Skreeworld - The New Paradigm

Skreeworld - The New Paradigm
Our understanding of the nature of reality is at a point of crisis. The three dethronements of Man have left us liberated yet utterly confused. The birth of the modern post religious mind began with the rejection of the heliocentric universe. Copernicus' suggestions and galileos confirmation revealed the universe is not a divine gift for us. The earth is not central but a minor planet in a typically common Galaxy in an unexceptional corner of the universe. It is mind blowing to contemplate the intellectual bravery men and women must have undergone during this first and most fundamental of shifts in perspective. The second dethronements of Man came from Darwins articulation of the ideas developing over the previous century, the realisation that we are an animal, subject to the same laws and patterns of all others. Reason had killed God but left us feeling somewhat less important. Thirdly, following Freud, Kant and Descartes it became obvious everything we knew must by our very nature be assumptions from a relative perspective of the consciousness, steered by the greater unconscious, of a highly developed ape. Nothing we can perceive can ever be more than shadows. Neuroscience finally nailed any notion of our potential to witness objectively. We would always be restricted to subjective experiences, the world obscured by our animal limitations. Party only to shadows and stories. This dialectic, the liberation and empowerment of reason and freedom from superior beings had ushered in the steady deconstruction of any notion of our capacity to uncover fixed truths. The security delivered by early science had evolved into a collection of contradictory and incompatible systems of measurement of reality. By the turn of the millennium through Freud and Darwin God had been revealed as an infantile projection, but the conscious human ego itself with its prize virtue the human reason - mans last bastion separating him from nature - was now dethroned , it too recognised as nothing more exalted than a recent and precarious development of out of the primordial id. Descartes 'cogito er sum', I think therefore I am, marked the start of the age of reason and in many ways, through a steady progression of scientific experiments we have realised that it is all we may ever know. The fact that we are conscious is all we can know. All else is guess work.
The development of the collective western understanding of reality has followed the same pattern of progress as science since its emergence as our primary system of belief. Scientific progress is characterised by the establishment of a model employing specific assumptions. From here an evolutionary process of progress takes place where the system is adjusted and corrected as fresh information re shapes and sculpts a theory to greater refinement. Ultimately the model will be unable to contain all new discoveries. At this point the old model is dismissed and displaced by a fresh paradigm. A new model built on a new set of foundations. A fresh model on fresh legs of assumption. Science can never produce knowledge that is certain. We make guesses about the structure of the universe. We can not approach the world without these conjectures as every observed fact presupposes an interpretative focus. These conjectures must be systematically tested yet however thoroughly scrutinised they can never be more than imperfectly corroborated conjecture. At any time a new test could prove the conjecture false. No scientific fact is immune. Even the basic facts are relative and open to reinterpretation in a new framework. We can never know the true essence of anything.
Science typically proceeds by confirmation of the prevailing paradigm. The typical process gathers facts in the light of existing data, performing of experiments on the paradigms basis, extending its range of applicability and attempting to clarify residual problems. Rather than subjecting the paradigm to constant testing science routinely avoids contradicting it by reinterpreting or rejecting conflicting data in ways to support the existing paradigm. Science unconsciously self validates the existing paradigm. The paradigm acts as a lens through which all observations are filtered.
Following the gradual accumulation of conflicting data a paradigm crumbles before we leap to a fresh paradigm though this leap is far from rational. The established customs of the scientific community, aesthetic, sociological, political factors, contemporary root metaphors, popular analogies, the dying of conservative scientists all contribute more powerful draws than impartial tests and arguments to establishing the conjectures or guesses that form the foundations of any new paradigm.
Rival paradigms are rarely genuinely compatible as each is based on differing data and differing modes of interpretation. Quantum mechanics, classic Newtonian physics and the concepts based on Einsteins relativity principles all operate in sealed bubbles. There is no agreed common measure leaving scientists working in different fields living, effectively in different worlds. Thus the history of science is not one of rational linear progress moving towards ever more accurate and complete knowledge of an objective truth, but one of radical shifts of vision in which a multitude of none rational and nonempirical factors play a crucial role.
The modern mind or collective consciousness has through the promotion of science and reason delivered a universe that is both liberated and incoherent. The triple dethronement of man has left us lost. The confusion or combined pressures of innumerable illuminations that aren't commensurate with current perspective suggests we are at the point of a vast paradigm shift. What is certain is whatever the new paradigm proves to look like, someone now will be advancing its basic form now. It is also certain they will be ridiculed as a fool. We can barely imagine the bravery of those men and women who were brave enough to embrace the new paradigms or the perspectives delivered by the previous dethronements.
Here it might be pertinent to explain that the use of the names of individuals subscribes to what I believe is a false perspective as to the nature of human development in all fields. Cultures go through periods of innovation and oppositional conservative periods. The shifts in the communal consciousness are seldom, if ever the result of a single heroic individual. In short hand we use Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin and Freud to describe these shifts but the concept of the isolated genius bares little truth. As in material culture where the concept of rare genius is bolstered by the patenting system, academic competition and personal ego create a false perception of the nature of philosophical perspective and shifts in the paradigm. Often parallel evolution of thought sees the same ideas occurring in different parts of the world. Charles Darwin 'Origin of Species' was rushed to publication to beat competitors to the line as other thinkers of the era stretching back further than his grandfather had advanced similar ideas. Laughable court cases over creativity take place over a few notes in a song or marginal differences in a chairs design. Such is the false perception of the individual genius. In reality all innovations have lesser known precursors. It is often said 'James Watt invented the steam engine in 1769', supposedly having been inspired by watching steam from a kettle. Watt actually got the idea whilst repairing a model of Thomas Newcomens steam engine which Newcomen invented 57 years earlier. Newcomens steam engine was inspired by Thomas Savery Steam engine patented in 1698 that followed the Denis Papins designed but never built steam engine of 1680 which in turn had precursors in the ideas of Christian Hurgens and others. In the same way we may attribute changes in conceptual consciousness to Darwin, Kant or Galileo when the changes in truth develop within in interactive communicative sharing and developing of ideas. With the advent of the Internet and the potential for any individual to have all existing information at hand alongside discussion by often anonymous voices, it seems the concept of the heroic genius increasingly looks a romantic view. Still, in the aim of brevity I will use individual names to communicate the conceptual shift they are attributed with.
The cosmological estrangement of modern consciousness initiated by Copernicus and the ontological estrangement initiated by Descartes were completed by the epistemological estrangement initiated by Kant: a three fold mutually enforced prison of modern alienation.
From this chaotic position of philosophical confusion we are met by the unforeseen destruction of the environment through the technologies developed through scientific advancement. The triple dethronement of Man has run parallel to our devastation of the environment.


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