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ENFORMATION SUMMATION

An Emerging Worldview : The Enformationism hypothesis suggests that an automatic, gradual, global  adjustment to our current scientific paradigms and to our philosophical worldviews is already in the process of transforming what thoughtful people see and how they interpret the world around them. If so, any further ethical and technical progress may be due largely to the subconscious Memetic Evolution of human culture. In that case, there is little that any individual can do to alter the trajectory of the autopoietic arrow which is already in the air. But each person can intentionally build his personal philosophy upon the best evidence and logic available. For that reason a group of scientists and philosophers has established an ongoing project with the goal of developing “a kind of methodology for world-view construction”. The Center Leo Apostel website has posted online documents presenting their suggestions toward that end [28].

One of those documents includes The Seven Components of a WorldView, with a list of questions “that must be accounted for in every world view” [29]. This is an abbreviation of that list:

1. What is the nature of our world?

2. Global explanatory principles.

3. General principles by which we should organize our actions.

4. What future is open to us?

5. Criteria for selection of possible futures.

6. Construct an image of this world.

7. Propose partial answers to these questions.
If rational people sincerely followed the recommended procedures, surely the outcome would be “one unified world view”. So the document goes on to reveal that, “Reaching such a consensus is one of the aims of world-view construction.” However, regarding the history of ideas they observe that, “Parmenides and Heraclitus seem to adhere to opposing views; materialism and idealism are opposites; theism and atheism exclude each other.” So they are not naive idealists, but concede that, “We should only look for a multitude of coherently connected world views with enough room for a plurality of aspects to be included in it.” And that is also the pragmatic goal of this preliminary formulation of the Enformationism hypothesis.

An Humble Postulation : A worldview derived from the Enformationism concept might answer the questions above as follows.

1. The nature of the world is a creative process rather than a created product.

2. The universal explanatory principle is Generic Information, which first in-forms Space-Time, which in turn provides an expandable container for the evolution of Energy-Matter into the actions and objects of the physical world.

3. We may derive or improve our Moral Principles with the deeper and broader understanding of the world, and our place in it, from the 21st century paradigms of Enformationism, as opposed to 19th century Materialism, or pre-historic Spiritualism.

4. Our forecasts of the future may be more accurate if we employ the more up-to-date axioms of Enformationism instead of other out-dated scientific and religious worldviews.

5. Future options may become clearer as we learn to distinguish between physical things and metaphysical concepts, and to unify our picture of the fragmented, Real vs Ideal, past.

6. Our personal and communal image of the world of Now should resolve and integrate into a more harmonious whole.

7.  Any specific answers to these, and all other philosophical inquiries, will of course remain subject to change as our collective understanding progresses, but we all have to start somewhere, usually nearer the beginning than the end of the question. 

E n d   o f   T h e s i s

Meta-physics for Dummies : For those unfamiliar with the weird worldview of modern physics that began to emerge around the beginning of the 20th century, the primary obstacle in the path of the new paradigm is the counter-intuitive nature of this new-fangled, so-called “Information” conceived as the immaterial building block of physical reality. The paradoxical notion of common-sense matter being made of mind-stuff  may not be as outrageous as it seems at first hearing, though. Back when Einstein claimed that matter was equivalent to energy, the idea was preposterous. Energy at the time was imagined to be some kind of mysterious living-force (vis viva) with no physical traits aside from the sensations they caused in the human body. Around the same time, physicists were forced to deal with a series of physical phenomena with few, if any, of the objective, empirical physical characteristics they were used to. For example, electro-magnetism was described as a “field”, which is simply a “place in space” where something happens. That kind of field is a place with no literal ground to put things on. Likewise, the “force” of gravity was found to be another type of field, which was defined metaphorically as the “fabric of space”. And even ethereal empty space itself has been portrayed by physicists as a void seething with tiny bubbles of energy spontaneously coming-in, and going-out of existence.  So what’s so strange about the idea of bringing metaphysical concepts into the physical sciences?

DISCLAIMER #3

This is a thesis, but not yet a complete theory. It may never be a “Realist” or “Descriptive” Theory –-in Ernest Nagel’s categorization–-But it could become an “Instrumental” Theory: a tool for further research.

INTEGRAL

WORLDVIEW

“A worldview is a coherent collection of concepts and theorems that must allow us to construct a global image of the world, and in this way to understand as many elements of our experience as possible.

—-Leo Apostel, et al                World Views :

        From Fragmentation

        to Integration

CATCH 42

As a scientific paradigm,  the Enformationism hypothesis has the serious "drawback" of requiring not only a Universal Mind to generate the generic information, but also a First Cause or Deity (a hypothetical entity) to "produce" existence--- to be the ultimate Being–- to serve as the original Informer. Otherwise the result would be a meaningless endless regress of causation.

WORLDVIEW

Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant

   —-Carl Sagan

Meta-physics for Dummies