Personal Reality : The Emergentist Concept of Science, Evolution, and Culture

A study in two volumes showing how the principles of emergence and evolution underlie our personal knowledge and understanding of reality.

Western civilization was built on the concept of God. Today modern science, based on the critical method and so-called objective facts, denies even the existence of our soul. There is only matter: atoms, molecules, and DNA sequences. There is no freedom; there are no well-grounded beliefs. The decline of Western civilisation is not the simple consequence of decadence, hedonism, and malevolence. Modern critical science has liberated us from the old dogmas but failed to establish our freedoms, values, and beliefs.

However, human knowledge is not objective but personal. We are the children of evolution. Everybody sees the world from his own personal point of view anchored into his or her body. We use our evolutionary skills and cultural heritage to recognise and acknowledge the personal facts of our reality, freedom, and most important natural beliefs, respect and speaking the truth. In reality, even science itself is based on our personal knowledge. Only our false conceptual dichotomies paralyse our thinking.

God or matter? There is a third choice: the emergence of life and human persons. This is the only way to defend our freedoms and the Christian moral dynamism of free Western societies.

Daniel Paksi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics where he received his PhD in history and philosophy of science in 2010. His primary goal with Personal Reality to establish a coherent concept of emergence based on Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge and Samuel Alexander's Space, Time, and Deity.