by Sebastian Penraeth

30 September 2014

Dave Pruett writes that the Manifesto for a Post-materialist Science is "well-reasoned, persuasive, and worth reading in its entirety." In his recent Huffington Post article Toward a Post-Materialistic Science the former NASA researcher and Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at James Madison University shares his own insights on the philosophy of science interspersed with points of historic relevance.

The proposed post-materialistic paradigm heals the Cartesian partition separating mind and matter, reunites philosophy and natural philosophy, and begins to resolve the age-old clash between science and religion. Much of the tragedy of the human condition lies in the competition for human allegiance of two rigid metaphysics: transcendental monism (spirit/psyche first) and materialistic monism (matter first), the former the metaphysic of religion and the latter that of science. "Do we really need to make this tragic choice?" pleads Ilya Prigogine, Nobel laureate in chemistry.

by Sebastian Penraeth

27 September 2014

As long-time author of the Skeptic column in Scientific American, Michael Shermer is well-known for his hard-nosed skepticism. So it's rather remarkable that in his latest article Anomalous Events That Can Shake One's Skepticism to the Core, he reports on inexplicable happenings during his recent wedding to Jennifer Graf. Raised by her mother, Jennifer's Grandfather had been like a father to her, and upon his passing she was left his broken transistor radio. Shermer had tried to fix it, but it seemed byond repair. Naturally, Jennifer wished that her grandfather could be there to give her away and after exchanging vows, Shermer says:

[Jennifer] whispered that she wanted to say something to me alone, so we excused ourselves to the back of the house where we could hear music playing in the bedroom. We don't have a music system there, so we searched for laptops and iPhones and even opened the back door to check if the neighbors were playing music. We followed the sound to the printer on the desk, wondering--absurdly--if this combined printer/scanner/fax machine also included a radio. Nope.

At that moment Jennifer shot me a look I haven't seen since the supernatural thriller The Exorcist startled audiences. "That can't be what I think it is, can it?" she said. She opened the desk drawer and pulled out her grandfather's transistor radio, out of which a romantic love song wafted. We sat in stunned silence for minutes. "My grandfather is here with us," Jennifer said, tearfully. "I'm not alone."