This is a more personal and reflective blog, sharing some of how I arrived at my current perspective on reality. It is inherently subjective, although I will be striving for enough objectivity for it to be recognisable to other people, and perhaps reflecting some of their own experiences.
It is very much a work-in-progress, and I am very new to blogging and running a web-site.
It’s been brewing for some years in the back of my mind, in between the distractions of family life and the demands of work. Some of it reflects material that I bring to my students, albeit in more detail, or with more of the underlying philosophy, here. As a Science teacher in a Steiner-Waldorf school, I enjoy much more freedom and discretion in the contents of the curriculum that I deliver compared to my state-school teacher colleagues, who are constrained by the National Curriculum and exam course specifications.
I can’t pretend that this is a particularly scholarly presentation; it’s aimed more at the intelligent and interested lay-person than anyone else, but I hope that despite the lack of detailed references, it still offers a few new suggestions for those already familiar with the broader topics addressed, and perhaps some useful connections that you had been unaware of…
Apart from finding the time to actually work on this there have been two things which have been holding me back over the last few years.
One is the esteemed company that I am hoping to join through writing this: there are so many brilliant Science writers out there, so much more qualified than I am; to whom I am in debt through what I have learned from their books or web-sites; is what I have to offer really going to stand up in such august company?
The second is linked; they keep writing new stuff! It is very tempting to think that I have to read all the latest output, so that I can incorporate the newest nuggets, before offering my own contribution; so that it will be ‘up-to-date’ and include any new insights they may bring.
Of course, this makes it a Sisyphean task and a good excuse never to get started.
Connected to these was another question: should it actually be a book? That was my original direction, but I came to the conclusion that it would be better to put my thoughts out there and hopefully get feedback, to refine it as it grew, rather than trying to present a completed and ‘perfect’ finished article.
A few Summers ago, I attended, and contributed to, a conference organised by a colleague, asking questions about origins: the Universe; Consciousness; Life.
Piqued by the quirkiness of the various versions of the Anthropic Principle (the idea that if the Universe had developed in a way that intelligent life couldn’t evolve, then we wouldn’t be here to think about it, so of course the Universe we find ourselves in had to be this way…) and annoyed at what seemed to me the intellectual laziness of the Multiverse (‘we can’t work out why the Universe would appear to be so fine-tuned ‘for life’, so we’ll assume that all possibilities play out and this is just one of zillions of permutations: some of them were bound to produce life/consciousness; we find ourselves in one of those.’).
Following on from that I read Robert Lanza’s Biocentrism, which set me asking more questions.
In my musing the idea struck me that the Universe might function as a giant Quantum Computer. This sent me on a journey to see just how seriously Physicists take contextuality, as well as just what ‘observation’ and ‘consciousness’ might mean, with the help of Carlo Rovelli’s books in particular.
However, one book acted as a particular catalyst: The Idea of the World by Bernardo Kastrup, because it turned some of the ideas that I had been wrestling with on their heads; not exactly freeing a log-jam, but making some of the concepts more credible, as well as opening a door for other aspects which I’d initially expected to put into a different book because, outside of my mind, the connections would seem very tenuous to other people.
The other thing that has spurred me to ‘put pen to paper’ in earnest is that I have questions and (what seem to me to be) insights which I haven’t heard anyone else articulate. Aspects of some of the ideas have been written about before, but they don’t appear to have been taken seriously, perhaps because they were presented before some of the more recent evidence or insights arising in Scientific circles…
Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree; but the best way to find out seems be to put my questions and thoughts out there, and see what comes back.
I hope you find my journey interesting enough to stick with me a while as I explore.