WEBVTT

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Okey-doke. So can everyone hear? Yes? Good. Okay, well we'll strive to maintain a certain level of formality, although this is definitely an in-house family get-together.

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I always say every time I'm at Will's that this feels like the home congregation. This is where we can let our hair down even when we speak from the pulpit. And I encountered Will a few weeks ago at a buffet and he said, I'm glad to see you. And I said, I'm glad to see you. I said, this must mean we both need money.

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So why don't we plan an event? But we needed a draw, so we thought probably we could lend some respectability to the enterprise by getting a British theoretical biologist to throw in with the plan.

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So every year...

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For now, for several years, the annual return of the Sheldrakes to Turtle Island has been a high point in the social calendar. And sometimes it happens in the spring and sometimes in the late summer.

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But it always is an excuse to suspend the ordinary rules of engagement and party down as much as we can with these wonderful people.

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And...

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And Rupert and I have not seen each other for ten months or so. He flew in from Vancouver this afternoon. I saw he and Jill for the first time this evening. I have yet to see Merlin, who is the latest adumbration of the Sheldrakean morphogenetic compressants.

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And I'm sure he lives up to the name.

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So the way we conceived of this is I just think that what goes on in our living rooms is much more exciting, even without the dope smoking, than what goes on in the public lecture situation.

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So the idea was for Rupert and I to get together again, get to catch up again, and to have you as part of the...

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So the idea was for Rupert and I to get together again, get to catch up again, and to have you as part of the...

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extended family participate in this.

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So on very short notice, I conceived this and called it Forms and Mysteries, Morphogenetic Fields and Psychedelic Experiences, as a kind of effort to split the deck two ways equally, you know.

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Although in the past, Rupert and I have participated at Esalen.

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We spent a very interesting afternoon talking about the theory of formative causation and what it might say about the psychedelic experience, pharmacologically, psychologically, historically, and so forth.

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Forms and Mysteries seemed to me a fitting title, because of course, form is a mystery that even science is willing to accept.

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Forms and Mysteries seemed to me a fitting title, because of course, form is a mystery that even science is willing to accept.

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This is the great terra incognito of modern science, is the persistence and genesis of form.

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What is it, where does it come from, and what sustains it?

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And typical of the history of science, the more complex problems have been postponed historically, until epistemological and analytical capabilities,

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were sufficient to deal with the problem.

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This is why, for instance, linguistics was more than a metaphor until the 20th century.

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And in a sense, I think probably morphogenesis was in the same situation,

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because powerful mathematical tools have had to be invented to carry it out of the realm of mere theoretical discussion.

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Because powerful mathematical tools have had to be invented to carry it out of the realm of mere theoretical discussion.

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And in a sense, I think probably morphogenesis was in the same situation, because powerful mathematical tools have had to be invented to carry it out of the realm of mere theoretical discussion.

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Because powerful mathematical tools have had to be invented to carry it out of the realm of mere theoretical discussion.

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And in a sense, I think probably morphogenesis was in the same situation, because powerful mathematical tools have had to be invented to carry it out of the realm of mere theoretical discussion.

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And in a sense, I think probably morphogenesis was in the same situation, because powerful mathematical tools have had to be invented to carry it out of the realm of mere theoretical discussion.

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And in a sense, I think probably morphogenesis was in the same situation, because powerful mathematical tools have had to be invented to carry it out of the realm of mere theoretical discussion.

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revisioning of causality and by extension the domain of of science what

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it is able to claim as its purvey and I think that his position has been at

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first ignored and more recently with the publication of his second book

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scoriated because this is no small matter this is actually a question of

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fundamental epistemic importance to the entire scientific enterprise because

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what is being proposed in the theory of the morphogenetic field is a

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revisioning of causality the second book which if you have a

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book which if you have a book which if you have a book which if you have a

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read it you're certainly missing an intellectual adventure it's like a

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chance to read the principia when the person who wrote it is striving around

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town giving lectures it's really a rare intellectual adventure I haven't known

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that kind of excitement reading theoretical biology since discovering LL

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White when I was a kid but what is being proposed is a fundamental revision

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of how events happen in the world and very fundamental to the performance of

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science is the notion of experiment and experiment rests on the relatively

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unexamined concept of the restoration of initial conditions the show Drakeian

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cosmos would play havoc with the notion of the

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restoration of initial conditions because what it is saying is that the

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universe is a a steadily accreting and self-defining set of interlocking

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habits and that know that slices into this waveform interference pattern of

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habit are therefore necessarily going to be time dependent in other words

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it looks different at each point in its history it makes it very hard therefore

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to see how in an atmosphere like that ordinary science can be prosecuted at

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all so the interest that it holds for me then is that it seems to be a very

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calm rational attentive of intellectual understanding

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which leads to the same radical conclusions that an emergence in the

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core experience of archaism the psychedelic experience argues for in

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other words that all our intellectual constructs are in fact built on

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shifting sands and all knowledge is provisional at this stage in the

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epistemic enterprise it doesn't mean that a

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more epistemically grounded knowing is not possible it merely means that up to

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this point it has not occurred science is claimed to fulfill this function is is

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now in serious trouble it actually has been in some areas since the elaboration

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of quantum physics in the 20s but shell Drake is coming at it not from a realm

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of extremely arcane

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mathematical modeling, but in the biological realm

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with a model which is both simultaneously true

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to felt experience and confounding

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to the scientific paradigm as it has been waged

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since Bacon, essentially.

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So Rupert is with us tonight.

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He will tell you, I hope, the state of the art

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in terms of experiments and the public dialogue

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that attends these things, because make no mistake about it,

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the overturning of a scientific paradigm is a political act

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and it has to do with reputations and tenure and publication

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and people who have built their lives defending something

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that they now see under severe attack.

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What I believe is happening

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and that Rupert and my own fascination

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with the psychedelic experience and other phenomena

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in society all can be brought under the single umbrella

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of a resurgent vitalism and awareness of the living vitality

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of form and organism and experience.

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And this is something that in order to do its work,

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the Newtonian model had to expunge all that,

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had to call these things secondary qualities,

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epiphenomenal, derivative, this, that, and the other.

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And yet, these are the existential stuff

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of the felt world of being.

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So Rupert brings to biology a theory

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which links it back into physics and forward into psychology

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in a way that, you know, it's not just a theory.

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It's a theory that restores meaning,

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however much it may do damage

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to the somewhat infantile wish of the Cartesians

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to construct a closed tautology,

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which is really what they want to do, you know?

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And that's why they want to get rid

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of all these troubling phenomena

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that are of such a complexity that it exceeds their model.

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Well, I'm a great fan of this theory I could run on at length,

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about it, but the man who invented it is here with us.

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He can lead us to a deeper understanding of it.

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Please welcome Rupert Sheldrake,

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the greatest biologist of the age.

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Well, you see, it's a paradoxical situation.

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It's a difficult act to follow, and yet,

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I've somehow got to try after that buildup.

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And it's, I think what Terence has,

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his explanation of how morphic resonance works

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is obviously eloquent and bardic, and I agree with it.

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And the point that he's put to us now

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is the thing about the experimental tests.

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This coming down very much to Earth

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after this wonderful flight of,

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you know, Terence's imagination into those realms

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of the imagination that he leads us so easily.

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The tests so far have mostly been on human subjects.

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And those of you who've seen the new edition

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of A New Science of Life, which just came out

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two or three months ago in the United States,

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which was published about three years ago in Britain,

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that edition contains an appendix which brings you up to date

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on what had happened up until 1985.

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It contains a summary of the controversies

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and the discussions, including a reprint

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of the full Nature editorial attack,

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the book for burning article.

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And it also summarizes the experiments which were done

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in the realm of hidden images, puzzle pictures.

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I've talked about those before several times here

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and in San Francisco, so I'm not going to go into those.

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But those were,

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roughly speaking, experiments that involved

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showing pictures containing a hidden image,

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a puzzle picture, on television to millions of people.

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And the test was to find out whether more people

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in other countries could recognize it,

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could spot the hidden image in these puzzle pictures before,

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if more could do it after it had been shown on TV

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in one country than before.

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So groups of subjects were tested in a variety of countries.

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The transmissions took place on British television,

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first on Thames television,

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and then another experiment on the BBC

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involving about eight million people in the audience.

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And the tests in other countries

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were done by volunteer experimenters.

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The tests involved two puzzle pictures.

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People in other countries were shown both of these

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for 30 seconds each.

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They had to guess or say what they saw in it.

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They were either right or wrong, easy to mark.

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And whether they got the hidden image or not.

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And the same two pictures were tested on different subjects

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after the TV transmission.

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One of them was a control.

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The other one was shown on TV.

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Anyway, these experiments,

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which were then repeated in Germany,

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gave interesting but variable results.

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The first one showed a large increase,

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well, large, a significant increase

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at the 1% level of probability

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in the recognition of the transmitted

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picture compared with the control picture,

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which remained constant.

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Very gratifying result.

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And so the experiment was done again on BBC

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with its larger audience.

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The second experiment showed a strong positive effect

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in Western Europe.

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More people in Germany and other countries

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recognized the picture shown on TV in Britain

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and the control picture didn't change.

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But it showed no effect in North America.

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Now, these results were very puzzling.

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And it's the kind of thing that,

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you know, what do you make of that?

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I don't expect morphic resonance to work

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by a distance effect,

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which is the most obvious explanation.

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Could it be that somehow people in Europe

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are being in the same time zone,

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more in phase with each other

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than those in the US at six to nine hours shifted?

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If morphic resonance works as a resonance,

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then what phase people are in should be

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an important variable.

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So that's one possibility.

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And that's suggested by the results from South Africa,

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which is only one hour different from Britain

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and at least as far away as New York

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and other places it was tested,

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which showed similar results to the European ones.

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It wasn't distance, it was time zone

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that seemed to be the variable.

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Anyway, this experiment was then done again in Germany,

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trying to, the pictures were,

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of course in each experiment.

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And the pictures there were transmitted

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on Sunday afternoon on a program there.

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And tests were done all around the world.

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Again, no effect in North America.

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A highly significant in fact in Britain.

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But in Britain, although it was highly significant

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and the control was no different,

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and the sample tested was something like 20,000 people,

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it was a huge sample.

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It was probably the biggest experiment ever done.

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It was probably the biggest experiment ever done.

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It was probably the biggest experiment ever done.

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And this is a very significant experiment.

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experiment ever done in terms of the number of participants.

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The effect showed that the picture had become significantly harder to recognise in Britain

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after it had been seen by a lot of Germans on a Sunday afternoon.

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Well, at this stage, I thought, well, you know, this is too close to a kind of standard

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parapsychological experiment, a one-shot thing.

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I said to, I discussed it with Russell Targ, who I met at a conference, and he said, I

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bet if you do this experiment, you'll get all sorts of weird precognitive effects and

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so on.

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It's so like a parapsychology experiment, you'll get the same kind of anomalies and

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bizarre things that we get in ours.

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And I thought, well, maybe that was one way of looking at it.

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And thought, thought that probably I should do more what is more in the spirit of the

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hypothesis.

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Namely, try and test for the effect of repeated exposures, because it's a hypothesis of repetition

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leading to habit, not a kind of one-shot event.

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I wanted to look for where puzzle pictures, for example, could be seen many times.

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Well, at this stage, it turned out that the only way to do this, feasibly, since I couldn't

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persuade a TV company to show the same puzzle picture in the same test hundreds of times

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on their programme.

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.

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The obvious way to do that would be to have it in a TV commercial, or to have it in advertising

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in hoardings.

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And at this stage, I entered into discussions with various leading members of the advertising

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industry, including some at the think tank here in San Francisco.

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And it seemed that they were indeed quite interested in this approach.

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And at that stage, I, I, then they, they sent to me from their office, and I said, well,

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I'm going to go to the office in Madison Avenue for some puzzle pictures, and started

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doing some trial ones for a campaign.

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But at this stage, I began to get cold feet.

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I began to think, do I really want the first tests of morphic resonance to be done directly

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and completely as part of a kind of advertising stunt, and as part of an advertising research

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project?

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And it's not, things should continue as they begin to some extent, and it, I thought it

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just wasn't a very auspicious beginning.

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And I didn't get too involved with that.

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I've sort of backed down on that one.

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They also had fears from their clients, because anything to do with hidden images, advertisers

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are terrified of being accused of subliminal advertising.

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And so there's a kind of paranoia the minute hidden images come up.

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Anyway, so that experiment's on the back burner.

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Several other projects are in the pipeline.

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A friend of mine has invented a puzzle in England.

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A nine-piece geometrical puzzle, which is exceedingly hard to do.

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It took me hours and hours to solve it.

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It's got tens of thousands, millions of combinations, and there's 148 possible answers, but they're

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very hard to find.

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He's planning to market this in the near future, or in the more or less near future.

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So we're setting up an experiment that would go with that, if it is marketed.

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We'd monitor in other countries where it's, than where it's marketed, the rate at which

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people can solve it.

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The standard conditions.

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And then measure at regular intervals in other countries before it's released there,

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to see whether millions of people, or thousands, or tens of thousands learning it in Britain,

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affect these successes.

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It's like monitoring the ability of people to solve the Rubik cube, if you'd got in right

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at the beginning.

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It's that kind of thing, only on a smaller scale.

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Anyway, that's one thing in the pipeline.

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The other thing is the three experiments which won the Tarrytown Prize.

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They're very interesting.

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Which was awarded in June 1986 for tests of morphic resonance.

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All involved experiments on the ability of human beings to learn things that millions

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of people had learned before.

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Again, I won't go into these in detail, because they're all written up in my new book, The

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Presence of the Past.

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Briefly, they involved the ability to learn or recognize words in languages unknown to

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the person, in the written form.

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One involved Hebrew words written in Hebrew.

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The other involved the ability to learn or recognize words in languages unknown to the

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person, in the written form.

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The other involved Persian words written in Persian.

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These two experiments were very similar.

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They were done independently.

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One in the United States at Yale by Gary Schwartz.

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The other in Britain by two people who both independently devised a very similar test

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to test for morphic resonance.

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Itself an interesting fact.

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These tests showed the ability of people to learn things more readily if they were thinking

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about them.

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They were doing things that other people had learned before.

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The third test was on Morse code.

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The main experiments that have been going on, apart from other ones planned in the human

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psychology realm, the ones that are actually going on right now are in the realms of chemistry

22:43.020 --> 22:46.020
and in fruit fly development.

22:46.020 --> 22:53.020
The experiment that's going on in Warwick University at this moment concerns protein

22:53.020 --> 22:54.020
folding.

22:54.020 --> 22:56.020
In my new book I discuss this.

22:56.020 --> 23:02.020
If proteins are unfolded, then it may be that when they fold up again, which involves a

23:02.020 --> 23:08.020
complex morphogenetic process at the molecular level, which can be monitored using quite

23:08.020 --> 23:13.020
simple techniques, when they fold up again they may be refolding in a way that they've

23:13.020 --> 23:15.020
not done in nature before.

23:15.020 --> 23:21.020
Especially there are reasons why this would be so for certain particular enzymes.

23:21.020 --> 23:22.020
And,

23:22.020 --> 23:28.020
so, the more often they're refolded, they should learn how to do it, as it were, and

23:28.020 --> 23:32.020
the refolding process should take place measurably quicker.

23:32.020 --> 23:38.020
But we have an experiment going on to test for this, the refolding of enzymes and then

23:38.020 --> 23:41.020
repeated refolding to see if it happens quicker.

23:41.020 --> 23:43.020
I don't know the results yet.

23:43.020 --> 23:48.020
It's still going on and I'm not sure whether it will give conclusive results or not within

23:48.020 --> 23:51.020
the summer, which is when the project ends.

23:52.020 --> 23:57.020
The other one's on fruit flies and the development of fruit flies, following up results that

23:57.020 --> 24:02.020
already suggest that when fruit flies have developed in response to an abnormal stimulus

24:02.020 --> 24:10.020
like ether or higher temperatures during pupation, that the percent abnormal flies, for example

24:10.020 --> 24:16.020
flies with extra veins in their wings, a certain proportion are produced by this stress

24:16.020 --> 24:17.020
from the environment.

24:17.020 --> 24:22.020
But the more flies that have been exposed to the stress, the more that have become abnormal

24:22.020 --> 24:27.020
the greater the abnormal response is when fresh ones are put into this stress.

24:27.020 --> 24:32.020
This has already been found and it looks very much like a morphogenetic and morphic resonance

24:32.020 --> 24:33.020
effect.

24:33.020 --> 24:38.020
And some more experiments are going on to test the earlier results that showed this

24:38.020 --> 24:41.020
result to be the case.

24:41.020 --> 24:46.020
Again, this experiment's about halfway through at the moment.

24:46.020 --> 24:51.020
So, these are some of the things that are going on to test the theory.

24:51.020 --> 24:56.020
I should perhaps mention one attempt to refute the theory that's been made and recently

24:56.020 --> 24:59.020
published in the Skeptical Inquirer.

24:59.020 --> 25:03.020
I don't know how many people here are readers of the Skeptical Inquirer.

25:03.020 --> 25:05.020
Perhaps rather few.

25:05.020 --> 25:11.020
The Skeptical Inquirer, as you may know, is the house journal of PSYCOP, the debunking

25:11.020 --> 25:19.020
organization, and the one that's most famous for James Randi being among its activists.

25:19.020 --> 25:25.020
And this was published, it was a paper by Francisco Varela, who claimed to have refuted

25:25.020 --> 25:29.020
the hypothesis of formative causation.

25:29.020 --> 25:34.020
And the experiment that he'd done involved programming a desktop computer to carry out

25:34.020 --> 25:40.020
a particular operation, measure the time it took to do it, and then repeat this operation

25:40.020 --> 25:43.020
millions of times, and then measuring the rate of it.

25:43.020 --> 25:46.020
And he found that the computer didn't do it any quicker.

25:46.020 --> 25:47.020
.

25:47.020 --> 25:51.020
He concluded that this refuted the hypothesis of formative causation.

25:51.020 --> 25:58.020
And he first wrote this paper in 1983 and sent it to me, and suggested we had a public

25:58.020 --> 26:01.020
discussion on this, which I agreed to.

26:01.020 --> 26:06.020
So we had two or three exchanges, and the idea was to publish the papers together.

26:06.020 --> 26:12.020
I argued in my first exchange that it didn't test the theory because the theory only applies

26:12.020 --> 26:17.020
to indeterminate quantum systems which contain enough indeterminacy for these probabilistic

26:17.020 --> 26:22.020
fields to get a grip on it, whereas computers are completely determinate in their functioning.

26:22.020 --> 26:24.020
There's nothing that the fields could do.

26:24.020 --> 26:30.020
Secondly, the computers are not self-organizing systems in the same sense that morphogenetic

26:30.020 --> 26:33.020
systems and cells, crystals, molecules, and atoms are.

26:33.020 --> 26:37.020
Rather, the program that's going on is not something that's created itself, but rather

26:37.020 --> 26:41.020
it's something which Varela had thought up and put inside the machine.

26:41.020 --> 26:44.020
There's nothing self-organizing about that.

26:44.020 --> 26:47.020
And therefore, this wasn't a test of the theory.

26:47.020 --> 26:54.020
Anyway, Varela didn't agree and said that I couldn't maintain that living organisms

26:54.020 --> 26:59.020
were not machines like computers because both organisms and machines were machines,

26:59.020 --> 27:04.020
and that there was no difference between computers and living organisms because they

27:04.020 --> 27:06.020
were all machines.

27:06.020 --> 27:11.020
So we got into this kind of argument, and I said I thought that was rubbish and that

27:11.020 --> 27:14.020
it wasn't like that at all, and so on.

27:14.020 --> 27:16.020
Anyway.

27:16.020 --> 27:21.020
What happened then was that a physicist, the late Professor Michael Ovenden of the

27:21.020 --> 27:28.020
University of British Columbia, who was one of the judges of the Terry Turn competition,

27:28.020 --> 27:33.020
read Varela's paper, which was entered for the competition, and all four judges rejected

27:33.020 --> 27:36.020
it as being a valid test of the theory.

27:36.020 --> 27:43.020
He pointed out to me that it didn't test the theory because the way computers work is

27:43.020 --> 27:46.020
that every microsecond or so there's a pulse.

27:46.020 --> 27:49.020
And the instructions are carried out pulse-wise.

27:49.020 --> 27:54.020
So a program with 30 steps in would take 30 microseconds because each step is pulsed

27:54.020 --> 27:56.020
by this internal clock.

27:56.020 --> 28:00.460
Well, roughly speaking, that seems to be what's going on in the computer.

28:00.460 --> 28:05.460
Varela's program with 30 steps took 30 microseconds for his computer to do.

28:05.460 --> 28:08.460
It's a computer that has a microsecond clock.

28:08.460 --> 28:12.460
And after millions of repetitions, it still took 30 microseconds.

28:12.460 --> 28:17.460
Well, all this shows is that the clock that pulses the things in the computer,

28:17.460 --> 28:21.460
was pulsing the instructions at exactly the rate that the computer has to pulse them at.

28:21.460 --> 28:23.460
Namely, one microsecond.

28:23.460 --> 28:27.460
And so it took 30 microseconds to run through these instructions.

28:27.460 --> 28:33.460
Even if the silicon chips had responded quicker to the pulses,

28:33.460 --> 28:38.460
then it wouldn't have shown up in this experiment because they would still have had to happen every microsecond.

28:38.460 --> 28:44.460
Anyway, this error in the basis of the experiment

28:44.460 --> 28:46.460
was found in the experiment.

28:46.460 --> 28:48.460
It was pointed out to him.

28:48.460 --> 28:50.460
Anyway, he published the original paper.

28:50.460 --> 28:55.460
And I've now written a reply in the Skeptical Inquirer pointing out these issues.

28:55.460 --> 28:59.460
But when I sent this in to the editor of the Skeptical Inquirer,

28:59.460 --> 29:04.460
he wrote back to me saying that my reply probably wouldn't come out till the winter number,

29:04.460 --> 29:11.460
since the letters section of the fall number was already full of letters from other people pointing out the same error.

29:18.060 --> 29:22.060
That's the status of the refutation debate at the moment.

29:22.060 --> 29:28.060
And you'll be able to see these various things in the forthcoming next two issues of the Skeptical Inquirer,

29:28.060 --> 29:31.060
should you ever see it around.

