This volume is a newly revised and updated edition of Evolution and Consciousness (Brill, 2019) and provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the emerging concept of the evolution of consciousness. It presents an overarching model that moves us to a new level of meaning and understanding of our place in the world.
A Seminal Work of Visionary Hope, Updated for the 21st Century In this era of government gridlock, economic and ecological devastation, and seemingly intractable global violence, our future is ever more ripe for — and in need of — fresh, creative reimagining. With her clear-eyed, inspiring, and sweeping vision of a possible global renaissance in the new millennium, Barbara Marx Hubbard shows us that our current crises are not the precursors of an apocalypse but the natural birth pains of an awakened, universal humanity. This is our finest hour. Conscious Evolution highlights the tremendous potential of newfound scientific knowledge, technological advances, and compassionate spirituality and illustrates the opportunities that each of us has to fully participate in this exciting stage of human history. As we do, we will bring forth all that is within us and not only save ourselves, but evolve our world.
A call for a paradigm shift in human thinking in recognition of the interconnectedness of all things--a new mind for a new world • Explains how the instability of our current time is part of a larger cycle of human evolution that will soon turn toward renewal and regeneration • Reveals how to participate in the process of conscious evolution to maintain resilience during these transitional times • Examines new findings in quantum physics and quantum biology on the interconnectivity of all life and how to utilize this for conscious evolution For centuries, indigenous wisdom traditions have talked of an epochal shift on the horizon, of a spiritual renaissance for the earth and her living family. Now the timelines are converging and the potential for an energetic “upgrade” for humanity is here, but first we must survive and evolve through the current period of transition. Explaining that evolution is not a gradual process but more like a “shock to the system”--radical waves of transformation after a period of dormancy--author Kingsley Dennis reveals that we are currently undergoing an evolutionary leap and shows not only how to survive but also thrive in this period of global upheaval and change. Examining the nature of evolutionary cycles, he explains that the instability we are now experiencing--climate change, economic meltdowns, and increasing political polarization--is the convergence of complex systems that have reached a critical state. What we need in order to push through to the coming spiritual renaissance is a paradigm shift in human thinking and perception, a conscious evolution in recognition of the interconnectedness of all things--a new mind for a new world. Examining new findings in quantum physics and quantum biology on the interconnectivity of all life as well as opportunities for us to reawaken our slumbering souls, this book offers a glimpse of the new global society to come, a renewed humanity for the 21st century, and how each of us can best participate during the process of planetary transformation.
A new theory about the origins of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the evolutionary transition to basic consciousness. What marked the evolutionary transition from organisms that lacked consciousness to those with consciousness—to minimal subjective experiencing, or, as Aristotle described it, “the sensitive soul”? In this book, Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka propose a new theory about the origin of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the transition to basic consciousness. Using a methodology similar to that used by scientists when they identified the transition from non-life to life, Ginsburg and Jablonka suggest a set of criteria, identify a marker for the transition to minimal consciousness, and explore the far-reaching biological, psychological, and philosophical implications. After presenting the historical, neurobiological, and philosophical foundations of their analysis, Ginsburg and Jablonka propose that the evolutionary marker of basic or minimal consciousness is a complex form of associative learning, which they term unlimited associative learning (UAL). UAL enables an organism to ascribe motivational value to a novel, compound, non-reflex-inducing stimulus or action, and use it as the basis for future learning. Associative learning, Ginsburg and Jablonka argue, drove the Cambrian explosion and its massive diversification of organisms. Finally, Ginsburg and Jablonka propose symbolic language as a similar type of marker for the evolutionary transition to human rationality—to Aristotle's “rational soul.”
