The Creating Consciousness: Science As the Language of God - Softcover

Wyller, Arne A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0965952169 ISBN 13: 9780965952163

Publisher: Divina, 1999

Synopsis

Throughout the Scientific Era, the popular perception has been that science threatens God's reach into the human imagination. And we have believed that to follow the thinking of scientists we must abandon our reach for the divine.

But maybe the findings of hard science have been slowly revealing to us the eternal truths we seem to have known instinctively all along.

As astrophysicist Arne Wyller reveals in this ambitious and open-minded inquiry, a century of research and discovery demonstrates that science might be the very language of the creator.

And if this is true, then - at the threshold of the new millennium - we are poised for the next step in the evolution of the human mind.

About this title

About the Author

Dr Arne A. Wyller received M.A. degrees from the University of Oslo and Harvard Univeristy, a Ph.D. in Astronomy from Harvard and a doctorate of Philosophy from Oslo. He was a Royal Swedish Academy Professor in Astrophysics for twenty years, Director of the Swedish Academy Solar observatory in Capri, Ialy and then Director of the Academy's Solar Observatory on the Canary Islands. He has also taught extensively worldwide, including at Harvard, the University of Oslo, Swarthmore College, Soeul National University and the University of Paris. He was decorated by King Juan Carlos I of Spain and King Carl XVI of sweden for this work at the Spanish International Observatory., He is retired and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Reviews

A former professor of the Royal Swedish Academy and director of its solar observatory in Capri, Italy, Wyller joins the ranks of Paul Davies and Michael Behe as a scientist who believes that the latest advances in knowledge shake the foundations of scientific materialism rather than strengthen it. In 1996 Behe's Darwin's Black Box revived the "argument by design," which had been used for centuries by theologians to show that even the simplest bacteria are extraordinarily complicated life machines. Although Behe was careful not to identify the possible designer, Wyller uses these same arguments to postulate the existence of an intelligence that predates the appearance of life on this planet. Like Davies, Wyller contends that DNA represents a new order of information in the universe. From where could this information have come? In Wyller's view, the intricately complex information contained in DNA and anatomical structures, such as the eye, are ideas made manifest by a primordial consciousness, which is itself evolving. Wyller is leery of being associated with flighty New Ageism, so at first glance his term for this intelligence, "the Planetary Mind Field," seems ill-advised. Later, it becomes clear that Wyller wants readers to conceive of the Mind Field as they would any other field theory, such as quantum field theory. To rebut the view that consciousness is only a recent evolutionary innovation, Wyller invokes the pantheistic philosophies of Aristotle, Plotinus, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell. Although Wyller strays far afield from his own area of research, his book reflects the measured arguments of one steeped in the scientific method. It will interest readers enamored of the recent crop of books speculating on a radical departure from the traditional scientific worldview. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Divina
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0965952169
• ISBN 13: 9780965952163
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 302