:20:44 - 01:20:48]	 in the future, might travel back and kill their grandfather
[01:20:48 - 01:20:51]	 and initiate that good old paradox of
[01:20:51 - 01:20:53]	 how could you kill your grandfather
[01:20:53 - 01:20:56]	 because you killed your grandfather, you didn't exist,
[01:20:56 - 01:20:58]	 so how could you exist to kill your grandfather?
[01:20:58 - 01:20:59]	 That sort of thing.
[01:20:59 - 01:21:03]	 But then I realized, no, in the same way
[01:21:03 - 01:21:08]	 that the most advanced cultures on the sphere of the planet
[01:21:08 - 01:21:14]	 dominate and overwhelm less advanced cultures,
[01:21:14 - 01:21:18]	 the most advanced future states
[01:21:18 - 01:21:22]	 would dominate and overwhelm the entire temporal continuum
[01:21:22 - 01:21:25]	 clear back to the moment of the invention
[01:21:25 - 01:21:27]	 of the first time machine.
[01:21:27 - 01:21:28]	 So what you would really see
[01:21:28 - 01:21:32]	 when you threw the switch on the first time machine
[01:21:32 - 01:21:35]	 would be the simultaneous arrival
[01:21:35 - 01:21:38]	 of the ultimate state of human evolution,
[01:21:38 - 01:21:42]	 whatever that is, something beyond our conceiving.
[01:21:42 - 01:21:46]	 So it's in very practical terms,
[01:21:46 - 01:21:51]	 it would fulfill this apocalyptic dream of monotheism.
[01:21:51 - 01:21:55]	 It's conceivable that if we could invent a device
[01:21:55 - 01:21:58]	 which would transmit information or objects
[01:21:58 - 01:22:00]	 forward into time,
[01:22:00 - 01:22:03]	 that the moment that device were invented,
[01:22:03 - 01:22:05]	 we could call upon the resources
[01:22:05 - 01:22:07]	 of all future human history
[01:22:07 - 01:22:11]	 to bail us out of this mess that we're in.
[01:22:11 - 01:22:15]	 It may be the only way to save the planet,
[01:22:15 - 01:22:19]	 an immediate time wars commitment
[01:22:19 - 01:22:24]	 to spare no effort to send information
[01:22:24 - 01:22:29]	 forward into the future looking for help.
[01:22:29 - 01:22:34]	 I'm not serious of course, but I am peculiar.
[01:22:34 - 01:22:41]	 On that note, why don't we take an intermission
[01:22:41 - 01:22:42]	 and then come back.
[01:22:42 - 01:22:46]	 Oh I don't know, 10 minutes.
[01:22:46 - 01:22:49]	 (audience applauding)
[01:22:49 - 01:22:56]	 That's a lot of quick.
[01:22:56 - 01:22:57]	 Oh well.
[01:22:57 - 01:22:59]	 (audience laughing)
[01:22:59 - 01:23:02]	 Let me take one bit first,
[01:23:02 - 01:23:04]	 I mean there's a lot of separate questions.
[01:23:04 - 01:23:07]	 The punctuated evolution thing,
[01:23:07 - 01:23:11]	 the idea that evolution moves by fits and starts,
[01:23:11 - 01:23:15]	 which was denied by neo-Darwinists and by Darwin himself
[01:23:15 - 01:23:19]	 in favor of the idea of a slow, gradual, steady progression
[01:23:19 - 01:23:21]	 moving at a more or less uniform rate.
[01:23:21 - 01:23:24]	 Darwin was a great disciple of Lyell's
[01:23:24 - 01:23:28]	 and the principle and geology of uniformitarianism,
[01:23:28 - 01:23:30]	 the idea that things go on at uniform rates.
[01:23:30 - 01:23:34]	 And this particular school of geology
[01:23:34 - 01:23:37]	 was opposed to the theory of catastrophism,
[01:23:37 - 01:23:41]	 the idea that there are catastrophic events on the Earth
[01:23:41 - 01:23:43]	 like the flood, the biblical flood.
[01:23:43 - 01:23:49]	 And that the development has been discontinuous,
[01:23:49 - 01:23:51]	 there's been breaks and fits and starts
[01:23:51 - 01:23:56]	 and periods of more or less stability and then big changes.
[01:23:56 - 01:23:59]	 That catastrophist theory, which was a popular theory
[01:23:59 - 01:24:00]	 at the beginning of the 19th century,
[01:24:00 - 01:24:04]	 was rejected by Darwin as it was rejected by Lyell
[01:24:04 - 01:24:07]	 because as soon as you allowed catastrophes,
[01:24:07 - 01:24:09]	 all the Christians agreed with this and said,
[01:24:09 - 01:24:10]	 yes, the Bible tells us that,
[01:24:10 - 01:24:12]	 we know from our whole cultural history
[01:24:12 - 01:24:13]	 that there are catastrophes
[01:24:13 - 01:24:16]	 and this is saying the same kind of thing.
[01:24:16 - 01:24:18]	 They wanted to be saying something totally different
[01:24:18 - 01:24:21]	 that wouldn't fit into any kind of biblical view whatsoever.
[01:24:21 - 01:24:25]	 The idea of a totally progressive linear process of change.
[01:24:25 - 01:24:28]	 Anyway, the fossil record never supported that
[01:24:28 - 01:24:32]	 and punctuated equilibrium seems to be what happens.
[01:24:32 - 01:24:35]	 And it suggests that evolution moves by fits and starts.
[01:24:35 - 01:24:38]	 And what started as an appalling heresy,
[01:24:38 - 01:24:39]	 it's been a recurrent heresy
[01:24:39 - 01:24:42]	 ever since Darwin first put forward his book.
[01:24:42 - 01:24:45]	 People have objected to it on the grounds
[01:24:45 - 01:24:48]	 that evolution may well move by fits and starts,
[01:24:48 - 01:24:51]	 even T.H. Huxley disagreed with Darwin on this one.
[01:24:51 - 01:24:55]	 Anyway, if evolution moves by fits and starts
[01:24:55 - 01:24:59]	 rather than uniformly, then it looks as if
[01:24:59 - 01:25:02]	 there's not a uniform rate of novelty formation
[01:25:02 - 01:25:03]	 in the universe.
[01:25:03 - 01:25:06]	 And of course, that's just what Terence tells us.
[01:25:06 - 01:25:08]	 - That's right.
[01:25:08 - 01:25:11]	 One way of thinking about the novelty wave
[01:25:11 - 01:25:15]	 on the largest level is that it is a picture
[01:25:15 - 01:25:19]	 of the ebb and flow of mutation
[01:25:19 - 01:25:22]	 in the history of life on the planet.
[01:25:22 - 01:25:27]	 In other words, the idea that mutation is random
[01:25:27 - 01:25:31]	 is based on the untested and cheerful assumption
[01:25:31 - 01:25:36]	 that radiation is arriving on the Earth
[01:25:36 - 01:25:41]	 at an even rate.
[01:25:41 - 01:25:43]	 But there's no reason why it should be.
[01:25:43 - 01:25:46]	 If the rate of radiation arriving on the Earth
[01:25:46 - 01:25:49]	 were fluctuating for any reason,
[01:25:49 - 01:25:53]	 you would expect to see a concomitant fluctuation
[01:25:53 - 01:25:55]	 in the fossil record.
[01:25:55 - 01:25:56]	 And there are many other reasons.
[01:25:56 - 01:26:00]	 A catastrophism, the idea that there have been
[01:26:00 - 01:26:04]	 extremely violent episodes in the Earth's history,
[01:26:04 - 01:26:09]	 huge volcanic outgassings, cometary and asteroid impacts,
[01:26:09 - 01:26:12]	 and this sort of thing, is now pretty widely,
[01:26:12 - 01:26:14]	 pretty widely accepted.
[01:26:14 - 01:26:17]	 And in fact, the extinction of the dinosaurs
[01:26:17 - 01:26:21]	 is put down to an asteroid impact.
[01:26:21 - 01:26:24]	 But go on, it would be interesting to hear you deal
[01:26:24 - 01:26:27]	 with the salts that tie--
[01:26:27 - 01:26:30]	 - Yes, I'm fascinated by these salts that get tired.
