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WORLD 1From the Big Bang to Conscious Humans
MODULE 1A Quest to Understand Where
Everything Comes From
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Where did we come from? What is our story?
How do the worldviews* we hold influence the way we see and interpret the world around us?
What do insights from the sciences of complexity have to tell us about the deeper patterns that
influence our evolutionary journey?
Focus Questions
* worldview |ˈwərldˌvyoō| (also world view) • nouna particular philosophy of life or conception of the world: a Christian worldview revolves around the battle of good and evil. (New Oxford American Dictionary 2nd edition © 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.)
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LEARNING UNIT 1Overview of our Evolutionary Journey
LEARNING UNIT 2A Brief History of the Evolution of the major Western Worldviews and Scientific Paradigms
LEARNING UNIT 3Appreciating Things from the Perspective of Complex Adaptive Systems and Living Systems Theory
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LEARNING UNIT 1Overview of our Evolutionary Journey
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Fig. source: Hubbard Marx Barbara (1998): Conscious Evolution
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Classic Scientific Method: Reductionist, Mechanistic Worldview
Holistic Paradigm: Systems based and Integral Worldview
Energy+
Matter
Consciousness+
Information
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PatternsIn Nature
Sand Waves and Tides Landscape
Bird Flock Wild Bee Hive Ant Foraging
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PatternsIn Art and Music
“Fall” by artist Bridget Riley, 1963 “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh, 1889
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Recurring decimals: repeating sequences of digits which repeat infinitely. For example, 1 divided by 81 will result in the answer 0.012345679...the numbers 0-9 (except 8) will repeat forever. 1/81 is a recurring decimal.
Fibonacci Sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55…
Golden Rectangle: two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one. The “golden ratio” is an irrational mathematical constant, approximately 1.6180339887.
PatternsIn Mathematics
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PatternsOf Chaotic Systems
Fractal
Computer Generated pattern
Lorentz’s weather pattern (“butterfly effect”)
Frost crystals formed naturally on cold glass
illustrate fractal process development in a purely
physical system
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LEARNING UNIT 2A Quick History of the major Western Worldviews and Scientific Paradigms
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What do you see?
Our mental structures constrain what we see
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Aristotle, 384 BCPlato, 428-427 BC
The material world as it appears to us is not the real world, but only an image or copy of the real world.
The basis of reality exists in an entirely transcendent and immaterial realm of ideal entities.
The natural world consists of concrete particulars which have recognizable universal patterns.
True reality is the perceptible world of concrete objects, not an imperceptible world of eternal ideas.
Ancient Greek Worldviews
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The Scientific Revolution
Descartes, 1596-1650Galileo, 1564-1642 Sir Isaac Newton, 1642-1727
Heliocentric ViewThen controversial idea that the Earth revolves around the sun.
Mind/Body Dichotomy“I think, therefore I am”
Rational AnalysisLogical thinking is the main approach to understand the world; no need of sensorial experience.
Universal Laws of MotionMankind has precise, predictive power over nature.
DeterminismThe Universe operates like a predictable clockwork.
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Complexity Everywhere
The Limit of the
Scientific Method
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Complexity Sciences: A Trans-Disciplinary Domain of Research
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_systems
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In the twenty-first century, science is evolving a holistic picture of reality. The emerging holism of the new physics, the new biology, and the newest branches of psychology mesh with and lend fresh
legitimacy to the holistic world-concept of the great cultural traditions. The holism of the new
civilization we need can have both a scientific and a cultural foundation.
~ Ervin Laszlo, The Chaos Point, 2006
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LEARNING UNIT 3Appreciating Things from the Perspective of Complex Systems and Living Systems Theory
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Patterns in Living Systems
Sensitivity to initial condition
Adaptation
Self-organization
Emergence
Creativity
A tendency to develop ever increasing levels of structural complexity, coherence and order
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“The threat lies in the realization that in our universe the security of stable, permanent rules are gone forever. We are living in a dangerous and uncertain world that inspires no blind confidence. Our hope arises from the knowledge that even small fluctuations may grow and change the overall structure. As a result, individual activity is not doomed to insignificance”
-Ilya Prigogine, Order Out of Chaos, 1984.
The Butterfly Effect
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Adaptation
Self-Organization
Emergence
Creativity
Order
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Bifurcation
Greater flexibility and creativity
More structural complexity
More degrees of freedom
Higher flows of matter, info, energy
Time
Life Conditions
New Life Conditions
Regression path
Surge to New Dynamic Stability
Extinction path
Critical point
Dynamic Stability/ Equilibrium
Chaos Phase- Outcome ???
Capacity
Evolutionary Path
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“To live in an evolutionary spirit means to engage with full ambition and without any reserve in the structure of the present, and yet to let go and flow into a new structure when the right time has come”
~Erich Jantsch
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The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new
landscapes but in having new eyes.~ Marcel Proust, French novelist (1871 – 1922)