|
A
Scientific Paradigm for the 21.st Century
Ervin Laszlo: ‘Science and the Akashic Field – An Integral Theory of
Everything’, Inner Traditions, Rochester,
Vermont 2004, ISBN 1-59477-042-5
Who may today unify our
scientific knowledge into a unifying theory, ‘an integral theory of
everything’? Science is compartmentalised as never before. Today, for
example, there are 30 different kinds of biology. The amount of
scientific knowledge is enormous and the criteria for what is considered
proper science are almost excluding such a task. And yet, we human
beings cannot escape asking the great questions about what reality
really is, and what is our place in it. And perhaps, these questions are
especially urgent today when it is getting ever more obvious that
humanity is facing a truly existential crisis.
Ervin Laszlo has
exceptional qualifications for such a task. In an autobiographical extra
chapter in his book he gives a summary of his 40 years search for “the
integral theory of everything”. From his youth he was a concerto pianist
touring the world around. At the same time he had an enduring interest
to find answers to the fundamental questions “What is the nature of the
world?” and “What is the meaning of my life in the world?”. And because
only science had methods that could provide certain knowledge, he
started methodically to look for answers to these questions through the
study of the sciences.
In the beginning
this was a side activity during air travel, in hotel rooms and whenever
he had the opportunity. But accidentally a scientific editor in Holland
got to read his notes, and decided that he wanted to publish them. This
happened in 1963 with the title ‘Essential Society: An Ontological
Reconstruction’. From that time on Laszlo’s search for the knowledge of
reality we can gain from science became a full time engagement to say
the least. It resulted in more books and invitations to preside in
educational projects at leading universities. And, even more important,
this brought him into contact and cooperation with leading and
pioneering scientists in our time, like Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the
creator of systems theory, and Ilya Prigogine, the creator of the theory
of dissipative structures. Laszlo himself became one of the foremost
contributors and scientific authorities on systems theory. In this
capacity he was invited to guide seminars at Princeton University in a
comprehensive project to apply system theory to international
development. This resulted in the book ‘A Strategy for the Future: The
Systems approach’ in 1974.
In this way Laszlo got into a central
position in the work to develop scientific strategies to solve the
problems humanity is facing. In this connection he became one of the
leading initiators both to the Club of Rome and the Club of Budapest
which followed. It is a sad part of history for all of us that the
leading politicians did not listen more and follow better up the advice
our leading scientists were able to offer. As contributions to the Club
of Budapest Laszlo wrote ‘Third Millenium: The Challenge and the Vision’
(1997) and ‘You Can Change the World: The Global Citizen’s Handbook for
Living on Planet Earth’ (2003)
Through this strong international
engagement and in the years which followed Laszlo continued his studies
to keep abreast of new scientific developments. He was welcome at the
foremost universities and he engaged himself in dialogue with leading
scientists in all central research fields. In an additional chapter of
‘Science and the Akashic Field’ he renders prefaces to his books written
by several prominent scientists in different fields. Among many other
famous names here we also find our own Arne Næss. von Bertalanffy
summarises the project of Laszlo in clear words: “As he (Laszlo) argues
convincingly, contemporary ‘analytic’ philosophy is in danger of
‘analyzing itself out of existence’ ….What we need, says Laszlo, is
rather a ‘synthetic’ philosophy, that is one which receives new inputs
from the various developments in modern science and tries to follow the
other way in philosophy, namely, endeavours to put together the precious
pieces of specialized knowledge into a coherent picture ……. No one who
looks beyond his own speciality and narrow interests will be able to
deny the legitimacy of this quest.”
The scientific world view Laszlo presents
to us in ‘Science and the Akashic Field’ is based on the preceding books
‘The Creative Cosmos’ 1993), ‘The Interconnected Universe’ (1995), ‘The
Whispering Pond’ (1997-1998), and above all the more heavily scientific
book ‘The Connectivity ypothesis’Hy
Hypothesis’ (2003). It is to this last book we have
to turn if we want a more thorough scientific exposition.
According to Laszlo, and many other
prominent scientists with him, several facts and relations have been
discovered during the last decades that can not be satisfactorily
explained on the basis of accepted scientific theories. Science is in
the process of moulding, and we are facing a change in scientific
paradigm as we did a hundred years ago before relativity theory and
quantum theory provided the foundation for a new scientific paradigm
that was to last all through the 20th century. We do not as
yet know what will be the new scientific paradigm that will provide the
scientific insight of the 21st century. But we may see some
clear tendencies which according to Laszlo may allow us to propose, not
a strictly formulated scientific theory, but a comprehensive
understanding of reality that may give us a rational explanation of
those paradoxes we face in present day science.
Systematically he presents to us the four
great fields of knowledge where we today are facing such decisive
puzzles: In cosmology, in quantum physics, in biology and in
consciousness research.
Cosmology
Cosmology is getting ever more enigmatic
the further our advanced instruments are reaching out into space. Laszlo
believes here to see a common denominator: That the universe exhibits an
incredible and seemingly unaccountable coherence across space and time.
According to our most exact measurements
the universe turns out to be ‘flat’, i.e. without curvature, in the
absence of masses. Big Bang must therefore have been incredibly precise.