[01:26:30 - 01:26:34]	 I don't know, I mean, I'd be interested to get from you
[01:26:34 - 01:26:37]	 later a reference to the literature so I can look it up
[01:26:37 - 01:26:40]	 because that sounds really interesting.
[01:26:40 - 01:26:42]	 Eutectic salts going backwards and forwards
[01:26:42 - 01:26:43]	 and getting tired.
[01:26:43 - 01:26:49]	 I mean, the only thing that I'd think offhand
[01:26:49 - 01:26:52]	 in response to that is that I've been thinking
[01:26:52 - 01:26:55]	 quite a lot recently about exactly that kind of phenomenon,
[01:26:55 - 01:26:59]	 melting points, and asking the question of myself
[01:26:59 - 01:27:03]	 and of chemists that whether compounds
[01:27:03 - 01:27:05]	 that are fairly newly synthesized,
[01:27:05 - 01:27:06]	 when they're crystallized,
[01:27:06 - 01:27:08]	 have a particular melting point.
[01:27:08 - 01:27:10]	 And that as time goes on, the melting point might change
[01:27:10 - 01:27:14]	 because the habit which holds the crystal in its form
[01:27:14 - 01:27:17]	 might become stronger and it might be more resistant
[01:27:17 - 01:27:20]	 to thermal disruption, so the melting point might go up.
[01:27:20 - 01:27:22]	 It turns out that in the chemical literature,
[01:27:22 - 01:27:24]	 far from being fixed, melting points fluctuate.
[01:27:24 - 01:27:26]	 But in the published literature, I found differences
[01:27:26 - 01:27:30]	 of up to 12 degrees over 20 years.
[01:27:30 - 01:27:34]	 And there do seem to be extraordinary fluctuations.
[01:27:34 - 01:27:36]	 And most organic chemists agree
[01:27:36 - 01:27:38]	 that the strange changes occur,
[01:27:38 - 01:27:41]	 that they don't seem half as constant as they're cracked up
[01:27:41 - 01:27:42]	 to be.
[01:27:42 - 01:27:45]	 - We're gonna keep the ice caps in place then.
[01:27:45 - 01:27:46]	 - Well, that might be--
[01:27:46 - 01:27:48]	 - By changing the melting point.
[01:27:48 - 01:27:51]	 (audience laughing)
[01:27:51 - 01:27:54]	 - One of the things I've been thinking about
[01:27:54 - 01:27:56]	 is that when a substance melts,
[01:27:56 - 01:27:59]	 you've both got a formative field of the crystal,
[01:27:59 - 01:28:01]	 but the liquid phase of the substance
[01:28:01 - 01:28:02]	 also has a morphic field.
[01:28:02 - 01:28:04]	 Liquids have characteristic properties.
[01:28:04 - 01:28:07]	 They're not totally chaotic and formless.
[01:28:07 - 01:28:11]	 They have, and if it's a new substance
[01:28:11 - 01:28:12]	 that's never been melted before,
[01:28:12 - 01:28:15]	 it won't have had a sort of morphic field
[01:28:15 - 01:28:16]	 for its liquid phase.
[01:28:16 - 01:28:20]	 By repeated cooling, I was trying to think of experiments
[01:28:20 - 01:28:23]	 involving cycles, cycling a substance
[01:28:23 - 01:28:25]	 through cycles of melting and cooling.
[01:28:25 - 01:28:30]	 Because there'd be a way in which the number of transitions
[01:28:30 - 01:28:33]	 and also the endurance of the liquid versus the solid phase
[01:28:33 - 01:28:35]	 would tend to stabilize the morphic fields
[01:28:35 - 01:28:36]	 of these two phases.
[01:28:37 - 01:28:39]	 In a sense, around the melting point,
[01:28:39 - 01:28:41]	 it would be as if there were two competing fields.
[01:28:41 - 01:28:44]	 And if one were the stronger,
[01:28:44 - 01:28:48]	 it might tend to raise or lower the melting point.
[01:28:48 - 01:28:51]	 So I've been thinking about this sort of thing,
[01:28:51 - 01:28:54]	 so I'm fascinated to hear about these eutectic crystals,
[01:28:54 - 01:28:56]	 and I'd love to read out the literature.
[01:28:56 - 01:29:04]	 I'm adopting a very traditional scientific position
[01:29:04 - 01:29:06]	 in one way, by assuming that,
[01:29:06 - 01:29:07]	 by putting forward the hypothesis
[01:29:07 - 01:29:10]	 in its most general possible form.
[01:29:10 - 01:29:14]	 If I said it sometimes works and it sometimes doesn't,
[01:29:14 - 01:29:19]	 then it would be very difficult to test, because...
[01:29:19 - 01:29:22]	 (audience laughing)
[01:29:22 - 01:29:27]	 And it would actually be irrefutable.
[01:29:27 - 01:29:30]	 (audience laughing)
[01:29:32 - 01:29:36]	 That's a vice and not a virtue in a scientific theory.
[01:29:36 - 01:29:42]	 I'm more inclined to think of it working,
[01:29:42 - 01:29:43]	 trying to think of it working everywhere.
[01:29:43 - 01:29:45]	 Now, there are many systems like the behavior
[01:29:45 - 01:29:48]	 of hydrogen atoms, crystallization of sodium chloride,
[01:29:48 - 01:29:50]	 and all sorts of phenomena that physics
[01:29:50 - 01:29:52]	 has studied in great detail,
[01:29:52 - 01:29:55]	 which have happened billions of times,
[01:29:55 - 01:29:57]	 and as far as we know, for billions of years,
[01:29:57 - 01:29:59]	 even before this planet formed.
[01:29:59 - 01:30:02]	 So there are certain kinds of phenomena in nature
[01:30:02 - 01:30:04]	 which have happened so many times before,
[01:30:04 - 01:30:06]	 they're so deeply habitual,
[01:30:06 - 01:30:09]	 that they behave as if they're governed by eternal laws,
[01:30:09 - 01:30:11]	 their habits are so deeply entrenched.
[01:30:11 - 01:30:13]	 And I think many of the phenomena
[01:30:13 - 01:30:15]	 that scientists have studied,
[01:30:15 - 01:30:18]	 particularly in the physical sciences, are of that kind,
[01:30:18 - 01:30:20]	 and therefore they do look as if
[01:30:20 - 01:30:22]	 they're governed by eternal laws.
[01:30:22 - 01:30:23]	 Where the difference shows up
[01:30:23 - 01:30:25]	 is when you look at any new phenomenon,
[01:30:25 - 01:30:26]	 'cause then you can see the habits building up,
[01:30:26 - 01:30:28]	 with old established habits.
[01:30:29 - 01:30:33]	 They might look as if they're not really habits at all,
[01:30:33 - 01:30:34]	 but following eternal laws.
[01:30:34 - 01:30:37]	 So I would say that the,
[01:30:37 - 01:30:39]	 I would prefer to think of the theory applying everywhere,
[01:30:39 - 01:30:42]	 and I would account for the apparent non-changing
[01:30:42 - 01:30:44]	 of many physical habits,
[01:30:44 - 01:30:47]	 in terms of their extreme antiquity,
[01:30:47 - 01:30:49]	 and the fact they're so deeply embedded
[01:30:49 - 01:30:51]	 in groups of habit, they don't change.
[01:30:51 - 01:30:54]	 - Some things you simply won't be able to test them.
[01:30:54 - 01:30:56]	 - Well, you can test the theory in any area
[01:30:56 - 01:30:59]	 where you can do something new.
[01:30:59 - 01:31:02]	 New forms, new crystals, new molecules,
[01:31:02 - 01:31:04]	 new patterns of protein folding,
[01:31:04 - 01:31:06]	 new ideas, new ways of learning.
[01:31:06 - 01:31:08]	 There seem to be plenty of areas it can be tested in.
[01:31:08 - 01:31:13]	 - Is there anything that would hardly refute your theory,
[01:31:13 - 01:31:16]	 or do you consider it status quo?
[01:31:16 - 01:31:19]	 Is it just a good idea with a few experiments?
[01:31:19 - 01:31:21]	 - It's a hypothesis, which,
[01:31:21 - 01:31:23]	 what a hypothesis is is a guess
[01:31:23 - 01:31:25]	 about the way things may be.