29:31.060 --> 29:45.340
There are quite a number of projects being planned in the realms of chemistry and developmental biology and experimental psychology.

29:45.340 --> 29:48.340
Some funding has become available for morphic resonance.

29:49.340 --> 29:52.340
Which is why these projects are going on right now.

29:52.340 --> 29:57.340
Owing to the generosity of three or four individuals.

29:57.340 --> 30:01.340
And then smaller subscriptions through the Fund for Morphic Resonance Research

30:01.340 --> 30:07.340
from individuals who have been good enough to try and help this process along.

30:07.340 --> 30:09.340
And this money really has helped it along,

30:09.340 --> 30:14.340
because it has made it possible to hire people to do these experiments in labs in universities.

30:14.340 --> 30:18.340
And there are quite a number of universities ready and willing to do them.

30:18.340 --> 30:23.340
And the only limiting factor at the moment is money to hire the people to do them.

30:23.340 --> 30:27.340
We're hiring students in the summer vacation to do these projects,

30:27.340 --> 30:34.340
because that way we can get a three to four month project done for $1,500.

30:34.340 --> 30:36.340
Yes?

30:36.340 --> 30:43.340
I don't know if I'm the only one in the audience who really doesn't grasp what the theory of morphogenetic resonance is,

30:43.340 --> 30:46.340
but I appreciate a couple of sentence descriptions.

30:46.340 --> 30:47.340
Yes, quite right.

30:47.340 --> 30:49.340
Well, I should have said that at the beginning.

30:49.340 --> 30:51.340
All right.

30:51.340 --> 30:54.340
The theory, sorry about that.

30:54.340 --> 30:56.340
I was assuming that most people did know,

30:56.340 --> 30:59.340
and I should have realized that not everybody would, and maybe most don't.

30:59.340 --> 31:02.340
Something intrigues me about it, but I don't grasp it.

31:02.340 --> 31:07.340
Well, it's hard to grasp in its detailed forms,

31:07.340 --> 31:12.340
but that's what our dialogue was going to be about in some of these things.

31:12.340 --> 31:17.340
But basically what it's saying is that the so-called laws of nature are like habits.

31:17.340 --> 31:21.340
That things happen the way they do because they've happened that way before.

31:21.340 --> 31:25.340
The way crystals crystallize depends on the way similar compound,

31:25.340 --> 31:28.340
the same compound has crystallized in the past.

31:28.340 --> 31:33.340
The way rats learn a new trick depends on whether other rats have learned it before.

31:33.340 --> 31:35.340
If rats in another place have already learned it,

31:35.340 --> 31:41.340
then it'll be easier to learn somewhere else for subsequent rats by the process called morphic resonance.

31:41.340 --> 31:45.340
So there's a kind of collective memory in nature in different species,

31:45.340 --> 31:47.340
in different kinds of things.

31:47.340 --> 31:54.340
And this collective memory is transferred from the past to the present

31:54.340 --> 31:56.340
by the process I call morphic resonance.

31:56.340 --> 32:00.340
That means that in general, new things which happen repeatedly

32:00.340 --> 32:04.340
should happen more and more easily or more and more quickly or more and more probably

32:04.340 --> 32:09.340
as time goes on because of the effect, the build-up of this morphic resonance.

32:09.340 --> 32:14.340
And this theory is controversial, as Terence pointed out,

32:14.340 --> 32:17.340
because it's not the way that scientists usually think about it.

32:17.340 --> 32:19.340
It's about these things.

32:19.340 --> 32:24.340
And the issue that I've just been discussing is various experimental ways to test it

32:24.340 --> 32:29.340
because this theory says when proteins fold up a new way and do it repeatedly,

32:29.340 --> 32:31.340
they should do it quicker.

32:31.340 --> 32:34.340
And when some people have learned something in one country,

32:34.340 --> 32:36.340
like on television in a hidden image,

32:36.340 --> 32:39.340
it should make it easier for others to spot it elsewhere.

32:39.340 --> 32:44.340
Or if fruit flies have developed in a particularly, in a new way,

32:44.340 --> 32:46.340
for example with extra veins in their wings,

32:46.340 --> 32:49.340
then the more that do it, the easier it should get for others to do it,

32:49.340 --> 32:51.340
other things being equal.

32:51.340 --> 32:55.340
And that's the point of all these experiments I've been describing.

32:55.340 --> 32:57.340
They're all designed to test this theory,

32:57.340 --> 33:03.340
to see whether there is in fact this kind of memory or habit in nature.

33:03.340 --> 33:07.340
There's one more aspect of the theory that I should mention,

33:07.340 --> 33:13.340
which is that it leads to a completely new interpretation of memory.

33:13.340 --> 33:15.340
And it says that

33:16.340 --> 33:19.340
our memory, our ordinary memories of what we've done,

33:19.340 --> 33:25.340
depend not on traces or physical material changes stored in the brain,

33:25.340 --> 33:29.340
like traces on a tape recorder or recordings in a hologram.

33:29.340 --> 33:33.340
It doesn't depend on a material storage system in the brain.

33:33.340 --> 33:39.340
Rather, memory depends on tuning in to our own past directly by morphic resonance.

33:39.340 --> 33:44.340
And the brain is more like a tuning system than a storage system.

33:44.340 --> 33:46.340
Damage to the brain can interfere with the tuning.

33:46.340 --> 33:47.340
Or the reception.

33:47.340 --> 33:49.340
And so you can get loss of memory through brain damage.

33:49.340 --> 33:51.340
But the memory isn't in the brain.

33:51.340 --> 33:55.340
And just as we tune in to our own memories from our own past,

33:55.340 --> 34:01.340
so we also tune in to the memories of large numbers of other people.

34:01.340 --> 34:06.340
And this is similar as a notion to what Jung called the collective unconscious.

34:06.340 --> 34:09.340
So that's a summary of what it's all about.

34:09.340 --> 34:12.340
And the experiments I've just been talking about were,

34:12.340 --> 34:16.340
in response to Terence asking for an update on

34:16.340 --> 34:19.340
the experimental test situation.

34:19.340 --> 34:24.340
So that's more or less what's been going on so far

34:24.340 --> 34:26.340
in the way of experimental tests.

34:26.340 --> 34:31.340
And more are in the pipeline.

34:31.340 --> 34:35.340
And the limiting factor at the moment is funds.

34:35.340 --> 34:37.340
And some funds are becoming available.

34:37.340 --> 34:40.340
So that's where we are from that point of view.

34:40.340 --> 34:44.340
Yes, I might say about all this,

34:44.340 --> 34:45.340
to my mind,

34:45.340 --> 34:53.340
the criticism of the theory has to this point been fairly inane

34:53.340 --> 34:59.340
and largely carried out by people who didn't really understand the theory.

34:59.340 --> 35:05.340
That doesn't mean that it is not open to criticism.

35:05.340 --> 35:08.340
The reason I have such an interest in it

35:08.340 --> 35:14.340
is because it solved a lot of what I felt were outstanding problems

35:14.340 --> 35:18.340
in my own model building efforts.

35:18.340 --> 35:22.340
But it certainly raises other questions.

35:22.340 --> 35:26.340
In the first paragraph of The Presence of the Past,

35:26.340 --> 35:32.200
condenses the theory into a slogan,

35:32.200 --> 35:36.200
which could be shouted in a theater or a parade.

35:36.200 --> 35:43.200
It's that things are as they are because they were as they were.

35:43.200 --> 35:44.200
And that, in essence,

35:44.200 --> 35:47.200
is what this theory is saying.

35:47.200 --> 35:53.200
Well, now notice that this is as conservative

35:53.200 --> 35:57.200
a point of view as one could possibly imagine.

35:58.200 --> 36:00.200
The problem,

36:00.200 --> 36:03.200
if you believe things are as they are

36:03.200 --> 36:06.200
because they were as they were,

36:06.200 --> 36:13.200
then your problem is to account for anything new or novel ever happening.

36:13.200 --> 36:16.200
How, in a world where things are as they are

36:16.200 --> 36:18.200
because they were as they were,

36:18.200 --> 36:21.200
are you ever going to get creative advance?

36:21.200 --> 36:24.200
It seems to preclude it from the outset.

36:24.200 --> 36:30.920
Well, what drew me originally to Rupert,

36:30.920 --> 36:32.920
or what drew us together,

36:32.920 --> 36:39.920
was I had a theory that was entirely about accounting for novelty.

36:39.920 --> 36:45.920
And that was what it delivered to me.

36:45.920 --> 36:50.920
What it delivered on was a model of how new things could come into being.

36:50.920 --> 36:54.920
Rupert's theory is a model of how structure is conserved

36:54.920 --> 36:57.920
and perpetuated through time.

36:57.920 --> 37:00.920
So my thought was you could bring these together,

37:00.920 --> 37:03.920
and if they were not mutually exclusive,

37:03.920 --> 37:08.920
then you would find out why there was persistence of form,

37:08.920 --> 37:11.920
why there was this overwhelming presence of the past,

37:11.920 --> 37:14.920
and yet why there could still be

37:14.920 --> 37:20.920
apparently free will and novel situations arise.

37:20.920 --> 37:25.920
And, you know, you really participate,

37:25.920 --> 37:28.920
when you participate in this idea,

37:28.920 --> 37:35.920
in an intellectual adventure upon which the curtain has only risen.

37:35.920 --> 37:41.920
No one can stride to a blackboard this afternoon, this evening,

37:41.920 --> 37:43.920
and write the equations

37:43.920 --> 37:45.920
of the morphogenetic field.

37:45.920 --> 37:48.920
We are a long, long way from that.

37:48.920 --> 37:57.060
This is basically at the level of discussion.

37:57.060 --> 38:01.060
But if the morphogenetic field is written,

38:01.060 --> 38:05.060
if the equations are written,

38:05.060 --> 38:10.060
then it will flower into who knows what,

38:10.060 --> 38:14.060
in the same way that when the electromagnetic equations

38:14.060 --> 38:16.060
were finally written by Clerk Maxwell,

38:16.060 --> 38:24.060
suddenly radio, television, all of these things became a possibility.

38:24.060 --> 38:28.060
I think that accounting for form

38:28.060 --> 38:31.060
is the great unsolved problem

38:31.060 --> 38:36.060
that science has put off for about 500 years.

38:36.060 --> 38:41.060
Accounting for novelty is a somewhat newer problem

38:41.060 --> 38:44.060
that is not even addressed by science

38:44.060 --> 38:48.060
until you get to the theory of evolution in the 1850s

38:48.060 --> 38:52.060
and then only addressed in the biological realm.

38:52.060 --> 38:56.060
The theory that I originally elaborated

38:56.060 --> 39:03.060
had novelty as the downsloping part of a fractal wave

39:03.060 --> 39:06.060
and the upmoving part of that wave

39:06.060 --> 39:09.060
I called entropy or disconnectedness

39:09.060 --> 39:11.060
or I can't even remember.

39:11.060 --> 39:13.060
And it was Rupert who said,

39:13.060 --> 39:17.060
you should call it habit.

39:17.060 --> 39:21.060
And you should see then that the world

39:21.060 --> 39:26.060
is an ebb and flow of habit versus novelty,

39:26.060 --> 39:31.060
of temporal situations of varying durations

39:31.060 --> 39:34.060
in which the presence of the past

39:34.060 --> 39:39.060
is so overwhelming that they are,

39:39.060 --> 39:42.060
that basically the past is replayed

39:42.060 --> 39:45.060
in that space-time domain.

39:45.060 --> 39:48.060
And yet there are other space-time domains

39:48.060 --> 39:51.060
where the way in which causality

39:51.060 --> 39:54.060
and formative causation come together

39:54.060 --> 39:57.060
creates novel connection.

39:57.060 --> 39:59.060
And these novel connections

39:59.060 --> 40:03.060
come into being with their own morphogenetic field,

40:03.060 --> 40:08.060
with their own ability to be a past present

40:08.060 --> 40:12.060
in a future yet to be realized.

40:12.060 --> 40:16.060
So though I think that the attacks

40:16.060 --> 40:20.060
that have been mounted so far have been trivial,

40:20.060 --> 40:24.060
the real challenge for the morphogenetic field

40:24.060 --> 40:27.060
is to formalize itself,

40:27.060 --> 40:31.060
to aim toward mathematical expression

40:31.060 --> 40:34.060
and to construct itself in such a way

40:34.060 --> 40:37.060
that the self-evidence of novelty

40:37.060 --> 40:40.060
is not sacrificed in the way

40:40.060 --> 40:44.060
that the Newtonian model had to sacrifice

40:44.060 --> 40:47.060
the self-evidence of primary experience,

40:47.060 --> 40:50.060
of felt experience.

40:50.060 --> 40:54.060
So you and I haven't talked about this this much,

40:54.060 --> 40:56.060
but I would love to hear you talk

40:56.060 --> 40:59.060
about the conservation of novelty

40:59.060 --> 41:03.060
in a universe ruled by formative causation

41:03.060 --> 41:06.060
and how you see that,

41:06.060 --> 41:09.060
and perhaps the way in which it plays into

41:09.060 --> 41:12.060
the psychedelic issue

41:12.060 --> 41:16.060
is that we can take the word habit very generally

41:16.060 --> 41:21.060
and realize that one of the curious things

41:21.060 --> 41:24.060
about ourselves as higher animals

41:24.060 --> 41:28.060
is our susceptibility to habituations.

41:28.060 --> 41:34.060
I define habituation as unexamined obsessive behavior.

41:36.060 --> 41:38.060
Seems reasonable.

41:38.060 --> 41:42.060
And we are, more than any other creature,

41:42.060 --> 41:45.060
we seem to fall into behavioral loops

41:45.060 --> 41:47.060
of television watching,

41:47.060 --> 41:49.060
snack consuming,

41:49.060 --> 41:54.060
fascist voting patterns,

41:54.060 --> 41:58.060
tasteless tonsorial tendencies,

41:58.060 --> 42:01.060
and so forth.

42:01.060 --> 42:04.060
What precisely, if...

42:04.060 --> 42:07.060
You see, my notion, again to try and unite

42:07.060 --> 42:10.060
the psychedelic thing with what Rupert is doing,

42:10.060 --> 42:14.060
my notion of a new model of the psychedelic experience

42:14.060 --> 42:21.060
is to call these things morphogenetic field amplifiers

42:21.060 --> 42:23.060
and to say, you know,

42:23.060 --> 42:29.060
this is why in the presence of a psychedelic experience

42:29.060 --> 42:33.060
one can hold an object in their hand

42:33.060 --> 42:36.060
and visualize its past states.

42:36.060 --> 42:40.060
This is how shamans determine who stole the hen

42:40.060 --> 42:44.060
or who's sleeping with who.

42:44.060 --> 42:48.060
Actually, the morphogenetic field,

42:48.060 --> 42:53.060
if sufficiently amplified to sufficient clarity,

42:53.060 --> 42:57.060
is nothing more or less than a record of the past history

42:57.060 --> 43:00.060
of whatever is being examined.

43:00.060 --> 43:04.060
So that suddenly, instead of being focused

43:04.060 --> 43:09.060
in a kind of atomized present

43:09.060 --> 43:13.060
with a receding past and an anticipated future,

43:13.060 --> 43:17.060
we lose our particulate nature

43:17.060 --> 43:22.060
as the individual, as meat object,

43:22.060 --> 43:25.060
and we enter into ourselves

43:25.060 --> 43:28.060
defined as a morphogenetic field,

43:28.060 --> 43:33.060
as a body of wave mechanically maintained

43:33.060 --> 43:39.060
information about past and future states of time.

43:39.060 --> 43:45.060
And you may be sure that these theories,

43:45.060 --> 43:47.060
like the theory of formative causation,

43:47.060 --> 43:49.060
like the theory of relativity,

43:49.060 --> 43:52.060
like the theory of Newtonian mechanics,

43:52.060 --> 43:57.060
eventually filter down into the realm of everyday experience

43:57.060 --> 44:02.060
and common models of ordinary consciousness.

44:02.060 --> 44:07.060
And if the morphogenetic field theory or idea

44:07.060 --> 44:10.060
was to become empowered

44:10.060 --> 44:14.060
as the model for millions and millions of people,

44:14.060 --> 44:19.060
then the past and the future

44:19.060 --> 44:23.060
would change in their connotation

44:23.060 --> 44:26.060
to our existential dilemma.

44:26.060 --> 44:30.060
It is, I think, probably the ultimate legacy

44:30.060 --> 44:32.060
of a transition from a particulate

44:32.060 --> 44:36.060
to a wave mechanical point of view.

44:36.060 --> 44:39.060
It binds us to the past

44:39.060 --> 44:42.060
at the same time that it exercises

44:42.060 --> 44:45.060
the terror of the future,

44:45.060 --> 44:50.060
and it really empowers the notion of Tao.

44:50.060 --> 44:53.060
So it is not far removed

44:53.060 --> 44:56.060
from the realm of our immediate experience.

44:56.060 --> 44:58.060
But how can we preserve

44:58.060 --> 45:02.060
the self-evident fact of novelty

45:02.060 --> 45:04.060
and still get all the good stuff

45:04.060 --> 45:07.060
out of formative causation?

45:07.060 --> 45:12.880
Well, I think there is a simple answer in a way,

45:12.880 --> 45:15.880
which is that the entire evolutionary cosmology

45:15.880 --> 45:19.880
of which formative causation is part,

45:19.880 --> 45:21.880
it makes sense because if we live

45:21.880 --> 45:22.880
in an evolutionary universe,

45:22.880 --> 45:25.880
then it makes sense for the regulative principles

45:25.880 --> 45:27.880
of all things to evolve

45:27.880 --> 45:28.880
rather than be fixed

45:28.880 --> 45:30.880
as eternal laws.

45:30.880 --> 45:32.880
And the standard view, of course,

45:32.880 --> 45:35.880
is that the regularities of nature

45:35.880 --> 45:37.880
are all governed by unchanging laws of nature,

45:37.880 --> 45:39.880
which were totally eternal

45:39.880 --> 45:42.880
and all there before the Big Bang.

45:42.880 --> 45:45.880
Well, that's the standard cosmology.

45:45.880 --> 45:47.880
But if one moves into the Big Bang cosmology,

45:47.880 --> 45:49.880
which is what I'm trying to do

45:49.880 --> 45:52.880
with this idea of an evolutionary universe

45:52.880 --> 45:54.880
and the laws of nature as habits,

45:54.880 --> 45:56.880
is to say that everything evolves,

45:56.880 --> 45:58.880
even the regularities of nature,

45:58.880 --> 46:02.880
then the very basis of the Big Bang cosmology

46:02.880 --> 46:04.880
is the driving force of evolution,

46:04.880 --> 46:06.880
which is one of expansion.

46:06.880 --> 46:09.880
The Big Bang is the initiation

46:09.880 --> 46:12.880
of an ongoing expansion of the universe.

46:12.880 --> 46:15.880
And the entire cosmology we have tells us

46:15.880 --> 46:17.880
that the universe is expanding,

46:17.880 --> 46:19.880
the red shift of the galaxies and so on.

46:19.880 --> 46:21.880
The whole of modern cosmology is based on

46:21.880 --> 46:23.880
an underlying expansion of the universe.

46:23.880 --> 46:25.880
And it's this expansion which,

46:25.880 --> 46:27.880
first of all, allowed the Big Bang

46:27.880 --> 46:30.880
to cool down enough so that particles,

46:30.880 --> 46:32.880
nuclear particles, could form.

46:32.880 --> 46:34.880
And it then cooled enough for atoms to form

46:34.880 --> 46:36.880
and then enough for molecules to form.

46:36.880 --> 46:38.880
And the emergence of form,

46:38.880 --> 46:40.880
the progressive emergence of form

46:40.880 --> 46:43.880
in the subatomic and the atomic

46:43.880 --> 46:45.880
and the molecular and the chemical realms

46:45.880 --> 46:48.880
and through the forms of stars and galaxies

46:48.880 --> 46:51.880
and then ultimately of planetary systems,

46:51.880 --> 46:53.880
the emergence of all this form

46:53.880 --> 46:55.880
has only been made possible

46:55.880 --> 46:57.880
by a progressive cooling process.

46:57.880 --> 47:00.880
Which is the other side of the expansion process.

47:00.880 --> 47:02.880
Because forms such as you and me

47:02.880 --> 47:05.880
couldn't exist at 25 billion degrees centigrade.

47:05.880 --> 47:07.880
Which is how the universe began.

47:07.880 --> 47:09.880
And nor could anything else here.

47:09.880 --> 47:11.880
Nor could the solid rocks of the Earth.

47:11.880 --> 47:13.880
I mean, there's a cooling process

47:13.880 --> 47:16.880
which is linked to the universal expansion

47:16.880 --> 47:20.880
which one could regard as the primary cause

47:20.880 --> 47:22.880
of the novelty wave.

47:22.880 --> 47:24.880
I mean, there's going to be novelty

47:24.880 --> 47:26.880
if the universe is always expanding,

47:26.880 --> 47:28.880
there's always new space, new territory,

47:28.880 --> 47:30.880
new possibilities.

47:30.880 --> 47:32.880
The new space creates new possibilities

47:32.880 --> 47:34.880
in some kind of literal way.

47:34.880 --> 47:36.880
And the creation of new space

47:36.880 --> 47:38.880
and new possibilities, which is happening

47:38.880 --> 47:40.880
both at the physical and the metaphorical

47:40.880 --> 47:42.880
and at the imaginal levels,

47:42.880 --> 47:44.880
if we have a view of evolution

47:44.880 --> 47:46.880
where everything's evolving,

47:46.880 --> 47:48.880
the mind, matter, space,

47:48.880 --> 47:50.880
it's all part of one process.

47:50.880 --> 47:52.880
It's a great evolutionary process.

47:52.880 --> 47:54.880
Then the creation of new space,

47:54.880 --> 47:56.880
new possibilities and new expansion means

47:56.880 --> 47:59.880
novelty going to be there

47:59.880 --> 48:01.880
as an inbuilt feature of any universe

48:01.880 --> 48:03.880
of this general kind.

48:03.880 --> 48:05.880
An expanding universe.

48:05.880 --> 48:07.880
Like in our Big Bang cosmology.

