current world views in philo

8/4/2019 Current World Views in Philo

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CURRENTCURRENT

WORLD WORLDVIEWSVIEWS

Cherrymae Elda Suñga



Current World ViewsCurrent World ViewsImplications to Science and Society

The System View of Life

>Open System

>Relationships>Multi-leveled Structure and Self-

Regulation

->The Systems View and Evolution

->The Systems View and Mind

The Mystical View

An Ideal World View

Entropy



IntroductionIntroduction

Current experience show we cannot

divide the world into independently

existing units or building blocks. As we

penetrate deeply into matte we see notisolated buildings blocks, rather nature

shows us a complicated web of

relationships between various parts of aunified whole.



In quantum theory, the observed objects can

only be understood in terms of interaction

between the various processes of

observation and measurement, and the end

of this chain of processes lies in the

consciousness of the human observer.The crucial feature of quantum theory is

that the human observer is not only

necessary to observe the properties of an

atomic phenomenon but is necessary evento bring about these properties.



In modern physics mass is no longer

associated with material substance and

hence particles are not seen as consisting

of any basic stuff but rather as bundles of

energy.

The notion of substances that make upmatter is quite useful at the macroscopic

level but it does not make sense at the

atomic level



Atoms are made up of particles and theparticles are not made up of any kind of

material substance. When we observe

them we do not see any substance. What

we observe are dynamic continuallychanging patterns ² a continuous dance of

energy.





>Open System


Regulation



The Mystical View

An Ideal World View

Entropy



The Systems View of LifeThe Systems View of Life

Solutions to problems, particularly as they pertain

to life on Earth and the Earth itself, are no longersimple solutions but multilateral solutions involving

all countries of this Earth.



As we face the future and attempt tosafeguard the interest of generations yet

to come we begin to realize that we livein an era where there is a need, morethan at any other time in the world·shistory, for greater coordination andcooperation of political and social actionand responsibility which also extends tothe economic system as is evident by the

establishment of an international system.



The 20th century has also seen a markedconcern for global problems bearing on our

very survival: a warming globe threats to theEarth·s ozone layer, deserts creeping onagricultural lands, pollution of land, sea andair, lack of water in some areas.

There is also the realization that theseproblems are interrelated with one anotherand with man and nature. It therefore seemlogical that the concepts of ¶systems· has

began to be applied to anew view of life.



A systems view looks at the world in

terms of relationships and integration.Systems are integrated wholes whose

properties cannot be reduced to those of

smaller units. Instead of focusing on

building blocks or basic component

substances, the systems approach

emphasizes basics principles of

organization.



Every living organism is an integrated

whole, and thus it is a living system. Cellsare living systems and so are various

organs and tissues in the body- the

human brain being the most complex

example.

This kind of material systems are wholes

whose specific structure arise from

interactions and interdependence of theirparts



Systemic properties are destroyed when

a system is dissected into isolatedelements. Although we discuss individual

parts in a system the whole is different

from the mere sum of its parts.

Another important aspect of systems is

their intrinsically dynamic nature.





>Open System


Regulation



The Mystical View

An Ideal World View

Entropy



Open SystemsOpen Systems

Living organism are open systems whichmeans that they have to maintain acontinuous exchange of energy andmatter with their environment to stay

alive.This exchange involves taking food/

nourishment, breaking them down and

using some of their components tomaintain or even increase the order of the organism. This process is known asmetabolism.



Metabolism allows the system to remain

in a state of nonequilibrium in which it isalways ́ at workµ. A high degree of

nonequilibrium is absolutely necessary for

self-organizations; living organisms are

open systems that continually operate farfrom equilibrium.

At the same time these self-organizing

systems have a high degree of stability.



The stability of self-organizing systems, iscompletely dynamic and must not be

confused with equilibrium. It is consists of maintaining the same over all structure inspite of ongoing changes and replacementsof its components.

For example, all the cells in our body exceptthose in our brain are replaced within a fewyears, yet we have no difficulty recognizingfriends even after long periods of separation.

Such is a dynamic stability of self organizingsystem.



A system in a state of continual

fluctuation even when there is no

disturbance is called homeotasis.

When there is a disturbance the

organism tends to return to its original

state and it does so by adapting in variousways in the environment. For example:

Stress Adaptation

Somatic Adaptation

The process of Evolution



These three modes of adaptation arecharacterized by increasing flexibility and

decreasing reversibility.The ability of the organism to adapt to

environment changes through geneticmutation. This represents only one aspect of the phenomenon of evolution.

On the other side, the creative developmentof new structures and functions without anyenvironmental pressures, is a manifestationof the potential for self-transcendence thatis inherent in all living organisms.