[01:31:25 - 01:31:29]	 And what I've done is contrasted this guess
[01:31:29 - 01:31:32]	 in a variety of areas, the realms of memory,
[01:31:32 - 01:31:37]	 crystallography, morphogenesis, instinct, behavior,
[01:31:37 - 01:31:39]	 transmission of learning,
[01:31:39 - 01:31:42]	 behavior and evolution of social groups.
[01:31:42 - 01:31:44]	 So I looked at the predictions of this way
[01:31:44 - 01:31:46]	 of looking at things compared with the standard way
[01:31:46 - 01:31:47]	 of looking at things.
[01:31:47 - 01:31:50]	 And in every area, one finds that there's a whole range
[01:31:50 - 01:31:52]	 of shadowy phenomena, which,
[01:31:52 - 01:31:54]	 where the evidence for the conventional position
[01:31:54 - 01:31:56]	 is very weak indeed.
[01:31:56 - 01:31:58]	 One sees that that's actually a guess too,
[01:31:58 - 01:32:02]	 which is in most essential areas unproved even now.
[01:32:02 - 01:32:05]	 So one's got one guess versus a much more common
[01:32:05 - 01:32:07]	 and habitual guess.
[01:32:07 - 01:32:09]	 And there are other guesses on the market too.
[01:32:09 - 01:32:11]	 - Is there anything that would falsify
[01:32:11 - 01:32:14]	 the morphogenetic field of the human mind?
[01:32:14 - 01:32:17]	 - Well, a failure of experiments to show morphic resonance
[01:32:17 - 01:32:18]	 would falsify it,
[01:32:18 - 01:32:22]	 except that falsifying scientific theories is never,
[01:32:22 - 01:32:25]	 people often go on as if they say,
[01:32:25 - 01:32:27]	 Papa says the ideal is to falsify theories.
[01:32:27 - 01:32:29]	 I don't know a single example
[01:32:29 - 01:32:31]	 of science proceeding in that manner.
[01:32:31 - 01:32:33]	 Most scientists are trying to prove theories
[01:32:33 - 01:32:37]	 and they may try and falsify theories of their rivals,
[01:32:37 - 01:32:39]	 which is what the way it usually happens.
[01:32:39 - 01:32:42]	 But, and it's a kind of dialectic then.
[01:32:42 - 01:32:46]	 Science becomes the dialectic between rivalries,
[01:32:46 - 01:32:50]	 rivals and it's, science is full of ego rivalries.
[01:32:50 - 01:32:52]	 Well, most people think that this is terrible vice,
[01:32:52 - 01:32:55]	 but actually it's one of the motors of competitive science
[01:32:55 - 01:32:56]	 as we know it.
[01:32:56 - 01:32:57]	 If somebody puts forward a theory
[01:32:57 - 01:32:59]	 and someone has a rival theory,
[01:32:59 - 01:33:03]	 then the way the contest is decided is by experiment.
[01:33:03 - 01:33:05]	 The rules of the scientific game,
[01:33:05 - 01:33:06]	 experiments are usually designed
[01:33:06 - 01:33:08]	 to test between rival hypotheses,
[01:33:08 - 01:33:12]	 rather than testing a single one in isolation.
[01:33:12 - 01:33:14]	 And I'm putting forward a variety of tests
[01:33:14 - 01:33:16]	 which test between the idea that nature
[01:33:16 - 01:33:19]	 has this habitual tendency
[01:33:19 - 01:33:20]	 as against the conventional idea,
[01:33:20 - 01:33:22]	 which is always that nature is governed by immutable,
[01:33:22 - 01:33:24]	 changeless, eternal laws.
[01:33:24 - 01:33:28]	 And some tests may be inconclusive.
[01:33:28 - 01:33:30]	 Some tests may, I think,
[01:33:30 - 01:33:32]	 favor the idea of morphic resonance.
[01:33:32 - 01:33:35]	 If all the tests that are done fail it, if it fails,
[01:33:35 - 01:33:36]	 if it looks as if things are governed
[01:33:36 - 01:33:38]	 by eternal changeless laws,
[01:33:38 - 01:33:41]	 that there's no evidence for any incremental change in time
[01:33:41 - 01:33:44]	 in any area, but everything goes on
[01:33:44 - 01:33:45]	 as if it were governed entirely by laws
[01:33:45 - 01:33:48]	 that were already there to start with.
[01:33:48 - 01:33:50]	 I'd find that rather surprising.
[01:33:50 - 01:33:52]	 But failure of these experiments
[01:33:52 - 01:33:54]	 would actually support that view.
[01:33:54 - 01:33:57]	 And the conventional view would then, for the first time,
[01:33:57 - 01:33:59]	 actually have empirical evidence in its favor.
[01:33:59 - 01:34:01]	 (audience laughs)
[01:34:01 - 01:34:02]	 'Cause this would be the first time
[01:34:02 - 01:34:04]	 it's ever been challenged.
[01:34:04 - 01:34:07]	 And if those challenges fail, it would strengthen it.
[01:34:07 - 01:34:10]	 So these tests, I think, are in everybody's interest.
[01:34:10 - 01:34:15]	 But if they support the idea of morphic resonance,
[01:34:15 - 01:34:20]	 then indeed it would show that that is not a perfect model.
[01:34:20 - 01:34:23]	 The idea of a memory in nature, morphic resonance,
[01:34:23 - 01:34:26]	 however crude the theory is in its present preliminary form,
[01:34:26 - 01:34:27]	 it would be a better theory
[01:34:27 - 01:34:30]	 and a theory more worth developing.
[01:34:30 - 01:34:33]	 And the question is, is the field connection
[01:34:33 - 01:34:36]	 in quantum nonlocality in Bell's theorem
[01:34:36 - 01:34:39]	 and the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky paradox,
[01:34:39 - 01:34:42]	 that kind of quantum nonlocality
[01:34:42 - 01:34:44]	 related to morphic resonance?
[01:34:44 - 01:34:47]	 Are they two aspects of the same phenomenon?
[01:34:47 - 01:34:48]	 That's the really interesting question
[01:34:48 - 01:34:50]	 in relation to existing physics.
[01:34:50 - 01:34:53]	 And nobody knows the answer.
[01:34:53 - 01:34:58]	 I don't know how morphic resonance is conceived
[01:34:58 - 01:35:00]	 would fit with quantum nonlocality,
[01:35:00 - 01:35:03]	 which it does in fact involve a past
[01:35:03 - 01:35:05]	 because both systems originate from a past
[01:35:05 - 01:35:07]	 and it's to do with a system with a past,
[01:35:07 - 01:35:10]	 which is, I would say, the very existence of these particles
[01:35:10 - 01:35:12]	 is a kind of resonance from their own past.
[01:35:12 - 01:35:15]	 I would say that there is a kind of morphic resonance link
[01:35:15 - 01:35:17]	 and probably that's what it might be.
[01:35:17 - 01:35:21]	 But I can't fit that into the formalism of quantum theory
[01:35:21 - 01:35:24]	 because I don't know it, I'm not a quantum theorist.
[01:35:24 - 01:35:27]	 And to really to work with those equations
[01:35:27 - 01:35:28]	 with any degree of subtlety
[01:35:28 - 01:35:31]	 would require a deep understanding of the subject.
[01:35:31 - 01:35:35]	 On the other hand, J.S. Bell,
[01:35:35 - 01:35:37]	 the inventor of Bell's theorem,
[01:35:37 - 01:35:39]	 has been in correspondence with me.
[01:35:39 - 01:35:44]	 He's read both my books and has sent me his latest book.
[01:35:44 - 01:35:45]	 So we've been in a correspondence
[01:35:45 - 01:35:47]	 about the possible connection
[01:35:47 - 01:35:49]	 between morphic resonance and his own theory.
[01:35:49 - 01:35:51]	 He's perfectly intrigued by morphic resonance
[01:35:51 - 01:35:53]	 and morphogenetic fields.
[01:35:53 - 01:35:55]	 He thinks they may be connected with his own theory,
[01:35:55 - 01:35:58]	 but he can't see how
[01:35:58 - 01:36:00]	 because there's nothing in the conventional physics
[01:36:00 - 01:36:02]	 which has yet proved,
[01:36:02 - 01:36:05]	 because it's so based on eternal equations,
[01:36:05 - 01:36:07]	 the idea of Schrodinger's equation
[01:36:07 - 01:36:08]	 is a kind of eternal platonic form
[01:36:08 - 01:36:10]	 that governs all quantum processes
[01:36:10 - 01:36:13]	 from the beginning of the universe to the end
[01:36:13 - 01:36:15]	 in exactly the same way.
