About
Us
Explanation of the
logo
We all know that it is easier to take things apart than to put them
back together. For the past 400 years science has been successful in
taking the Universe apart but it still has little inkling as to how to
put it back together. The Universe remains as mysterious as ever. The
Center for Cooperative Phenomena is dedicated to putting Reality back
together, to the “re-assembly” of the Universe. As our motto, we could
adopt the following excerpt from A Course of Love, “No atoms
do battle.
No molecules compete for dominance. The universe is a dance of
cooperation. You are but asked to rejoin the dance.” (p.186).
Current Goals
Our
group is still in the early stages of recruitment and fund-raising.
The hope is that the Center will evolve from a Local Society organized
around the talks given by the visiting speakers and local
faculty, to a think tank dealing with policy and educational issues,
and
perhaps eventually toward an institute devoted to scholarly and
educational activities.
- Study the limitations of reductionism;
- Encourage the cultivation of nonlinear science. The latter is less
hostile to spirituality as both see all things in the universe as
existing in unity and in reciprocal relationship;
- Promote the inclusion of nonlinear and emergent phenomena in science
education;
- Write reports on scientific and educational issues, including those
at the science/religion interface;
- Promote the proper understanding of spirituality. Spirituality as
understood here consists of the following four injunctions: (1) quiet
the mind; (2) open the heart; (3) unite the mind with the heart; (4)
transform your relationship to the world through sharing in unity;
- Promote the vision of science and spirituality as
relationship-centered;
- Present science as a liberal art that has deep things to say about
the nature of reality, to attract philosophers, theologians, and social
scientists to our end of the campus so we can all join in the
conversation about the great issues of our time;
- Adopt the attitude of epistemic humility in both science and religion.
A simplified chart of the current tension in science between
reductionism and emergentism is given below:
LEVELS
OF
ORGANIZATIONAL COMPLEXITY
Social sciences: psychology, sociology,
anthropology,
societies
economics,
etc.
communities
individuals
Boudary Problem: “Origin of consciousness”(mind-body)
Biomedical sciences: biology, botany,
zoology,
organisms
physiology, ecology, etc.
organs
cells
Boundary Problem: “Origin of life”
Physical sciences: physics, chemistry,
astronomy,
molecules
geology,
etc.
atoms
nuclei, electrons
p, n, e
quarks,
gluons
superstrings (?)
Boundary Problem: “Origin of
the universe”
Mathematics
Logic
As the level of organizational complexity increases, (1) sciences
become less quantitative and less precise; (2) phenomena become less
predictable and more chaotic, (3) sciences become less objective and
more subjective (i.e., more dependent on interpretation), (4) the
amount of reliable knowledge decreases and scientific consensus becomes
harder to reach.
Reductionism
is a research program that attempts to explain the
properties of complex systems in terms of their simpler components.
Reductionism has been the dominant approach in science since its
beginnings five hundred years ago. Extreme reductionism is often
“nothing but” thought, i.e., psychology is nothing but biology, biology
is nothing but chemistry, and chemistry is nothing but physics.
Reductionism is associated with the view that the whole is equal to the
sum of its parts, as is true for linear systems.
Emergentism
is a more recent approach that recognizes that
complex systems are nonlinear, i.e., for them the whole is greater than
the sum of its parts (synergy). Examples include emergent structures
(e.g., atoms, molecules, crystals, black holes, the Internet,
Wikipedia), chaotic phenomena (e.g., the Butterfly Effect,
turbulence, strange attractors), synchronization (e.g., schools of
fish, flocks of birds, entrainment, resonance,
cyclical phenomena, pendulum clocks, circadian rhythms, Earth and
Moon system), spontaneous pattern formation (e.g.,
hurricanes, tornadoes, rivers), cooperative phenomena (e.g.,
superconductivity, superfluidity), tipping points (e.g., collapse of
buildings and bridges, phase transitions, critical mass, chain
reaction, explosions, epidemics, revolutions, wars).
Cooperative
Phenomena
Do cooperative phenomena in science
indicate that we are reaching the limits of the reductionist program in
science? Examples
to think about:
- relational
holism in quantum physics (e.g., the laser, superconductivity, Bose-Einstein
condensation, soliton solutions in quantum field theories);
- solitons,
synchronization (e.g,
grandfather clocks, schools of fish), and other
nonlinear
phenomena in classical physics;
- self-organizing systems
in physics,
chemistry, and biology (e.g., crystal growth,
star
formation, molecular self-assembly, homeostasis, creation of structures
by social
animals);
- networks (e.g., the
Internet);
- self-sustaining
ecologies;
- altruism in ethology
and
evolutionary
biology (at the boundary between science
and
spirituality),
Readings:
S. Strogatz, Sync –
The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, 2003;
A. Barabasi, Linked –
How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and
What It Means for Business,
Science, and Everyday Life, 2002;
M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity – The Emerging Science
at the Edge of
Order and Chaos, 1992.
THE SPEAKER PROGRAM
As an integral part of the Center’s activities the Visiting Speaker
series strives to serve in the public interest by inviting guest
speakers who think deeply about the foundations of their subject rather
than those who do low-risk incremental type of research. The talks have
been widely attended not only by the faculty but also by many students.
While the talks are designed to be accessible to a wider audience, we
also started an interview program in which the speakers would be free
to delve into more technical issues. The interviews are
available on the Center website.
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