Science, Culture and Consciousness

Abstract

A predominant feature of the nuclear age is that a major paradigm shift is now under way. A new holistic paradigm is slowly but steadily emerging, which stresses convergence in place of conflict, cooperation in place of competition. For the last four centuries the predominant mode of Western thought which has dominated the world was based essentially upon dualistic philosophies, on what may be called the Cartesian-Newtonian-Marxist paradigm of a materialistic universe in which consciousness was simply an epi-phenomenon flowing, as Bertrand Russell once put it, from a 'fortuitous conglomoration of atoms'. This world-view has begun to collapse quite recently under the combined impact of several scientific and conceptual revolutions. With post-Einsteinian physics, quantum mechanics, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, extragalactic cosmology and transpersonal psychology, the old model is being shown up as inadequate, and in its place the contours of a new holistic paradigm are beginning to emerge.