The Darwinian concept therefore

expresses only one of twocomplementary views that are necessary

in understanding evolution.

Living organisms being open systems

themselves, keep themselves alive andfunctioning through intense transactions

with the environment itself consists

partially of organisms.



Most organism are not only embedded in

the ecosystems but are complex

ecosystems themselves containing a host

of smaller organisms that have

considerable autonomy and yet integrate

themselves harmoniously into thefunctioning of the whole i.e., they live as a

system.





>Open System


Regulation



The Mystical View

An Ideal World View

Entropy



RelationshipsRelationships

Close coordination of activities exists notonly among individuals of the same aspectbut also among different species, and againthe resulting systems have the characteristics

of simple organisms.Sy mbiosis is a phenomenon that happens

when many types of organisms that werethought to represent well-defined biological

species have turned out, upon closeexamination, to consist of 2 or moredifferent species in intimate biologicalassociation.



For example: bacteria that are usable for

energy needs of plants have incorporated

themselves in the roots of the plants to

become almost indistinguishable. Bacteria

live in symbiotic relationship in tissues of

higher organisms especially in the intestinaltracts of animals and humans.

In brief, we do not have solitary beings.

Every creature is, in some sense connected

to and dependent on the rest.





>Open System

>Relationships>Multi-leveled Str ucture and Self -

Regulation



The Mystical View

An Ideal World View

Entropy



MultiMulti--Leveled Structure and Self Leveled Structure and Self--

RegulationRegulationAnother principle of living systems is

their tendency to from multi-leveled

structure² this is pervasive throughout

nature. At each level of complexity weencounter systems that are integrated,

self-organizing wholes consisting of

smaller parts and at the same time actinglike parts of larger wholes.



An example is the organ systems of human

beings --- each system is made of organs,

each organ is made of tissues, each tissues ismade of cells.

The important aspect of stratified order in

nature is not transfer of control but ratherthe organization of complexity. The various

systems levels are stable levels of different

complexities and this makes it possible to

use different descriptions of each level.



The concept of stratified order also

provides perspectives on the

phenomenon of death. Self-renewal is anessential living systems. The structures

that are being replaced are themselves

living organisms- from their point of view,the self-renewal of the larger system is

their own cycle of life over death.

Birth and death are central aspects of

self-organization.



James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis

suggested that the phenomena happen tothe Earth can only be understood if the

planet would be regarded as a single living

organism. Recognizing that their

hypothesis represents a renaissance of anancient myth, these scientists have called

it the Gaia hypothesis after the Greek

Goddess of the Earth.



Aware of our Earth a aliveplayed an important role inman·s cultural past and it

was revived whenastronauts were first ableto look at our planet fromouter space. Theirperception of our planet- abeautiful blue and whiteglobe floating in a sea of darkness, moved deeplyand was profound spiritualexperience that foreverchanged their relationship

wit the Earth.



What astronauts and many men and

women on Earth before them realized is

that the Earth is not only teeming withlife but seems to be a living being in its

own right. All living matter on earth,

together with the atmosphere, oceans,and the soil form a complex system that

has all the characteristic pattern of self-

organization.





>Open System


Regulation



The Mystical View

An Ideal World View

Entropy



The Systems View and EvolutionThe Systems View and Evolution

There are fundamental differencesbetween the new systems view of

evolution and the view of classical Neo

Darwinian Theory.The classical theory sees evolution as

moving towards an equilibrium state with

organisms adapting themselves ever more

perfectly to their environment.



According to th esystems view evolution

operates far from equilibrium and unfolds

through an interplay of creation and

evolution.

It also takes into account that the

environment itself is a living systemcapable of adaptation and evolution.

Thus, in the systems view, the focus shifts

from the evolution of an organism to theconvolutions of an organism plus

environment.



Darwin·s theory of evolution posits the

specie, subspecies or some other building

blocks of the biological world as the unitof survival. However, a century later it

becomes quite clear that the unit of

survival is not any of these entities; whatsurvives is the organism in its

environment.

An organism that thinks only of survival

will invariably destroy its environment and

in the end itself.



From the systems view the unit of survival isnot an entity but rather a pattern of

organization adapted by an organism in itsinteractions with the environment. Anelaboration of this idea is shown in theevolution of life on Earth is as follow:

The earliest forms of life appeared on Earth about ½billion years after the planet was formed.

The emergence of eukaryotes.

Organisms developed sexual reproduction whichintroduced genetic variety .

Emergence of consciousness which made it possible toreplace mechanisms.





>Open System


Regulation



The Mystical View

An Ideal World View

Entropy



The Systems View and MindThe Systems View and Mind

There are large manifestations of mind of which our minds are only subsystems; thisidea has implications for the naturalenvironment. If we separate mental

phenomena from the larger systems, andconfine them to human individuals, we willsee the environment as mindless, and tendto exploit it.