[01:36:15 - 01:36:18]	 That's the kind of inherited formalism of quantum mechanics.
[01:36:18 - 01:36:20]	 And that kind of mathematics,
[01:36:20 - 01:36:22]	 which postulates eternal platonic type forms,
[01:36:22 - 01:36:23]	 is not going to be adequate
[01:36:23 - 01:36:26]	 for modeling an evolutionary universe.
[01:36:26 - 01:36:30]	 And so it's not clear how the bridge can be made
[01:36:30 - 01:36:31]	 or even whether that connection,
[01:36:31 - 01:36:33]	 but I think there must be some kind of connection.
[01:36:33 - 01:36:36]	 There can't be lots of totally unconnected
[01:36:36 - 01:36:39]	 types of nonlocality in the universe.
[01:36:39 - 01:36:43]	 - Rupert, why not replace the platonic models
[01:36:43 - 01:36:46]	 with fractal models
[01:36:46 - 01:36:51]	 and then say that time itself is the morphogenetic field,
[01:36:51 - 01:36:57]	 that it is some kind of fractal topological manifold
[01:36:57 - 01:37:00]	 that, and what,
[01:37:00 - 01:37:05]	 and so the repetition or the connection to past states
[01:37:05 - 01:37:09]	 is really accomplished through resonance within the fractal.
[01:37:09 - 01:37:12]	 And then we have a model for resonance
[01:37:12 - 01:37:16]	 because it's familiar to us from other domains of nature.
[01:37:16 - 01:37:20]	 - Well, I don't see quite how,
[01:37:20 - 01:37:22]	 there's a sense in which the fractal
[01:37:22 - 01:37:24]	 is a new mathematical model
[01:37:24 - 01:37:26]	 that gives us the same idea that,
[01:37:26 - 01:37:28]	 the ancient idea of the microcosm
[01:37:28 - 01:37:30]	 mirroring the macrocosm.
[01:37:30 - 01:37:32]	 The idea of the different levels.
[01:37:32 - 01:37:34]	 - Well, but not only different levels,
[01:37:34 - 01:37:39]	 but different points on the same level,
[01:37:39 - 01:37:43]	 in the same way that the past occupies a relationship
[01:37:43 - 01:37:48]	 to the future of formative anticipation.
[01:37:48 - 01:37:53]	 So in a fractal, do early portions of it
[01:37:53 - 01:37:57]	 anticipate later forms.
[01:37:57 - 01:37:59]	 So it is like a prediction,
[01:37:59 - 01:38:04]	 a self-fulfilling prediction is what a fractal is.
[01:38:04 - 01:38:07]	 It predicts by virtue of its past states,
[01:38:07 - 01:38:11]	 they define what its future states will be,
[01:38:11 - 01:38:14]	 exactly in the same way that I imagine
[01:38:14 - 01:38:19]	 the morphogenetic field defines what future states will be.
[01:38:19 - 01:38:22]	 The fractals that have been talked about to date
[01:38:22 - 01:38:27]	 have been used to describe spatial phenomena,
[01:38:27 - 01:38:31]	 coastlines, molecular arrangements,
[01:38:31 - 01:38:33]	 distribution of flowers in a meadow,
[01:38:33 - 01:38:35]	 this sort of thing.
[01:38:35 - 01:38:38]	 But if instead you thought of fractals
[01:38:38 - 01:38:43]	 as descriptors for the temporal dimension,
[01:38:43 - 01:38:48]	 and replace the notion of a flat or slightly curved manifold
[01:38:48 - 01:38:54]	 with an actual fractal surface
[01:38:54 - 01:38:56]	 over which events were flowing,
[01:38:56 - 01:39:00]	 and flowing over patterns which repeated themselves
[01:39:00 - 01:39:01]	 at many, many levels,
[01:39:01 - 01:39:05]	 in resonance with previous similar patterns,
[01:39:05 - 01:39:10]	 then you would begin to have a mathematical picture
[01:39:10 - 01:39:13]	 of how the morphogenetic field would work.
[01:39:13 - 01:39:17]	 And you would also have found a phenomenon in nature
[01:39:17 - 01:39:22]	 upon which to hang it by saying time is obviously it.
[01:39:22 - 01:39:28]	 It's just that we are so ingrained by Newtonianism
[01:39:28 - 01:39:31]	 to accept time as an abstraction,
[01:39:31 - 01:39:34]	 as something not having equal status
[01:39:34 - 01:39:36]	 with the other three dimensions,
[01:39:36 - 01:39:39]	 that we've overlooked this fact.
[01:39:39 - 01:39:43]	 And yet obviously that is the carrier wave.
[01:39:43 - 01:39:47]	 That's why you would speak of the presence of the past.
[01:39:47 - 01:39:52]	 What then can it be but time, past time in the present?
[01:39:52 - 01:39:57]	 - Well it is past time in the present.
[01:39:57 - 01:40:00]	 But the fractal wave, you see,
[01:40:00 - 01:40:02]	 why I don't like the fractal model
[01:40:02 - 01:40:04]	 taken to any great extremes,
[01:40:04 - 01:40:08]	 because any kind of mathematical modeling,
[01:40:08 - 01:40:12]	 given the whole nature of mathematics as it's practiced,
[01:40:12 - 01:40:15]	 fractal mathematics is conventional paradigm
[01:40:15 - 01:40:17]	 in the sense that you create an equation
[01:40:17 - 01:40:19]	 and you generate this form.
[01:40:19 - 01:40:21]	 The equation itself is not subject,
[01:40:21 - 01:40:24]	 the governing equation is not subject to evolution.
[01:40:24 - 01:40:27]	 It's generating the same form,
[01:40:27 - 01:40:28]	 and it would go on generating the same form
[01:40:28 - 01:40:30]	 right into the future.
[01:40:30 - 01:40:32]	 In other words, it would be a kind of determinism
[01:40:32 - 01:40:36]	 based on the kind of platonic or Pythagorean ideal form,
[01:40:36 - 01:40:39]	 the fractal equation which generates the fractal.
[01:40:39 - 01:40:42]	 And I don't understand evolution as happening like that.
[01:40:42 - 01:40:45]	 I don't think it's as deterministic.
[01:40:45 - 01:40:49]	 - Well you're right that as they are presently understood
[01:40:49 - 01:40:52]	 it would generate however complicated
[01:40:52 - 01:40:54]	 ultimately a determinism.
[01:40:54 - 01:40:59]	 But I wonder if we're just not mathematically sophisticated
[01:40:59 - 01:41:04]	 enough to inculcate into the fractal equations
[01:41:04 - 01:41:09]	 sufficient randomness within the fractal constraints
[01:41:09 - 01:41:13]	 to begin to get the kind of complexity
[01:41:13 - 01:41:15]	 that we need in the real world.
[01:41:15 - 01:41:17]	 That would seem to be what is lacking,
[01:41:17 - 01:41:22]	 is a random factor that causes the fractal equation
[01:41:22 - 01:41:26]	 to skew toward production of ferns,
[01:41:26 - 01:41:30]	 and then suddenly to switch over to feathers,
[01:41:30 - 01:41:32]	 and then to river systems,
[01:41:32 - 01:41:36]	 and then to industrial economies or something like that.
[01:41:36 - 01:41:41]	 But if it can do all these things,
[01:41:41 - 01:41:42]	 it can model all these things,
[01:41:42 - 01:41:45]	 but as you say in a deterministic way.
[01:41:45 - 01:41:49]	 But maybe we don't know enough about them yet,
[01:41:49 - 01:41:52]	 and that there may be higher dimensional
[01:41:52 - 01:41:55]	 or higher order fractals with a degree
[01:41:55 - 01:42:00]	 of self determinacy or auto poesis built into them.
[01:42:00 - 01:42:04]	 I think this must be so because I think the world
[01:42:04 - 01:42:07]	 we're living in must be such a world,
[01:42:07 - 01:42:09]	 and that we are these fractals.