48:07.880 --> 48:08.880
It has to be there.

48:08.880 --> 48:10.880
The cosmology demands it.

48:10.880 --> 48:14.880
So that's an accepted, a given.

48:14.880 --> 48:16.880
So for me, the problem isn't

48:16.880 --> 48:19.880
the existence of novelty through the expansion.

48:19.880 --> 48:21.880
I mean, that's the basis of the whole cosmology.

48:21.880 --> 48:23.880
The problem would be in such a universe

48:23.880 --> 48:26.880
how to account for the stabilization of novelty.

48:26.880 --> 48:28.880
So that it's just not swept away

48:28.880 --> 48:30.880
by this onrush of expansion and change,

48:30.880 --> 48:33.880
which is the underlying process of evolution.

48:33.880 --> 48:35.880
So I would see morphic resonances

48:35.880 --> 48:37.880
providing a way in which

48:37.880 --> 48:39.880
the novelty of things,

48:39.880 --> 48:41.880
when new forms come into being,

48:41.880 --> 48:44.880
that persistences, habits can build up.

48:44.880 --> 48:46.880
Because otherwise, pure novelty

48:46.880 --> 48:49.880
without any persistence would be chaos.

48:49.880 --> 48:51.880
I mean, chaos is precisely

48:51.880 --> 48:54.880
that which where no regularity emerges.

48:54.880 --> 48:55.880
Utterly unpredictable.

48:55.880 --> 48:57.880
And pure novelty, novelty alone,

48:57.880 --> 48:59.880
the novelty wave alone without stabilization

48:59.880 --> 49:01.880
would be chaos.

49:01.880 --> 49:03.880
Endless chaos.

49:03.880 --> 49:06.880
An expanding chaos, but nothing more.

49:06.880 --> 49:09.880
And so I think that the,

49:09.880 --> 49:12.880
I think the two ideas are completely complementary.

49:12.880 --> 49:14.880
But the thing that's just occurred to me

49:14.880 --> 49:15.880
as you were talking is that

49:15.880 --> 49:18.880
if the novelty wave applies to novelty in general,

49:18.880 --> 49:20.880
as I think is its claim,

49:20.880 --> 49:22.880
not just in the human mind,

49:22.880 --> 49:25.880
not just in cockroaches and eagles,

49:25.880 --> 49:27.880
ecosystems, even in this planet,

49:27.880 --> 49:29.880
but to the whole universe.

49:29.880 --> 49:30.880
Yes?

49:30.880 --> 49:31.880
Yes.

49:31.880 --> 49:33.880
Well, then I deduce from that

49:33.880 --> 49:35.880
that the universe is not expanding

49:35.880 --> 49:38.880
at a steady rate, the usual theory,

49:38.880 --> 49:40.880
given by the idea of Newtonian absolute time,

49:40.880 --> 49:43.880
simply cranked onto the new cosmology.

49:43.880 --> 49:45.880
But rather the expansion of the cosmos

49:45.880 --> 49:47.880
is taking place at a rate

49:47.880 --> 49:51.880
which is determined by the novelty wave.

49:51.880 --> 49:53.880
And that there should be a variable rate

49:53.880 --> 49:55.880
which should have all the,

49:55.880 --> 49:58.880
the fractal ripples and features of the novelty wave,

49:58.880 --> 49:59.880
if your theory is correct.

49:59.880 --> 50:02.880
Now where would we look

50:02.880 --> 50:05.880
for a trace of this?

50:05.880 --> 50:08.880
I don't know, but I mean the trace,

50:08.880 --> 50:12.880
what gives the measure of the universal expansion

50:12.880 --> 50:15.880
is the cosmic microwave background radiation.

50:15.880 --> 50:16.880
That's right.

50:16.880 --> 50:18.880
And there's argument about whether it's uniform

50:18.880 --> 50:20.880
or inhomogeneous.

50:20.880 --> 50:21.880
That's right.

50:21.880 --> 50:24.880
But the reason why it's of such very long wavelength

50:24.880 --> 50:26.880
is because it's relic light,

50:26.880 --> 50:28.880
it's fossil light from the Big Bang.

50:28.880 --> 50:31.880
And since the universe has been expanding

50:31.880 --> 50:32.880
ever since the Big Bang,

50:32.880 --> 50:35.880
light which remains light from that first moment,

50:35.880 --> 50:38.880
which has never yet been intercepted by matter,

50:38.880 --> 50:40.880
because when light's intercepted by matter

50:40.880 --> 50:42.880
it stops being light, it's absorbed,

50:42.880 --> 50:44.880
unless it's reflected.

50:44.880 --> 50:46.880
But this light is light from the original,

50:46.880 --> 50:47.880
but since the universe was,

50:47.880 --> 50:49.880
x, I pass, very, very small to start with,

50:49.880 --> 50:51.880
the light was at very high energy,

50:51.880 --> 50:54.880
the wavelength was very, very, very, very short.

50:54.880 --> 50:55.880
But as the universe expands,

50:55.880 --> 50:57.880
the same light you see gets sort of stretched out

50:57.880 --> 50:59.880
and the wavelength goes slower,

50:59.880 --> 51:01.880
longer and longer and longer.

51:01.880 --> 51:05.880
And this 3.5 k is the result of this stretching process.

51:05.880 --> 51:08.880
It's light cooled down to that wavelength

51:08.880 --> 51:12.880
corresponding to 3.5 degrees above absolute zero.

51:12.880 --> 51:14.880
But nevertheless, it should show irregularities

51:14.880 --> 51:16.880
in its wavelength.

51:16.880 --> 51:19.880
Irregularities in the change of its wavelength

51:19.880 --> 51:21.880
which reflect the novelty wave.

51:21.880 --> 51:23.880
Well, it is true that both at its beginning

51:23.880 --> 51:27.880
and its end, the novelty wave undergoes

51:27.880 --> 51:31.880
at its beginning a series of balloon-like expansions,

51:31.880 --> 51:35.880
which is what these new cosmologies are calling for.

51:35.880 --> 51:38.880
Instead of a smooth big bang,

51:38.880 --> 51:42.880
they're calling for tremendous expansions

51:42.880 --> 51:45.880
very shortly after the beginning of the universe,

51:45.880 --> 51:48.880
in a series of successive stages.

51:48.880 --> 51:52.880
So, in that sense,

51:52.880 --> 51:55.880
you may be right.

51:55.880 --> 51:58.880
We were talking before we came on stage tonight

51:58.880 --> 52:01.880
and I was saying that to my mind,

52:01.880 --> 52:06.960
ten months since I've seen Rupert

52:06.960 --> 52:10.960
but have read The Presence of the Past,

52:10.960 --> 52:14.960
I've come to wonder about conceiving of

52:14.960 --> 52:19.960
what we're trying to talk about as a field exactly.

52:19.960 --> 52:22.960
That what it is, is it's theory

52:22.960 --> 52:24.960
of formative causation

52:24.960 --> 52:29.960
the morphogenetic field is just an image

52:29.960 --> 52:31.960
of trying to understand

52:31.960 --> 52:35.960
how this pre-formative causation could work.

52:35.960 --> 52:40.960
And one thought that has occurred to me about it

52:40.960 --> 52:50.430
is the big bang is basically tremendous energy,

52:50.430 --> 52:53.430
free energy, which as Rupert described

52:53.430 --> 52:55.430
goes through a series of coolings

52:55.430 --> 53:00.430
and as it cools and energy dissipates

53:00.430 --> 53:05.030
and is lost as heat emerges,

53:05.030 --> 53:08.030
first the form of nuclear chemistry,

53:08.030 --> 53:10.030
then organic chemistry,

53:10.030 --> 53:13.030
then molecular chemistry, so forth and so on,

53:13.030 --> 53:16.030
but progressively more and more complex form

53:16.030 --> 53:21.400
as you move of the arrow of time.

53:21.400 --> 53:27.400
Well, rather than visualizing this as a field,

53:27.400 --> 53:30.710
previous states,

53:30.710 --> 53:32.710
the presence of the past,

53:32.710 --> 53:36.710
where previous states are impacting on successive states,

53:36.710 --> 53:39.710
another way you could think of it is

53:39.710 --> 53:43.710
energy enters a universe

53:43.710 --> 53:49.710
in which at a very great distance ahead of time's arrow

53:49.710 --> 53:53.710
there is a plenum of form,

53:53.710 --> 53:57.710
a kind of form of forms, if you want.

53:57.710 --> 54:00.710
And if the causality that operates

54:00.710 --> 54:02.710
within this form of forms

54:02.710 --> 54:06.710
was a two-way causality,

54:06.710 --> 54:09.710
then what you would have is

54:09.710 --> 54:13.710
the expanding shell of energy that is the universe

54:13.710 --> 54:17.710
slowly being influenced essentially

54:17.710 --> 54:21.710
by information flowing backward from the future.

54:21.710 --> 54:25.710
And so it isn't so much the presence of the past

54:25.710 --> 54:29.710
that puts the stamp of form onto things,

54:29.710 --> 54:34.710
but that form is an intimation of a future state

54:34.710 --> 54:37.710
that is a kind of maximizing a form

54:37.710 --> 54:41.710
into a kind of metaphysical hypostatization

54:41.710 --> 54:44.710
beyond our ability to conceive.

54:44.710 --> 54:50.710
Have you ever considered this possibility?

54:50.710 --> 54:53.710
We should have rehearsed.

55:01.280 --> 55:04.280
Well, I think so.

55:04.280 --> 55:09.280
I take your description, you seem to be very like,

55:09.280 --> 55:12.280
I don't know if you like this or not, the similarity,

55:12.280 --> 55:15.280
but like the omega point of Teilhard de Chardin,

55:15.280 --> 55:19.280
which he sees as the goal or attractor of the entire universe.

55:19.280 --> 55:22.280
If there is to be a model of morphogenetic fields,

55:22.280 --> 55:24.280
to come back to one of your earlier points,

55:24.280 --> 55:28.280
it has to be in terms of dynamics of some kind.

55:28.280 --> 55:30.280
And the interesting thing about modern dynamics

55:30.280 --> 55:33.280
is that it's based on the idea of attractors.

55:33.280 --> 55:36.280
Systems are attracted towards states which,

55:36.280 --> 55:38.280
from their point of view, lie in the future.

55:38.280 --> 55:40.280
So these morphic attractors,

55:40.280 --> 55:43.280
which are the basis of the kind of dynamical models,

55:43.280 --> 55:47.280
including in chaotic dynamics that are emerging now.

55:47.280 --> 55:49.280
And so that gives the idea,

55:49.280 --> 55:51.280
as morphogenetic fields have to have,

55:51.280 --> 55:54.280
as the idea of containing the goal or form

55:54.280 --> 55:57.280
or final state of something within themselves.

55:57.280 --> 55:59.280
The morphogenetic field of the oak tree

55:59.280 --> 56:02.280
contains in some sense the form of the fully formed oak

56:02.280 --> 56:05.280
and draws the growing seedling towards it.

56:05.280 --> 56:08.280
This is like the Aristotelian system of final causes.

56:08.280 --> 56:13.280
And so if the entire nature of morphic fields

56:13.280 --> 56:15.280
is to have attractors,

56:15.280 --> 56:18.280
and the only way to model them mathematically

56:18.280 --> 56:22.280
that we have something that hints towards it at the moment

56:22.280 --> 56:26.280
is in terms of dynamics, including chaotic dynamics.

56:26.280 --> 56:28.280
The idea of non-stable endpoints,

56:28.280 --> 56:30.280
or dynamic endpoints.

56:30.280 --> 56:33.280
And if one has a model of the universe based on those,

56:33.280 --> 56:35.280
and if one has also, as one does

56:35.280 --> 56:38.280
in this kind of organismic holistic universe,

56:38.280 --> 56:41.280
the idea that the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm,

56:41.280 --> 56:44.280
that the part in some sense mirrors the whole,

56:44.280 --> 56:49.280
so each system is in some way related to the whole,

56:49.280 --> 56:52.280
then the morphic field of the entire universe

56:52.280 --> 56:54.280
must have a kind of cosmic attractor

56:54.280 --> 56:56.280
from that point of view,

56:56.280 --> 56:58.280
which is drawing the universe

56:58.280 --> 56:59.280
towards something.

56:59.280 --> 57:00.280
So instead of...

57:00.280 --> 57:02.280
This would then, you see, lead to the view

57:02.280 --> 57:05.280
that even the flux of energy has another side to it,

57:05.280 --> 57:07.280
because we normally think of the Big Bang

57:07.280 --> 57:09.280
pushing matter out from behind,

57:09.280 --> 57:12.280
everything being pushed from the past.

57:12.280 --> 57:15.280
And the Big Bang is certainly that model as an explosion.

57:15.280 --> 57:17.280
It's the original impetus of the explosion

57:17.280 --> 57:21.280
which is pushing the galaxies and the whole universe apart.

57:21.280 --> 57:24.280
But the idea of an attractor

57:24.280 --> 57:27.280
is that it's not being pushed, it's being pulled.

57:27.280 --> 57:32.280
And so the energetic causation, as we know it,

57:32.280 --> 57:34.280
is based on a pushing principle,

57:34.280 --> 57:38.280
and formative causation is based on a pulling principle

57:38.280 --> 57:42.280
towards a kind of goal or form or an attractor.

57:42.280 --> 57:47.280
So placing it in the future is not that inappropriate?

57:47.280 --> 57:50.280
Well, you see, if one has the idea

57:50.280 --> 57:54.280
that the universe as a whole has a morphic field

57:54.280 --> 57:55.280
which has a morphic attractor

57:55.280 --> 57:57.280
for the evolution of the universe,

57:57.280 --> 58:00.280
then what could that attractor be?

58:00.280 --> 58:02.280
And we don't know what it is.

58:02.280 --> 58:06.280
It might be a kind of ever-receding attractor.

58:06.280 --> 58:08.280
So the universe would just go on expanding

58:08.280 --> 58:10.280
forever and forever and forever

58:10.280 --> 58:13.280
with an endless creation of new forms with no end.

58:13.280 --> 58:16.520
That's one possible kind of attractor.

58:16.520 --> 58:18.520
That's one possible view.

58:18.520 --> 58:19.520
But if there's an end,

58:19.520 --> 58:22.520
which is what the entire Judeo-Christian myth of history

58:22.520 --> 58:24.520
leads us to believe,

58:24.520 --> 58:26.520
and we're within the field

58:26.520 --> 58:28.520
of a Judeo-Christian myth of history,

58:28.520 --> 58:29.520
whether we like it or not,

58:29.520 --> 58:32.520
the whole cult of progress depends on it.

58:32.520 --> 58:34.520
And the idea that there's some kind of end

58:34.520 --> 58:36.520
or goal of history

58:36.520 --> 58:39.520
is deeply rooted in our entire culture.

58:39.520 --> 58:42.520
It comes out in some forms,

58:42.520 --> 58:44.520
you know, Star Wars

58:44.520 --> 58:46.520
and these kinds of visions of the future,

58:46.520 --> 58:48.520
of the ultimate nuclear war,

58:48.520 --> 58:51.520
and mostly images drawn from the Book of Revelation.

58:51.520 --> 58:53.520
These are things that happen

58:53.520 --> 58:55.520
at the end of ordinary history,

58:55.520 --> 58:57.520
before the coming of the millennium.

58:57.520 --> 58:59.520
Plagues, famines,

58:59.520 --> 59:03.520
seas and rivers turning red to blood,

59:03.520 --> 59:05.520
fire from heaven,

59:05.520 --> 59:09.520
and finally the great war in heaven.

59:09.520 --> 59:10.520
Signs of the end,

59:10.520 --> 59:16.520
which many of us can easily find very plausible.

59:16.520 --> 59:19.520
The approaching of a new millennium

59:19.520 --> 59:21.520
means we're absolutely bound to have

59:21.520 --> 59:26.520
a vast outbreak of millenarian prophecy,

59:26.520 --> 59:30.520
of which you're one of the earlier exponents.

59:30.520 --> 59:34.520
Well, thank you very much.

59:34.520 --> 59:36.520
But I mean, this is, you're just,

59:36.520 --> 59:38.520
I mean, you're ahead of your time,

59:38.520 --> 59:40.520
but since the millennium's only 12 years away,

59:40.520 --> 59:42.520
you can't possibly be more than 12 years ahead of it,

59:42.520 --> 59:45.520
because the crescendo,

59:45.520 --> 59:48.520
the crescendo of prophets is going to grow,

59:48.520 --> 59:51.520
obviously, as we approach 9th December,

59:51.520 --> 59:54.520
January the 1st, 2000.

59:54.520 --> 59:56.520
And, you know, harmonic convergence was even,

59:56.520 --> 59:59.520
only the beginning of a beginning of a dress rehearsal

59:59.520 --> 01:00:03.520
for what's going to be a mammoth revisioning.

01:00:03.520 --> 01:00:06.520
And this sense of culminations in time,

01:00:06.520 --> 01:00:07.520
and of goals and ends,

01:00:07.520 --> 01:00:10.520
is something very hard to escape from in our civilisation.

01:00:10.520 --> 01:00:13.520
The idea of it just going on and on and on and on and on forever

01:00:13.520 --> 01:00:15.520
isn't very attractive.

01:00:15.520 --> 01:00:18.520
The Teilhard de Chardin view,

01:00:18.520 --> 01:00:19.520
of an omega point,

01:00:19.520 --> 01:00:22.520
is the idea of there being an end or goal to history.

01:00:22.520 --> 01:00:23.520
And then, of course,

01:00:23.520 --> 01:00:25.520
there's the pessimistic fashion of this,

01:00:25.520 --> 01:00:29.520
which is always associated with the postulation of dark matter,

01:00:29.520 --> 01:00:32.520
which, dark matter, dark mother, Kali,

01:00:32.520 --> 01:00:35.520
I mean, it's the dark one who is going to destroy all,

01:00:35.520 --> 01:00:38.520
the destructive aspect by having enough dark matter

01:00:38.520 --> 01:00:40.520
undetectable by any instruments,

01:00:40.520 --> 01:00:43.520
which will cause the expansion to slow down

01:00:43.520 --> 01:00:45.520
into this dark matter in the universe,

01:00:45.520 --> 01:00:47.520
and then to contract until everything ends

01:00:47.520 --> 01:00:50.520
in the final implosion, the big crunch.

01:00:50.520 --> 01:00:54.520
Well, this is one cosmology on the market, you see.

01:00:54.520 --> 01:00:56.520
So, then, of course,

01:00:56.520 --> 01:00:59.520
the return to the great cycle cosmologists

01:00:59.520 --> 01:01:00.520
who welcome that,

01:01:00.520 --> 01:01:03.520
because they see that if it's the big crunch of this universe,

01:01:03.520 --> 01:01:05.520
it could be the big bang of the next,

01:01:05.520 --> 01:01:07.520
and then you get back to endless cycles forever,

01:01:07.520 --> 01:01:11.520
which is back in the realm of archaic cosmology,

01:01:11.520 --> 01:01:12.520
eternal laws.

01:01:12.520 --> 01:01:14.520
It's where the whole tradition of our science,

01:01:14.520 --> 01:01:17.520
rooted in Greek cosmology, feels comfortable,

01:01:17.520 --> 01:01:20.520
the idea of an eternal cyclic universe with eternal laws.

01:01:20.520 --> 01:01:23.520
So, but if we have this idea

01:01:23.520 --> 01:01:26.520
of an evolutionary universe,

01:01:26.520 --> 01:01:30.520
then it seems to me the main choice is between these,

01:01:30.520 --> 01:01:32.520
either it's all going in reverse

01:01:32.520 --> 01:01:34.520
or coming to a sticky end model,

01:01:34.520 --> 01:01:35.520
the big crunch,

01:01:35.520 --> 01:01:37.520
or that it just goes on and on and on forever

01:01:37.520 --> 01:01:38.520
and there's no end,

01:01:38.520 --> 01:01:40.520
there's no final form in some sense

01:01:40.520 --> 01:01:41.520
pulling things forward,

01:01:41.520 --> 01:01:44.520
except pure diversity for its own sake,

01:01:44.520 --> 01:01:46.520
a kind of universal free economy

01:01:46.520 --> 01:01:48.520
that goes on forever.

01:01:48.520 --> 01:01:50.520
So, is what you're saying,

01:01:50.520 --> 01:01:53.520
since there obviously were

01:01:53.520 --> 01:01:56.520
a big bang since we're here,

01:01:56.520 --> 01:01:59.520
you're more comfortable with placing

01:01:59.520 --> 01:02:04.520
the morphogenetic causality

01:02:04.520 --> 01:02:06.520
as something which moves from the past

01:02:06.520 --> 01:02:08.520
toward the future,

01:02:08.520 --> 01:02:10.520
rather than from the future toward the past,

01:02:10.520 --> 01:02:13.520
because the hypothesized final end state

01:02:13.520 --> 01:02:15.520
we have no evidence for?

01:02:15.520 --> 01:02:17.520
Well, there are two things,

01:02:17.520 --> 01:02:19.520
that if the influence from the future

01:02:19.520 --> 01:02:22.520
in some sense influences creativity,

01:02:22.520 --> 01:02:24.520
if that in some sense causes

01:02:24.520 --> 01:02:26.520
new forms to come into being,

01:02:26.520 --> 01:02:28.520
once they've come into being,

01:02:28.520 --> 01:02:31.520
I think that they take on a life of their own,

01:02:31.520 --> 01:02:33.520
and there's this kind of memory aspect.

01:02:33.520 --> 01:02:35.520
I think memory is so intrinsic

01:02:35.520 --> 01:02:36.520
a part of our own life,

01:02:36.520 --> 01:02:39.520
so obviously a part of all life,

01:02:39.520 --> 01:02:44.520
so undeniable the basis of all our experience,

01:02:44.520 --> 01:02:46.520
that any view of the universe

01:02:46.520 --> 01:02:48.520
that doesn't take memory seriously

01:02:48.520 --> 01:02:50.520
as an influence from the past

01:02:50.520 --> 01:02:51.520
and tries to substitute

01:02:51.520 --> 01:02:53.520
in its place an influence from the future

01:02:53.520 --> 01:02:55.520
is going to be inadequate.

