# Expanding Science  ## Metadata - Author: [[Mario Beauregard, Natalie Dyer, Marjorie Woollacott, and Gary Schwartz]] - Full Title: Expanding Science - Category: #books ## Highlights - Out of the Summit was also born the Campaign for Open Science, and a website was created to share its message: opensciences.org. ([Location 187](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=187)) - Yet, quite amusingly, at least 80% of the beneficial effect of antidepressants and 75% of pain medication is solely due to placebo (Kirsch & Sapirstein, 1998; Kirsch et al., 2002). ([Location 1426](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=1426)) - After extensive study with indigenous peoples and those diagnosed with schizophrenia, the American anthropologist Julian Silverman at the National Institute of Mental Health wrote about the difference between schizophrenia in American culture and shamanism in indigenous cultures. He noted one major difference between the two cultures with regards to how life crises are resolved. In indigenous cultures, the abnormal experience (shamanism) is typically beneficial to the individual and he is regarded as being one with a greater consciousness. In a culture that does not provide guidelines for comprehending this kind of experience, the individual (perceived as schizophrenic) is likely to undergo further suffering over and above the original crisis (Silverman, 1967). ([Location 1455](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=1455)) - Meditation or contemplative practices have their roots in being a means to unite with a higher aspect of self, a greater power, or divinity/god, through transcending and/or integrating the ego-self. These practices have a variety of goals, but one is samadhi, a state of pure awareness, and another is metta, or universal love, kindness, and compassion for all of existence (Buddharakkhita, 1989). ([Location 1495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=1495)) - The Eternal Law: Ancient Greek Philosophy, Modern Physics, and Ultimate Reality, ([Location 1862](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=1862)) - The fact is, Platonism—or, more broadly stated, the perennial philosophy—and thus rational mysticism, is at the root of all science. It always has been, and it always will be. ([Location 1967](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=1967)) - Schumann calculated that all electrical activity on earth resonated in a standing wave between the earth’s crust and ionosphere averaged to 7.83 Hz (Rusov et al., 2012). Tesla observed this phenomenon when he was monitoring electrical magnetic radiations due to lightning discharges, and calculated a similar wavelength and frequency to Schumann of around 8 Hz (Valone, 2002). Due to the similarity of this frequency to the frequency range of deeply relaxed states, researchers have suggested a connection between Schumann’s resonance and the ability of the human mind to interface within a global field. (See also Oschman, 2000). ([Location 2238](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=2238)) - Galen Strawson shares the frustration of many contemporary philosophers with the seemingly intractable problems of materialism and of dualism. He has come to the conclusion that there is only one way out. He argues that a consistent materialism must imply panpsychism, namely the idea that even atoms and molecules have a primitive kind of mentality or experience. ([Location 2939](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=2939)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Note: Kastrup must be deducibke from levels lower in pyramid - But can we meaningfully say that electrons have experiences, feelings, and motivations? Can they be attracted towards one possible future, or repelled by another? The answer is “yes.” For a start, they are electrically charged; they “feel” the electric field around them; they are attracted towards positively charged bodies, and repelled by those with negative charges. ([Location 3053](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=3053)) - Strawson, G. (2006). Realistic monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13, 3-31. ([Location 3162](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=3162)) - Schrödinger offers an interesting perspective on why it is so difficult to pinpoint the experiencer or observer in our scientific investigations: he writes that “the reason why our sentient, percipient and thinking ego is met nowhere within our scientific world picture can easily be indicated in seven words: because it is itself that world picture. It is identical with the whole and therefore cannot be contained in it as a part of it” (Schrödinger, 1967, p. 138.). ([Location 7712](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=7712)) - Gödel believed that “materialism is false” and that “the world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived” (Gödel, quoted in Wang, 2001, p. 316). The skeptics want to say that rejecting materialism or believing in some form of reincarnation is not logical, but they are unlikely to be able to match the logical rigor of a mind such as Gödel’s. ([Location 7849](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=7849)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Putting the two together, we get materialist reductionism, the official religion of academia, which holds that all things, including consciousness, can be reduced to the motions of these fundamental units of matter. We note in passing that atomism is empirically false, as the field theories of the 19th century, and relativity and quantum theory of the 20th century, support wholism, not atomism. According to our best theories about the nature of matter there are no fundamental units of matter, and everything is deeply interconnected with everything else, such that the entire physical universe comprises a single unbroken whole (Bohm, 1985). ([Location 7974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=7974)) - “The body confuses the soul and does not allow it to acquire truth and wisdom whenever it (the soul) is associated with it (the body)”, Plato Phaedo 66a (parenthesis mine). “if we are ever to have pure knowledge, we must escape from the body and observe matters in themselves with the soul by itself” (Phaedo 66e) ([Location 11492](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08P92NLDC&location=11492)) - Tags: [[favorite]]