Revolution in the Mind Sciences

Date                May 27, 2013

Speaker/s         First speaker, second speaker

Title

First speaker: not a typical man, here’s a man that cannot sit still in one place. even while he was a man he went on  to get a degree in physics and then  he went on to start neuron sciences and phycology and eventually he got one of those PHD things that some of you have  and then he went on to become a professor in UCSB . Then he decided he couldn’t sit <> UCSB so he went out to found his own institute and he decided to take everything he ever learnt in life to try to advance the <> sciences.

When I heard about his work I figured this are things that will be interesting  to Google’s and mind scientist, so invited him  to come visit , come eat with  us and share a talk. Before I bring <> just a reminder to all Google’s please don’t ask questions that contains information that is school work confidential , thank you .

<Applause>

Second speaker: well it’s quite a delight for me to be with you today. I’ve known about Google like the rest of us for a long time, delighted to be in the matrix here and to share some of my passions pertaining to understand I had a rather diverse background but I had been blessed with extraordinary teachers in the <>, other Buddhist traditions but also marvelous instructors in physics, philosophy science at <> college and doing   very diverse PHD program at Stanford University; where <. In religious studies but taking courses in philosophy of physics and <> psychology philosophy of mind and trying to bring all of these together.  to integrate them , my background being raised  in the west  but then living years in  Europe and  quite a few years In to , to synthesize so that  these various aspects of   own life as a Buddhist monk for 14 years but also  physics student and so forth can be all integrated. So that the various aspects of my own last fifty six years on the planet would be all a one integrated unit so no part was isolated form the others.

This actually took a long time because again I had been exposed to so many diverse world views, ways of life and so on. What I’d   like to share with you this afternoon is a vision of a possibility of a first revolution in the mind sciences.  This very notion is based on an assumption that certainly can be contested. probably everything can be but the starting assumption here is that amid the  natural sciences we have the first great revolution in the natural science , starting with <> building on momentum with <> and coming  to its fulfilment to  its fruition with Newton ..

So the first great revolution we had in the natural sciences wasn’t physics and astronomy. I would say from own perceptive it started with Copernicus but with Newton it came together, he brought it all together and that’s when that revolution stopped and then we simply have a lot of excellent science and physics after that.

Then we move over to another discipline. The life sciences are plugging along and then 1859 Darwin comes out with his masterpiece. I he started the first and  the only  great revolution we’ve had in the life science .he started building  momentum in 1870s with Greggory Mendel , a Christian monk , with genetics of course and then he was  building  momentum. Key point one century after Darwin, 1959 <> and Watson DNA.  We fondly <>, how does this happen, the natural selection, hoe can species mutate?

Darwin didn’t tell us, Mendel gave us a hint. <> and Watson pointed there is a machinery. Following that we’ve had this extraordinary growth. A spectacular growth in the study of genetics and I would say that great revolution starting in 1859 has come to communication, it’s over and it was with the human genome project. We’ve mapped it, it’s something like 99%.

Now of course the study of biology of genetics will continue but it was 140 years and interestingly not, it’s probably just a coincidence but it was 140 years also from Copernicus through Newton. It took 140 years for the revolution to start and then go” Walla”.

We also have a second great revolution in physics and it started with Max plank in the 1900s. It picked up momentum in 1905 and 1915 with a special and relativity theory form Einstein. It was truly a revolution and by revolution I mean to use the familiar phrase, “the paradigm is shifted”. You’re fundamentally orientation toward the subject matter has shifted and it will never be the same. From geo centric to the hellio-centric. Ram pre Darwin to post Darwin nothing is the same. You cannot look at human existence, you cannot look at the pllanet the same way anymore. Your axis has rotated.

that  second great revolution in mystics is not over, 106 years of  you start 1900 when  Max Plank came out with the  notion of <>, it’s not over. there’s some  core ,crucial , fundamental issues in <> mechanics  in particular have not been sold  for the m most important of which  would say is the  measurement  problem.

how is it that  you move from  mathematical obstruction of a probability function which is hardly physical, it’s a pure abstraction but prior to making a measurement  that’s what you have , you have a probability function, a shooting away equation and then you make  a measurement then suddenly you have an electron that is here.  It still doesn’t have simultaneous exact momentum and location but at least it’s a real electron, Fulton but what is it   about the act of measurement that moves you forma a realm of possibility to a realm of actuality.

Somehow the observer is involved but in what way? What does it take for a measurement to take place? What’s required? So you need consciousness?  Could a robot do it? The measurement problem I think it was identified in about 1930 or so, it’s unsolved. What is the roll e of the observer in the natural world? It takes us from potential to actuality. another major  unresolved question in this 2th century physics is you have two extraordinary , elegant , rap found , powerful theories  and that is <. Mechanics in one hand and generality on the other.  Neither one of them is going away. They’re too good but they’re not integrated. That would be the grand <> theory and nobody had come up with it.

That revolution is in progress, now we go to   the mind science and I want to get a little bit of historical sciences here to point out one element that I think is absolutely and indispensable catalyst to bring about a revolution in any field. Of science and that is the development if extraordinarily, sophisticated, advance method of imperial observation.  If you don’t have that the revolution is not going to take place that would be my premise. you’ve  got to observe the phenomena  you’re really interested in an you’ve got to serve it beyond folk psychology , folk astronomy or  folk biology  get professional .

When I think of this first great revolution in the physical science   I don’t think of Copernicus. He’s a brilliant mathematician. He was not a brilliant experimenter, he was not a brilliant observer. He get up on the roof of his monetary, looked at the star with the best of them, he’s didn’t really do anything innovative there. His mathematical theory that was innovative so they called it the <> revolution.

Keller himself was not a great observer. He got hall his data from <> who was an every overfill observer, a brilliant Danish astronomer but Keller like Copernicus was a great mathematician. It’s Galileo that brought t in the full package. Galileo was the observer, she was the engineer, he was the one that reinvented the telescope, which has actually been invented in Hoagland, he tried to order and somebody snipped it on the way. He was there bummed out that he didn’t get his telescope because somebody snipped it so he said “I’ll make my own.”  He made himself a 20 power   telescope and he did something unprecedented, the telescope was already there but Galileo was   the innovator and he used it in an unprecedented ways.

Instead of goggling the girls across the street in Holland he directed it upwards, can you imagine how thrilling this must have been? That everything he looked at he was covering something nobody had ever seen before. He took his Telescope and directed it to the moons and he seen craters for the e first time in humanity. he turned it to Jupiter and  he saw the moons for  the first time , he turned  it to the sum he saw sun spot, he turned it to Venus  she saw the face of Venus. Wouldn’t that be thrilling?

He too was mathematician but he was an experimenter. he was  rolling balls down a ramp to see  whether they <> at constant velocity they accelerated . he did actually brought objects off the tower of Piza. I”ve been there  and asked the  people at the University of Piza. He did it all and he also brought it out into the world he didn’t write Latin like so many of his contemprraies, he wrote in Italian he brought it home. He was the full package, he was the Constance first great scientist that brought it all together.

Among the trainings he did which was seminal, which is indispensable for this triggering of the first great revolution in the physical sciences was his use of the telescope. He was making observations like nobody has done before. The mathematics was there, the observation that was crucial.  Otherwise what they were doing with the Copernicus <> centric system was a c very cool mathematical system but we already have one. Ours cover the data, it accounts for the appearances so does yours so it’s a matter of choice.  It’s not a matter of choice when you start seeing the face of Venus. It’s not a matter of which do you like ice cream or do you like brownies.