01:02:55.520 --> 01:02:57.520
And if there's an influence from the future,

01:02:57.520 --> 01:02:58.520
I don't think it can work

01:02:58.520 --> 01:03:01.520
in the realm of memory and habit phenomena,

01:03:01.520 --> 01:03:04.520
which we know very well depends on the past.

01:03:04.520 --> 01:03:07.520
Rather it may work in the realms of the as yet,

01:03:07.520 --> 01:03:09.520
in the realms of the possible,

01:03:09.520 --> 01:03:10.520
which are the realms into which

01:03:10.520 --> 01:03:11.520
we're always moving,

01:03:11.520 --> 01:03:12.520
and they're the realms

01:03:12.520 --> 01:03:15.520
which in fact consciousness inhabits.

01:03:15.520 --> 01:03:16.520
I mean consciousness is the realms

01:03:16.520 --> 01:03:18.520
of the possible as far as I can see.

01:03:18.520 --> 01:03:20.520
Well, I think one way to think about

01:03:20.520 --> 01:03:24.520
information coming from the future

01:03:24.520 --> 01:03:28.520
is to imagine that ordinarily

01:03:28.520 --> 01:03:30.520
this is not allowed,

01:03:30.520 --> 01:03:35.520
but to make a quantum mechanical metaphor,

01:03:35.520 --> 01:03:38.520
you can imagine bits of information

01:03:38.520 --> 01:03:41.520
that tunnel into the past

01:03:41.520 --> 01:03:44.520
in the way that particles overcome

01:03:44.520 --> 01:03:47.520
energy transitions by magically appearing

01:03:47.520 --> 01:03:49.520
on the other side of them

01:03:49.520 --> 01:03:51.520
without ever having gone over them.

01:03:51.520 --> 01:03:53.520
And it's possible to imagine

01:03:53.520 --> 01:03:56.520
that a very small amount of information

01:03:56.520 --> 01:03:59.520
actually leaks into the past,

01:03:59.520 --> 01:04:02.520
and that this information becomes

01:04:02.520 --> 01:04:05.520
the province of seers and shamans

01:04:05.520 --> 01:04:08.520
and visionary thinkers of all sorts,

01:04:08.520 --> 01:04:13.520
that creativity is this appetition.

01:04:13.520 --> 01:04:15.520
You know, there's a word in Gaelic,

01:04:15.520 --> 01:04:17.520
hiraeth,

01:04:17.520 --> 01:04:19.520
which means simultaneously

01:04:19.520 --> 01:04:23.520
nostalgia for the past and the future.

01:04:23.520 --> 01:04:25.520
And it seems to me

01:04:25.520 --> 01:04:27.520
that kind of nostalgia

01:04:27.520 --> 01:04:29.520
for the past and the future

01:04:29.520 --> 01:04:34.520
is what drives great creative spirits,

01:04:34.520 --> 01:04:37.520
poets and visionaries.

01:04:37.520 --> 01:04:39.520
And it has this enchanted,

01:04:39.520 --> 01:04:42.520
this fey kind of aura about it

01:04:42.520 --> 01:04:45.520
because information from the future

01:04:45.520 --> 01:04:47.520
is necessarily magical.

01:04:47.520 --> 01:04:48.520
It's...

01:04:48.520 --> 01:04:52.520
It exists and yet it cannot exist

01:04:52.520 --> 01:04:54.520
because in its existence

01:04:54.520 --> 01:04:56.520
is implicitly...

01:04:56.520 --> 01:04:58.520
is a paradox.

01:04:58.520 --> 01:05:03.790
Well, I think there are two ways

01:05:03.790 --> 01:05:05.790
that information from the future works.

01:05:05.790 --> 01:05:07.790
One isn't really so much information

01:05:07.790 --> 01:05:08.790
from the future

01:05:08.790 --> 01:05:09.790
as what I'd think

01:05:09.790 --> 01:05:11.790
was the primary cause of the whole thing,

01:05:11.790 --> 01:05:14.790
which is the attraction of the attractor.

01:05:14.790 --> 01:05:15.790
There's something in the future

01:05:15.790 --> 01:05:19.790
which draws us, for example, forwards.

01:05:19.790 --> 01:05:20.790
And what we experience,

01:05:20.790 --> 01:05:21.790
the future as,

01:05:21.790 --> 01:05:23.790
is not as definite information,

01:05:23.790 --> 01:05:26.790
not even as exactly concrete plans,

01:05:26.790 --> 01:05:29.790
but more in the experience of hope

01:05:29.790 --> 01:05:30.790
and more consciously

01:05:30.790 --> 01:05:32.790
in the experience of faith.

01:05:32.790 --> 01:05:34.790
And faith is basically

01:05:34.790 --> 01:05:35.790
a vision of the future

01:05:35.790 --> 01:05:37.790
which we believe in

01:05:37.790 --> 01:05:39.790
and believe is the right one for us

01:05:39.790 --> 01:05:41.790
and to which we're attracted.

01:05:41.790 --> 01:05:43.790
So people who have,

01:05:43.790 --> 01:05:44.790
as we read in thousands of books

01:05:44.790 --> 01:05:46.790
on how to get on in business,

01:05:46.790 --> 01:05:47.790
if you have faith

01:05:47.790 --> 01:05:48.790
that you're going to succeed,

01:05:48.790 --> 01:05:49.790
you really believe

01:05:49.790 --> 01:05:50.790
that you're going to be rich,

01:05:50.790 --> 01:05:51.790
then the chances are

01:05:51.790 --> 01:05:53.790
you may well be so.

01:05:53.790 --> 01:05:55.790
Whereas if you don't actually want to be rich

01:05:55.790 --> 01:05:57.790
and if you don't have faith in it

01:05:57.790 --> 01:05:58.790
and if you don't keep putting out

01:05:58.790 --> 01:05:59.790
that kind of image

01:05:59.790 --> 01:06:01.790
and you don't have that hope and so on,

01:06:01.790 --> 01:06:02.790
then the chances are

01:06:02.790 --> 01:06:04.790
you won't be rich.

01:06:04.790 --> 01:06:08.790
So there's also the kind of religious faith

01:06:08.790 --> 01:06:10.790
that drew the Pilgrim Fathers

01:06:10.790 --> 01:06:11.790
to the United States

01:06:11.790 --> 01:06:12.790
and it was the faith

01:06:12.790 --> 01:06:14.790
from the Judeo-Christian heritage,

01:06:14.790 --> 01:06:16.790
the faith in the promised land,

01:06:16.790 --> 01:06:18.790
the promise of a land in the future

01:06:18.790 --> 01:06:20.790
or somewhere else

01:06:20.790 --> 01:06:24.790
which will be flowing with milk and honey,

01:06:24.790 --> 01:06:26.790
where there will be bounty and prosperity,

01:06:26.790 --> 01:06:28.790
the land will yield up its riches.

01:06:28.790 --> 01:06:29.790
The land, of course,

01:06:29.790 --> 01:06:31.790
the properly original promised land

01:06:31.790 --> 01:06:32.790
wasn't empty,

01:06:32.790 --> 01:06:34.790
it had inhabitants in it,

01:06:34.790 --> 01:06:35.790
but they were killed off

01:06:35.790 --> 01:06:37.790
and their land was appropriated.

01:06:37.790 --> 01:06:39.790
And this was the promised land,

01:06:39.790 --> 01:06:40.790
was that.

01:06:40.790 --> 01:06:42.790
And it's America.

01:06:42.790 --> 01:06:44.790
And that dream of the promised land

01:06:44.790 --> 01:06:46.790
which drew everybody here to America

01:06:46.790 --> 01:06:47.790
or their ancestors

01:06:47.790 --> 01:06:49.790
is this kind of hope,

01:06:49.790 --> 01:06:50.790
this drawing,

01:06:50.790 --> 01:06:51.790
this attraction,

01:06:51.790 --> 01:06:52.790
is what actually we know

01:06:52.790 --> 01:06:53.790
from our own experiences

01:06:53.790 --> 01:06:55.790
how this attraction works.

01:06:55.790 --> 01:06:56.790
It works through faith,

01:06:56.790 --> 01:06:58.790
through vague mythic hopes,

01:06:58.790 --> 01:06:59.790
through sense of promises

01:06:59.790 --> 01:07:01.790
as yet unfulfilled and so on.

01:07:01.790 --> 01:07:05.790
So the disturbing thing about that then

01:07:05.790 --> 01:07:07.790
is what you referred to,

01:07:07.790 --> 01:07:09.790
this utter conviction

01:07:09.790 --> 01:07:12.790
in the approaching end of the world

01:07:12.790 --> 01:07:16.790
which motivates vast numbers

01:07:16.790 --> 01:07:18.790
of people caught up

01:07:18.790 --> 01:07:22.790
in this monotheistic myth system.

01:07:22.790 --> 01:07:25.790
All the major monotheistic religions

01:07:25.790 --> 01:07:29.790
appoint an end to the world

01:07:29.790 --> 01:07:31.790
and for several of them,

01:07:31.790 --> 01:07:33.790
it's soon.

01:07:33.790 --> 01:07:34.790
But you see,

01:07:34.790 --> 01:07:35.790
I think we're in a worse way

01:07:35.790 --> 01:07:37.790
than you may think

01:07:37.790 --> 01:07:39.790
because if we say,

01:07:39.790 --> 01:07:40.790
all right,

01:07:40.790 --> 01:07:41.790
let's not bother so much

01:07:41.790 --> 01:07:43.790
with these monotheistic religions,

01:07:43.790 --> 01:07:44.790
what are the models?

01:07:44.790 --> 01:07:45.790
Since I think that

01:07:45.790 --> 01:07:47.790
if morphic resonance works,

01:07:47.790 --> 01:07:48.790
then it means that

01:07:48.790 --> 01:07:49.790
our collective unconscious

01:07:49.790 --> 01:07:50.790
and particularly

01:07:50.790 --> 01:07:52.790
our cultural unconscious

01:07:52.790 --> 01:07:55.790
contains elements which we've,

01:07:55.790 --> 01:07:56.790
they're so deep down,

01:07:56.790 --> 01:07:57.790
they influence us

01:07:57.790 --> 01:07:59.790
much more deeply than we know.

01:07:59.790 --> 01:08:01.790
And the Anglo-Saxon race,

01:08:01.790 --> 01:08:02.790
the English language,

01:08:02.790 --> 01:08:04.790
its cultural roots in Germany,

01:08:04.790 --> 01:08:06.790
the Germanic gods,

01:08:06.790 --> 01:08:07.790
the whole Germanic mythology

01:08:07.790 --> 01:08:10.790
is that the whole age will end

01:08:10.790 --> 01:08:12.790
in a twilight of the gods.

01:08:12.790 --> 01:08:13.790
And one of the problems

01:08:13.790 --> 01:08:14.790
that Hitler had

01:08:14.790 --> 01:08:15.790
in revising

01:08:15.790 --> 01:08:16.790
the German gods

01:08:16.790 --> 01:08:18.790
is that that entire theology

01:08:18.790 --> 01:08:19.790
of those gods,

01:08:19.790 --> 01:08:20.790
the entire pagan system

01:08:20.790 --> 01:08:21.790
of the Germanic gods

01:08:21.790 --> 01:08:22.790
is one that comes

01:08:22.790 --> 01:08:23.790
to an appalling end

01:08:23.790 --> 01:08:25.790
in the twilight of the gods.

01:08:25.790 --> 01:08:26.790
Even the gods die out

01:08:26.790 --> 01:08:28.790
in the twilight of the world

01:08:28.790 --> 01:08:29.790
when there's a destruction

01:08:29.790 --> 01:08:30.790
of all things,

01:08:30.790 --> 01:08:32.790
Ragnarok.

01:08:32.790 --> 01:08:33.790
So even if we look

01:08:33.790 --> 01:08:35.790
to pagan mythic sources

01:08:35.790 --> 01:08:37.790
as well as the Judaic ones,

01:08:37.790 --> 01:08:38.790
and even if we look

01:08:38.790 --> 01:08:40.790
to the Hindu mythic sources,

01:08:40.790 --> 01:08:42.790
you know, the idea

01:08:42.790 --> 01:08:43.790
of the Kali Yuga

01:08:43.790 --> 01:08:44.790
at the end of every age

01:08:44.790 --> 01:08:45.790
where there's this

01:08:45.790 --> 01:08:46.790
densification of time

01:08:46.790 --> 01:08:48.790
and finally the entire universe

01:08:48.790 --> 01:08:50.790
is dissolved.

01:08:50.790 --> 01:08:51.790
And then the Brahma,

01:08:51.790 --> 01:08:52.790
it's the inhaling

01:08:52.790 --> 01:08:53.790
of the breath of Brahma

01:08:53.790 --> 01:08:54.790
and then a new universe

01:08:54.790 --> 01:08:56.790
is created or breathed out.

01:08:56.790 --> 01:08:57.790
It seems to me

01:08:57.790 --> 01:08:58.790
there's great many of these

01:08:58.790 --> 01:09:00.790
have this view

01:09:00.790 --> 01:09:02.790
that would lock in

01:09:02.790 --> 01:09:04.790
to the idea of an end to time.

01:09:04.790 --> 01:09:07.420
Yes, well,

01:09:07.420 --> 01:09:08.420
or an end to history.

01:09:08.420 --> 01:09:10.420
Or an end to history.

01:09:10.420 --> 01:09:12.420
It's occurred to me recently

01:09:12.420 --> 01:09:14.420
in thinking about this,

01:09:14.420 --> 01:09:16.420
my own model of time

01:09:16.420 --> 01:09:20.420
comes to an abrupt end.

01:09:20.420 --> 01:09:22.420
For all of its prophecies

01:09:22.420 --> 01:09:23.420
to work,

01:09:23.420 --> 01:09:24.420
there has to be

01:09:24.420 --> 01:09:26.420
an end date assigned

01:09:26.420 --> 01:09:27.420
and it only works

01:09:27.420 --> 01:09:28.420
when the end date

01:09:28.420 --> 01:09:30.420
is assigned very close

01:09:30.420 --> 01:09:33.420
to the end of the Mayan calendar,

01:09:33.420 --> 01:09:35.420
which is 24 years

01:09:35.420 --> 01:09:37.420
in the future.

01:09:37.420 --> 01:09:38.420
So I've spent

01:09:38.420 --> 01:09:40.420
a great deal of time

01:09:40.420 --> 01:09:42.420
trying to imagine

01:09:42.420 --> 01:09:45.420
how the world could end

01:09:45.420 --> 01:09:48.420
in 24 years.

01:09:48.420 --> 01:09:51.420
How is such a thing possible

01:09:51.420 --> 01:09:53.420
without just, you know,

01:09:53.420 --> 01:09:55.420
God Almighty descending

01:09:55.420 --> 01:09:57.420
in a chariot of flame?

01:09:57.420 --> 01:09:58.420
How could it happen

01:09:58.420 --> 01:10:00.420
without that?

01:10:00.420 --> 01:10:02.420
Could there be a plausible

01:10:02.420 --> 01:10:04.420
scenario created

01:10:04.420 --> 01:10:06.420
that would have our world

01:10:06.420 --> 01:10:09.420
utterly end in 24 years

01:10:09.420 --> 01:10:11.420
in a happy way?

01:10:12.420 --> 01:10:14.420
And it occurs to me that

01:10:15.420 --> 01:10:18.420
that the way in which

01:10:18.420 --> 01:10:21.420
this is to be accomplished

01:10:21.420 --> 01:10:24.420
is staring us in the face.

01:10:24.420 --> 01:10:26.420
It is simply this,

01:10:26.420 --> 01:10:31.420
that shortly after

01:10:31.420 --> 01:10:33.420
the first few years

01:10:33.420 --> 01:10:35.420
of the next century,

01:10:35.420 --> 01:10:37.420
a technology will begin

01:10:37.420 --> 01:10:38.420
to be developed,

01:10:38.420 --> 01:10:40.420
the purpose of which will be

01:10:40.420 --> 01:10:43.420
to transmit a message

01:10:43.420 --> 01:10:45.420
forward into time.

01:10:45.420 --> 01:10:48.420
And unbeknownst

01:10:48.420 --> 01:10:49.420
to the technocrats

01:10:49.420 --> 01:10:50.420
who will create

01:10:50.420 --> 01:10:52.420
this massive governmental project

01:10:52.420 --> 01:10:55.420
to communicate with the future,

01:10:55.420 --> 01:10:57.420
will be certain paradoxes

01:10:57.420 --> 01:10:59.420
which are built in

01:10:59.420 --> 01:11:01.420
to the effort to do this.

01:11:01.420 --> 01:11:02.420
One of the things

01:11:02.420 --> 01:11:04.420
that will be discovered

01:11:04.420 --> 01:11:06.420
is if you invent

01:11:06.420 --> 01:11:09.420
a time communicator

01:11:09.420 --> 01:11:10.420
that can send a message

01:11:10.420 --> 01:11:12.420
into time,

01:11:12.420 --> 01:11:13.420
into the future,

01:11:13.420 --> 01:11:15.420
then anyone in the future

01:11:15.420 --> 01:11:18.420
can send a message back

01:11:18.420 --> 01:11:20.420
to you,

01:11:20.420 --> 01:11:22.420
but no message

01:11:22.420 --> 01:11:24.420
can go further back

01:11:24.420 --> 01:11:25.420
into the past

01:11:25.420 --> 01:11:26.420
than the moment

01:11:26.420 --> 01:11:28.420
of the invention

01:11:28.420 --> 01:11:30.420
of the first time machine.

01:11:30.420 --> 01:11:32.420
Do you follow?

01:11:32.420 --> 01:11:34.420
So suddenly in human history

01:11:34.420 --> 01:11:36.420
an absolute membrane

01:11:36.420 --> 01:11:38.420
for information

01:11:38.420 --> 01:11:39.420
is established

01:11:39.420 --> 01:11:41.420
before time communicator,

01:11:41.420 --> 01:11:43.420
all causality moves

01:11:43.420 --> 01:11:44.420
from the past

01:11:44.420 --> 01:11:46.420
to the future.

01:11:46.420 --> 01:11:48.420
After time communicator,

01:11:48.420 --> 01:11:50.420
causality moves

01:11:50.420 --> 01:11:51.420
both directions

01:11:51.420 --> 01:11:53.420
and consequently

01:11:53.420 --> 01:11:55.420
more advanced states,

01:11:55.420 --> 01:11:56.420
states,

01:11:56.420 --> 01:11:57.420
thousands,

01:11:57.420 --> 01:11:58.420
millions,

01:11:58.420 --> 01:11:59.420
hundreds of millions

01:11:59.420 --> 01:12:00.420
of years in the future

01:12:00.420 --> 01:12:02.420
will diffuse

01:12:02.420 --> 01:12:04.420
through the entire temporal medium

01:12:04.420 --> 01:12:05.420
like heat

01:12:05.420 --> 01:12:06.420
through a gas

01:12:06.420 --> 01:12:08.420
and at that point

01:12:08.420 --> 01:12:10.420
what you will suddenly find

01:12:10.420 --> 01:12:11.420
is the moment

01:12:11.420 --> 01:12:13.420
the switch is thrown

01:12:13.420 --> 01:12:16.420
on the first time communicator

01:12:16.420 --> 01:12:19.420
the future end state

01:12:19.420 --> 01:12:20.420
of evolution

01:12:20.420 --> 01:12:21.420
on this planet

01:12:21.420 --> 01:12:23.420
will appear

01:12:23.420 --> 01:12:25.420
one microsecond later

01:12:25.420 --> 01:12:27.420
because the entirety

01:12:27.420 --> 01:12:28.420
of the future

01:12:28.420 --> 01:12:29.420
will be forced

01:12:29.420 --> 01:12:30.420
to happen

01:12:30.420 --> 01:12:32.420
all at once.

01:12:34.420 --> 01:12:35.420
I'm not sure

01:12:35.420 --> 01:12:36.420
you're with me.

01:12:42.800 --> 01:12:43.800
So basically

01:12:43.800 --> 01:12:44.800
it's simply

01:12:44.800 --> 01:12:46.800
a technological innovation

01:12:46.800 --> 01:12:47.800
which would be like

01:12:47.800 --> 01:12:48.800
a whistle

01:12:48.800 --> 01:12:49.800
for calling

01:12:49.800 --> 01:12:51.800
Almighty God

01:12:51.800 --> 01:12:54.800
into the historical process.

01:12:54.800 --> 01:12:55.800
The first person

01:12:55.800 --> 01:12:56.800
to invent

01:12:56.800 --> 01:12:57.800
a device

01:12:57.800 --> 01:12:58.800
which communicates

01:12:58.800 --> 01:12:59.800
with the future

01:12:59.800 --> 01:13:00.800
will discover

01:13:00.800 --> 01:13:01.800
that all

01:13:01.800 --> 01:13:02.800
of the future

01:13:02.800 --> 01:13:03.800
is suddenly

01:13:03.800 --> 01:13:04.800
communicating

01:13:04.800 --> 01:13:07.800
with them.

01:13:07.800 --> 01:13:08.800
And this will

01:13:08.800 --> 01:13:09.800
be experienced

01:13:09.800 --> 01:13:11.800
as a very radical

01:13:11.800 --> 01:13:12.800
sort of transition

01:13:12.800 --> 01:13:14.800
in the way we

01:13:14.800 --> 01:13:15.800
maintain

01:13:15.800 --> 01:13:16.800
our homes

01:13:16.800 --> 01:13:23.120
and businesses.

01:13:23.120 --> 01:13:24.120
I don't know.

01:13:24.120 --> 01:13:25.120
I think we've run past

01:13:25.120 --> 01:13:26.120
intermission time.

01:13:26.120 --> 01:13:27.120
Maybe we should have

01:13:27.120 --> 01:13:28.120
an intermission

01:13:28.120 --> 01:13:29.120
and then all these people

01:13:29.120 --> 01:13:30.120
who are burning

01:13:30.120 --> 01:13:31.120
to ask questions

01:13:31.120 --> 01:13:32.120
should do

01:13:32.120 --> 01:13:33.120
should come back.

01:13:33.120 --> 01:13:34.120
How do you feel

01:13:34.120 --> 01:13:35.120
about that?

01:13:36.120 --> 01:13:37.120
Who whines

01:13:37.120 --> 01:13:39.120
behind the light?