[01:42:09 - 01:42:14]	 We are essentially three dimensional expressions of DNA,
[01:42:14 - 01:42:18]	 and all the DNA is the same,
[01:42:18 - 01:42:20]	 and yet each one of us is different,
[01:42:20 - 01:42:23]	 and yet 10 of us are like any other 10,
[01:42:23 - 01:42:25]	 and yet different.
[01:42:25 - 01:42:29]	 We as human beings have the same quality,
[01:42:29 - 01:42:32]	 and so do our cities and our nation states
[01:42:32 - 01:42:34]	 and the continents we inhabit,
[01:42:34 - 01:42:38]	 and the religious systems that we're inside of.
[01:42:38 - 01:42:41]	 So it seems to me the fractal model
[01:42:41 - 01:42:44]	 may be the one which holds out the greatest hope
[01:42:44 - 01:42:48]	 for a formalizing of the morphogenetic field.
[01:42:48 - 01:42:52]	 All other fields are fractals.
[01:42:52 - 01:42:55]	 The electromagnetic field, the radio wave,
[01:42:55 - 01:42:59]	 all of these things are found to have this quality,
[01:42:59 - 01:43:02]	 and in fact the development of this kind of mathematics
[01:43:02 - 01:43:07]	 initially was in an effort to describe the field phenomenon,
[01:43:07 - 01:43:11]	 Fourier transforms and that sort of thing.
[01:43:11 - 01:43:14]	 So then why not this one?
[01:43:14 - 01:43:18]	 And then that vastly narrows down the mathematical domain
[01:43:18 - 01:43:22]	 in which you have to search for a formal description
[01:43:22 - 01:43:24]	 of the morphogenetic field.
[01:43:24 - 01:43:27]	 It would also yield a perfect theory of history
[01:43:27 - 01:43:31]	 because that would be part of the morphogenetic field.
[01:43:31 - 01:43:36]	 - Well I suppose that one of the problems I have
[01:43:36 - 01:43:39]	 is that I'm not so fascinated with mathematics.
[01:43:39 - 01:43:41]	 I mean I don't think that mathematics,
[01:43:41 - 01:43:44]	 most mathematicians think that the maths
[01:43:44 - 01:43:47]	 is more real than the thing it models,
[01:43:47 - 01:43:48]	 that the equations of the universe
[01:43:48 - 01:43:50]	 are more real somehow than the universe.
[01:43:50 - 01:43:52]	 They were there before it after all.
[01:43:52 - 01:43:55]	 They were its source, they were prior to it,
[01:43:55 - 01:43:56]	 both logically and temporally.
[01:43:56 - 01:43:57]	 They're the more real thing.
[01:43:57 - 01:43:59]	 This is a platonic tradition.
[01:43:59 - 01:44:01]	 And this is alive and well.
[01:44:01 - 01:44:04]	 I mean its latest greatest exponent
[01:44:04 - 01:44:06]	 in the best seller lists of the last few months
[01:44:06 - 01:44:11]	 is Stephen Hawking, who as a perfect exponent really
[01:44:11 - 01:44:14]	 of that platonic view of the eternal intellect,
[01:44:14 - 01:44:16]	 the eternal mathematical mind,
[01:44:16 - 01:44:18]	 which somehow is over and above the universe,
[01:44:18 - 01:44:20]	 the mathematical mind of God in some sense
[01:44:20 - 01:44:24]	 is there before and prior to matter or bodies.
[01:44:24 - 01:44:29]	 And as one of our British journals put it,
[01:44:29 - 01:44:31]	 Stephen Hawking is the closest thing we have
[01:44:31 - 01:44:33]	 to a disembodied mind.
[01:44:33 - 01:44:36]	 (audience laughing)
[01:44:36 - 01:44:40]	 And it's a perfect, you see, in a sense there's a perfect,
[01:44:40 - 01:44:43]	 I think the reason for his mythic quality,
[01:44:43 - 01:44:46]	 'cause he is a mythic figure, mythic power,
[01:44:46 - 01:44:48]	 is because of that.
[01:44:48 - 01:44:50]	 And the vision is totally consistent with it.
[01:44:50 - 01:44:57]	 So I don't really, all mathematics tends
[01:44:57 - 01:44:58]	 to have that quality.
[01:44:58 - 01:45:01]	 And I would think of the fields not as something
[01:45:01 - 01:45:04]	 which to grasp we have to model mathematically,
[01:45:04 - 01:45:06]	 but as something which I think of them
[01:45:06 - 01:45:08]	 as much more like living things.
[01:45:08 - 01:45:10]	 And our models would be much more
[01:45:10 - 01:45:13]	 and more appropriately based on an intuitive sense,
[01:45:13 - 01:45:15]	 a living sense of things that we actually learn
[01:45:15 - 01:45:18]	 from experience as living things ourselves.
[01:45:18 - 01:45:21]	 So the models would be much more communicated
[01:45:21 - 01:45:23]	 by seeing how they correspond
[01:45:23 - 01:45:25]	 to our actual subjective experiences,
[01:45:25 - 01:45:27]	 the kind of things that we experience.
[01:45:27 - 01:45:30]	 - So through ordinary language.
[01:45:30 - 01:45:31]	 - Through ordinary language,
[01:45:31 - 01:45:33]	 through the realms of the imagination,
[01:45:33 - 01:45:34]	 through our understanding of memory,
[01:45:34 - 01:45:36]	 through the mind, through the power of hopes,
[01:45:36 - 01:45:40]	 fears, desires, fantasies,
[01:45:40 - 01:45:42]	 through the experience of our consciousness
[01:45:42 - 01:45:43]	 as the realm of the possible.
[01:45:44 - 01:45:47]	 And so these are much the best models.
[01:45:47 - 01:45:50]	 And mathematics is a tiny fraction
[01:45:50 - 01:45:52]	 of a formalized modeling of the possible,
[01:45:52 - 01:45:55]	 which is constrained by very particular rules
[01:45:55 - 01:45:57]	 and is entirely so far in the whole history
[01:45:57 - 01:46:01]	 of the subject under the aegis of the platonic spirit.
[01:46:01 - 01:46:06]	 And I just think that to try and pin it all to that
[01:46:06 - 01:46:10]	 just seems a limitation that one doesn't need at this stage.
[01:46:10 - 01:46:13]	 I mean, it may be helpful, it may be interesting.
[01:46:13 - 01:46:16]	 (audience laughing)
[01:46:16 - 01:46:20]	 My God, I see why they're alarmed now.
[01:46:20 - 01:46:23]	 (audience laughing)
[01:46:23 - 01:46:33]	 Yes, well, I'm sure you're quite right.
[01:46:33 - 01:46:36]	 (audience laughing)
[01:46:39 - 01:46:44]	 So what you're really calling for is the rebirth of poetry.
[01:46:44 - 01:46:48]	 - Well, and all kinds of lived experience
[01:46:48 - 01:46:50]	 through which we directly relate to the world.
[01:46:50 - 01:46:53]	 Because a science which helps us directly
[01:46:53 - 01:46:55]	 to experience nature, and actually,
[01:46:55 - 01:46:58]	 when we walk in the wood, understand it more deeply
[01:46:58 - 01:47:01]	 and more profoundly than we do now,
[01:47:01 - 01:47:04]	 something that tells us something we don't know
[01:47:04 - 01:47:06]	 about the quality of words, trees,
[01:47:06 - 01:47:09]	 the nature of the birdsong we hear, how they communicate.
[01:47:09 - 01:47:12]	 I mean, I think they adjust call signs, their songs,
[01:47:12 - 01:47:15]	 and the actual messages, as it were, telepathic,
[01:47:15 - 01:47:17]	 once they've tuned in through the right calls.
[01:47:17 - 01:47:20]	 This kind of world, we might come to live in
[01:47:20 - 01:47:22]	 and actually experience.
[01:47:22 - 01:47:24]	 And the mathematical models just wouldn't seem,
[01:47:24 - 01:47:27]	 I don't think, terribly interesting or important.
[01:47:27 - 01:47:29]	 - Well, so this is the connection
[01:47:29 - 01:47:32]	 to the psychedelic experience,
[01:47:32 - 01:47:36]	 the felt realm of immediate perception
[01:47:36 - 01:47:39]	 that somehow with the psychedelics,
[01:47:39 - 01:47:41]	 we're coming into the full spectrum
[01:47:41 - 01:47:45]	 of our experiential birthright.
