Re-Enchanting the World
“Because disenchantment is intrinsic to the scientific worldview, the modern epoch contained, from its inception, an inherent instability that severely limited its ability to sustain itself for more than a few centuries. For more than 99 percent of human history, the world was enchanted and man saw himself as an integral part of it.
The complete reversal of this perception in a mere four hundred years or so has destroyed the continuity of the human experience and the integrity of the human psyche. It has nearly wrecked the planet as well.
The only hope, or so it seems to me, lies in a re-enchantment of the world.”
–Morris Berman (American Cultural Historian, Writer and Visiting Faculty Member of the Catholic University of America, 1944-)
One With Mother Earth
“Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you.
You are as firmly established, as invulnerable as she, indeed a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable. As surely as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to the new striving and suffering. And not merely “some day.”
Now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once but thousands upon thousands of times, just as every day she engulfs you a thousand times over.”
–Erwin Schrödinger (Austrian Physicist and, in 1933, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, 1887-1961)
Mysteries of Nature
“The world of biology is full of miracles, but nothing I have seen is as miraculous as the metamorphosis of the monarch caterpillar. Her brain is a speck of neural tissue a few millimeters long, about a million times smaller than a human brain.
With this almost microscopic clump of nerve cells she knows how to manage her new legs and wings, to walk and to fly, to find her way by some unknown means of navigation over thousands of miles from Massachusetts to Mexico.
How are her behavior patterns programmed first into the genes of the caterpillar and then translated into the neural pathways of the butterfly? These are mysteries that biologists are far from understanding. The monarch is living proof that nature’s imagination is richer than our own.”
–Freeman Dyson (English-born American Physicist and Mathematician, 1923-)
Inter-Relationships
“Modern scientists have concluded that all phenomena are interrelated in complex networks of energy transformation. Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the noosphere, a network of thought encompassing the planet, is one such idea. The notion of networks of individuals who share a common interest and provide information and support to one another has enormous potential for furthering individual and social transformation.”
–Ralph Metzner (German-born American Psychologist, Researcher, Writer and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, 1936-)
The World As An Organization
“We are seeking another basic outlook: the world as an organization. This would profoundly change the categories of our thinking and influence our practical attitudes. We must envision the biosphere as a whole with mutually reinforcing or mutually destructive interdependencies.”
–Ludwig von Bertalanffy (Austrian-born American Biologist and a Founder of General Systems Theory, 1901-1972)
