Theos-Talk Archives (November 2006 Message tt00529)

Marie
Thought you might enjoy this
TWM
    
    
      
      
    
    
      Noetic
Sciences Review,
Winter 1998 pages 32-33 

      What
Are Noetic Sciences? 

      Willis
Harman
    
    
       
    
    
      What is noetic science and why is it
important?
We need to remind ourselves from time to time why this endeavor in
which
we have joined seems significant, and to reassess where we are. 

      A new science is arising, a science of the human
mind
much broader than psychology has been to date. We have called it "noetic"
science, after the Greek word for intuitive knowing. Perhaps it
is somewhat inaccurate to speak of it as though it were totally new; it
might be better to refer to a noetic emphasis in the human sciences.
But
the radical nature of the developments should not be underestimated. It
is the second stage of a two-stage process. 

      The first stage, the rise of modern
materialistic
science, is one of the most important evolutionary leaps in human
history.
Its essence embodies a remarkable proposition, namely that knowledge of
the objective sense-perceived world should not be based on religious or
traditional authority, nor the guarded property of an elite priesthood,
but should be empirically based and publicly verifiable, open and free
to all. Thus there is not Russian chemistry and American chemistry, or
Hindu physics and Christian physics. There is only science ? the best
framework
of empirical relationships and conceptual models currently available,
continuously
tested in public by agreed-upon procedures. 

      The goal of the second stage, just begun, is
creation
of a similar body of knowledge, empirically based and publicly
validated,
about the realm of subjective experience. For the first time in
history we are beginning to create a growing, progressively funded body
of established experience about humanity's inner life ? and
particularly
about the perennial wisdom of
the
great religious traditions and gnostic groups. For the first time
there
is hope that this knowledge can become ? not a secret repeatedly lost
in
dogmatization and institutionalization, or degenerating into manifold
varieties
of cultism and occultism ? but rather the living heritage of all
humankind. 

      This extension of scientific exploration, which
we have
termed noetic, differs from the materialistic science of the
past in
a number of ways. It is centrally concerned with subjective
experience where materialistic science has dealt almost entirely with
objective,
sensory experience. To the reductionistic models of materialistic
science
it adds holistic models; to deterministic explanations of
events
it adds teleological, purpose - recognizing explanations.
Where
materialistic science was largely value - inattentive, noetic science
is
centrally concerned with value issues. Materialistic science
has
tended to test knowledge by noting whether it leads to the ability to
predict
and control; while the consensus on validation of noetic sciences has
not
yet emerged, it seems clear that it will have more to do with understanding
than prediction, and more with joining than
control.Furthermore,
it seems likely that the noetic sciences will
evolve in a way quite different from the evolution of materialistic
science.
The latter dealt with genuinely new discoveries, and as a result the
changing
view of reality in the culture tended to lag behind that of the
scientists.
In the case of the new science of subjective experience it is
otherwise.
In part, at least, we are dealing here with rediscovery of
truths
that in some sense have been discovered over and over again, and have
left
their track in the culture more rapidly than in the scientific
community.
Changes in the view of reality held in the culture tend to lead to
corresponding
changes in the sciences; for example, the role of psychological
attitudes
such as faith in healing, and the conviction of spiritual reality that
comes with certain altered states of consciousness. 

      Because the noetic sciences are partially a
process of
rediscovery it is possible to anticipate what some of the essential
characteristics
will be. The new science is not really new. It is the esoteric
core
of all the world's religions, East and West, ancient and modern,
becoming
exoteric, "going public." As Aldous Huxley describes this "perennial
wisdom,"
it "recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and
lives and minds ... finds in the soul something similar to, or even
identical
with, divine Reality ... places man's final end in the knowledge of the
immanent and transcendent God of all Being." 

      Whether it is implied by extrapolation from
biofeedback
training or psychic phenomena and the evidence for psychosomatic
origins
of illness, or whether arising from immediate intuitive experience, the
fundamental profound insight appears to be recognition that in some
important
sense "I am cause and creator." In some sense much more fundamental
than
is implied in conventional psychology, our belief systems create our
reality. 

      The fact that the key characteristics of the
emerging
knowledge can be anticipated is very significant. It means that there
is
no need to wait decades, until the new science begins to take more
definite
shape, before beginning to act on its basic principles. The influence
of
these principles can be brought to bear on social and business
decision-making
right now. 

      It is generally recognized that industrialized
society
is at a crisis point. Choices relating to energy, environment,
control
of technology, growth, employment, land use, economic incentives,
government
and business roles, all seem to present more and more unpalatable
trade-offs,
and seem in this fact to indicate an underlying fundamental change of
direction.
Western political tradition, based in a Judeo-Christian ethic, a force
that has declined as the industrial-era paradigm has gained in
influence,
is wracked with self-doubts. Nation after nation is retreating from
democracy.
Contemporary political, economic, environmental, and social crises are
reflections of an underlying moral and
spiritual
crisis of industrial civilization. Their resolution depends on the
resolution of that crisis. 

      A noetic science ? a science of consciousness
and
the world of inner experience ? is the most promising
contemporary
framework within which to carry on that fundamental moral inquiry which
stable human societies have always had to place at the center of their
concerns. We do well also to recall that it was this nation more than
any
other in recent times which has clearly ? at its inception ? given this
knowledge the capstone position, as symbolized by the All-seeing Eye in
the Great Seal on the back of the dollar bill. 

      Public acceptance of the validity of a noetic
emphasis
in the human sciences has been rising. More importantly, there is
widespread
recognition of the need for deeper
understanding
of our spiritual nature and of the essential goals and
characteristics
of a workable humane society.
    
    
      Reprinted from IONS Newsletter, Vol. 6,
No. 1, Spring
1978. Willis Harman was president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences
from
1978 until his death in 1997.
    
    
      

      
    
    
      
       
      
    
    
      
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