[01:47:45 - 01:47:50]	 And you're saying that this theory correctly assimilated
[01:47:50 - 01:47:54]	 brings us also into a full appreciation
[01:47:54 - 01:47:58]	 of the felt spectrum of experience that is our birthright.
[01:47:58 - 01:48:02]	 - It makes us realize that we're living in a magical world
[01:48:02 - 01:48:04]	 in which there are unseen connections
[01:48:04 - 01:48:07]	 that the power of thought and imagination and dream
[01:48:07 - 01:48:09]	 actually has a reality.
[01:48:09 - 01:48:12]	 And our ancestors lived in such a world.
[01:48:12 - 01:48:16]	 And the whole medieval and animistic world
[01:48:16 - 01:48:18]	 and the worlds before that.
[01:48:18 - 01:48:21]	 And most people in the whole world have lived
[01:48:21 - 01:48:24]	 in such a world, a world in which these things are possible.
[01:48:24 - 01:48:27]	 It's only since the 17th century that our civilization
[01:48:27 - 01:48:30]	 has stripped the world of its magic.
[01:48:30 - 01:48:32]	 And it's stripped the world of its magic
[01:48:32 - 01:48:33]	 by turning it into a machine.
[01:48:33 - 01:48:35]	 And if it becomes a living organism again,
[01:48:35 - 01:48:38]	 alive once again as I think it's becoming,
[01:48:38 - 01:48:40]	 then it's a living thing.
[01:48:40 - 01:48:42]	 We have to relate to it as living things.
[01:48:42 - 01:48:45]	 And the disembodied mind approach
[01:48:45 - 01:48:47]	 of totally abstract mathematics,
[01:48:47 - 01:48:49]	 seeing the universe as if from without.
[01:48:49 - 01:48:51]	 The whole point of the mechanistic picture
[01:48:51 - 01:48:53]	 is that you withdraw yourself from the world.
[01:48:53 - 01:48:55]	 You see the world as a spinning ball
[01:48:55 - 01:48:58]	 as we now finally through the space mission
[01:48:58 - 01:48:59]	 come to see the world.
[01:48:59 - 01:49:02]	 It's a total confirmation of the initial leap
[01:49:02 - 01:49:03]	 of the mechanism of Copernicus.
[01:49:04 - 01:49:07]	 It's a proof of the Copernican theory
[01:49:07 - 01:49:08]	 in the most dramatic form.
[01:49:08 - 01:49:10]	 'Cause there it was to step off the earth,
[01:49:10 - 01:49:11]	 which everyone else had taken the earth
[01:49:11 - 01:49:14]	 as the center from which to model things.
[01:49:14 - 01:49:16]	 'Cause it's the center from which we experience them.
[01:49:16 - 01:49:18]	 And it's true to our experience.
[01:49:18 - 01:49:21]	 Saying that's not the center at all.
[01:49:21 - 01:49:24]	 And Kepler in 1609 wrote this early work
[01:49:24 - 01:49:26]	 of science fiction, "The Dream."
[01:49:26 - 01:49:29]	 When he imagined himself being in a transport,
[01:49:29 - 01:49:32]	 a visionary state, transported to the moon.
[01:49:32 - 01:49:35]	 From the moon, on the moon, encountering strange creatures
[01:49:35 - 01:49:38]	 that lived underground and crawled out from under rocks.
[01:49:38 - 01:49:39]	 And looking back at the earth
[01:49:39 - 01:49:42]	 and seeing the earth spinning on its axis,
[01:49:42 - 01:49:45]	 just as astronauts and our cameras see it from the moon.
[01:49:45 - 01:49:48]	 And using this in his book, "The Somnium,"
[01:49:48 - 01:49:50]	 to persuade people by this thought experiment
[01:49:50 - 01:49:52]	 to see that the earth could be moving
[01:49:52 - 01:49:54]	 even though they themselves experienced
[01:49:54 - 01:49:56]	 the rest of the heavens to be moving.
[01:49:56 - 01:49:57]	 And this is the thought experiment
[01:49:57 - 01:49:59]	 that takes our minds off the earth
[01:49:59 - 01:50:00]	 and puts them out in space.
[01:50:00 - 01:50:02]	 And then through Newtonian space
[01:50:02 - 01:50:04]	 takes them outside the entire universe
[01:50:04 - 01:50:06]	 until they occupy the same vantage point
[01:50:06 - 01:50:09]	 as the imagined God of the mechanistic world machine.
[01:50:09 - 01:50:11]	 Somehow external to the mechanism.
[01:50:11 - 01:50:15]	 And this is the world in which Laplace and his followers
[01:50:15 - 01:50:17]	 thought that their minds were actually dwelling
[01:50:17 - 01:50:22]	 through experiencing these eternal mathematical truths,
[01:50:22 - 01:50:24]	 learning them in physics textbooks.
[01:50:24 - 01:50:27]	 And there they were, the eternal truths of the universe,
[01:50:27 - 01:50:29]	 as named by God, if such a God existed.
[01:50:29 - 01:50:31]	 And so the human mind is totally abstracted
[01:50:31 - 01:50:33]	 from the whole universe, leaving the body
[01:50:33 - 01:50:36]	 and the feelings behind in some other kind of realm,
[01:50:36 - 01:50:38]	 the realm of everyday life, poetry,
[01:50:38 - 01:50:41]	 imagination, religion, et cetera.
[01:50:41 - 01:50:43]	 That the intellectual understanding of the whole universe,
[01:50:43 - 01:50:46]	 which was finally applied to the whole of the self,
[01:50:46 - 01:50:48]	 to the whole of life, to the whole of the human body,
[01:50:48 - 01:50:51]	 and finally to the whole of the human brain,
[01:50:51 - 01:50:52]	 purporting to explain everything
[01:50:52 - 01:50:55]	 in terms of this abstracted intellectual vision
[01:50:55 - 01:50:59]	 rooted in eternity, as the mind of the scientist
[01:50:59 - 01:51:01]	 somehow outside the universe observing it.
[01:51:01 - 01:51:02]	 This has been collapsing.
[01:51:02 - 01:51:05]	 I mean, the observer in quantum theory,
[01:51:05 - 01:51:07]	 the unworkability of that view,
[01:51:07 - 01:51:11]	 and now the collapse of any justification for eternal laws.
[01:51:11 - 01:51:16]	 And so I think that we don't really have to stay in that.
[01:51:16 - 01:51:20]	 We have to change our whole way of experiencing it, yes.
[01:51:20 - 01:51:23]	 - And it is an archaic return.
[01:51:23 - 01:51:27]	 It is a brief intellectual detour
[01:51:27 - 01:51:30]	 since the 17th century, as you point out.
[01:51:30 - 01:51:33]	 Terence's interest in the time flows,
[01:51:33 - 01:51:34]	 and I'm interested in the habits.
[01:51:34 - 01:51:36]	 But I think they're complementary
[01:51:36 - 01:51:38]	 because you're never going to understand
[01:51:38 - 01:51:40]	 the quality of time flow
[01:51:40 - 01:51:42]	 if you haven't already understood
[01:51:42 - 01:51:44]	 the power and nature of habit.
[01:51:44 - 01:51:46]	 Because there's no doubt whatever
[01:51:46 - 01:51:49]	 that a great deal of the time flow that's happening,
[01:51:49 - 01:51:50]	 in spite of all the fluctuations,
[01:51:50 - 01:51:53]	 involves the persistence of a vast number of habits,
[01:51:53 - 01:51:55]	 which is why we're all here tonight.
[01:51:55 - 01:51:58]	 If these habits, the major ones by which we live
[01:51:58 - 01:52:00]	 from day to day, our bodies work, our language works,
[01:52:00 - 01:52:03]	 our social conventions work, and so on,
[01:52:03 - 01:52:06]	 if these habits were severely disrupted,
[01:52:06 - 01:52:10]	 it would be virtually impossible
[01:52:10 - 01:52:11]	 even to sit here and talk about it.
[01:52:11 - 01:52:14]	 We're here because there's a vast ability of habit.