01:13:43.120 --> 01:13:44.120
I don't care.

01:13:44.120 --> 01:13:45.120
Fine.

01:13:45.120 --> 01:13:46.120
You.

01:13:57.810 --> 01:13:58.810
The moment

01:13:58.810 --> 01:13:59.810
the past is going

01:13:59.810 --> 01:14:00.810
to pile up

01:14:00.810 --> 01:14:01.810
behind it

01:14:01.810 --> 01:14:02.810
with momentum.

01:14:02.810 --> 01:14:03.810
Well, but we haven't

01:14:03.810 --> 01:14:04.810
reached the moment

01:14:04.810 --> 01:14:10.390
when the switch

01:14:10.390 --> 01:14:11.390
is thrown.

01:14:11.390 --> 01:14:12.390
The future cannot

01:14:12.390 --> 01:14:13.390
go any further

01:14:13.390 --> 01:14:14.390
into the past

01:14:14.390 --> 01:14:15.390
than that moment.

01:14:15.390 --> 01:14:16.390
Absolutely.

01:14:16.390 --> 01:14:17.390
But the past

01:14:17.390 --> 01:14:18.390
is still going

01:14:18.390 --> 01:14:19.390
to pile up

01:14:19.390 --> 01:14:20.390
upon that point

01:14:20.390 --> 01:14:21.390
because the past

01:14:21.390 --> 01:14:22.390
is in the causal mode,

01:14:22.390 --> 01:14:23.390
right?

01:14:23.390 --> 01:14:24.390
First one thing

01:14:24.390 --> 01:14:25.390
then another

01:14:25.390 --> 01:14:26.390
and another.

01:14:26.390 --> 01:14:27.390
Well, don't you think

01:14:27.390 --> 01:14:28.390
that's what's making

01:14:28.390 --> 01:14:29.390
the world so crazy?

01:14:29.390 --> 01:14:30.390
It may not.

01:14:30.390 --> 01:14:31.390
It's that we are

01:14:31.390 --> 01:14:32.390
dimension

01:14:32.390 --> 01:14:33.390
and that's what's creating

01:14:33.390 --> 01:14:34.390
the shock wave

01:14:34.390 --> 01:14:35.390
of cultural effects

01:14:35.390 --> 01:14:36.390
that we call

01:14:36.390 --> 01:14:38.390
the 20th century

01:14:38.390 --> 01:14:39.390
but which

01:14:39.390 --> 01:14:40.390
once we get

01:14:40.390 --> 01:14:41.390
through all this

01:14:41.390 --> 01:14:42.390
it will be known

01:14:42.390 --> 01:14:44.390
as the bow shock

01:14:44.390 --> 01:14:45.390
of transition

01:14:46.390 --> 01:14:48.390
to the millennial

01:14:48.390 --> 01:14:49.390
eschaton

01:14:49.390 --> 01:14:50.390
or whatever it was.

01:14:51.390 --> 01:14:54.470
I've been storing

01:14:54.470 --> 01:14:55.470
your questions

01:14:55.470 --> 01:14:56.470
all night

01:14:56.470 --> 01:15:05.020
but I was

01:15:05.020 --> 01:15:06.020
I had a

01:15:06.020 --> 01:15:14.090
Project Zonitor

01:15:14.090 --> 01:15:15.090
from Universal

01:15:15.090 --> 01:15:16.090
and the Royal Library

01:15:16.090 --> 01:15:17.090
and they put me

01:15:17.090 --> 01:15:18.090
into a wonderful

01:15:18.090 --> 01:15:19.090
space

01:15:19.090 --> 01:15:20.090
and they told me

01:15:20.090 --> 01:15:21.090
about a month ago

01:15:21.090 --> 01:15:22.090
that time is in fact

01:15:22.090 --> 01:15:23.090
asymptotic

01:15:23.090 --> 01:15:24.090
and that we are

01:15:24.090 --> 01:15:25.090
approaching the

01:15:25.090 --> 01:15:26.090
asymptote

01:15:26.090 --> 01:15:27.090
and at that moment

01:15:27.090 --> 01:15:28.090
this point is known

01:15:28.090 --> 01:15:29.090
as the naked

01:15:29.090 --> 01:15:30.090
singularity

01:15:30.090 --> 01:15:31.090
and he said

01:15:31.090 --> 01:15:32.090
we're entering

01:15:32.090 --> 01:15:33.090
this asymptotic

01:15:33.090 --> 01:15:34.090
curve now

01:15:34.090 --> 01:15:35.090
and this is when

01:15:35.090 --> 01:15:36.090
the quote unquote

01:15:36.090 --> 01:15:37.090
the weirdness

01:15:37.090 --> 01:15:38.090
is about to begin

01:15:38.090 --> 01:15:39.090
with the

01:15:39.090 --> 01:15:40.090
synchronicity

01:15:40.090 --> 01:15:41.090
begins piling up

01:15:41.090 --> 01:15:42.090
on the

01:15:42.090 --> 01:15:43.090
synchronicity

01:15:43.090 --> 01:15:44.090
and I wonder

01:15:44.090 --> 01:15:45.090
if this fits in

01:15:45.090 --> 01:15:47.790
with the

01:15:47.790 --> 01:15:48.790
Well, I think

01:15:48.790 --> 01:15:49.790
that this

01:15:49.790 --> 01:15:50.790
that you're talking

01:15:50.790 --> 01:15:51.790
about

01:15:51.790 --> 01:15:52.790
how you perceive

01:15:52.790 --> 01:15:53.790
it depends on

01:15:53.790 --> 01:15:54.790
where you stand

01:15:54.790 --> 01:15:55.790
in time.

01:15:55.790 --> 01:15:56.790
There is a certain

01:15:56.790 --> 01:15:57.790
point of view

01:15:57.790 --> 01:15:58.790
where only

01:15:58.790 --> 01:15:59.790
a few moments

01:15:59.790 --> 01:16:00.790
after the

01:16:00.790 --> 01:16:01.790
Big Bang

01:16:01.790 --> 01:16:03.790
the asymptotic

01:16:03.790 --> 01:16:04.790
weirdness

01:16:04.790 --> 01:16:05.790
began to

01:16:05.790 --> 01:16:06.790
set in.

01:16:07.790 --> 01:16:08.790
It was interesting

01:16:08.790 --> 01:16:09.790
a few weeks ago

01:16:09.790 --> 01:16:11.790
I was visited

01:16:11.790 --> 01:16:12.790
in Hawaii

01:16:12.790 --> 01:16:13.790
by

01:16:13.790 --> 01:16:14.790
none other

01:16:14.790 --> 01:16:16.790
than Carl Sagan

01:16:16.790 --> 01:16:17.790
and

01:16:18.790 --> 01:16:19.790
he had

01:16:19.790 --> 01:16:20.790
several

01:16:20.790 --> 01:16:21.790
things on

01:16:21.790 --> 01:16:22.790
his mind

01:16:22.790 --> 01:16:23.790
but

01:16:23.790 --> 01:16:24.790
one

01:16:24.790 --> 01:16:25.790
of the

01:16:25.790 --> 01:16:26.790
things

01:16:26.790 --> 01:16:27.790
that he was

01:16:27.790 --> 01:16:28.790
at great pains

01:16:28.790 --> 01:16:29.790
to point out

01:16:29.790 --> 01:16:30.790
to me

01:16:30.790 --> 01:16:31.790
was I said

01:16:31.790 --> 01:16:32.790
something about

01:16:32.790 --> 01:16:33.790
this asymptotic

01:16:33.790 --> 01:16:34.790
approach

01:16:34.790 --> 01:16:35.790
to the end

01:16:35.790 --> 01:16:36.790
of history

01:16:36.790 --> 01:16:37.790
and he said

01:16:37.790 --> 01:16:38.790
well my dear boy

01:16:38.790 --> 01:16:39.790
you just have

01:16:39.790 --> 01:16:40.790
it all wrong

01:16:40.790 --> 01:16:41.790
the speed

01:16:41.790 --> 01:16:42.790
of information

01:16:42.790 --> 01:16:43.790
transfer

01:16:43.790 --> 01:16:44.790
reached

01:16:44.790 --> 01:16:45.790
the speed

01:16:45.790 --> 01:16:46.790
of light

01:16:46.790 --> 01:16:47.790
with the invention

01:16:47.790 --> 01:16:48.790
of radio

01:16:48.790 --> 01:16:49.790
which is

01:16:49.790 --> 01:16:50.790
absolutely

01:16:50.790 --> 01:16:51.790
flat

01:16:51.790 --> 01:16:52.790
ever since

01:16:52.790 --> 01:16:53.790
the largest

01:16:53.790 --> 01:16:54.790
thermonuclear blast

01:16:54.790 --> 01:16:55.790
ever detonated

01:16:55.790 --> 01:16:56.790
was in

01:16:56.790 --> 01:16:57.790
1958

01:16:57.790 --> 01:16:58.790
there hasn't

01:16:58.790 --> 01:16:59.790
been a bigger

01:16:59.790 --> 01:17:00.790
one for

01:17:00.790 --> 01:17:01.790
30 years

01:17:01.790 --> 01:17:02.790
the fastest

01:17:02.790 --> 01:17:03.790
human object

01:17:03.790 --> 01:17:04.790
ever built

01:17:04.790 --> 01:17:05.790
was launched

01:17:05.790 --> 01:17:06.790
in 1967

01:17:06.790 --> 01:17:07.790
there hasn't

01:17:07.790 --> 01:17:08.790
been a

01:17:08.790 --> 01:17:09.790
faster

01:17:09.790 --> 01:17:10.790
one since

01:17:10.790 --> 01:17:11.790
so

01:17:11.790 --> 01:17:12.790
this nonsense

01:17:12.790 --> 01:17:13.790
about

01:17:13.790 --> 01:17:14.790
ever increasing

01:17:14.790 --> 01:17:15.790
this that

01:17:15.790 --> 01:17:16.790
and the other

01:17:16.790 --> 01:17:17.790
just doesn't

01:17:17.790 --> 01:17:18.790
hold water.

01:17:18.790 --> 01:17:19.790
What is

01:17:19.790 --> 01:17:20.790
increasing

01:17:20.790 --> 01:17:21.790
asymptotically

01:17:21.790 --> 01:17:22.790
is

01:17:22.790 --> 01:17:23.790
density

01:17:23.790 --> 01:17:24.790
of connectedness

01:17:24.790 --> 01:17:26.790
and obviously

01:17:26.790 --> 01:17:27.790
at a certain

01:17:27.790 --> 01:17:28.790
point

01:17:28.790 --> 01:17:29.790
you reach

01:17:29.790 --> 01:17:30.790
maximum

01:17:30.790 --> 01:17:31.790
density

01:17:31.790 --> 01:17:32.790
of connectedness

01:17:32.790 --> 01:17:33.790
in the present

01:17:33.790 --> 01:17:34.790
the only

01:17:34.790 --> 01:17:35.790
way

01:17:35.790 --> 01:17:36.790
you can then

01:17:36.790 --> 01:17:37.790
continue

01:17:37.790 --> 01:17:38.790
to densify

01:17:38.790 --> 01:17:39.790
connection

01:17:39.790 --> 01:17:40.790
is if

01:17:40.790 --> 01:17:41.790
the

01:17:41.790 --> 01:17:42.790
connections

01:17:42.790 --> 01:17:43.790
begin to move

01:17:43.790 --> 01:17:44.790
outward

01:17:44.790 --> 01:17:45.790
in time

01:17:45.790 --> 01:17:46.790
into the future

01:17:46.790 --> 01:17:47.790
and into the past

01:17:47.790 --> 01:17:48.790
and you

01:17:48.790 --> 01:17:49.790
go this

01:17:49.790 --> 01:17:50.790
transition

01:17:50.790 --> 01:17:51.790
from

01:17:51.790 --> 01:17:52.790
particulate

01:17:52.790 --> 01:17:53.790
Cartesian

01:17:53.790 --> 01:17:54.790
Newtonian

01:17:54.790 --> 01:17:55.790
existence

01:17:55.790 --> 01:17:56.790
to

01:17:56.790 --> 01:17:57.790
this wave

01:17:57.790 --> 01:17:58.790
mechanical

01:17:58.790 --> 01:17:59.790
shamanic

01:17:59.790 --> 01:18:00.790
both

01:18:00.790 --> 01:18:01.790
present

01:18:01.790 --> 01:18:02.790
in the past

01:18:02.790 --> 01:18:03.790
present

01:18:03.790 --> 01:18:04.790
in the future

01:18:04.790 --> 01:18:05.790
present

01:18:05.790 --> 01:18:06.790
in the present

01:18:06.790 --> 01:18:07.790
kind of existence

01:18:07.790 --> 01:18:08.790
this is what I meant

01:18:08.790 --> 01:18:09.790
about

01:18:09.790 --> 01:18:10.790
the social

01:18:10.790 --> 01:18:11.790
implications

01:18:11.790 --> 01:18:12.790
of integrating

01:18:12.790 --> 01:18:13.790
Rupert's

01:18:13.790 --> 01:18:14.790
paradigm

01:18:14.790 --> 01:18:15.790
it is

01:18:15.790 --> 01:18:16.790
permission

01:18:16.790 --> 01:18:17.790
to feel

01:18:17.790 --> 01:18:18.790
a new way

01:18:18.790 --> 01:18:19.790
and to know

01:18:19.790 --> 01:18:20.790
that it is

01:18:20.790 --> 01:18:21.790
a more correct

01:18:21.790 --> 01:18:22.790
mirroring

01:18:22.790 --> 01:18:23.790
of

01:18:23.790 --> 01:18:24.790
of the greater

01:18:24.790 --> 01:18:25.790
cosmos

01:18:25.790 --> 01:18:26.790
than

01:18:26.790 --> 01:18:27.790
the model

01:18:27.790 --> 01:18:28.790
that had us

01:18:28.790 --> 01:18:29.790
as the citizen

01:18:29.790 --> 01:18:30.790
the ego

01:18:30.790 --> 01:18:31.790
the individual

01:18:31.790 --> 01:18:32.790
all

01:18:32.790 --> 01:18:33.790
all of that

01:18:33.790 --> 01:18:34.790
sort of thing

01:18:34.790 --> 01:18:35.790
well

01:18:35.790 --> 01:18:36.790
we think

01:18:36.790 --> 01:18:37.790
all the threshold

01:18:37.790 --> 01:18:38.790
of major changes

01:18:38.790 --> 01:18:39.790
in our

01:18:39.790 --> 01:18:40.790
information

01:18:40.790 --> 01:18:41.790
universe

01:18:41.790 --> 01:18:42.790
in some

01:18:42.790 --> 01:18:43.790
you know

01:18:43.790 --> 01:18:44.790
hypertext

01:18:44.790 --> 01:18:45.790
and so forth

01:18:45.790 --> 01:18:46.790
which

01:18:46.790 --> 01:18:47.790
would allow us to go

01:18:47.790 --> 01:18:48.750
into more

01:18:48.750 --> 01:18:49.750
well see I think it is something

01:18:49.750 --> 01:18:50.750
much more profound

01:18:50.750 --> 01:18:51.790
than that

01:18:51.790 --> 01:18:52.790
ah

01:18:52.790 --> 01:18:53.790
let us take

01:18:53.790 --> 01:18:54.630
my example

01:18:54.630 --> 01:18:54.790
about the time

01:18:54.790 --> 01:18:56.550
communicator

01:18:56.550 --> 01:18:57.550
for a moment

01:18:57.550 --> 01:18:57.790
and let's

01:18:57.790 --> 01:18:58.790
tell a little

01:18:58.790 --> 01:18:59.790
science fiction

01:18:59.790 --> 01:19:00.790
story

01:19:00.790 --> 01:19:01.790
to make it more

01:19:01.790 --> 01:19:02.790
understandable

01:19:02.790 --> 01:19:03.790
what I am talking about

01:19:03.790 --> 01:19:04.790
let us pretend

01:19:04.790 --> 01:19:05.790
it is not

01:19:05.790 --> 01:19:06.670
a time

01:19:06.670 --> 01:19:07.790
communicator

01:19:07.790 --> 01:19:08.790
it is a real

01:19:08.790 --> 01:19:09.790
time

01:19:09.790 --> 01:19:10.790
machine

01:19:10.790 --> 01:19:11.790
now

01:19:11.790 --> 01:19:12.990
we are going

01:19:12.990 --> 01:19:13.790
to send somebody

01:19:13.790 --> 01:19:14.790
into the far

01:19:14.790 --> 01:19:15.790
flung

01:19:15.790 --> 01:19:16.790
reaches

01:19:16.790 --> 01:19:17.790
of the future

01:19:17.790 --> 01:19:24.810
into the jeweled device that we've built in our laboratory and we pass out the champagne and we

01:19:24.810 --> 01:19:34.250
have a brief countdown and then we throw the switch and our lab chief sails off into the

01:19:34.250 --> 01:19:42.030
future well now what do the rest of us sitting there see what happens at that moment well I

01:19:42.030 --> 01:19:50.330
first I thought what would happen is suddenly all over the world time travelers would begin

01:19:50.330 --> 01:19:58.410
arriving from the far-flung reaches of the future having come to witness the first voyage into time

01:19:58.410 --> 01:20:05.430
obviously a great thing to see if you're a time traveler it's like that if you had to

01:20:05.430 --> 01:20:11.970
cessna airplane that you could fly to Kitty Hawk in 1906 wouldn't you fly there and see

01:20:11.970 --> 01:20:12.010
it

01:20:12.030 --> 01:20:18.010
but it kept nagging at my mind

01:20:18.010 --> 01:20:23.590
that there was some paradox in this

01:20:23.590 --> 01:20:26.090
or something was wrong with this idea

01:20:26.090 --> 01:20:27.950
and then I said, aha, I see

01:20:27.950 --> 01:20:32.110
what it is is that it's the kill your own grandfather problem

01:20:32.110 --> 01:20:36.030
if time travelers could travel backward into the past

01:20:36.030 --> 01:20:41.090
even as far as only the invention of the first time machine

01:20:41.090 --> 01:20:45.430
one of them might conceive one from many centuries in the future

01:20:45.430 --> 01:20:48.290
might travel back and kill their grandfather

01:20:48.290 --> 01:20:51.150
and initiate that good old paradox

01:20:51.150 --> 01:20:53.250
of how could you kill your grandfather

01:20:53.250 --> 01:20:55.910
because you killed your grandfather you didn't exist

01:20:55.910 --> 01:20:58.330
so how could you exist to kill your grandfather

01:20:58.330 --> 01:20:59.490
that sort of thing

01:20:59.490 --> 01:21:01.270
but then I realized, no

01:21:01.270 --> 01:21:06.350
in the same way that the most advanced cultures

01:21:06.350 --> 01:21:09.330
on the sphere of the planet

01:21:09.330 --> 01:21:11.070
dominate and overpower

01:21:11.090 --> 01:21:14.710
and overwhelm less advanced cultures

01:21:14.710 --> 01:21:18.130
the most advanced future states

01:21:18.130 --> 01:21:22.410
would dominate and overwhelm the entire temporal continuum

01:21:22.410 --> 01:21:27.190
clear back to the moment of the invention of the first time machine

01:21:27.190 --> 01:21:32.390
so what you would really see when you threw the switch on the first time machine

01:21:32.390 --> 01:21:36.110
would be the simultaneous arrival of

01:21:36.110 --> 01:21:40.270
the ultimate state of human evolution, whatever that is

01:21:40.270 --> 01:21:41.090
something beyond the human mind

01:21:41.090 --> 01:21:42.970
something beyond our conceiving

01:21:42.970 --> 01:21:46.130
so it's in very practical terms

01:21:46.130 --> 01:21:47.790
it would fulfill

01:21:47.790 --> 01:21:51.710
this apocalyptic dream of monotheism

01:21:51.710 --> 01:21:56.250
it's conceivable that if we could invent a device which would transmit

01:21:56.250 --> 01:22:00.290
information or objects forward into time

01:22:00.290 --> 01:22:03.410
that the moment that device were invented

01:22:03.410 --> 01:22:09.670
we could call upon the resources of all future human history to bail us out

01:22:09.670 --> 01:22:10.710
of this mess that we're in now.

01:22:11.090 --> 01:22:15.410
it may be the only way to save the planet

01:22:15.410 --> 01:22:18.750
an immediate time wars

01:22:18.750 --> 01:22:27.750
commitment to spare no effort to send information forward into the future

01:22:27.750 --> 01:22:29.710
looking for help

01:22:29.710 --> 01:22:32.370
I'm not serious, of course

01:22:32.370 --> 01:22:36.770
but I am peculiar

01:22:36.770 --> 01:22:38.650
on that note

01:22:38.650 --> 01:22:39.850
why don't we take an intermission?

01:22:39.850 --> 01:22:40.090
on that note, why don't we take an intermission?

01:22:40.090 --> 01:22:40.590
on that note, why don't we take an intermission?

01:22:40.590 --> 01:22:40.970
on that note, why don't we take an intermission?

01:22:40.970 --> 01:22:41.550
on that note, why don't we take an intermission?

01:22:41.550 --> 01:22:42.450
and then come back

01:23:04.590 --> 01:23:06.310
The punctuated evolution thing

01:23:06.310 --> 01:23:06.610
The punctuated evolution thing

01:23:06.610 --> 01:23:07.770
The idea that evolution moves by fits and starts

01:23:07.770 --> 01:23:10.490
the idea that evolution moves by fits and starts

01:23:10.490 --> 01:23:13.310
which was denied by neo-Darwinists

01:23:13.310 --> 01:23:14.030
which was denied by neo-Darwinists

01:23:14.030 --> 01:23:15.230
and by Darwin himself

01:23:15.230 --> 01:23:17.590
in favor of the idea of a slow, gradual, steady progression

01:23:17.590 --> 01:23:18.850
in favor of the idea of a slow, gradual, steady progression

01:23:18.850 --> 01:23:20.290
moving at a more or less uniform rate

01:23:20.290 --> 01:23:20.810
moving at a more or less uniform rate

01:23:20.810 --> 01:23:23.630
That Darwin was a great disciple of Lyell

01:23:23.630 --> 01:23:24.170
that Darwin was a great disciple of Lyell

01:23:24.170 --> 01:23:25.010
and the principle in geology Удачи и Alle, и בד stair, hier, легко и в IR Circle

01:23:25.010 --> 01:23:25.670
and the principle in geology here

01:23:25.670 --> 01:23:26.470
and the principle in geology here

01:23:26.490 --> 01:23:30.390
of uniformitarianism, the idea that things go on at uniform rates.