If there had been one billionth part more or less matter, empty space
without matter would have had curvature. Laszlo further mentions the
lacking mass in the universe which the astrophysicists can not account
for and therefore call ‘dark matter’. The accelerating expansion of the
universe which was discovered during the 1990s raise further challenging
questions. The greatest paradox, however, is how the universal
constants, the basic physical parameters of the universe, are so finely
attuned to each other that they allow for harmonic reactions and even –
seemingly against all odds - that living beings can arise and develop.
Quantum Physics
Quantum physics, the science about the smallest parts
of the universe, presents us with a reality so strange that it
challenges the limits of our imagination. The smallest parts we can
identify whether it is matter, energy or light have at the same time the
character of being both particles and waves. Until they have been
measured or observed they do not have any clear position in space or
time. Their position and qualities are first determined by our
experiments and observations. At the same time they are what Laszlo
calls ‘social entities’. If they first have been connected in a state,
they preserve this connection even if they later are separated over ever
so large distances. Experimentally it has been demonstrated that if we
observe a quality (like spin) of a particle, the corresponding quality
of the other particle will at the same time be determined, although it
may now be hundreds of kilometres away. This is the actual meaning of
the concepts ‘non locality’ and ‘entanglement’. Quantum physics has
proved that these are fundamental properties of physical reality. Laszlo
raises the question whether this is due to a basic field which records
the state of particles and atoms and transmits this information to
particles and atoms in corresponding states.
Biology
In biology Laszlo refers to recent
research which proves that living organisms have properties that
indicate coherence at a very high level. All the parts of an organism
“are multidimensionally, dynamically, and almost instantly correlated
with all other parts”. What happens to a cell or an organ will influence
all the other cells and organs. We may here talk about an organic
correlation which may correspond to the phenomenon of entanglement in
quantum physics. The organism is also coherent with its surroundings,
and the external environment is reflected in its interior. It is due to
this coherence that the organism may develop in harmony with its
environment. From a genetic point of view even the simplest organisms
are so complex and their adaptation to the environment so delicate that
living beings could not mutate into viable species without being
eliminated through natural selection had it not been for this intimate
correlation with the environment. When the earth is populated not only
by simple species, like blue-green algae and bacteria, this is in the
end due to this correlation or ‘entanglement’ which exists between
genes, organisms, species and niches in the biosphere. Laszlo’s
argumentation is here persuasive and detailed and shows that he is well
informed about vanguard research.
Consciousness Research
Consciousness is something we immediately
experience. It is given for each one of us. But is my consciousness able
to influence yours? For many people, living in so called primitive,
traditional cultures, this is a matter of course. And anthropological
studies as well as modern parapsychology or transpersonal research seem
to confirm this. When we have coined the concept ‘para-psychology’, it
is not because this has to do with phenomena that are at odds with
psychology per se, but because they apparently have been at odds with
our science of physical reality. With recent developments in physics and
the acknowledgement of a phenomenon like ‘entanglement’ there is no
longer reason not to include research in parapsychology into our
scientific understanding of reality.
Consciousness research confirms in
several ways the general scientific understanding of reality Laszlo is
presenting to us. It is really question of an ‘Integral Theory of
Everything’ which comprises physical reality, the life sciences and
psychic, conscious reality. He proves himself to be an extraordinary
guide who, perhaps better than any other, is able to to give us an
introduction to this new scientific understanding of our common reality.
The Vacuum Field
In this new understanding of reality it
is the vacuum field which is fundamental. Vacuum is more than empty
space. It is a plenum of potentiality. According to quantum theory it is
filled with virtual particles and the medium of all physical fields. In
‘the grand unified theories’ (GUT) that were developed during the last
half of the 20th century, the concept of ‘vacuum’ was
transformed from being empty space to become carrier of the
zero-point-field (which got its name because the field energies were
found to be present although all classical forms of energy disappeared
at a temperature of absolute zero). John Wheeler at Princeton University
in his time calculated the energy density in vacuum to be 10 in the 94th
potency erg per square cubic centimetre, an enormous number which
actually surpasses the added energy of all material particles in the
universe!
First of all the vacuum field is a
carrier of information. It is in-formed, as Laszlo expresses it. All
information is stored as holograms in the vacuum field, and it is
immediately available in all parts of the universe. How this is possible
is as yet an open question. Laszlo here emphasises a theory he finds
promising: the theory of torsion waves proposed by the Russian
physicists G.I. Shipov, A.E. Akimov and collaborators with support from
physicists in America and Europe. According to this theory, different
parts of the universe are connected by torsion waves that propagate in
groups with a velocity one billion times greater than the velocity of
light.
As a name for this all-comprehensive and
all-potential field at the base of reality, Laszlo has chosen ‘the A
field’ or ‘the Akashic field’ because it has so much in common with the
ancient teaching of the Akashic field in Indian philosophy.
There is a close agreement between
Laszlo’s theory and the theory of David Bohm about the implicate and the
explicate order. But Laszlo develops this further into a real integrated
theory of everything where very much of what today is presented as our
most advanced scientific knowledge finds its place.
Vilhelm Schjelderup
|