Our attitudes will be very different if we seethe environment as alive and mindful likeourselves.



Multi-level structure of organisms implies

that there are also levels of minds.

In the individual organisms there are

various levels of metabolic mentations

involving cells, tissues, organs. Such notion

of mind as a multi-leveled phenomenon of which we are only partly aware in

ordinary states of consciousness is

widespread in many non-Western nations.



As in the case of the evolution twocomplementary approaches are needed;

the r eductionism appr oac h- to understandthe detailed neural mechanism and theholistic appr oac h- to understand theintegration of this mechanisms into the

functioning of the whole system.Since the systems view of mind is not

limited to individual organisms but can be

extended to social and ecologicalsystems.





>Open System


Regulation



The Mystical View

An Ideal World View

Entropy



The Mystical ViewThe Mystical View

It regards consciousness as the primary reality and

the reality and the ground of all being. In its puristform. Consciousness is nonmaterial, formless, void

of all content, without reality.



This manifestation of consciousness isassociated with the Divine in manytraditions.The mystical view of consciousness is based

on the experience of reality in nonordinarymodes of awareness which are traditionallyachieved through meditation but may also

occur spontaneously in the process of artistic creation and in various contexts. Theroots of cultural crises lie in the imbalancebetween two modes of consciousness whichhave been recognized as characteristicaspects of human nature through the ages.



They oftentimes referred as masculine,

feminine; linear, nonlinear; yin, yang by the

Chinese.In traditional Chinese, Y ang is our masculine

side- active, rational competitive, scientific;

Y in is the feminine side- yielding, intuitive,

cooperative, mystical side.

Before the 1960s, the yang seemed to be

consistently favored by Western culture but

in the 1960s to the current decade someauthors believe the movement is toward the

other direction.



Most of the manifestation in this time is

found to be of the trend that counteracts

the rational, machine attitude and values,attain a balance between the masculine

and the feminine. Hence, the movement

has been towards yin.





>Open System


Regulation



The Mystical View

An Ideal World View

Entropy



An Ideal World ViewAn Ideal World View

any philosophy that advocates the continued rape of thisEarth in the hope of achieving some kind of paradise in thealien planet is a philosophy that threatens the very existenceof our Earth. The proposal to colonize other planets whenwe have exhausted our Earth·s resources or overpopulated itis a myth fostered by the world-power game that compete

for the world·s resources and dominance of outer space.- J. Michell



J. Mic hell , a scholar who spent years

researching and rediscovering the wisdom

of ancient civilizations, speaks of thepower of mythology, each dominant myth

exerts great influence on society.

Examples are the two contrasting myths:The Newtonian Myth

Plato who gave the myth that the world is a living

creature



Michell believes it is a fundamental error

to regard the universe as a mechanism

because of the effects of that view.If we decide to regard the Earth as a

living organism in an organic universe, that

decision will condition the way we relateto it. If we see the Earth as a living

creature we will be able to detect the

symptoms of overall illness.



At this point we identify two constant

sources from which we draw a cosmology.These two sources are: human nature and

the nature of the universe.

Michell thinks there are at present two

general world-views or cosmologies, one

established in power and the other still in

the process of formation.



First the force, now power, was the

expanding universe theory as the modelfor an ape-to-spaceman view of history

because man is now able to explore the

universe though at a vast cost of the

Earth·s resources.

Second, Darwin's view of life as

spontaneous development from simple

organisms to larger complex forms hasbeen taken as a universal paradigm.



A rival of Darwin, Kropotkin ha san oppositeview of life. According to him, nature·s first

principle is mutual aid relationships betweenand within species. They are not primarilyaggressive but cooperative.The study of long lasting civilizations in the

past shows only in this way, by allowing

society to reflect the entirety of humannature- its positive inventive aspect as wellas its traditionalist Earth rooted aspect- canwe hope to slow down and harmonize the

inevitable tendency to rise, to progress anddissolve which is inherent in all humaninstitution.



This implies a steady-state model of the

universe. The type of science appropriate

to a steady state society will be very

different from what it is now.

The purpose of a steady state science is

to form relationships between people andhuman activities, and the world we live in.



The traditional view of the life span of a

culture as a process of running downfrom the time of original inspiration is the

opposite of the modern view which is

that cultures tend to naturally improve

and develop.

This is related to the Darwinian belief

that life forms have spontaneously

organized themselves from simpler tomore complicated organisms with human

awareness somehow developing as a

function of matter.



The general notion has been criticized as

contradicting the second law of

thermodynamics- the tendency of energyto spread itself and dissipate (entropy).

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