Dear All,

'Coincidentally' I have just begun to draft a new book, entitled 'Life,
Environment and People - How To Evolve Good Neighbourhood', based on my
final year course taught here at Bath to biologists, natural scientists,
psychology and management students. Please see summary and preface pasted in
below.

The point I want to make is that I am all in favour of a press release along
the lines that Nick suggests, but am concerned that, as far as possible, the
'tone' of this should be invitational rather than confrontational. And I am
not as optimistic as Nick that science, in its currently predominant form,
has 'solved' anything.

Nick, would you like me to approach the pr who we have working on 'Unhooked
Thinking' (see www.unhookedthinking.com and mesage sent separately to this
group) regarding publicity options?


Best

Alan

-----------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY

This book offers a way out of the soul-destroying addiction to conflict that
has become deeply ingrained in human culture through viewing life as a
struggle for existence. It describes a radical transformation of our
understanding of evolution in which space, far from keeping everything
separate, is a vital inclusion in the fluid dynamic geometry of nature. This
opens up a new way of appreciating our natural human identities as complex,
dynamically relating flow forms rather than isolated individuals.  Hence it
may be possible to live in a truly loving, creative and sustainable way
within rather than at odds with our natural dynamic neighbourhood.



PREFACE


My aim in this book is to help open up a way of understanding our natural
human neighbourhood, which offers hope of living more loving, respectful,
sustainable and creative lives together. I start by questioning how the way
we human beings tend to define our selves and nature into discrete objects
and categories may close down our creative potential and provide grounds for
a profound addiction to conflict. I link this tendency to our incompatible
desires for total freedom and security, which are reinforced by perceiving
that an absolute demarcation exists between 'something' and 'nothing' -
'matter' and 'space'. I show how this perception might be understood in the
light of modern scientific evidence to arise from focusing our attention on
material form as 'all there is to reality', whilst ignoring or taking for
granted our sense of spatial inclusion in nature. I also describe how the
ancient system of abstract logic based on this perception, which lies deep
in the foundations of mathematical and scientific method, persists in many
aspects of modern culture. I suggest that we have allowed ourselves to
become driven by this logic to race frantically against the clock and view
one another as rivals in a relentless pursuit of power and money in order to
survive and be happy. And I offer the prospect of a way out of this trap.


The idea for the book emerged from my learning experience gained whilst
presenting a final year undergraduate course on 'Life, Environment and
People' to biology, natural sciences, psychology and management students at
the University of Bath. I developed this course early in 2001, because as a
biological scientist I was very aware by then of the difficulties and
opportunities involved in applying ideas and findings from my academic
discipline to a 'real-world' social and environmental context. I recognized
that with the growing modern emphasis on molecular mechanism, biology
students and researchers were being given little chance to appreciate these
difficulties and opportunities. Correspondingly, the development of new
technologies like genetic modification and cloning are running into deeply
troubled waters. And the discourse in social, economic and environmental
fields - indeed the very idea that  'social' and 'economic' can be
distinguished from 'environmental' - is benefiting little, if at all, from
our scientific understanding of living systems and their natural ecology.

My intention in the course was therefore to provide an opportunity both for
myself and for students studying diverse disciplines to reflect critically
and creatively on a single, pivotal question. How may we use, develop and
communicate scientific and biological findings in a way that can both
enhance and deepen understanding of our human relationships with the living
world, including ourselves? In other words, how can scientific and
biological knowledge and understanding be made relevant to the social and
environmental issues that concern us today?

Asking this question immediately draws attention not only to what I think
are very serious limitations in current methods of scientific enquiry,
perception and communication, but also to the possibility for opening up
more natural and imaginative approaches. For there is no doubt in my mind
that much of what is currently called 'natural science' is actually very far
from 'natural' in its practice and theory. In fact, despite what it sets out
to challenge, and its own findings in relativity, quantum mechanics and
non-linear theory, I might go so far as to describe it as 'supernatural' or
even 'superstitious'. This is because of its logical foundation in the
notion that everything is either 'A' or 'not A'. This 'fallacy of the
excluded middle' arises from belief in an absolute separation between
'something', as discrete visible or tangible form, and 'nothing', as
formless, void space. Nature is thereby regarded as consisting of
independent material 'bodies', 'particles' or 'objects', whose movements
depend on the application of external force and take place within a fixed
reference frame of space and time. There is no modern evidence in support of
this 'picture' of discretely bounded objects acting and reacting in
discretely bounded space, and indeed much evidence that it is an illusion
arising from our human binocular vision. Nonetheless it continues to be the
basis for much scientific argument and explanation of natural phenomena,
including so-called 'natural selection', to the detriment of understanding
all kinds of evolutionary processes. And the logical paradoxes and
inconsistencies it produces are, I think, at the heart of all kinds of human
conflict, which arise from the mental alienation of 'one thing' from
'another thing'.

From the outset of my course, I was therefore aware that the answer to my
question of how to apply scientific knowledge and understanding in a
real-world context lay, ironically, in a radical transformation of the
logical premise upon which our modern scientific worldview has been based. I
was also aware that this premise is by no means confined to science, but has
become taken for granted as a cornerstone in our systems of human
governance, economics, education and all kinds of research enquiry in which
we regard 'individuals' as competitive 'performing objects'. It is a mind
trap to which we all too readily can become accustomed and defend with the
utmost zeal. We do so because it makes our lives seem more secure,
predictable and controllable in the face of the fearful uncertainty of the
outside world. But in the process we can become 'trap happy' - content with
the confinement that we impose on our own and others' lives at the expense
of living lovingly and creatively together. To escape the trap requires a
transformation in our view of the world and our selves.

