AAPS Board Member Menas Kafatos, PhD, Has Been Elected as a Member of The Korean Academy of Science and Technology
Dr. Menas Kafatos, a founding board member of the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences (AAPS), has been elected as a foreign member of the prestigious Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST). Members of KAST come from many scientific fields, including natural sciences, engineering, policy studies, agriculture and fisheries sciences, and medicine. KAST has approximately 600 members, including a total of 67 foreign members, of which half are Nobel Laureates.
During his keynote membership acceptance speech to the KAST General Assembly on February 26th
in Seoul, Korea, Dr. Kafatos states that “In the new paradigm, science and spirituality (or metaphysics) are also going to be converging, not seen as opposite poles but rather as valid in their own right, complimentary activities.” Dr. Kafatos also talks about qualia science, as a new field of science of the future.
New Interdisciplinary Science Paradigm*
Menas C. Kafatos
Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair Professor of Computational Physics, Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA
*Keynote Membership Speech, KAST General Assembly, 26 February, 2018, Seoul, Korea
Abstract
Modern science is increasingly becoming multidisciplinary & interdisciplinary. We explore how what we term the New Paradigm will be moving beyond multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to transdisciplinary unity, meaning that diverse human activities and subjects such as biological, brain, social, economic sciences, to name a few, will be combined with physical sciences. This combination will often involve advanced methodologies in mathematics, in computational and data sciences. In this context, the term “sciences” denotes intellectual knowledge activities. Examples will be presented. In the New Paradigm, science and spirituality (or metaphysics) are also going to be converging, not seen as opposite poles but rather as valid in their own right, complementary activities. This actually used to be the case in the past. What has changed dramatically is that Quantum Mechanics opened the door to the primacy of the Mind. Today we accept that we live in the Participatory Universe, we are both actors and observers in the cosmic drama. The New Paradigm will involve accepting that Fundamental Awareness is the underlying total Reality. Moreover, the field of pure Awareness, exists & manifests through our own experiences in everyday life, full of the living force, the living conscious awareness. It is ever-existing, this is the Living Presence. It must be what we experience all the time, our own individual lives, The Living Presence is not separate from our lives. The new Paradigm is in agreement with spiritual, philosophical and contemplative practices of both the East and the West. Awareness manifests Reality through innumerable experiences, what we term the qualia of sensing, feelings, thinking, experiences of color, smell, time, space, in fact, everything we experience in life, including the dream and deep sleep states. Qualia are the fundamental building blocks of the Universe and everything “fundamental” in science such as particles, atoms or physical objects, are known through experience. The New Paradigm will give rise to a new science where qualia of experience play a paramount role.