[01:52:14 - 01:52:18]	 And so I think that one has to understand the habits
[01:52:18 - 01:52:20]	 as well as that they're two sides of the same coin,
[01:52:20 - 01:52:21]	 in a sense.
[01:52:21 - 01:52:25]	 The time flow and its quality are what affects,
[01:52:25 - 01:52:28]	 or it's the other side of the coin of habit,
[01:52:28 - 01:52:30]	 and understanding them goes together, I think.
[01:52:30 - 01:52:33]	 But I would think, see the primary task,
[01:52:33 - 01:52:35]	 as I see it, for me at any rate,
[01:52:35 - 01:52:37]	 is to try and establish the nature of these habits.
[01:52:37 - 01:52:40]	 Once we understand the nature of habits better,
[01:52:40 - 01:52:42]	 I think it would be easier to set up,
[01:52:42 - 01:52:45]	 if one wanted to study the nature of time flow,
[01:52:45 - 01:52:47]	 around one would, I suppose,
[01:52:47 - 01:52:49]	 look for correlated events around the world,
[01:52:49 - 01:52:51]	 seeing whether certain patterns of events
[01:52:51 - 01:52:53]	 tended to happen around the world.
[01:52:53 - 01:52:57]	 What Jung would call synchronicities,
[01:52:57 - 01:52:59]	 which he thought of as manifesting
[01:52:59 - 01:53:02]	 some kind of underlying pattern in the flow of time.
[01:53:02 - 01:53:06]	 And so the study of synchronicities already exists,
[01:53:06 - 01:53:07]	 of course, Jung initiated it,
[01:53:07 - 01:53:10]	 or even before him, camera and others.
[01:53:10 - 01:53:13]	 So that's one way of looking at time flow,
[01:53:13 - 01:53:15]	 because synchronicities suggest
[01:53:15 - 01:53:17]	 there's something behind the scenes
[01:53:17 - 01:53:22]	 of what appear to be new events in different places.
[01:53:22 - 01:53:26]	 So, no, these are complementary approaches.
[01:53:26 - 01:53:27]	 It's not one or the other.
[01:53:27 - 01:53:31]	 And I think both the study of synchronicities
[01:53:31 - 01:53:33]	 and the quantity of time might help to explain
[01:53:33 - 01:53:35]	 a lot of anomalies in scientific experiments.
[01:53:35 - 01:53:39]	 Very few scientific experiments are repeatable, in fact.
[01:53:39 - 01:53:42]	 And they're repeatable only approximately.
[01:53:42 - 01:53:45]	 Now, I've spent years teaching practical classes
[01:53:45 - 01:53:50]	 in Cambridge and other universities, Harvard.
[01:53:50 - 01:53:52]	 Teaching practical classes to undergraduates
[01:53:52 - 01:53:55]	 in biochemistry is an enlightening experience,
[01:53:55 - 01:53:58]	 because they're only given experiments to do,
[01:53:58 - 01:54:00]	 which are textbook experiments.
[01:54:00 - 01:54:03]	 Everybody already knows work.
[01:54:03 - 01:54:04]	 I mean, you wouldn't give students
[01:54:04 - 01:54:06]	 something that's not going to work.
[01:54:06 - 01:54:09]	 So you give them the most certain, established,
[01:54:09 - 01:54:11]	 and repetitive and repeatable
[01:54:11 - 01:54:13]	 of all the systems you can think of.
[01:54:13 - 01:54:15]	 You don't want them right up at the research frontiers
[01:54:15 - 01:54:17]	 where results fluctuate wildly
[01:54:17 - 01:54:19]	 and no one knows really what's going on,
[01:54:19 - 01:54:21]	 until it's sort of stabilized, been published,
[01:54:21 - 01:54:24]	 and become a kind of habit of thought and expectation.
[01:54:24 - 01:54:26]	 You give them things that are already believed
[01:54:26 - 01:54:28]	 by everyone to work.
[01:54:28 - 01:54:30]	 And the results you get are astounding.
[01:54:30 - 01:54:31]	 They're all over the place.
[01:54:31 - 01:54:35]	 I mean, even competent undergraduates are...
[01:54:35 - 01:54:37]	 (audience laughs)
[01:54:37 - 01:54:39]	 The results are extremely variable.
[01:54:39 - 01:54:41]	 For any biological experiment I've ever had
[01:54:41 - 01:54:44]	 in hundreds of the ones I've conducted in lab classes,
[01:54:44 - 01:54:47]	 they're given the same apparatus, the same pipettes,
[01:54:47 - 01:54:50]	 the same solutions, the same lab techniques,
[01:54:50 - 01:54:52]	 and put these things out by the dozen
[01:54:52 - 01:54:53]	 in first-year and second-year
[01:54:53 - 01:54:56]	 undergraduate practical laboratories.
[01:54:56 - 01:54:57]	 The results are all over the place.
[01:54:57 - 01:55:00]	 Well, even in third-year undergraduate things,
[01:55:00 - 01:55:02]	 in graduate studies, the results keep coming out
[01:55:02 - 01:55:04]	 all over the place.
[01:55:04 - 01:55:06]	 You explain away the ones that don't work.
[01:55:06 - 01:55:07]	 Either they didn't know the technique,
[01:55:07 - 01:55:09]	 they put the wrong solution in,
[01:55:09 - 01:55:11]	 they must have done this, you must have done that,
[01:55:11 - 01:55:12]	 you must have done the other.
[01:55:12 - 01:55:14]	 You can find a hundred ways to explain
[01:55:14 - 01:55:15]	 why this actually happens.
[01:55:15 - 01:55:17]	 The only actual examples we have
[01:55:17 - 01:55:21]	 where people try to repeat experiments on a mass scale
[01:55:21 - 01:55:24]	 turn out to be highly unrepeatable.
[01:55:24 - 01:55:26]	 Most scientists don't spend their time
[01:55:26 - 01:55:28]	 repeating standard experiments
[01:55:28 - 01:55:30]	 and measuring whether they fluctuate or not.
[01:55:30 - 01:55:33]	 They're always getting onto the next thing.
[01:55:33 - 01:55:35]	 This idea has never been tested.
[01:55:35 - 01:55:39]	 I think if it is tested, we'd find synchronized,
[01:55:39 - 01:55:41]	 perhaps synchronized fluctuations
[01:55:41 - 01:55:43]	 in the way experiments work in labs around the world.
[01:55:43 - 01:55:46]	 People have lab notebooks kept separately.
[01:55:46 - 01:55:48]	 The date, the way of presenting the experiments,
[01:55:48 - 01:55:50]	 you never mention the date you did it.
[01:55:50 - 01:55:53]	 It's assumed that time flows uniformly.
[01:55:53 - 01:55:57]	 You say, "Figure one shows the effect of magnesium ions
[01:55:57 - 01:56:00]	 "on the activity of phosphofructokinase."
[01:56:00 - 01:56:02]	 And you have sort of enzyme activity,
[01:56:02 - 01:56:05]	 magnesium ion concentration, there's this graph.
[01:56:05 - 01:56:07]	 It's treated as if it's an eternal truth.
[01:56:07 - 01:56:10]	 And yet, any biochemical experiment you do,
[01:56:10 - 01:56:11]	 they're always different.
[01:56:11 - 01:56:13]	 I've done hundreds in my time.
[01:56:13 - 01:56:14]	 You publish one of them that gives
[01:56:14 - 01:56:16]	 a sort of plausibly fixed date
[01:56:16 - 01:56:19]	 and say, "Representative results are shown in figure one."
[01:56:19 - 01:56:20]	 (audience laughs)
[01:56:20 - 01:56:23]	 No two experiments give exactly the same results
[01:56:23 - 01:56:26]	 in any real interesting scientific system,
[01:56:26 - 01:56:29]	 such as those looked at by a chemist and so on.
[01:56:29 - 01:56:32]	 And so, I think actually, there's vast amounts of data.
[01:56:32 - 01:56:35]	 If scientists dated their results, for example,
[01:56:35 - 01:56:37]	 there's been elementary move towards
[01:56:37 - 01:56:39]	 recognizing the quality of time.
[01:56:39 - 01:56:41]	 Nifflin found that sort of all sort of
[01:56:41 - 01:56:43]	 particular kinds of results were dated there.
