The emerging global brain 1

We are witnessing the rapid expansion of communications across the globe. Existing networks such as the postal system, telephone networks, airline ticket reservations, weather satellites, banking and stock market systems, etc., are rapidly being supplemented by the World Wide Net. The impact of this process will be two‐fold. First just as the printing press had a major impact on the collective intelligence of Europe, so will the world computer networks upgrade the collective intelligence of global society. Second, the properties of this constellation of systems, approach the anatomy of the human brain. The complexity of the global brain will result in properties, and an independence, which cannot be anticipated at this time.     

COLLECTIVE RELIGIO‐SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSIONS ON ISLAM AND HIV/AIDS: I. BIOMEDICAL SCIENTISTS

During the 1990s, biomedical scientists and Muslim religious scholars collaborated to construe Islamic responses for the ethical questions raised by the AIDS pandemic. This is the first of a two‐part study examining this collective legal reasoning (ijtihād jamā‘ī). The main thesis is that the role of the biomedical scientists is not limited to presenting scientific information. They engaged in the human rights discourse pertinent to people living with HIV/AIDS, gave an account of the preventive strategy adopted by the World Health Organization, and offered an (Islamic) virtue‐based preventive model. Finally, these scientists tried to draft a number of Islamic legal rulings (a?kām), usually seen in Islamic jurisprudence as the exclusive business of Muslim religious scholars. This multilayered role played by the scientists reflects intriguing developments in the Islamic religio‐ethical discourse in general and in the field of Islamic jurisprudence in particular.     

The Growing Social and Moral Conflict Between Conservative Protestantism and Science

Due to conservative Protestant elites challenging scientists in the public sphere, and prominent scientists attacking religion, scholars have claimed that there is an increasing conflict between conservative Protestants and science. However, these claims have never been empirically investigated and these general claims do not specify what conflict is actually about. In this article I use the General Social Survey from 1984 to 2010 to examine whether conservative Protestants are increasingly opposed to the social and moral influence of scientists. I find evidence for increasing opposition by biblical literalist conservative Protestants to the involvement of scientists in social debates about moral issues.     

It's Complicated: Corporate Sustainability and the Uneasiness of Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique and field of expertise aimed at modeling the complete ‘cradle-to-grave’ life of goods and services, as well as their multiple impacts on environmental and human well-being. Although not new, in recent years LCA has become a central tool in corporate and government initiatives to improve overall product sustainability. These initiatives show how corporate supply chains have become increasingly important sites and objects of knowledge production. But the production process is not straightforward. LCA practitioners must navigate complicated relationships with corporations that serve as both clients and sources of vital information. The challenges of generating knowledge deemed both credible and useful are compounded by the complexity, diversity and contingency of product life cycles, as well as by ongoing debates about exactly how product sustainability should be modeled and assessed. While some of these challenges are unique to LCA, others reflect tensions common to many fields that assess corporate conduct in order to improve it.     

Beyond Viral: Interpersonal Communication in the Internet Age

Contemporary scholarship on mindfulness casts it as a form of purely nonevaluative engagement with experience. Yet, traditionally mindfulness was not intended to operate in a vacuum of dispassionate observation, but was seen as facilitative of eudaimonic mental states. In spite of this historical context, modern psychological research has neglected to ask the question of how the practice of mindfulness affects downstream emotion regulatory processes to impact the sense of meaning in life. To fill this lacuna, here we describe the mindfulness-to-meaning theory, from which we derive a novel process model of mindful positive emotion regulation informed by affective science, in which mindfulness is proposed to introduce flexibility in the generation of cognitive appraisals by enhancing interoceptive attention, thereby expanding the scope of cognition to facilitate reappraisal of adversity and savoring of positive experience. This process is proposed to culminate in a deepened capacity for meaning-making and greater engagement with life.     

Slouching Toward Policy: Lazy Bioethics and the Perils of Science Fiction

Too much contemporary bioethical discourse is weak on science, lazily citing and adopting science fiction scenarios rather than science facts in the framing of analyses and policies. We challenge bioethicists to take more seriously the role of providing informed insight into and oversight over contemporary science and its implications and applications. Bioethicists must work harder to understand the fast-changing truths and limits of basic science, and they must incorporate only appropriate and authentic science into their discourse, just as they did in the past when addressing the quandaries of clinical medicine. The field of bioethics is not so old and entrenched that its future is assured. Bioethicists must make themselves useful to society in order to deserve and retain the public's trust. They can best do this by ensuring that decision making and public policy are grounded in facts, not fictions and fantasies.     

A PERSONAL APPRECIATION

Abstract. My primary relation to Barbour's work is that of indebtedness and appreciation. He has reassured me that despite the vast changes in physics, the Whiteheadian perspective that has been so important to me as a Christian believer provides a valid way of understanding the physical world. If there is a difference between us, it is my greater emphasis on perspective and on the challenge of the Whiteheadian perspective to the ones that now dominate the sciences.     

CHEMISTRY: WHAT DOES ONE NEED TO KNOW?

Abstract. The general knowledge and understanding that every teacher of religion and science should have relative to chemistry can be found in the answers to three major questions. In my own response to the first question, How did chemistry emerge as a discipline? I trace the origins, establishment, and subsequent historical significance of cosmology. I contend that chemistry is “the obvious, oldest science” and, as such, has played a key role among the sciences in agelong human efforts to understand reality. In my response to the second question, How do chemists currently view (cosmic) reality? I outline three prominent examples in support of my contention that chemistry, despite being “the obvious, oldest science,” is seen by some as playing only a tacit role in current efforts to (re)integrate religion and science. In my response to the third question, How do chemists currently view ultimate reality and meaning? I argue that “unifiers” in chemistry can also now play a key role in a reality revolution that is pointing humankind not only toward a possible historical (re) integration of religion and science but also toward a return to cosmology.     

试论西方伦理学的科学路径

由于文化的差异,西方伦理学在发展路径上表现出明显的科学化倾向:一方面,与中国伦理学认为通达道德境界的道路只能是修身养性不同,西方伦理学却主张科学的理性有助于达到道德的理想目标;另一方面,与中国伦理学甚至认为为道与为学在根本上是对抗的相反,西方伦理学却断言美德本身就是知识。     

心理科学的两根拐杖

心理科学发展至今,一直受到哲学以及科学与技术发展的影响。哲学为心理科学的发展提供了方法论,科学与技术则为心理科学的发展提供了研究范式和研究工具。笔者认为:当今心理科学正处变革之中,后现代主义思潮与信息技术、纳米技术及生物技术的发展也许将孕育一场心理学革命。