01:23:31.790 --> 01:23:36.930
And this particular school of geology was opposed to the theory of catastrophism,

01:23:36.930 --> 01:23:41.130
the idea that there are catastrophic events on the earth,

01:23:41.410 --> 01:23:43.410
like the flood, the biblical flood,

01:23:44.570 --> 01:23:48.930
and that the development has been discontinuous.

01:23:49.690 --> 01:23:54.610
There's been breaks and fits and starts and periods of more or less stability

01:23:54.610 --> 01:23:55.730
and then big changes.

01:23:56.490 --> 01:24:00.870
That catastrophist theory, which was a popular theory at the beginning of the 19th century,

01:24:00.950 --> 01:24:04.330
was rejected by Darwin as it was rejected by Lyell

01:24:04.330 --> 01:24:07.010
because as soon as you allowed catastrophes,

01:24:07.470 --> 01:24:09.350
all the Christians agreed with this and said,

01:24:09.450 --> 01:24:10.830
yes, the Bible tells us that.

01:24:10.890 --> 01:24:13.750
We know from our whole cultural history that there are catastrophes

01:24:13.750 --> 01:24:15.930
and this is saying the same kind of thing.

01:24:16.170 --> 01:24:18.150
They wanted to be saying something totally different

01:24:18.150 --> 01:24:21.150
that wouldn't fit into any kind of biblical view whatsoever.

01:24:21.630 --> 01:24:25.430
The idea of a totally progressive linear process of change.

01:24:25.990 --> 01:24:26.330
Anyway, the final...

01:24:26.490 --> 01:24:28.230
The fossil record never supported that

01:24:28.230 --> 01:24:31.750
and punctuated equilibrium seems to be what happens

01:24:31.750 --> 01:24:35.530
and it suggests that evolution moves by fits and starts.

01:24:35.530 --> 01:24:37.490
And what started as an appalling heresy,

01:24:38.030 --> 01:24:42.170
it's been a recurrent heresy ever since Darwin first put forward his book.

01:24:43.330 --> 01:24:48.070
People have objected to it on the grounds that evolution may well move by fits and starts.

01:24:48.190 --> 01:24:51.170
Even T.H. Huxley disagreed with Darwin on this one.

01:24:53.170 --> 01:24:56.430
Anyway, if evolution moves by fits and starts rather than uniform,

01:24:56.490 --> 01:25:03.190
then it looks as if there's not a uniform rate of novelty formation in the universe.

01:25:03.650 --> 01:25:05.670
And of course, that's just what Terence tells us.

01:25:07.890 --> 01:25:08.550
That's right.

01:25:08.770 --> 01:25:13.110
One way of thinking about the novelty wave on the largest level

01:25:13.110 --> 01:25:19.310
is that it is a picture of the ebb and flow of mutation

01:25:19.310 --> 01:25:22.250
in the history of life on the planet.

01:25:22.250 --> 01:25:27.230
In other words, the idea that mutation is random,

01:25:27.930 --> 01:25:31.570
is based on the untested and cheerful assumption

01:25:31.570 --> 01:25:40.370
that radiation is arriving on the Earth at an even rate.

01:25:41.390 --> 01:25:43.670
But there's no reason why it should be.

01:25:43.950 --> 01:25:48.710
If the rate of radiation arriving on the Earth were fluctuating for any reason,

01:25:48.710 --> 01:25:54.810
you would expect to see a concomitant fluctuation in the fossil record.

01:25:55.130 --> 01:25:56.710
And there are many other reasons.

01:25:56.850 --> 01:25:57.710
A catastrophist...

01:25:57.930 --> 01:26:03.550
The idea that there have been extremely violent episodes in the Earth's history,

01:26:04.030 --> 01:26:06.490
huge volcanic outgassings,

01:26:06.710 --> 01:26:09.950
cometary and asteroidal impacts and this sort of thing

01:26:09.950 --> 01:26:14.350
is now pretty widely accepted.

01:26:14.870 --> 01:26:21.070
And in fact, the extinction of the dinosaurs is put down to an asteroidal impact.

01:26:21.250 --> 01:26:22.150
But go on.

01:26:22.750 --> 01:26:27.070
It would be interesting to hear you deal with the salts that tie...

01:26:27.570 --> 01:26:27.830
Yes.

01:26:27.930 --> 01:26:30.190
I'm fascinated by these salts that get tired.

01:26:31.310 --> 01:26:33.290
I don't know...

01:26:33.290 --> 01:26:36.770
I mean, I'd be interested to get from you later a reference to the literature

01:26:36.770 --> 01:26:40.150
so I can look it up, because that sounds really interesting.

01:26:40.890 --> 01:26:43.610
Eutectic salts going backwards and forwards and getting tired.

01:26:45.330 --> 01:26:50.830
I mean, the only thing that I think offhand in response to that

01:26:50.830 --> 01:26:53.290
is that I've been thinking quite a lot recently

01:26:53.290 --> 01:26:56.650
about exactly that kind of phenomenon, melting points,

01:26:57.270 --> 01:26:57.770
and asking...

01:26:57.930 --> 01:27:00.770
asking the question of myself and of chemists

01:27:00.770 --> 01:27:04.750
that whether compounds that are fairly newly synthesized

01:27:04.750 --> 01:27:08.010
when they're crystallized have a particular melting point

01:27:08.010 --> 01:27:10.570
and that as time goes on, the melting point might change

01:27:10.570 --> 01:27:14.450
because the habit which holds the crystal in its form

01:27:14.450 --> 01:27:17.910
might become stronger and it might be more resistant to thermal disruption

01:27:17.910 --> 01:27:19.530
so the melting point might go up.

01:27:20.050 --> 01:27:23.090
It turns out that in the chemical literature, far from being fixed,

01:27:23.210 --> 01:27:24.670
melting points fluctuate.

01:27:24.670 --> 01:27:27.670
But in the published literature, I've found differences of up to 12%.

01:27:27.930 --> 01:27:31.930
I mean, the melting point fluctuates by 12 degrees over 20 years.

01:27:31.930 --> 01:27:34.930
And there do seem to be extraordinary fluctuations.

01:27:34.930 --> 01:27:38.930
And most organic chemists agree that the strange changes occur,

01:27:38.930 --> 01:27:41.930
that they don't seem half as constant as they're cracked up to be.

01:27:41.930 --> 01:27:44.930
You know, we're going to need to keep the ice caps in place then.

01:27:44.930 --> 01:27:46.930
Well, that might be...

01:27:46.930 --> 01:27:48.930
By changing the melting point.

01:27:50.930 --> 01:27:52.930
The eutectic mixture...

01:27:52.930 --> 01:27:55.930
You see, one of the things I've been thinking about is that when a substance melts,

01:27:55.930 --> 01:27:57.930
you've both got a formative field of substance,

01:27:57.930 --> 01:27:59.930
of the crystal.

01:27:59.930 --> 01:28:02.930
But the liquid phase of the substance also has a morphic field.

01:28:02.930 --> 01:28:04.930
Liquids have characteristic properties.

01:28:04.930 --> 01:28:06.930
They're not totally chaotic and formless.

01:28:06.930 --> 01:28:08.930
They have...

01:28:08.930 --> 01:28:12.930
And if it's a new substance that's never been melted before,

01:28:12.930 --> 01:28:15.930
it won't have had a sort of morphic field for its liquid phase.

01:28:15.930 --> 01:28:18.930
By repeated cooling...

01:28:18.930 --> 01:28:21.930
I was trying to think of experiments involving cycles,

01:28:21.930 --> 01:28:25.930
cycling a substance through cycles of melting and cooling.

01:28:25.930 --> 01:28:26.930
Because...

01:28:27.930 --> 01:28:30.930
There would be a way in which the number of transitions

01:28:30.930 --> 01:28:33.930
and also the endurance of the liquid versus the solid phase

01:28:33.930 --> 01:28:36.930
would tend to stabilize the morphic fields of these two phases.

01:28:36.930 --> 01:28:38.930
And in a sense, around the melting point,

01:28:38.930 --> 01:28:41.930
it would be as if there were two competing fields.

01:28:41.930 --> 01:28:43.930
And if one were the stronger,

01:28:43.930 --> 01:28:47.930
it might tend to raise or lower the melting point.

01:28:47.930 --> 01:28:49.930
So, this is...

01:28:49.930 --> 01:28:51.930
I've been thinking about this sort of thing,

01:28:51.930 --> 01:28:54.930
so I'm fascinated to hear about these eutectic crystals,

01:28:54.930 --> 01:28:59.940
and I'd love to read out the literature.

01:28:59.940 --> 01:29:04.940
I'm adopting a very traditional scientific position in one way,

01:29:04.940 --> 01:29:05.940
by assuming that...

01:29:05.940 --> 01:29:10.940
by putting forward the hypothesis in its most general possible form.

01:29:10.940 --> 01:29:14.940
If I said it sometimes works and it sometimes doesn't,

01:29:14.940 --> 01:29:18.940
then it would be very difficult to test, because...

01:29:25.600 --> 01:29:27.600
And it would actually be irrefutable.

01:29:31.600 --> 01:29:36.600
That's a vice and not a virtue in a scientific theory.

01:29:36.600 --> 01:29:38.600
And so...

01:29:38.600 --> 01:29:41.600
I'm more inclined to think of it working...

01:29:41.600 --> 01:29:43.600
trying to think of it working everywhere.

01:29:43.600 --> 01:29:46.600
Now, there are many systems like the behavior of hydrogen atoms,

01:29:46.600 --> 01:29:48.600
crystallization of sodium chloride,

01:29:48.600 --> 01:29:52.600
and all sorts of phenomena that physics has studied in great detail,

01:29:52.600 --> 01:29:54.600
which have happened billions of times,

01:29:54.600 --> 01:29:56.600
and as far as we know, for billions of years,

01:29:56.600 --> 01:29:59.600
even before this planet formed.

01:29:59.600 --> 01:30:00.600
So...

01:30:00.600 --> 01:30:02.600
there are certain kinds of phenomena in nature

01:30:02.600 --> 01:30:04.600
which have happened so many times before,

01:30:04.600 --> 01:30:06.600
they're so deeply habitual,

01:30:06.600 --> 01:30:09.600
that they behave as if they're governed by eternal laws.

01:30:09.600 --> 01:30:11.600
The habits are so deeply entrenched.

01:30:11.600 --> 01:30:14.600
And I think many of the phenomena that scientists have studied,

01:30:14.600 --> 01:30:16.600
particularly in the physical sciences,

01:30:16.600 --> 01:30:18.600
are of that kind.

01:30:18.600 --> 01:30:21.600
And therefore they do look as if they're governed by eternal laws.

01:30:21.600 --> 01:30:24.600
Where the difference shows up is when you look at any new phenomenon,

01:30:24.600 --> 01:30:26.600
because then you can see the habits building up.

01:30:26.600 --> 01:30:28.600
With old established habits,

01:30:28.600 --> 01:30:29.600
um...

01:30:29.600 --> 01:30:32.600
they might look as if they're not really habits at all,

01:30:32.600 --> 01:30:34.600
but following eternal laws.

01:30:34.600 --> 01:30:35.600
So...

01:30:35.600 --> 01:30:36.600
I would say that the...

01:30:36.600 --> 01:30:39.600
I would prefer to think of the theory applying everywhere,

01:30:39.600 --> 01:30:43.600
and I would account for the apparent non-changing of many physical habits,

01:30:43.600 --> 01:30:47.600
in terms of their extreme antiquity,

01:30:47.600 --> 01:30:49.600
and the fact they're so deeply embedded in groups of habits,

01:30:49.600 --> 01:30:50.600
they don't change.

01:30:50.600 --> 01:30:53.600
Some things you simply won't be able to test, though.

01:30:53.600 --> 01:30:58.600
Well, you can test the theory in any area where you can do something new.

01:30:58.600 --> 01:30:59.600
New forms,

01:30:59.600 --> 01:31:00.600
new crystals,

01:31:00.600 --> 01:31:01.600
new molecules,

01:31:01.600 --> 01:31:03.600
new patterns of protein folding,

01:31:03.600 --> 01:31:04.600
new ideas,

01:31:04.600 --> 01:31:05.600
new ways of learning.

01:31:05.600 --> 01:31:08.600
There seem to be plenty of areas it can be tested in.

01:31:08.600 --> 01:31:12.650
Is there anything that would hardly refute your theory?

01:31:12.650 --> 01:31:18.750
Or is it just a good idea that you experiment with?

01:31:18.750 --> 01:31:19.750
It's a hypothesis.

01:31:19.750 --> 01:31:22.750
What a hypothesis is, is a guess

01:31:22.750 --> 01:31:24.750
about the way things may be.

01:31:24.750 --> 01:31:25.750
And...

01:31:25.750 --> 01:31:28.750
what I've done is contrasted this guess

01:31:28.750 --> 01:31:30.750
in a variety of areas.

01:31:30.750 --> 01:31:31.750
The realms of memory,

01:31:31.750 --> 01:31:32.750
crystallography,

01:31:32.750 --> 01:31:33.750
morphology,

01:31:33.750 --> 01:31:34.750
morphogenesis,

01:31:34.750 --> 01:31:35.750
instinct,

01:31:35.750 --> 01:31:36.750
behaviour,

01:31:36.750 --> 01:31:39.750
transmission of learning,

01:31:39.750 --> 01:31:42.750
behaviour and evolution of social groups.

01:31:42.750 --> 01:31:44.750
So I've looked at the predictions of this way of looking at things

01:31:44.750 --> 01:31:47.750
compared with the standard way of looking at things.

01:31:47.750 --> 01:31:48.750
And in every area,

01:31:48.750 --> 01:31:51.750
one finds that there's a whole range of shadowy phenomena,

01:31:51.750 --> 01:31:55.750
where the evidence for the conventional position is very weak indeed.

01:31:55.750 --> 01:31:58.750
And one sees that that's actually a guess, too,

01:31:58.750 --> 01:32:02.750
which is, in most essential areas, unproved, even now.

01:32:02.750 --> 01:32:06.750
So one's got one guess versus a much more common and habitual guess.

01:32:06.750 --> 01:32:09.750
And there are other guesses on the market, too.

01:32:09.750 --> 01:32:14.750
Is there anything that would falsify the morphogenetic field in your mind?

01:32:14.750 --> 01:32:18.750
Well, a failure of experiments to show morphic resonance would falsify it.

01:32:18.750 --> 01:32:22.750
Except that falsifying scientific theories is never...

01:32:22.750 --> 01:32:24.750
People often go on as if they say,

01:32:24.750 --> 01:32:27.750
Papa says the ideal is to falsify theories.

01:32:27.750 --> 01:32:31.750
I don't know a single example of science proceeding in that manner.

01:32:31.750 --> 01:32:33.750
Scientists are trying to prove theories.

01:32:33.750 --> 01:32:36.750
And they may try and falsify theories of their rivals,

01:32:36.750 --> 01:32:39.750
which is the way it usually happens.

01:32:39.750 --> 01:32:42.750
And it's a kind of dialectic, then.

01:32:42.750 --> 01:32:46.750
Science becomes a dialectic between rivals.

01:32:46.750 --> 01:32:49.750
And science is full of ego rivalries.

01:32:49.750 --> 01:32:51.750
Well, most people think that this is terrible vice,

01:32:51.750 --> 01:32:55.750
but actually it's one of the motors of competitive science as we know it.

01:32:55.750 --> 01:32:58.750
Somebody puts forward a theory and someone has a rival theory,

01:32:58.750 --> 01:32:59.750
and then there's a...

01:32:59.750 --> 01:33:01.750
The way the contest is decided,

01:33:01.750 --> 01:33:04.750
is by experiment, the rules of the scientific game.

01:33:04.750 --> 01:33:08.750
Experiments are usually designed to test between rival hypotheses,

01:33:08.750 --> 01:33:11.750
rather than testing a single one in isolation.

01:33:11.750 --> 01:33:15.750
And I'm putting forward a variety of tests which test between

01:33:15.750 --> 01:33:18.750
the idea that nature has this habitual tendency,

01:33:18.750 --> 01:33:20.750
as against the conventional idea,

01:33:20.750 --> 01:33:24.750
which is always that nature is governed by immutable, changeless, eternal laws.

01:33:24.750 --> 01:33:27.750
And some tests may be inconclusive.

01:33:27.750 --> 01:33:31.750
Some tests may, I think, favour the idea of morphogenetics,

01:33:31.750 --> 01:33:32.750
if it resonates.

01:33:32.750 --> 01:33:34.750
If all the tests that are done fail it,

01:33:34.750 --> 01:33:38.750
if it fails, if it looks as if things are governed by eternal changeless laws,

01:33:38.750 --> 01:33:42.750
that there's no evidence for any incremental change in time in any area,

01:33:42.750 --> 01:33:45.750
that everything goes on as if it were governed entirely by laws

01:33:45.750 --> 01:33:47.750
that were already there to start with,

01:33:47.750 --> 01:33:50.750
I'd find that rather surprising.

01:33:50.750 --> 01:33:54.750
But failure of these experiments would actually support that view.

01:33:54.750 --> 01:33:56.750
And the conventional view would then, for the first time,

01:33:56.750 --> 01:33:59.750
actually have empirical evidence in its favour.

01:34:01.750 --> 01:34:04.750
Because this would be the first time it's ever been challenged.

01:34:04.750 --> 01:34:07.750
And if those challenges fail, it would strengthen it.

01:34:07.750 --> 01:34:10.750
So these tests, I think, are in everybody's interest.

01:34:10.750 --> 01:34:15.750
But if they support the idea of morphic resonance,

01:34:15.750 --> 01:34:20.750
then indeed it would show that that is not a perfect one.

01:34:20.750 --> 01:34:23.750
The idea of a memory in nature, a morphic resonance,

01:34:23.750 --> 01:34:26.750
however crude the theory is in its present preliminary form,

01:34:26.750 --> 01:34:30.750
it would be a better theory and a theory more worth developing.

01:34:30.750 --> 01:34:35.750
So the question is, is the field connection in quantum nonlocality

01:34:35.750 --> 01:34:39.750
in Bell's theorem and the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky paradox,

01:34:39.750 --> 01:34:44.750
that kind of quantum nonlocality, related to morphic resonance?

01:34:44.750 --> 01:34:47.750
Are they two aspects of the same phenomenon?

01:34:47.750 --> 01:34:51.750
That's the really interesting question in relation to existing physics.

01:34:51.750 --> 01:34:54.750
And nobody knows the answer.

01:34:54.750 --> 01:35:00.750
I don't know how morphic resonance as conceived would fit with quantum nonlocality,

01:35:00.750 --> 01:35:03.750
although it does in fact involve a past,

01:35:03.750 --> 01:35:05.750
because both systems originate from the past,

01:35:05.750 --> 01:35:07.750
and it's to do with a system with a past,

01:35:07.750 --> 01:35:10.750
which is, I would say, the very existence of these particles

01:35:10.750 --> 01:35:12.750
is a kind of resonance from their own past.

01:35:12.750 --> 01:35:15.750
I would say that there is a kind of morphic resonance link,

01:35:15.750 --> 01:35:17.750
and probably that's what it might be.

01:35:17.750 --> 01:35:21.750
But I can't fit that into the formalism of quantum theory,

01:35:21.750 --> 01:35:24.750
because I don't know it, I'm not a quantum theorist,

01:35:24.750 --> 01:35:28.750
and really to work with those equations with any degree of subtlety

01:35:28.750 --> 01:35:30.750
would require a deep understanding of the subject.

01:35:30.750 --> 01:35:37.750
On the other hand, J.S. Bell, the inventor of Bell's theorem,

01:35:37.750 --> 01:35:39.750
has been in correspondence with me.

01:35:39.750 --> 01:35:43.750
He's read both my books, and has sent me his latest book.

01:35:43.750 --> 01:35:46.750
So we've been in a correspondence about the possible connection

01:35:46.750 --> 01:35:49.750
between morphic resonance and his own theory.

01:35:49.750 --> 01:35:53.750
He's perfectly intrigued by morphic resonance and morphogenetic fields.

01:35:53.750 --> 01:35:55.750
He thinks they may be connected with his own theory,

01:35:55.750 --> 01:35:57.750
but he can't see how,

01:35:57.750 --> 01:36:00.750
because there's nothing in the conventional physics,

01:36:00.750 --> 01:36:02.750
which has yet proved...

01:36:02.750 --> 01:36:04.750
Because it's so based on eternal equations,

01:36:04.750 --> 01:36:08.750
the idea of Schrodinger's equation is a kind of eternal platonic form

01:36:08.750 --> 01:36:12.750
that governs all quantum processes from the beginning of the universe to the end,

01:36:12.750 --> 01:36:14.750
in exactly the same way.

01:36:14.750 --> 01:36:17.750
That's the kind of inherited formalism of quantum mechanics,

01:36:17.750 --> 01:36:19.750
and that kind of mathematics,

01:36:19.750 --> 01:36:21.750
which postulates eternal platonic-type forms,

01:36:21.750 --> 01:36:25.750
is not going to be adequate for modelling an evolutionary universe.

01:36:25.750 --> 01:36:29.750
And so it's not clear how the bridge can be made,

01:36:29.750 --> 01:36:31.750
or even whether that connection...

01:36:31.750 --> 01:36:33.750
But I think there must be some kind of connection.

01:36:33.750 --> 01:36:38.750
There can't be lots of totally unconnected types of nonlocality in the universe.

01:36:38.750 --> 01:36:46.750
Rupert, why not replace the platonic models with fractal models,

01:36:46.750 --> 01:36:52.750
and then say that time itself is the morphogenetic field?

01:36:52.750 --> 01:36:57.750
That it is some kind of fractal topological manifold

01:36:57.750 --> 01:36:59.750
that...

01:36:59.750 --> 01:37:04.750
And so the repetition or the connection to past states

01:37:04.750 --> 01:37:09.750
is really accomplished through resonance within the fractal.