[01:56:43 - 01:56:45]	 And if scientists all around the world found that,
[01:56:45 - 01:56:47]	 say, on the 12th of September,
[01:56:47 - 01:56:49]	 experiments weren't working very well,
[01:56:49 - 01:56:51]	 but they all tend to work on the 15th,
[01:56:51 - 01:56:54]	 this would be very interesting information.
[01:56:54 - 01:56:56]	 Everyone agrees that sunspots, for example,
[01:56:56 - 01:56:59]	 the 11-year cycle affects climatic patterns
[01:56:59 - 01:57:00]	 and growth rings in trees.
[01:57:00 - 01:57:03]	 You can measure it way back.
[01:57:03 - 01:57:05]	 And this is standard science now.
[01:57:05 - 01:57:07]	 I mean, everyone, and cosmic ray fluctuations,
[01:57:07 - 01:57:10]	 every year the Earth passes through meteorite clouds.
[01:57:10 - 01:57:13]	 There are all sorts of things that are known to be,
[01:57:13 - 01:57:15]	 and cosmic rays affect mutation rates,
[01:57:15 - 01:57:16]	 and they're different.
[01:57:16 - 01:57:19]	 And if you do experiments where people have tried to do,
[01:57:19 - 01:57:22]	 some of the Rudolf Steiner people did experiments
[01:57:22 - 01:57:24]	 where they crystallized standard solutions,
[01:57:24 - 01:57:26]	 they crystallized them on different days,
[01:57:26 - 01:57:28]	 the same conditions, and yet the patterns,
[01:57:28 - 01:57:29]	 the dendritic patterns of crystal growth
[01:57:29 - 01:57:31]	 differ from day to day,
[01:57:31 - 01:57:33]	 indicating a kind of quality of time.
[01:57:33 - 01:57:35]	 Now, no normal science would do that, you see,
[01:57:35 - 01:57:39]	 because it's assumed that any day is as good as any other.
[01:57:39 - 01:57:41]	 So, there in lab notebooks, if you went to the,
[01:57:41 - 01:57:43]	 the data's all there.
[01:57:43 - 01:57:45]	 There's tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands
[01:57:45 - 01:57:47]	 of lab notebooks in the world today.
[01:57:47 - 01:57:49]	 And scientists do date their experiments
[01:57:49 - 01:57:50]	 in their notebooks.
[01:57:50 - 01:57:52]	 You keep a daily register of experiments, all dated.
[01:57:52 - 01:57:54]	 Just an examination of lab notebooks
[01:57:54 - 01:57:55]	 would be quite revealing,
[01:57:55 - 01:57:58]	 and it wouldn't even involve new experiments.
[01:57:58 - 01:58:00]	 But as soon as they write up the paper,
[01:58:00 - 01:58:02]	 it's taken out of its temporal context,
[01:58:02 - 01:58:05]	 and put into this kind of seemingly timeless context
[01:58:05 - 01:58:07]	 of eternal truth.
[01:58:07 - 01:58:10]	 - Well, this is because science cannot operate
[01:58:10 - 01:58:14]	 without this notion of the restoration
[01:58:14 - 01:58:16]	 of initial conditions.
[01:58:16 - 01:58:20]	 And yet, this is a highly unexamined notion.
[01:58:20 - 01:58:24]	 And as all these anecdotal incidents indicate,
[01:58:24 - 01:58:28]	 there is no restoration of initial conditions.
[01:58:28 - 01:58:32]	 All of science is being practiced on an unexamined,
[01:58:32 - 01:58:36]	 and apparently false assumption.
[01:58:36 - 01:58:41]	 So, a more honest definition of what science is,
[01:58:44 - 01:58:48]	 is science is the art of studying those phenomena
[01:58:48 - 01:58:53]	 so crude that they can have an apparent restoration
[01:58:53 - 01:58:57]	 of initial conditions.
[01:58:57 - 01:58:59]	 But that leaves out all investment schemes,
[01:58:59 - 01:59:04]	 love affairs, dynastic families,
[01:59:04 - 01:59:09]	 military campaigns, and what have you.
[01:59:09 - 01:59:13]	 None of those can have their initial conditions restored.
[01:59:13 - 01:59:16]	 And those are the things that are really important to us.
[01:59:16 - 01:59:21]	 So, it then is correctly seen to be a very limited way
[01:59:21 - 01:59:23]	 of doing intellectual business,
[01:59:23 - 01:59:28]	 having a very narrow spectrum of applications.
[01:59:28 - 01:59:32]	 One way, I think, of thinking about the difference
[01:59:32 - 01:59:36]	 between ordinary science and what Rupert is trying to do,
[01:59:36 - 01:59:39]	 is to think of science as
[01:59:43 - 01:59:45]	 that enterprise of human thought
[01:59:45 - 01:59:50]	 which attempts to state what is possible, what is possible.
[01:59:50 - 01:59:55]	 But out of the very large class of the possible,
[01:59:55 - 01:59:58]	 certain things are going to have to be selected
[01:59:58 - 02:00:00]	 to actually happen,
[02:00:00 - 02:00:03]	 to undergo what Whitehead calls
[02:00:03 - 02:00:06]	 the formality of actually occurring.
[02:00:06 - 02:00:11]	 And an idea like Rupert's is a way of saying,
[02:00:11 - 02:00:13]	 well, here it's the past,
[02:00:13 - 02:00:18]	 the past is the factor which selects against
[02:00:18 - 02:00:21]	 the class of the possible to narrow it
[02:00:21 - 02:00:23]	 into this much narrower class,
[02:00:23 - 02:00:26]	 the class of those things which have actually occurred.
[02:00:26 - 02:00:31]	 Science never talks about how the class of the possible
[02:00:31 - 02:00:35]	 is narrowed into the class of the actually occurring.
[02:00:35 - 02:00:37]	 And yet, this is obviously a big question.
[02:00:37 - 02:00:39]	 We don't wanna know what's possible,
[02:00:39 - 02:00:42]	 we wanna know what's going to happen.
[02:00:42 - 02:00:44]	 We don't wanna know what might have happened,
[02:00:44 - 02:00:46]	 we wanna know what happened.
[02:00:46 - 02:00:49]	 And so new ways of thinking about causality,
[02:00:49 - 02:00:52]	 new ways of thinking about time,
[02:00:52 - 02:00:56]	 new ways of thinking about the way influence,
[02:00:56 - 02:00:59]	 the influence of form is mitigated
[02:00:59 - 02:01:02]	 into the world of three-dimensional space.
[02:01:02 - 02:01:05]	 Does it come from the past?
[02:01:05 - 02:01:09]	 Does it come from some kind of platonic never-never land
[02:01:09 - 02:01:12]	 that is a hyper-dimension that surrounds
[02:01:12 - 02:01:15]	 apparent space and time?
[02:01:15 - 02:01:16]	 Does it come from the future?
[02:01:16 - 02:01:19]	 Is it like a dynamic attractor?
[02:01:19 - 02:01:22]	 Is it a huge flickering shadow
[02:01:22 - 02:01:25]	 across a lower-dimensional landscape
[02:01:25 - 02:01:28]	 that is somehow gathered into itself?
[02:01:28 - 02:01:32]	 These are the kinds of questions that have to be asked
[02:01:32 - 02:01:36]	 to create a new model of time
[02:01:36 - 02:01:41]	 that is empowering of the felt presence
[02:01:41 - 02:01:44]	 of immediate experience.
[02:01:44 - 02:01:49]	 That is the new ground zero of any kind of humane science.
[02:01:49 - 02:01:54]	 The felt presence of the immediate experience
[02:01:54 - 02:01:59]	 of the individual has to be the primary datum
[02:01:59 - 02:02:00]	 of a new science.
[02:02:00 - 02:02:03]	 Otherwise, it isn't going to be a new science.
[02:02:03 - 02:02:08]	 It's just going to be a retread on the old science.
[02:02:08 - 02:02:12]	 Well, it's well after 11 o'clock.
[02:02:12 - 02:02:14]	 Maybe we should pack it in.
[02:02:14 - 02:02:17]	 Thank you very much.
[02:02:17 - 02:02:20]	 (audience applauding)
[02:02:20 - 02:02:21]	 Thank you.
[02:02:21 - 02:02:24]	 (audience applauding)
[02:02:24 - 02:02:27]	 (audience applauding)