Can the Truth Come Back with a Capital “T”? – Part 3

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP, Menas C. Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University, P. Murali Doraiswamy, MBBS, FRCP, Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Neil Theise, MD, Professor, Pathology and Medicine, (Division of Digestive Diseases) Beth Israel Medical Center — Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York

Reactions to our previous posts in this series are ample proof that Truth with a capital T outrages and offends people. A few comments have come from sputtering atheists. But among some of the critics the main accusation is that consciousness is “outside science.”  It offers no physical evidence; it cannot be quantified.  All of which is true, if you insist on the old materialist or an external physical reality paradigm.

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Can the Truth Come Back with a Capital “T”? – Part 2

Can the Truth Come Back With a Capital “T”? (Part 2)

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP, Menas C. Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University, P. Murali Doraiswamy, MBBS, FRCP, Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Neil Theise, MD, Professor, Pathology and Medicine, (Division of Digestive Diseases) Beth Israel Medical Center — Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York

If you propose that Truth with a capital T might return into our lives, like a speck on the horizon that gets bigger and bigger, many would prefer to swat the speck away. For one thing, Truth veers uncomfortably close to God. When Stephen Hawking was promoting his most recent book, The Grand Design, he held a press conference that created a headline shot around the world: “Science Makes God Unnecessary.”  Hawking’s popular authority gave weight to a common sentiment. Even among scientists who are devoutly religious, nobody claims that God is necessary when it comes to doing science.  (This assumes, as many religions do, that God is an external being, in essence an independent force outside the forces that physics study.) (more…)

Can the Truth Come Back With a Capital “T”?

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP, Menas C. Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University, P. Murali Doraiswamy, MBBS, FRCP, Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)

The modern world was created with a simple editing stroke when Truth lost its capital “T.”  Instead of pursuing the Truth, with a hundred paths stemming from philosophy and religion, the rise of science taught us to seek lower-case truth, which consists of a body of verifiable facts.  We have inherited a suspicion about Truth that can be heard in everyday speech.  How often do people say, “Well, it’s all relative.” There’s no such thing as truth with a capital ‘T’.” Between them, relativism and the mountain of data assembled  by science have suffocated the notion of Truth. (more…)

From Quanta to Qualia: What Nature Is Really Telling Us

What would it take to make the universe a living thing? What would it take to make it human once again, a secure home for us instead of a cold, meaningless place? What would it take to give God meaning and a future? As disconnected as these questions may seem, they are on the minds of some farseeing thinkers. And the deeper one looks, the more it appears that all three issues – a living universe, a human universe, and a universe that holds a place for God – start to merge. If they actually do merge, nothing will ever be the same again. Not just science but everyday existence will be completely overturned. Modern society will move from the brink of collapse to a new, humane living entity, one that honors the true nature of humans. (more…)

From Quanta to Qualia: The Mystery of Reality

Wherever reality leads, science follows. The two are inseparably linked, as they must be when science is our way of knowing reality. Reality shifts in ways that are unpredictable and strange. Time and space took very strange turns a century ago, for example, while cause-and-effect turned into a game of probabilities, and the solid physical universe dissolved into invisible energy clouds. Quantum theory had arrived, keeping pace with where reality led it. What Einstein called the “spookiness” of activity at the quantum level has only become more spooky ever since. (more…)