01:37:09.750 --> 01:37:11.750
And then we have a model for resonance,

01:37:11.750 --> 01:37:18.700
because it's familiar to us from other domains of nature.

01:37:18.700 --> 01:37:20.700
Well, I don't see quite how...

01:37:20.700 --> 01:37:23.700
There's a sense in which the fractal is a new mathematical model

01:37:23.700 --> 01:37:26.700
that gives us the same idea that...

01:37:26.700 --> 01:37:29.700
The ancient idea of the microcosm mirroring the macrocosm.

01:37:29.700 --> 01:37:30.700
The idea of...

01:37:30.700 --> 01:37:32.700
The different levels...

01:37:32.700 --> 01:37:34.700
Well, but not only different levels,

01:37:34.700 --> 01:37:39.700
but different points on the same level,

01:37:39.700 --> 01:37:44.700
in the same way that the past occupies a relationship to the future

01:37:44.700 --> 01:37:48.700
of formative anticipation.

01:37:48.700 --> 01:37:56.700
So in a fractal, do early portions of it anticipate later forms?

01:37:56.700 --> 01:37:58.700
So it is like a prediction,

01:37:58.700 --> 01:38:03.700
a self-fulfilling prediction is what a fractal is.

01:38:03.700 --> 01:38:07.700
It predicts by virtue of its past states.

01:38:07.700 --> 01:38:10.700
They define what its future states will be

01:38:10.700 --> 01:38:13.700
exactly in the same way that I imagine

01:38:13.700 --> 01:38:18.700
the morphogenetic field defines what future states will be.

01:38:18.700 --> 01:38:22.700
The fractals that have been talked about to date

01:38:22.700 --> 01:38:26.700
have been used to describe spatial phenomena,

01:38:26.700 --> 01:38:27.700
coastlines,

01:38:27.700 --> 01:38:30.700
molecular arrangements,

01:38:30.700 --> 01:38:33.700
distribution of flowers in a meadow,

01:38:33.700 --> 01:38:34.700
this sort of thing.

01:38:34.700 --> 01:38:38.700
But if instead you thought of fractals

01:38:38.700 --> 01:38:43.700
as descriptors for the temporal dimension

01:38:43.700 --> 01:38:48.700
and replaced the notion of a flat or slightly curved manifold

01:38:48.700 --> 01:38:53.700
with an actual fractal surface

01:38:53.700 --> 01:38:56.700
over which events were flowing,

01:38:56.700 --> 01:38:58.700
and flowing over patterns

01:38:58.700 --> 01:39:01.700
which repeated themselves at many, many levels

01:39:01.700 --> 01:39:05.700
in resonance with previous similar patterns,

01:39:05.700 --> 01:39:10.700
then you would begin to have a mathematical picture

01:39:10.700 --> 01:39:13.700
of how the morphogenetic field would work.

01:39:13.700 --> 01:39:17.700
And you would also have found a phenomenon in nature

01:39:17.700 --> 01:39:19.700
upon which to hang it

01:39:19.700 --> 01:39:24.700
by saying time is obviously it.

01:39:24.700 --> 01:39:26.700
It's just that we are so ingrained

01:39:26.700 --> 01:39:28.700
in Newtonianism

01:39:28.700 --> 01:39:31.700
to accept time as an abstraction,

01:39:31.700 --> 01:39:34.700
as something not having equal status

01:39:34.700 --> 01:39:36.700
with the other three dimensions

01:39:36.700 --> 01:39:39.700
that we've overlooked this fact.

01:39:39.700 --> 01:39:43.700
And yet obviously that is the carrier wave.

01:39:43.700 --> 01:39:47.700
That's why you would speak of the presence of the past.

01:39:47.700 --> 01:39:50.700
What then can it be but time,

01:39:50.700 --> 01:39:54.980
past time in the present?

01:39:54.980 --> 01:39:56.980
Well, it is past time in the present.

01:39:56.980 --> 01:39:59.980
But the fractal wave, you see,

01:39:59.980 --> 01:40:01.980
why I don't like the fractal model

01:40:01.980 --> 01:40:03.980
taken to any great extreme

01:40:03.980 --> 01:40:07.980
is because any kind of mathematical modelling,

01:40:07.980 --> 01:40:11.980
given the whole nature of mathematics as it's practised,

01:40:11.980 --> 01:40:14.980
fractal mathematics is conventional paradigm

01:40:14.980 --> 01:40:16.980
in the sense that you create an equation

01:40:16.980 --> 01:40:18.980
and you generate this form.

01:40:18.980 --> 01:40:20.980
The equation itself is not subject,

01:40:20.980 --> 01:40:23.980
the governing equation is not subject to evolution.

01:40:23.980 --> 01:40:26.980
It's generating the same form,

01:40:26.980 --> 01:40:28.980
and it would go on generating the same form

01:40:28.980 --> 01:40:29.980
right into the future.

01:40:29.980 --> 01:40:32.980
In other words, it would be a kind of determinism

01:40:32.980 --> 01:40:35.980
based on a kind of platonical Pythagorean ideal form,

01:40:35.980 --> 01:40:38.980
the fractal equation which generates the fractal.

01:40:38.980 --> 01:40:41.980
And I don't understand evolution as happening like that.

01:40:41.980 --> 01:40:44.980
I don't think it's as deterministic.

01:40:44.980 --> 01:40:48.980
Well, you're right that as they are presently understood

01:40:48.980 --> 01:40:51.980
it would generate, however complicated,

01:40:51.980 --> 01:40:53.980
ultimately a determinism.

01:40:53.980 --> 01:40:56.980
But I wonder if we're just now

01:40:56.980 --> 01:40:59.980
not mathematically sophisticated enough

01:40:59.980 --> 01:41:03.980
to inculcate into the fractal equations

01:41:03.980 --> 01:41:08.980
sufficient randomness within the fractal constraints

01:41:08.980 --> 01:41:12.980
to begin to get the kind of complexity

01:41:12.980 --> 01:41:14.980
that we meet in the real world.

01:41:14.980 --> 01:41:17.980
That would seem to be what is lacking,

01:41:17.980 --> 01:41:22.980
is a random factor that causes the fractal equation

01:41:22.980 --> 01:41:26.980
to skew toward production of ferns

01:41:26.980 --> 01:41:29.980
and then suddenly to switch over to feathers

01:41:29.980 --> 01:41:31.980
and then to river systems

01:41:31.980 --> 01:41:34.980
and then to industrial economies

01:41:34.980 --> 01:41:36.980
or something like that.

01:41:36.980 --> 01:41:40.980
But if it can do all these things,

01:41:40.980 --> 01:41:42.980
it can model all these things,

01:41:42.980 --> 01:41:45.980
but as you say, in a deterministic way.

01:41:45.980 --> 01:41:48.980
But maybe we don't know enough about them yet,

01:41:48.980 --> 01:41:51.980
and that there may be higher dimensional

01:41:51.980 --> 01:41:55.980
or higher order fractals with a degree

01:41:55.980 --> 01:42:01.980
of self-determinacy or autopoiesis built into them.

01:42:01.980 --> 01:42:03.980
I think this must be so because I think

01:42:03.980 --> 01:42:06.980
the world we're living in must be such a world

01:42:06.980 --> 01:42:09.980
and that we are these fractals.

01:42:09.980 --> 01:42:15.980
We are essentially three-dimensional expressions of DNA

01:42:15.980 --> 01:42:17.980
and all the DNA is the same

01:42:17.980 --> 01:42:19.980
and yet each one of us is different

01:42:19.980 --> 01:42:22.980
and yet ten of us are like any other ten

01:42:22.980 --> 01:42:24.980
and yet different.

01:42:24.980 --> 01:42:28.980
We as human beings have the same quality

01:42:28.980 --> 01:42:31.980
and so do our cities and our nation states

01:42:31.980 --> 01:42:33.980
and the continents we inhabit

01:42:33.980 --> 01:42:37.980
and the religious systems that we're inside of.

01:42:37.980 --> 01:42:40.980
So it seems to me the fractal model

01:42:40.980 --> 01:42:43.980
may be the one which holds out the greatest hope

01:42:43.980 --> 01:42:47.980
for a formalizing of the morphogenetic field.

01:42:47.980 --> 01:42:52.980
All other fields are fractals.

01:42:52.980 --> 01:42:54.980
The electromagnetic field,

01:42:54.980 --> 01:42:55.980
the radio wave,

01:42:55.980 --> 01:42:58.980
all of these things are found to have this quality

01:42:58.980 --> 01:43:01.980
and in fact the development of this kind of mathematics

01:43:01.980 --> 01:43:07.980
initially was in an effort to describe the field phenomenon.

01:43:07.980 --> 01:43:10.980
Fourier transforms and that sort of thing.

01:43:10.980 --> 01:43:13.980
So then why not this one?

01:43:13.980 --> 01:43:17.980
And then that vastly narrows down the mathematical domain

01:43:17.980 --> 01:43:21.980
in which you have to search for a formal description

01:43:21.980 --> 01:43:23.980
of the morphogenetic field.

01:43:23.980 --> 01:43:27.980
It would also yield a perfect theory of history

01:43:27.980 --> 01:43:33.940
because that would be part of the morphogenetic field.

01:43:33.940 --> 01:43:36.940
Well I suppose that one of the problems I have

01:43:36.940 --> 01:43:39.940
is that I'm not so fascinated with mathematics.

01:43:39.940 --> 01:43:41.940
I mean I don't think that mathematics,

01:43:41.940 --> 01:43:44.940
most mathematicians think that the maths is more real

01:43:44.940 --> 01:43:46.940
than the thing it models.

01:43:46.940 --> 01:43:48.940
That the equations of the universe

01:43:48.940 --> 01:43:50.940
are more real somehow than the universe.

01:43:50.940 --> 01:43:52.940
They were there before it after all.

01:43:52.940 --> 01:43:53.940
They were its source.

01:43:53.940 --> 01:43:54.940
They were prior to it.

01:43:54.940 --> 01:43:56.940
Both logically and temporally.

01:43:56.940 --> 01:43:57.940
They're the more real thing.

01:43:57.940 --> 01:43:59.940
This is a platonic tradition.

01:43:59.940 --> 01:44:01.940
And this is alive and well.

01:44:01.940 --> 01:44:03.940
I mean its latest greatest exponent

01:44:03.940 --> 01:44:06.940
in the best seller list of the last few months

01:44:06.940 --> 01:44:07.940
is Stephen Hawking

01:44:07.940 --> 01:44:12.940
who as a perfect exponent really of that platonic view

01:44:12.940 --> 01:44:13.940
of the eternal intellect,

01:44:13.940 --> 01:44:15.940
the eternal mathematical mind

01:44:15.940 --> 01:44:18.940
which somehow is over and above the universe.

01:44:18.940 --> 01:44:21.940
The mathematical mind of God in some sense is there before

01:44:21.940 --> 01:44:23.940
and prior to matter or bodies.

01:44:24.940 --> 01:44:28.940
And as one of our British journals put it,

01:44:28.940 --> 01:44:30.940
Stephen Hawking is the closest thing we have

01:44:30.940 --> 01:44:32.940
to a disembodied mind.

01:44:34.940 --> 01:44:38.950
And it's a perfect, you see,

01:44:38.950 --> 01:44:40.950
in a sense there's a perfect,

01:44:40.950 --> 01:44:42.950
I think the reason for his mythic quality

01:44:42.950 --> 01:44:44.950
because he is a mythic figure,

01:44:44.950 --> 01:44:45.950
mythic power,

01:44:45.950 --> 01:44:47.950
is because of that.

01:44:47.950 --> 01:44:50.950
And the vision is totally consistent with it.

01:44:50.950 --> 01:44:54.950
And so I don't really,

01:44:54.950 --> 01:44:57.950
all mathematics tends to have that quality.

01:44:57.950 --> 01:44:59.950
And I would think of the fields

01:44:59.950 --> 01:45:01.950
not as something which to grasp

01:45:01.950 --> 01:45:03.950
we have to model mathematically

01:45:03.950 --> 01:45:05.950
but as something which I think of them

01:45:05.950 --> 01:45:07.950
as much more like living things.

01:45:07.950 --> 01:45:09.950
And our models would be much more

01:45:09.950 --> 01:45:12.950
and more appropriately based on an intuitive sense,

01:45:12.950 --> 01:45:14.950
a living sense of things that we actually learn

01:45:14.950 --> 01:45:17.950
from experience as living things ourselves.

01:45:17.950 --> 01:45:20.950
So the models would be much more communicated

01:45:20.950 --> 01:45:22.950
by seeing how they correspond

01:45:22.950 --> 01:45:24.950
to our actual subjectivity.

01:45:24.950 --> 01:45:25.950
Through our collective experiences,

01:45:25.950 --> 01:45:27.950
the kind of things that we experience.

01:45:27.950 --> 01:45:29.950
So through ordinary language?

01:45:29.950 --> 01:45:30.950
Through ordinary language,

01:45:30.950 --> 01:45:32.950
through the realms of the imagination,

01:45:32.950 --> 01:45:34.950
through our understanding of memory,

01:45:34.950 --> 01:45:35.950
through the mind,

01:45:35.950 --> 01:45:39.950
through the power of hopes, fears, desires, fantasies,

01:45:39.950 --> 01:45:41.950
through the experience of our consciousness

01:45:41.950 --> 01:45:44.950
as the realm of the possible.

01:45:44.950 --> 01:45:47.950
And so these are much the best models.

01:45:47.950 --> 01:45:49.950
And mathematics is a tiny fraction

01:45:49.950 --> 01:45:51.950
of a formalised modelling of the possible

01:45:51.950 --> 01:45:54.950
which is constrained by very particular rules

01:45:54.950 --> 01:45:57.950
and is entirely so far in the whole history

01:45:57.950 --> 01:46:01.950
of the subject under the aegis of the platonic spirit.

01:46:01.950 --> 01:46:06.950
And I just think that to try and pin it all to that

01:46:06.950 --> 01:46:10.950
just seems a limitation that one doesn't need at this stage.

01:46:10.950 --> 01:46:16.520
I mean it may be helpful, it may be interesting.

01:46:16.520 --> 01:46:21.520
My God, I see why they're alarmed now.

01:46:21.520 --> 01:46:39.490
Yes, well I'm sure you're quite right.

01:46:39.490 --> 01:46:45.490
So what you're really calling for is the rebirth of poetry.

01:46:45.490 --> 01:46:48.490
Well, and all kinds of lived experience

01:46:48.490 --> 01:46:50.490
through which we directly relate to the world.

01:46:50.490 --> 01:46:54.490
Because a science which helps us directly to experience nature

01:46:54.490 --> 01:46:56.490
and actually when we walk in the wood

01:46:56.490 --> 01:46:58.490
understand it more deeply

01:46:58.490 --> 01:47:01.490
and more profoundly than we do now.

01:47:01.490 --> 01:47:03.490
Something that tells us something we don't know

01:47:03.490 --> 01:47:06.490
about the quality of woods, trees,

01:47:06.490 --> 01:47:08.490
the nature of the birdsong we hear,

01:47:08.490 --> 01:47:09.490
how they communicate.

01:47:09.490 --> 01:47:12.490
I mean, I think they're just call signs, their songs,

01:47:12.490 --> 01:47:15.490
and the actual message is, as it were, telepathic

01:47:15.490 --> 01:47:17.490
once they've tuned in through the right calls.

01:47:17.490 --> 01:47:20.490
This kind of world we might come to live in

01:47:20.490 --> 01:47:21.490
and actually experience.

01:47:21.490 --> 01:47:24.490
And the mathematical models just wouldn't seem,

01:47:24.490 --> 01:47:27.490
I don't think, terribly interesting or important.

01:47:27.490 --> 01:47:32.490
So this is the connection to the psychedelic experience,

01:47:32.490 --> 01:47:36.490
the felt realm of immediate perception.

01:47:36.490 --> 01:47:38.490
That somehow with the psychedelics

01:47:38.490 --> 01:47:41.490
we're coming into the full spectrum

01:47:41.490 --> 01:47:44.490
of our experiential birthright.

01:47:44.490 --> 01:47:47.490
And you're saying that this theory,

01:47:47.490 --> 01:47:50.490
correctly assimilated,

01:47:50.490 --> 01:47:53.490
brings us also into a full appreciation

01:47:53.490 --> 01:47:56.490
of the felt spectrum of experience

01:47:56.490 --> 01:47:59.490
that is our birthright.

01:47:59.490 --> 01:48:02.490
It makes us realize that we're living in a magical world

01:48:02.490 --> 01:48:04.490
in which there are unseen connections

01:48:04.490 --> 01:48:07.490
to the power of thought and imagination and dream

01:48:07.490 --> 01:48:09.490
actually has a reality.

01:48:09.490 --> 01:48:11.490
And our ancestors lived in such a world.

01:48:11.490 --> 01:48:15.490
And the whole medieval and animistic world

01:48:15.490 --> 01:48:17.490
and the worlds before that.

01:48:17.490 --> 01:48:20.490
And most people in the whole world

01:48:20.490 --> 01:48:22.490
have lived in such a world.

01:48:22.490 --> 01:48:24.490
A world in which these things are possible.

01:48:24.490 --> 01:48:26.490
It's only since the 17th century

01:48:26.490 --> 01:48:29.490
that our civilizations stripped the world of its magic.

01:48:29.490 --> 01:48:31.490
And it stripped the world of its magic

01:48:31.490 --> 01:48:33.490
by turning it into a machine.

01:48:33.490 --> 01:48:35.490
And if it becomes a living organism again,

01:48:35.490 --> 01:48:37.490
alive once again as I think it's becoming,

01:48:37.490 --> 01:48:40.490
then it's a living thing

01:48:40.490 --> 01:48:42.490
and we have to relate to it as living things.

01:48:42.490 --> 01:48:44.490
And the disembodied mind approach

01:48:44.490 --> 01:48:47.490
of totally abstract mathematics,

01:48:47.490 --> 01:48:49.490
seeing the universe as if from without,

01:48:49.490 --> 01:48:51.490
the whole point of the mechanistic picture

01:48:51.490 --> 01:48:53.490
is that you withdraw yourself from the world.

01:48:53.490 --> 01:48:55.490
You see the world as a spinning ball

01:48:55.490 --> 01:48:57.490
as we now finally through the space mission

01:48:57.490 --> 01:48:58.490
come to see the world.

01:48:58.490 --> 01:49:01.490
It's a total confirmation of the initial leap

01:49:01.490 --> 01:49:03.490
of the mechanism of Copernicus.

01:49:03.490 --> 01:49:06.490
It's a proof of the Copernican theory

01:49:06.490 --> 01:49:08.490
in the most dramatic form.

01:49:08.490 --> 01:49:10.490
Because it was to step off the earth,

01:49:10.490 --> 01:49:12.490
which everyone else had taken the earth as the center

01:49:12.490 --> 01:49:13.490
from which to model things.

01:49:13.490 --> 01:49:16.490
Because it's the center from which we experience them.

01:49:16.490 --> 01:49:18.490
And it's true to our experience.

01:49:18.490 --> 01:49:21.490
Saying that's not the center at all.

01:49:21.490 --> 01:49:24.490
And Kepler in 1609 wrote this early work of science fiction.

01:49:24.490 --> 01:49:26.490
The Dream.

01:49:26.490 --> 01:49:28.490
When he imagined himself being in a transport,

01:49:28.490 --> 01:49:29.490
a visionary state,

01:49:29.490 --> 01:49:31.490
transported to the moon.

01:49:31.490 --> 01:49:32.490
On the moon,

01:49:32.490 --> 01:49:34.490
encountering strange creatures

01:49:34.490 --> 01:49:35.490
that lived underground

01:49:35.490 --> 01:49:37.490
and crawled out from under rocks.

01:49:37.490 --> 01:49:39.490
And looking back at the earth

01:49:39.490 --> 01:49:41.490
and seeing the earth spinning on its axis,

01:49:41.490 --> 01:49:43.490
just as astronauts and our cameras

01:49:43.490 --> 01:49:45.490
see it from the moon.

01:49:45.490 --> 01:49:47.490
And using this in his book,

01:49:47.490 --> 01:49:48.490
The Somnium,

01:49:48.490 --> 01:49:50.490
to persuade people by this thought experiment

01:49:50.490 --> 01:49:52.490
to see that the earth could be moving

01:49:52.490 --> 01:49:54.490
even though they themselves experienced

01:49:54.490 --> 01:49:56.490
the heavens to be moving.

01:49:56.490 --> 01:49:57.490
And this is the thought experiment

01:49:57.490 --> 01:49:59.490
that takes our minds off the earth

01:49:59.490 --> 01:50:00.490
and puts them out in space.

01:50:00.490 --> 01:50:02.490
And then, through Newtonian space,

01:50:02.490 --> 01:50:04.490
takes them outside the entire universe

01:50:04.490 --> 01:50:06.490
until they occupy the same vantage point

01:50:06.490 --> 01:50:09.490
as the imagined god of the mechanistic world machine.

01:50:09.490 --> 01:50:11.490
Somehow external to the mechanism.

01:50:11.490 --> 01:50:13.490
And this is the world in which Laplace

01:50:13.490 --> 01:50:15.490
and his followers thought

01:50:15.490 --> 01:50:17.490
that their minds were actually dwelling.

01:50:17.490 --> 01:50:21.490
Through experiencing these eternal mathematical truths.

01:50:21.490 --> 01:50:24.490
Learning them in physics textbooks.

01:50:24.490 --> 01:50:25.490
And there they were,

01:50:25.490 --> 01:50:26.490
the eternal truths of the universe,

01:50:26.490 --> 01:50:27.490
as known by God,

01:50:27.490 --> 01:50:29.490
if such a god existed.

01:50:29.490 --> 01:50:31.490
And so the human mind was totally abstracted

01:50:31.490 --> 01:50:32.490
from the whole universe,

01:50:32.490 --> 01:50:34.490
leaving the body and the feelings behind

01:50:34.490 --> 01:50:36.490
in some other kind of realm,

01:50:36.490 --> 01:50:37.490
the realm of everyday life,

01:50:37.490 --> 01:50:40.490
poetry, imagination, religion, etc.