A pioneering proposal for a pluralistic extension of evolutionary theory, now updated to reflect the most recent research. This new edition of the widely read Evolution in Four Dimensions has been revised to reflect the spate of new discoveries in biology since the book was first published in 2005, offering corrections, an updated bibliography, and a substantial new chapter. Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb's pioneering argument proposes that there is more to heredity than genes. They describe four “dimensions” in heredity—four inheritance systems that play a role in evolution: genetic, epigenetic (or non-DNA cellular transmission of traits), behavioral, and symbolic (transmission through language and other forms of symbolic communication). These systems, they argue, can all provide variations on which natural selection can act. Jablonka and Lamb present a richer, more complex view of evolution than that offered by the gene-based Modern Synthesis, arguing that induced and acquired changes also play a role. Their lucid and accessible text is accompanied by artist-physician Anna Zeligowski's lively drawings, which humorously and effectively illustrate the authors' points. Each chapter ends with a dialogue in which the authors refine their arguments against the vigorous skepticism of the fictional “I.M.” (for Ipcha Mistabra—Aramaic for “the opposite conjecture”). The extensive new chapter, presented engagingly as a dialogue with I.M., updates the information on each of the four dimensions—with special attention to the epigenetic, where there has been an explosion of new research. Praise for the first edition “With courage and verve, and in a style accessible to general readers, Jablonka and Lamb lay out some of the exciting new pathways of Darwinian evolution that have been uncovered by contemporary research.” —Evelyn Fox Keller, MIT, author of Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines “In their beautifully written and impressively argued new book, Jablonka and Lamb show that the evidence from more than fifty years of molecular, behavioral and linguistic studies forces us to reevaluate our inherited understanding of evolution.” —Oren Harman, The New Republic “It is not only an enjoyable read, replete with ideas and facts of interest but it does the most valuable thing a book can do—it makes you think and reexamine your premises and long-held conclusions.” —Adam Wilkins, BioEssays
In "Matter and Consciousness," Paul Churchland clearly presents the advantages and disadvantages of such difficult issues in philosophy of mind as behaviorism, reductive materialism, functionalism, and eliminative materialism. This new edition incorporates the striking developments that have taken place in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence and notes their expanding relevance to philosophical issues. Churchland organizes and clarifies the new theoretical and experimental results of the natural sciences for a wider philosophical audience, observing that this research bears directly on questions concerning the basic elements of cognitive activity and their implementation in real physical systems. (How is it, he asks, that living creatures perform some cognitive tasks so swiftly and easily, where computers do them only badly or not at all?) Most significant for philosophy, Churchland asserts, is the support these results tend to give to the reductive and the eliminative versions of materialism. "A Bradford Book"
This volume provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the emerging concept of the evolution of consciousness. The simple, but dynamic, theory of evolving consciousness blends the powerful insights of modern science with the deep wisdom of age-old cultures, synthesising the traditions of East and West, of the head and heart, of the feminine and the masculine and of science and spirituality. By integrating diverse multi-disciplinary approaches, it provides an overarching and transcending model that moves us to a new level of meaning and understanding of our place in the world. An appreciation of the evolution of consciousness can deepen our connection to ourselves, to others and to the natural world, while bringing a new dimension to the work of psychotherapy.
The Evolution of Consciousness begins to set an agenda for science to include consciousness. This program may well result in making redundant many of the cherished assumptions of mechanical science. When consciousness is considered, for example, the standard fiction that space and time are physical features of an independent universe is seen for what it is: an illusion. Both are features of universal consciousness. The universe is not full of information, as many scientists have thought, but full of the relations of Meaning. This book demonstrates how humans have seven ways to see and make meaning of the world. These represent the steps in the evolution of consciousness as well as the developmental phases in each person's spiritual path. ..". a bravura achievement and a poke in the eye for uncompromising materialism..." -- Larry Dossey, author of One Mind "Andrew Lohrey makes some astounding observations in this remarkably clear book." -- Professor Stephen Muecke, University of Adelaide Andrew Lohrey has a PhD in Communications from the University of Technology, Sydney. His doctoral thesis, The Meaning of Consciousness, was published by the University of Michigan Press. He has contributed to several books, including Bridging Science and Spirituality, and has written papers on consciousness and meaning for a range of journals. He has four daughters and lives on the east coast of Tasmania with his wife, the writer Amanda Lohrey.
Based on his life's research, Robert Ornstein provides a look at the evolution of the mind. He explains that we are not rational but adaptive, and that it is Darwin, not Freud, who is the central scientist of the brain. Our minds have evolved to help us survive, not to reason. At the same time, our individual worlds have developed our minds and destroyed many of our natural abilities.