THE NEW PARADIGM

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. - Albert Einstein

The World is Undergoing A Paradigm Shift
From "Mechanistic" to "Organic" Science and Thinking
The Global Curriculum is based on the new scientific paradigm, the “organic” worldview. We have all heard about organic food—but what is the “Organic Worldview”? Worldviews, or paradigms, are the underlying analogies through which we understand the universe, scientifically and/or spiritually. Our society is currently undergoing a shift from the Mechanistic Worldview, based on the analogy of the machine, to an organic science and culture that thinks through biological models. The biological analogy allows science to create theories that can explain what mechanism cannot: evolution, ecology, human nature, economics--anything having to do with living beings and life.

There are many ways this “Organic Shift” is affecting science and technology. There has literally been a "second Copernican Revolution" in science as thought has shifted from mechanistic to biological, organismic models. Ecology, for example, is based on a non-mechanistic, organismic analogy, where the ecosystem is seen as acting like a single living thing. The New Physics is part of the Organic Shift as well, going beyond rigid Newtonian thinking in order to be able to understand the realm of sub-atomic particles. Holistic alternative medicine, as well as Organic Agriculture and the Health Food Movement are all part of the Organic Shift.

Even culture and politics have been transformed by the change in worldviews, yet the press covers only the surface and never probes very deeply into the obvious new trends. Paradigms go unnoticed, much as the fish in the ocean are not aware of the water around them—it is just always there. The underlying analogy is so fundamental to our consciousness we simply never think about it. So the mass media is not aware of the paradigm shift, as it is still left to scientists and philosophers to speak about. To laypeople and the young, it may seem as though the shift doesn’t exist at all.

Our world, however, has already changed in many ways. The beginning of a transformation to a new way of thinking cannot be denied. Awareness of the environment and ecology, for example, has already entered the public mind and is proving to be a powerful driver of change. Indeed, many thinkers predict environmental awareness will eventually turn out to be the biggest revolution of all, more significant than the Farming Revolution or the Industrial Revolution. They may well prove correct.

The first step in learning about the organic paradigm is to deconstruct the present-day. Going beyond the well-known liberal-conservative struggle in politics, the world of today initially appears as an ongoing battle between two scientific/cultural worldviews, or paradigms. Modern science and the Medieval fundamentalist worldview are seen as the main competing mindsets of today. Today, whether a conservative, liberal or even communist party runs a government, all are based on the paradigm of modern science and technology (though not always democracy).

Yet the term “modern” is misleading, merely meaning contemporary—the latest, the most recent. Modern also implies that it is the best thinking available. Yet what is usually called “modern science”, “modern medicine” and “modern technology” are in the eyes of the organic paradigm old school thinking that must be replaced by new models and theories. It would be more accurate to call the scientific worldview the “mechanistic” paradigm, for the models used to create its theories are all based on the concept of the machine.

Newton’s “Clockwork Universe” neatly conveys the underlying analogy of the mechanistic worldview: the universe with its planetary orbits and revolving galaxies are like the gears and machinery inside a clock. Clocks and mechanisms are adequate analogies for inanimate objects, but machine models are too limited to explain human beings, the mind, evolution, ecology and most branches of biology. Since machines cannot reproduce, think or evolve of their own accord, a broader model naturally emerged as these areas came under study.

In fact, there are not just two major paradigms in the world today—there are three. All co-exist and have their own timelines of development: the Medieval, fundamentalist worldview of many religious sects, the ruling mechanistic science and culture and now a new paradigm, the organic worldview. With the new thinking, biological or organic models supersede the old machine models of the universe, creating not only a different science but also a whole new way to look at science itself.



The Organic Shift

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead

Changing the underlying analogy that all scientific theories rest on, directly leads to a re-invention of nearly all science and then society itself. It is thus a second Copernican Revolution: the “Organic Shift”. In his 1982 book The Turning Point, Fritjof Capra agrees that the new paradigm is a true scientific revolution on the scale of the Copernican.

Capra, moreover, says the old science and power structure will never be able to solve the crises of the modern day. Only the radical change of the new worldview—applied to all the endeavors of humanity—could succeed in that great task.

