What a tragedy it is, that Humanity has been so alienated from its accumulated wisdom, that we must — because we are too ignorant of what has been known for millennia — start all over again in an effort to break free of the myopia imposed on us all by the modern Scientific Industry. To wit:
Plato described the necessary structure of reality as a nondual whole, from which forms, such as the formal ontogenesis of we humans, must arise from the whole in a codependent infinitely-nested recursive organic coherent structuring of formal activity. It’s in the Sophist Dialogue, where he launches into an extended discourse on the “three great forms” in the middle of the main subject of that dialogue. He was responding to Parmenides, but not to criticize him. Instead, he showed logically how Parmenides’ description of reality actually supported Plato’s own theory of forms.
The important point of it was something that is missing from all the New Age philosophical theories: Why, and not just How, the Universe — and all it contains — arises as it does. The latter being the only allowable discussion, for the most part — in modern Science. This was 2,500 years ago.
Nowadays, hubris has it that Plato was just showing off. That what he was arguing at length was utter nonsense not related to anything. Too bad. It perfectly describes the world as we are discovering it to be. But because these great insights are not investigated through self-application, but at best, are only memorized rather than internalized, even rediscovering their pith meaning comes to be seen as heresy.
So we’ll wait for a new Plato to arrive who will rediscover what Humanity already knew.
Tibetan Buddhism — for over a thousand years — has a doctrine that perfectly describes the contemporary findings of the different fields of science, and which, like Plato’s, gives not only the How, but the Why as well. It’s called the Great Perfection (“Great” has a specialized meaning), and one aspect of that doctrine, called Great Responsiveness, is already the explanatory model Quantum physics is looking for. The trouble is, just as you can’t expect someone who is not trained in advanced mathematics to truly understand quantum physical theories, someone who has not been trained in profound contemplative practices (not modern “mindfulness”) can comprehend the Great Perfection. I imagine Plato wouldn’t have any difficulty understanding it.
My own preference was to stop trying to correct modern scientific misunderstandings, and go back to the great minds and their discoveries. I am not willing to wait to be told what to believe.
We have a choice between adopting the worldview imposed by the modern scientific community, while trying to fit new phenomena into it that is challenging that worldview, or accept the phenomena as facts, which they are, and adapt a worldview that best supports them; and where better to start, than the hard-won wisdom of our ancestors, who, not to make too fine a point here, thrived for untold millennia, while the advent of modern scientific practice has coincided with a rapid descent into looming ruination.
Time’s short, and things need to get done.