01:50:40.490 --> 01:50:42.490
But the intellectual understanding

01:50:42.490 --> 01:50:43.490
of the whole universe,

01:50:43.490 --> 01:50:45.490
which was finally applied

01:50:45.490 --> 01:50:46.490
to the whole of this earth,

01:50:46.490 --> 01:50:47.490
to the whole of life,

01:50:47.490 --> 01:50:48.490
to the whole of the human body,

01:50:48.490 --> 01:50:50.490
and finally to the whole of the human brain,

01:50:50.490 --> 01:50:52.490
purporting to explain everything

01:50:52.490 --> 01:50:54.490
in terms of this abstracted intellectual

01:50:54.490 --> 01:50:57.490
vision rooted in eternity.

01:50:57.490 --> 01:50:58.490
As the mind of the scientist

01:50:58.490 --> 01:51:00.490
somehow outside the universe observing it.

01:51:00.490 --> 01:51:02.490
This has been collapsing.

01:51:02.490 --> 01:51:04.490
I mean, the observer in quantum theory,

01:51:04.490 --> 01:51:07.490
the unworkability of that view,

01:51:07.490 --> 01:51:09.490
and now the collapse of any justification

01:51:09.490 --> 01:51:11.490
for eternal laws.

01:51:11.490 --> 01:51:15.490
And so I think that we don't really

01:51:15.490 --> 01:51:16.490
have to stay in that,

01:51:16.490 --> 01:51:18.490
we have to change our whole way

01:51:18.490 --> 01:51:20.490
of experiencing it, yes.

01:51:20.490 --> 01:51:23.490
And it is an archaic return.

01:51:23.490 --> 01:51:26.490
It is a brief intellectual detour

01:51:26.490 --> 01:51:28.490
since the 17th century,

01:51:28.490 --> 01:51:30.490
as you point out.

01:51:30.490 --> 01:51:32.490
Terence is interested in time flows,

01:51:32.490 --> 01:51:34.490
and I'm interested in the habits.

01:51:34.490 --> 01:51:36.490
But I think they're complementary

01:51:36.490 --> 01:51:38.490
because you're never going to understand

01:51:38.490 --> 01:51:40.490
the quality of time flow

01:51:40.490 --> 01:51:42.490
if you haven't already understood

01:51:42.490 --> 01:51:44.490
the power and nature of habit.

01:51:44.490 --> 01:51:46.490
Because there's no doubt whatever

01:51:46.490 --> 01:51:47.490
that a great deal of the time flow

01:51:47.490 --> 01:51:48.490
that's happening,

01:51:48.490 --> 01:51:50.490
in spite of all the fluctuations,

01:51:50.490 --> 01:51:51.490
involves the persistence

01:51:51.490 --> 01:51:52.490
of a vast number of habits,

01:51:52.490 --> 01:51:54.490
which is why we're all here tonight.

01:51:54.490 --> 01:51:55.490
If these habits,

01:51:55.490 --> 01:51:57.490
the major ones by which we live

01:51:57.490 --> 01:51:58.490
from day to day,

01:51:58.490 --> 01:51:59.490
our bodies work,

01:51:59.490 --> 01:52:00.490
our language works,

01:52:00.490 --> 01:52:01.490
our social conventions work,

01:52:01.490 --> 01:52:03.490
and so on.

01:52:03.490 --> 01:52:06.490
If these habits were severely disrupted,

01:52:06.490 --> 01:52:09.490
it would be virtually impossible

01:52:09.490 --> 01:52:11.490
even to sit here and talk about it.

01:52:11.490 --> 01:52:12.490
We're here because there's

01:52:12.490 --> 01:52:13.490
a vast ability of habit.

01:52:13.490 --> 01:52:16.490
And so I think that one has to understand

01:52:16.490 --> 01:52:18.490
the habits as well as the,

01:52:18.490 --> 01:52:19.490
they're two sides of the same coin

01:52:19.490 --> 01:52:20.490
in a sense.

01:52:20.490 --> 01:52:22.490
The time flows,

01:52:22.490 --> 01:52:24.490
the time flow and its quality,

01:52:24.490 --> 01:52:26.490
what affects or,

01:52:26.490 --> 01:52:28.490
it's the other side of the coin of habit

01:52:28.490 --> 01:52:30.490
and the understanding goes together I think.

01:52:30.490 --> 01:52:31.490
But I would think,

01:52:31.490 --> 01:52:34.490
see the primary task as I see it,

01:52:34.490 --> 01:52:35.490
for me at any rate,

01:52:35.490 --> 01:52:36.490
is to try and establish

01:52:36.490 --> 01:52:38.490
the nature of these habits.

01:52:38.490 --> 01:52:40.490
Once we understand the nature of habits better,

01:52:40.490 --> 01:52:42.490
I think it would be easier to set up,

01:52:42.490 --> 01:52:45.490
if one wanted to study the nature of time flow,

01:52:45.490 --> 01:52:46.490
around,

01:52:46.490 --> 01:52:47.490
one would, I suppose,

01:52:47.490 --> 01:52:49.490
look for correlated events around the world,

01:52:49.490 --> 01:52:51.490
seeing whether certain patterns of events

01:52:51.490 --> 01:52:54.490
tended to happen around the world.

01:52:54.490 --> 01:52:56.490
What Jung would call synchronicities,

01:52:56.490 --> 01:52:58.490
which he thought of as manifesting

01:52:58.490 --> 01:53:00.490
some kind of underlying pattern

01:53:00.490 --> 01:53:02.490
in the flow of time.

01:53:02.490 --> 01:53:03.490
And so one,

01:53:03.490 --> 01:53:06.490
the study of synchronicities already exists,

01:53:06.490 --> 01:53:07.490
of course, Jung initiated it,

01:53:07.490 --> 01:53:08.490
or even before him,

01:53:08.490 --> 01:53:10.490
Kammerer and others.

01:53:10.490 --> 01:53:13.490
So that's one way of looking at time flow,

01:53:13.490 --> 01:53:15.490
because synchronicities suggest

01:53:15.490 --> 01:53:17.490
there's something behind the scenes

01:53:17.490 --> 01:53:19.490
of what appear to be

01:53:19.490 --> 01:53:20.490
new events,

01:53:20.490 --> 01:53:22.490
in different places.

01:53:22.490 --> 01:53:23.490
So,

01:53:23.490 --> 01:53:25.490
no, these are complementary approaches,

01:53:25.490 --> 01:53:27.490
it's not one or the other.

01:53:27.490 --> 01:53:30.490
And I think both the study of synchronicities

01:53:30.490 --> 01:53:31.490
and the quantity of time

01:53:31.490 --> 01:53:32.490
might help to explain

01:53:32.490 --> 01:53:35.490
a lot of anomalies in scientific experiments.

01:53:35.490 --> 01:53:37.490
Very few scientific experiments

01:53:37.490 --> 01:53:38.490
are repeatable, in fact.

01:53:38.490 --> 01:53:42.490
And they're repeatable only approximately.

01:53:42.490 --> 01:53:44.490
I've spent years teaching practical classes

01:53:44.490 --> 01:53:47.490
in Cambridge and other universities,

01:53:47.490 --> 01:53:49.490
Harvard,

01:53:49.490 --> 01:53:50.490
teaching practical classes

01:53:50.490 --> 01:53:53.490
to undergraduates in biochemistry.

01:53:53.490 --> 01:53:55.490
It's an enlightening experience,

01:53:55.490 --> 01:53:58.490
because they're only given experiments to do,

01:53:58.490 --> 01:54:00.490
which are textbook experiments.

01:54:00.490 --> 01:54:02.490
Everybody already knows work.

01:54:02.490 --> 01:54:04.490
I mean, you wouldn't give students something

01:54:04.490 --> 01:54:06.490
that's not going to work.

01:54:06.490 --> 01:54:08.490
So you give them the most certain,

01:54:08.490 --> 01:54:11.490
established and repetitive and repeatable

01:54:11.490 --> 01:54:13.490
of all the systems you can think of.

01:54:13.490 --> 01:54:15.490
You don't want them right up at the research frontiers

01:54:15.490 --> 01:54:17.490
where results fluctuate wildly

01:54:17.490 --> 01:54:19.490
and no one knows really what's going on,

01:54:19.490 --> 01:54:20.490
until it's sort of stabilized,

01:54:20.490 --> 01:54:21.490
been published,

01:54:21.490 --> 01:54:24.490
and become a kind of habit of thought and expectation.

01:54:24.490 --> 01:54:26.490
You give them things that are already believed

01:54:26.490 --> 01:54:27.490
by everyone to work.

01:54:27.490 --> 01:54:29.490
And the results you get are astounding.

01:54:29.490 --> 01:54:31.490
They're all over the place.

01:54:31.490 --> 01:54:34.490
I mean, even competent undergraduates are...

01:54:36.490 --> 01:54:39.490
The results are extremely variable.

01:54:39.490 --> 01:54:41.490
For any biological experiment I've ever had,

01:54:41.490 --> 01:54:44.490
in hundreds of ones I've conducted in lab classes,

01:54:44.490 --> 01:54:46.490
they're given the same apparatus,

01:54:46.490 --> 01:54:47.490
the same pipettes,

01:54:47.490 --> 01:54:48.490
the same solutions,

01:54:48.490 --> 01:54:49.490
the same...

01:54:49.490 --> 01:54:51.490
You know, lab technicians put these things out

01:54:51.490 --> 01:54:53.490
by the dozen in first year and second year

01:54:53.490 --> 01:54:55.490
undergraduate practical laboratories.

01:54:55.490 --> 01:54:57.490
The results are all over the place.

01:54:57.490 --> 01:55:00.490
Well, even in third year undergraduate things

01:55:00.490 --> 01:55:01.490
and graduate studies,

01:55:01.490 --> 01:55:03.490
the results keep coming out all over the place.

01:55:03.490 --> 01:55:05.490
And you explain away the ones that don't work.

01:55:05.490 --> 01:55:07.490
Either they didn't know the technique,

01:55:07.490 --> 01:55:08.490
they put the wrong solution in,

01:55:08.490 --> 01:55:09.490
they must have done this,

01:55:09.490 --> 01:55:10.490
you must have done that,

01:55:10.490 --> 01:55:12.490
you must have done the other.

01:55:12.490 --> 01:55:14.490
You can find a hundred ways to explain

01:55:14.490 --> 01:55:15.490
why this actually happens.

01:55:15.490 --> 01:55:17.490
The only actual examples we have

01:55:17.490 --> 01:55:20.490
where people try to repeat experiments

01:55:20.490 --> 01:55:21.490
on a mass scale

01:55:21.490 --> 01:55:23.490
turn out to be highly unrepeatable.

01:55:23.490 --> 01:55:26.490
And most scientists don't spend their time

01:55:26.490 --> 01:55:28.490
repeating standard experiments

01:55:28.490 --> 01:55:30.490
and measuring whether they fluctuate or not.

01:55:30.490 --> 01:55:32.490
They're always getting on to the next thing.

01:55:32.490 --> 01:55:34.490
And so this idea has never been tested.

01:55:34.490 --> 01:55:37.490
And I think if it is tested,

01:55:37.490 --> 01:55:39.490
we'd find synchronized,

01:55:39.490 --> 01:55:41.490
perhaps synchronized fluctuations

01:55:41.490 --> 01:55:42.490
in the way experiments work

01:55:42.490 --> 01:55:43.490
in labs around the world.

01:55:43.490 --> 01:55:45.490
People have lab notebooks kept separately.

01:55:45.490 --> 01:55:46.490
The date...

01:55:46.490 --> 01:55:48.490
The way of presenting the experiments,

01:55:48.490 --> 01:55:50.490
you never mention the date you did it.

01:55:50.490 --> 01:55:52.490
It's assumed that time flows uniformly.

01:55:52.490 --> 01:55:55.490
You say figure one shows the effect

01:55:55.490 --> 01:55:58.490
of magnesium ions on the activity

01:55:58.490 --> 01:56:00.490
of phosphofructokinase.

01:56:00.490 --> 01:56:02.490
And you have sort of enzyme activity,

01:56:02.490 --> 01:56:04.490
magnesium ion concentration.

01:56:04.490 --> 01:56:05.490
There's this graph.

01:56:05.490 --> 01:56:07.490
It's treated as if it's an eternal truth.

01:56:07.490 --> 01:56:09.490
And yet any biochemical experiment you do,

01:56:09.490 --> 01:56:11.490
they're always different.

01:56:11.490 --> 01:56:12.490
I've done hundreds in my time.

01:56:12.490 --> 01:56:14.490
You publish one of them that gives

01:56:14.490 --> 01:56:15.490
a sort of plausible if it's the date,

01:56:15.490 --> 01:56:17.490
and you say representative results

01:56:17.490 --> 01:56:19.490
are shown in figure one.

01:56:19.490 --> 01:56:22.490
And no two experiments give exactly the same results

01:56:22.490 --> 01:56:25.490
in any real interesting scientific system

01:56:25.490 --> 01:56:28.490
such as those looked at by biochemists and so on.

01:56:28.490 --> 01:56:32.490
And so I think actually there's vast amounts of data.

01:56:32.490 --> 01:56:34.490
If scientists dated their results,

01:56:34.490 --> 01:56:35.490
for example,

01:56:35.490 --> 01:56:36.490
this would be an elementary move

01:56:36.490 --> 01:56:38.490
towards recognizing the quality of time.

01:56:38.490 --> 01:56:40.490
Nifflin found that sort of all sorts

01:56:40.490 --> 01:56:42.490
of particular kinds of results were dated there.

01:56:42.490 --> 01:56:44.490
And if scientists all around the world

01:56:44.490 --> 01:56:45.490
found that, say,

01:56:45.490 --> 01:56:47.490
on the 12th of September experiments

01:56:47.490 --> 01:56:48.490
weren't working very well,

01:56:48.490 --> 01:56:50.490
but they all tended to work on the 15th,

01:56:50.490 --> 01:56:53.490
this would be very interesting information.

01:56:53.490 --> 01:56:55.490
Everyone agrees that sunspots,

01:56:55.490 --> 01:56:56.490
for example,

01:56:56.490 --> 01:56:57.490
the 11-year cycle,

01:56:57.490 --> 01:56:58.490
affects climatic patterns

01:56:58.490 --> 01:57:00.490
and growth rings in trees.

01:57:00.490 --> 01:57:02.490
You can measure it way back.

01:57:02.490 --> 01:57:04.490
And this is standard science now.

01:57:04.490 --> 01:57:07.490
And cosmic ray fluctuations.

01:57:07.490 --> 01:57:09.490
Every year the Earth passes through meteorite clouds.

01:57:09.490 --> 01:57:12.490
There are all sorts of things that are known to be...

01:57:12.490 --> 01:57:14.490
And cosmic rays affect meteorites.

01:57:14.490 --> 01:57:15.490
They have different mutation rates

01:57:15.490 --> 01:57:16.490
and they're different.

01:57:16.490 --> 01:57:17.490
And if you do experiments

01:57:17.490 --> 01:57:19.490
where people have tried to do...

01:57:19.490 --> 01:57:21.490
Some of the Rudolf Steiner people

01:57:21.490 --> 01:57:23.490
did experiments where they crystallized

01:57:23.490 --> 01:57:24.490
standard solutions,

01:57:24.490 --> 01:57:26.490
they crystallized them on different days,

01:57:26.490 --> 01:57:27.490
the same conditions,

01:57:27.490 --> 01:57:28.490
and yet the patterns,

01:57:28.490 --> 01:57:30.490
the dendritic patterns of crystal growth,

01:57:30.490 --> 01:57:32.490
differ from day to day,

01:57:32.490 --> 01:57:34.490
indicating a kind of quality of time.

01:57:34.490 --> 01:57:36.490
Now, no normal science would do that, you see,

01:57:36.490 --> 01:57:39.490
because it's assumed that any day is as good as any other.

01:57:39.490 --> 01:57:40.490
So there's...

01:57:40.490 --> 01:57:41.490
Although in lab notebooks,

01:57:41.490 --> 01:57:42.490
if you went to the...

01:57:42.490 --> 01:57:43.490
The data's all there.

01:57:43.490 --> 01:57:44.490
There's tens of thousands,

01:57:44.490 --> 01:57:47.490
hundreds of thousands of lab notebooks in the world today.

01:57:47.490 --> 01:57:50.490
And scientists do date their experiments in their notebooks.

01:57:50.490 --> 01:57:53.490
You keep a daily register of experiments all dated.

01:57:53.490 --> 01:57:56.490
Just an examination of lab notebooks would be quite revealing,

01:57:56.490 --> 01:57:58.490
and it wouldn't even involve new experiments.

01:57:58.490 --> 01:58:00.490
But as soon as they write out the paper,

01:58:00.490 --> 01:58:02.490
it's taken out of its temporal context

01:58:02.490 --> 01:58:05.490
and put into this kind of seemingly timeless context

01:58:05.490 --> 01:58:07.490
of eternal truth.

01:58:07.490 --> 01:58:10.490
Well, this is because science cannot operate

01:58:10.490 --> 01:58:13.490
without this notion

01:58:13.490 --> 01:58:16.490
of the restoration of initial conditions,

01:58:16.490 --> 01:58:20.490
and yet this is a highly unexamined notion.

01:58:20.490 --> 01:58:24.490
And as all these anecdotal incidents indicate,

01:58:24.490 --> 01:58:28.490
there is no restoration of initial conditions.

01:58:28.490 --> 01:58:32.490
All of science is being practiced on an unexamined

01:58:32.490 --> 01:58:36.490
and apparently false assumption.

01:58:36.490 --> 01:58:41.490
So a more honest definition

01:58:41.490 --> 01:58:43.490
of what science is

01:58:43.490 --> 01:58:48.490
is science is the art of studying those phenomena

01:58:48.490 --> 01:58:54.490
so crude that they can have an apparent restoration

01:58:54.490 --> 01:58:56.490
of initial conditions.

01:58:56.490 --> 01:58:59.490
But that leaves out all investment schemes,

01:58:59.490 --> 01:59:03.490
love affairs, dynastic families,

01:59:03.490 --> 01:59:09.490
military campaigns, and what have you.

01:59:09.490 --> 01:59:12.490
None of those can have their initial conditions restored.

01:59:12.490 --> 01:59:15.490
And those are the things that are really important to us.

01:59:15.490 --> 01:59:18.490
So it then is correctly seen to be

01:59:18.490 --> 01:59:23.490
a very limited way of doing intellectual business,

01:59:23.490 --> 01:59:28.490
having a very narrow spectrum of applications.

01:59:28.490 --> 01:59:31.490
One way, I think, of thinking about the difference

01:59:31.490 --> 01:59:35.490
between ordinary science and what Rupert is trying to do

01:59:35.490 --> 01:59:43.310
is to think of science as that enterprise

01:59:43.310 --> 01:59:48.310
of human thought which attempts to state what is possible.

01:59:48.310 --> 01:59:51.310
What is possible.

01:59:51.310 --> 01:59:55.310
But out of the very large class of the possible,

01:59:55.310 --> 01:59:58.310
certain things are going to have to be selected

01:59:58.310 --> 02:00:01.310
to actually happen,

02:00:01.310 --> 02:00:03.310
to undergo what Whitehead calls

02:00:03.310 --> 02:00:07.310
the formality of actually occurring.

02:00:07.310 --> 02:00:11.310
And an idea like Rupert's is a way of saying,

02:00:11.310 --> 02:00:13.310
well, here it's the past.

02:00:13.310 --> 02:00:18.310
The past is the factor which selects against the class

02:00:18.310 --> 02:00:23.310
of the possible to narrow it into this much narrower class,

02:00:23.310 --> 02:00:26.310
the class of those things which have actually occurred.

02:00:26.310 --> 02:00:31.310
Science never talks about how the class of the possible

02:00:31.310 --> 02:00:35.310
is narrowed into the class of the actually occurring.

02:00:35.310 --> 02:00:37.310
And yet this is obviously a big question.

02:00:37.310 --> 02:00:39.310
We don't want to know what's possible.

02:00:39.310 --> 02:00:41.310
We want to know what's going to happen.

02:00:41.310 --> 02:00:44.310
We don't want to know what might have happened.

02:00:44.310 --> 02:00:46.310
We want to know what happened.

02:00:46.310 --> 02:00:49.310
And so new ways of thinking about causality,

02:00:49.310 --> 02:00:51.310
new ways of thinking about time,

02:00:51.310 --> 02:00:56.310
new ways of thinking about the way influence,

02:00:56.310 --> 02:00:59.310
the influence of form is mitigated

02:00:59.310 --> 02:01:02.310
into the world of three-dimensional space.

02:01:02.310 --> 02:01:05.310
Does it come from the past?

02:01:05.310 --> 02:01:09.310
Does it come from some kind of platonic never-never land

02:01:09.310 --> 02:01:11.310
that is a hyper-dimension

02:01:11.310 --> 02:01:15.310
that surrounds apparent space and time?

02:01:15.310 --> 02:01:17.310
Does it come from the future?

02:01:17.310 --> 02:01:19.310
Is it like a dynamic attractor?

02:01:19.310 --> 02:01:22.310
Is it a huge flickering shadow

02:01:22.310 --> 02:01:25.310
across a lower-dimensional landscape

02:01:25.310 --> 02:01:28.310
that is somehow gathered into itself?

02:01:28.310 --> 02:01:32.310
These are the kinds of questions that have to be asked

02:01:32.310 --> 02:01:36.310
to create a new model of time

02:01:36.310 --> 02:01:40.310
that is empowering

02:01:40.310 --> 02:01:44.310
of the felt presence of immediate experience.

02:01:44.310 --> 02:01:47.310
That is the new ground zero

02:01:47.310 --> 02:01:51.310
of any kind of humane science.

02:01:51.310 --> 02:01:54.310
The felt presence of the immediate experience

02:01:54.310 --> 02:01:58.310
of the individual has to be the primary datum

02:01:58.310 --> 02:02:00.310
of a new science.

02:02:00.310 --> 02:02:03.310
Otherwise it isn't going to be a new science.

02:02:03.310 --> 02:02:06.310
It's just going to be a retread

02:02:06.310 --> 02:02:09.310
on the old science.

02:02:09.310 --> 02:02:12.310
Well, it's well after 11 o'clock.

02:02:12.310 --> 02:02:15.310
Maybe we should pack it in.

02:02:15.310 --> 02:02:17.310
Thank you very much.