Just as the mechanists exposed the contradictions of the astronomy and science of the Middle Ages, now the new Organic Worldview emerges in its turn, based on a devastating critique of the Mechanistic Worldview. In his book Person/Planet, Theodore Roszak showed how ecology is more than just another new science, that it changes the very relationship humanity has with nature. Ecology, moreover, wakes a person up to a new awareness.

Roszak showed how the illusion of technique and institutional priesthoods in science and economics are similar to cults. Cults maintain their power by "mystifiying" the population, making them believe in a fantasy world rather than reality. The fantasy world of course is structured so that the cult leaders are at the top, wielding absolute power over all members and all thought.

The Mechanists of today have television commercials to aid them in the mystification of the population, an attempt to persuade us that nuclear power, coal, oil, and fast cars are good for you, that endless combinations of prescription drugs are fine, never mind the side-effects are worse than the disease. Or that war is necessary to have peace and abject global poverty is insoluble. None of these things are true.

Ecology, said Roszak, has the power to break this spell, because it immediately leads to a different way of thinking. It immediately leads to the new paradigm and the rejection of the old machine-model of the universe.


Person/Planet by Theodor Roszak Stated That the
Anthropocentrism of the Old Paradigm is
Being Replaced by a New Worldview

Rather than the Mechanists' anthropocentric universe, which places humanity at the center of reality--giving it the right of full exploitation over nature--there is a new way to view reality. Ecology, in fact, reveals to us a non-anthropocentric center, a "biocentric" view. The center if the universe is one thing, but for the safe operation of our Spaceship Earth, we must put aside the notion that humanity has the right to exploit nature to the breaking point, and adopt a new ethic based on seeing the health of the biosphere and all the ecosystems within it as our Earthly center.

Instead of the typical materialism and rugged individualism of the Mechanistic Worldview, Roszak said the very concept of the Person changes in the new paradigm, becoming “Person/Planet”. One is still an individual, but everyone is now also part of the greater whole, of the biosphere and the planet itself—-and that must guide our actions going forward into the future.

The new paradigm is not merely philosophy or progressive political rhetoric. The new paradigm is, in part, a set of powerful new discoveries in science and technology, discoveries that change all the social and economic equations we operate with today. These recent inventions and breakthroughs make it possible to not only avoid the worst of global warming, collectively they are a leap to a new civilization, one that lives in harmony with nature--rather than one that uses nature up.

Discussion: Machines are not alive. They cannot evolve, love, love or think for themselves. What advantages would a science based on biological models have over machine-model science? Discussion: Where in today's world do you see evidence of the Organic Shift? Discussion: Compare the concept of ecological ethics and respect for wildlife and nature with the typical anthropocentric view that condones exploitation. What are the differences in values and behavior?

Links: Theodor Roszak

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Discussion Group

PERSON/PLANET The greater the amount or intensity of mystification, the greater the violation of our personhood. For mystification is, essentially, an imposition of false identity. It is the act of maneuvering people into somebody else's conception of who they are, what they are, the roles they are expected to play, the feelings they must feel, the limits of ability, allegiance, personal worth they must respect. Mystification is aggression upon the spiritual autonomy of others; it is inevitably a depersonalizing assertion of hierarchical status based on the assumption that there is an authority somewhere in the world that has the right to assign and to enforce identities. …if there is any hope of saving the rights of the person and planet in the years ahead, we—by which I mean the ordinary, chronically powerless people who live in the belly of the urban-industrial leviathan—we are going to have to find our way back to a comparable sense of mutual aid, a comparable capacity to live self-reliantly within more local and domestic economies... We are going to have to rethink some of our most firmly held assumptions about property and privacy, security and success, recognizing that there is simply no livable future for the competitive, self-regarding, high-consumption, middle-class way of life which we have been taught to regard as the culmination of industrial progress. And we are going to have to undertake that reappraisal from the bottom up, expecting no encouragement from leaders and experts who are the chief products and principal beneficiaries of our high industrial compulsions. It will be up to us to begin coming together, talking together, working together. We are going to have to stop keeping our cares and material goods, our troubles and our talents, our wealth and our psychic wounds to ourselves and begin sharing our lives like mature, convivial animals.