The Human Condition
As Seen by a Materialist Neurobiologist

Paul Grobstein
Building the Scientific Mind
Vancouver, May 2007

Towards a New Human Culture

• Culture reflects, can be modified by stories.

• It is time to stop arguing about "Truth" or "Reality", to try get others to agree on them, and commit violence on those who don't.

• It is time to acknowledge that cultures are/should be distributed rather than hierarchical, with no single leader.

• It is time to recognize that everyone has a different story, and that that is valuable for ongoing exploration/creation.
  "The universe has lost its centre overnight, and woken up to find it has countless centres. So that each one can now be seen as the centre, or none at all." ... Life of Galileo, by Bertold Brecht

• It is time for the creation of social structures that encourage both the ongoing telling and revision of distinctive stories by all individuals and their active participation in creating a revising a "collective human story ... from which no one feels estranged."

• It is time for the full and universal emergence of the "scientific mind"
  An ongoing negotiation between specialized entities interacting with and learning from the body/world and a story teller who listens to/suggests candidate productive meanings to account for those interactions, one that shares both observations and stories with others, and that treats all stories, both its own and others with skepticism, not as what is but as stepping stones for exploring what might yet be.

  Culture as Disability
  From Complexity to Emergence and Beyond: Towards Empirical Non-Foundationalism as a Guide for Inquiry
  Social Organization as Applied Neurobiology: The Value of Stories and Story Creation

  Some efforts in such new directions ....

  • Center for Science in Society, encouraging interdisciplinary conversation at the university level
  • Exploring Science as Open-Ended Transactional Inquiry, thinking about science at the K-12 level
  • Serendip, "a gathering place for people who suspect life's instructions are always ambiguous and incomplete"
  • Building the Scientific Mind, in the Hague, Vancouver, and beyond
    • On-line forum on Serendip
  
  

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  | Overview | Brain: Exploring/Creating | Brain: Story Telling | Brain: Story Sharing | Towards a New Human Culture | On-line Forum |

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