Bioelectric Fields: A Paradigm Shift In Biology | Prof. Michael Levin

Hearing Stephen Wolfram in conversation is a gift to lifelong exploration and discovery. There are several other talks available. This one is coalesces everyday questions with some of the discrete ideas that would need to be explored for more fundamental understanding.

One theme that he traces here is the role of human perception in shaping the ‘reality’ that we assume to be ‘objective’, ie, supposed to be independent of human perception:

“One of the important realisations (in) thinking about … foundations of science…in the end, what 29:04 matters is how we perceive things. What’s actually out there in the universe – the ruliad, doing all its complicated stuff. That’s all sort of irrelevant. What’s relevant is what a mind like ours perceives in the ruliad…He continues: In this ruliad object, this ‘entangled limit of all possible computations, observers like us inevitably observe the 30:12 laws of physics that we know to be the laws of physics. If we were not observers like us, we would not observe these laws of physics. “

This is a more open, nuanced and more helpful starting point, than starting from a more common attitude that says something like, ” we already know what the laws of physics are and whatever doesn’t conform to our current view is nonsense . Scientists like Stephen Wolfram, who also engage with practical questions, mark changes in how science is being conceived. This is why I have chosen to share this link.

From the video information, here is a breakdown of the CHAPTERS:

Composition of Matter 27:18

– Nature of Reality 39:35

– Exploring the Soul 42:10

– The Possibility of Aliens 49:29

– Consciousness vs Internal Experience 51:11

– The Secrets of Biological Evolution 56:13

– Expanding Human Perception 58:33

– Does the Body Have Its Own Language? 01:09:20

– How Reductionist Science is Limiting Medicine 01:31:15

– Arrival: A Discussion 01:32:53 – ARRIVAL Film: Behind-the-Scenes 02:03:13

– Would an Alien Mind Function Like AI?

This is a wonderful talk that resonates with inner awareness and allows many subtle threads to enter conscious realisation.

I am reminded that when I was around 14 or 15, our biology teacher set us an experiment of talking to plants and to see how this affects their growth.

We used punnets of mustard cress. We placed them in different locations throughout our large laboratory classroom. They were all placed along the worktops by the window wall for equal access to the light source.

We carefully measured their water intake to make sure that it was equal.

To one, we spoke lovingly. To another, we spoke horribly. And, to the 3rd group, the ‘control’ group, we didn’t speak at all.

In our results, those we spoke to well, grew the most; those we spoke to horribly grew the least, and the measurement of the ‘control’ plants was ‘between’ the best and worst. So, in later years when the press was ridiculing Prince Charles for talking to his plants, it never occurred to me to wonder about the sense of his actions. In a quiet way, I knew what I knew, having been involved in the experiment and seen the results for myself.

This has probably been a discreet influence on my attitude to science and the question of an authentic basis for what we think we know. Experience indicates that what tends to fall short are beliefs based on our reaction to the attitudes and opinions of others, rather than what we have wondered about and explored for ourselves. So often, in the absence of our own involvement, ie testing out and seeing what happens, we become caught up in placing intense emphasis on conclusions and interpretations whose nature and implications we actually neither know or understand, and may not actually even care about.

While it is a valuable faculty/function, what we think of as the intellect is often misinformed and dominated, deformed by received opinions, rather than based on the convergence of genuine streams of awareness. Experience indicates that it is the friction of such contra-diction of this quieter knowing/being that gives rise to suffering. Suffering functions as a real time signal indicating that something vital is being misrecognised – ie, our beliefs are out of alignment with the real nature of our being.

It was many years later before I realised that the timing of her setting us the task of the experiment probably followed her reading of The Secret Life of Plants, published at that time (1973).

• This book is referred to as pseudoscience in the AI response to a search; pseudos as in lying! The question of who is lying about what sends our intellect into spirals of confusion when we have blocked ourselves off from our own enquiry. Our inner knowing awaits our attune to it again. It may be quiet or speak loudly, with symptoms and turmoil. Many, if not most of us, currently have some work to do to bring our conscious attitudes closer to resonance with our profound/intimate being/truth. This work is not strenuous, and not only can strain not accomplish it, strain goes in an opposing direction. We only have to begin by giving our consent (as an embodied feeling of being) in a present moment of its calling to us., of easing up on tension and, step by step, transformation begins happening.

The talk in the link above conveys a feeling of the way as well as bringing many relevant ideas into play.

Stephan R Schwartz – for intelligent, rigorous discussion of key themes, oriented by exploration and experience. Here, he explores similarities and distinctions between scientific and religious beliefs/practices.

What is interesting for me in this discussion is the range of the speaker’s intelligence; his capacity to entertain and articulate many subtle and complex themes in a coherent and accessible way.

Most important also is his ethical engagement with these questions and the exploration of phenomena in a steady and creative way.

This makes a very valuable epistemological contribution to our (humanity/our civilisation’s) ability to rise to the challenges that we generate. This is instead of navigating life by denying or fearfully avoiding awareness of what we don’t understand but urgently need to.

It is not an interest or fascination with the strangeness of phenomena that prompts me to share this. It is to indicate that what is naturally within human experience is miscategorised as excluded from it. As I see it, we have an imminent need to allow the extension of capacity to handle ourselves well in the diversity of what life presents. This implies becoming increasingly able to discern and to work creatively with its truth. This is not something to do that is difficult; it is something whose ways of becoming can naturally unfold as we give our intimate consent.

The richness, vitality and diversity of experience that this opens to, for each of those who are willing, is in itself worth reaching for, as is the prospect of humanity not having to perpetually reach for threatening stimulation in order to feel excitement and satisfaction in daily life.

“In the absence of that which you are not, that which you are is not”