The nature of this needed transformation is simple enough. All that it
entails is a shift from a form of logic based on abstracting space from
matter, to a form of logic in which matter (or, more technically,
'electromagnetic information') is a dynamic inclusion of space (or, more
technically, 'gravitational field'). But the implications of this shift, to
what a few friends and I have called 'inclusionality', are both enormous and
deeply disturbing. They comprehensively and in my view comprehensibly change
our understanding of everything, everywhere and the fundamental nature of
uncertainty and evolutionary processes. They offer hope of learning to live
more peaceful, loving and sustainable lives together in a spirit of natural
neighbourhood. But they also can seem to threaten our mutually contradictory
desires and impossible dreams of absolute security and absolute liberty.

So my difficult challenge was and is how to admit such radical thinking
within a community so deeply committed - one might say 'addicted' - to fixed
and thereby alienating views of human and non-human nature. And, not least
of my difficulties was and is how to cover such an enormous and potentially
revolutionary field of enquiry, given my own inevitable limitations of
knowledge, understanding and experience.

The approach that I continue to evolve through my course discussions will
become apparent in the way I have written this book. It has four key
elements.

Firstly, there is a clear focus for enquiry around the question of real
world scientific relevance. This focus has helped to dispel the external
perception, from which I suffered at first, that I was somehow misleading
students and preaching 'anti-science' and 'free-fall philosophy'. Apart from
perhaps revealing something about the rigidity with which many scientists
defend and impose their discipline, this perception could not have been
further removed from my actual intention. I wasn't attacking science at all,
but rather seeking to liberate its potential to contribute creatively to
social and environmental understanding, through questioning what currently
constrains this potential. Nonetheless, I recognize that questioning what
provides people with a sense of security, especially a false sense of
security, is always liable to provoke a backlash unless approached with
great sensitivity. I have found it to be like trying to help someone out of
an addiction from which I cannot myself claim to be free.

Secondly, I have tried to keep the enquiry as 'invitational' and as
'participatory' as possible. That is, I have tried to work as a guide or
facilitator with personal experience of the territory, rather than as an
authoritative instructor who imposes his own and/or his discipline's
expertise as the one and only correct source of wisdom. I have made no
assumptions about what others may or may not be thinking or feeling, and I
make no attempt to persuade others to adopt my viewpoint. Correspondingly, I
have initiated a series of conversations about a variety of themes
concerning life, environment and people, in which I have encouraged students
both to express their personal views and be receptive and responsive to one
another's views alongside my own contributions. Hence it has been possible
to develop a 'holographic' imagery in which diverse individual perspectives
are brought together in a way that reveals both their distinctiveness and
complementarity in contributing to a richer, deeper understanding of human
and non-human nature. In other words I have used the neighbourhood of the
students and myself to enhance our individual and collective understanding
of complex relationships and identities.

Thirdly, I have encouraged a spirit of continual questioning of assumptions
that underlie what we think and believe. What, I ask myself as well as the
students, do you believe? Why do you believe it? What have you been told? Do
you believe what you have been told? If not, why not? In this way I have
hoped to allow fresh possibilities to emerge.

Fourthly, I have encouraged diverse modes of enquiry and communication in
order to open up new possibilities for expression and comprehension.
Correspondingly, I have allowed artistic and metaphorical as well as
conventionally scientific methods, in order to bring a full range of human
intellectual and emotional experience and sentience to bear.  Here, I have
recognized that verbal language with its 'thing words' and 'doing words' is
itself an abstraction from nature that cannot encompass nature but can, if
taken literally, reinforce alienating definitions and create paradox.
Similarly, I have recognized that discrete, space-excluding assumptions lie
deep in the foundations of mathematical expression. Some relaxation of these
definitions is necessary if a fuller, more natural meaning is to be given
space to emerge.




----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas Clough Daffern <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 20 March 2006 18:31
Subject: Re: Friends of Wisdom


Dear friends of wisdom,

Re further comments on press release idea...etc.

Some of us may teach in universities and some may have done so or will do so
again... and some of us (hopefully) may have some influence in shaping the
agenda of higher education as it develops around the world and in the UK

my time doing educational research into the ways and wherefores of higher
education in Britain and globally - comparatively - and networking with all
higher education institutions worldwide that teach peace studies, conflict
resolution and world order studies and global responsibility led me to take
a birds eye overview of what's going on in higher education worldwide and to
follow trends in this field during the last 10 years or so

Don't panic folks, there are also people working in higher education trying
to change things for the better from the inside out....

One example is the work of the international association of university
presidents

This network links heads of universities worldwide

Check it out at

http://www.ia-up.org/search/country/

They have various commissions including one linked to the UN exploring peace
and disarmament education - of which body I am a member

http://www.iaups.org/eng/

Try and think up another press release aimed at higher education itself - at
movers and shakers therein - rather than just the media so called....

With a view to getting influential contacts inside higher education who can
join up and sign a petition or whatever calling for change from within to a
deeper and more meaningful higher education experience for all, teachers and
students alike...

Journeys in some 33 countries worldwide and visits to innumerable
universities have led me to have faith - there are some wonderful pockets of
genuine wisdom seeking going on around planet earth...

Peace is possible....

Peace through wisdom


Yours

Thomas Daffern
www.educationaid.net