Incredible facts
This project was started two years ago, when several hundred scientists were interviewed, who were asked one question: what do you consider the greatest secret of nature and science?
Here's what they answered.
What drives evolution?
You've probably heard the answer to this question: natural selection is accepted by scientists as the main engine of the vital functions of organisms and their very functioning. This is one of the most well-proven theories in science. But is evolution by natural selection the only explanation for the complexity of organisms?
"I believe that one of the greatest mysteries of biology today is whether natural selection is the only explanation for the evolutionary process, and therefore the only way to generate the complexity of organisms, or are there other properties of matter that also play an important role." says Massimo Pigliucci, Specialist in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University in New York.
What's going on inside an earthquake?
In fact, it is very strange that we do not know the processes that take place on our planet right under our feet. Experts can tell exactly about the epicenter of an earthquake, what type of earthquake belongs to, and how long the tremors will last. But they are completely unsure about what is happening inside the planet during this natural disaster. The nature and nature of the forces involved in this process is not yet fully understood.
"The issue of plate displacement during earthquakes is not yet fully understood and is one of the fundamental problems in all of earth science," says geophysicist Tom Heaton. "To this day, the nature of earthquakes remains a big mystery for physicists around the world."
Who you are?
The nature of consciousness has long puzzled psychologists and cognitive scientists. Part of the answer to this question, however, is surprisingly simple: most of our actions depend on the functioning of neural circuits. This opinion is shared by Joseph LeDoux, a neurologist at New York University.
"The intuitive idea of \u200b\u200bthe banality of what is happening, like 'I control my own behavior' is just as wrong as the idea that the Earth is flat," explains Ledoux. While we often think of ourselves as independent beings, this is actually not the case. Everything we do is influenced by unconscious environmental processes.
How did life appear on Earth?
The earliest evidence for microbial life on Earth dates back to 3 billion years ago. How it came about, no one knows. Ideas range from the development of chemical reactions that have occurred on the seabed to the origin of corresponding reactions in rock formations.
"There are many theories of the origin of life on Earth, but since none of them can be neither confirmed nor disproved, there is no officially accepted theory," summed up biologist Diana Northup.
How does our brain work?
Of course, we know much more about brain activity today than we did a few decades ago. But nonetheless, billions of neurons, each with thousands of connections, is a very complex topic. "We all think we understand the brain, at least our own, through experience. But our own subjective experience serves us very badly in questions of how our brain works," said Scott Huettel, Center for Cognitive Neurology at Duke University.
"We still don't have a good way to study how groups of neurons form functional networks when we learn, remember something, or do anything else, including watching movies, listening to music, etc.," says a neurologist at the university. California Norman Weinberg (Norman Weinberger). "If we fully understand our brain, we can understand both its potential and the boundaries for thinking, emotion, reasoning, love and everything else."
Where is the rest of the universe?
"I call this the dark side of the universe," says University of Chicago cosmologist Michael Turner, referring to the great mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.
In fact, only 4 percent of the matter and energy in the universe was discovered. The remaining 96 percent remain elusive, but scientists continue to search in the most remote corners and in the deepest depths of the Earth in order to solve two dark mysteries.
Why does gravity exist?
You might think that this concept has long been understood, because Newton explained it many years ago. But in reality, everything is much more complicated. Gravity is the least studied force in the Universe, and it cannot be explained using standard laws of physics.
Theorists believe it's all about tiny, massless particles called gravitons, which are the brainchild of gravitational fields. "Gravity is completely different from other forces that are standardized because when you do some small calculations of gravitational interactions, you get stupid answers, because the math just doesn't work," says theoretical physicist Mark Jackson. Jackson).
Is there a "theory of everything"?
There is a good "standard model" in physics that divides the universe we know into particles in order to describe every detail, from magnetism to describing what atoms are made of and how they stay stable. The Standard Model views particles as small points that perform specific functions, and some of which carry specific forces.
But the standard model has two serious flaws: it does not explain the process of gravity and all information loses its relevance when it comes to high energy levels.
If, nevertheless, it is possible to develop a theory (many scientists say that this will never happen), which explains gravity and can withstand the incredible energetic forces of the early universe, then a universal theory of physics will become reality.
Does alien life exist?
Life is everywhere, at least on this planet. Therefore, it is logical to assume that it exists in the entire universe. But so far we have only managed to thoroughly study one world.
We know that there are solar systems like ours outside. "We are here made of stardust. So it is likely that there are other life forms in the universe," says Jill Tarter, director of the Space Research Center in California.
Moreover, it is very likely that life forms outside our planet are very intelligent. "Humanity has made scientific and technological progress in only the last 200 years of the approximately 4.5 billion years of life on Earth," said Frank Wilczek, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at MIT. "Therefore, it is likely that there are many scientific and technological civilizations that have existed and developed for many millions or even billions of years."
How did the universe start?
This question is perhaps the most exciting. Simply put, all other mysteries lie below this question, because it is paramount. Yes, the theory says it all started with the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. In the blink of an eye, the explosion expanded to cosmic proportions. The idea, it would seem, is not a bad thing, but one thing is bad: this statement cannot be believed in any way.
"The big bang theory is an extremely powerful idea, but it is still not clear which phenomenon triggered this explosion," says Eric Agol, an astrophysicist at the University of Washington.
Sometimes I wonder, does the memory mean something? Everything that I feel as if it flows in my veins, but in reality does not exist in the current moment - a whisper, a touch, that very look. Where is it all, why did it go, and why is it still here? My hope that something has happened brings a whole universe of sensations to life, as if it were around a bend. In turn, the Universe in its memories generates states in me that are dear to me. But why? Perhaps when I thinks to cease to exist, someone's worries about the time spent with me allow me to still be. If so, then objective reality is a fantasy, and we are part of some deeper unity. If we let go of the illusion of separation, we can see an endlessly interconnected, interpenetrating, uninterrupted web, where the electrons in the carbon atoms of my brain always know how your heart beats. Sometimes it seems that somewhere deeper in this hologram a canvas appears in front of me, on which new worlds are created, in which the past, future and present are the same, and we are all part of the same matter, where consciousness creates an extra-finite number of tunnels in a holographic labyrinth generating every experience, every feeling about you and me. Dead matter comes to life and thinks. A mystery is happening in my mind: matter looks at itself in amazement in my face. In this act of self-knowledge, it is impossible to trace the boundary between subject and object either in time or in space. Every time I feel, something in this labyrinth remembers me - suddenly I know that I am not alone.
Dr. Stanislav Grof is one of the most controversial scientists in modern psychology. Numerous supporters put him on a par with the fathers of psychoanalysis Freud and Jung and talk about the powerful, incomparable experience that can be achieved during a transpersonal session. The founder of Dream Industries, Alexey Ostroukhov, talked to the scientist about the paradigm shift that has already taken place, but has not yet been recognized by official science, about whether the Earth will survive its main transition period and how love will save the world.
- Dr. Grof, I would like to start this interview with perhaps the most difficult question, namely: what is love? What could you say about it not so much from the side of biological evolution, but more broadly - what is love as a factor in the expansion of consciousness and the evolutionary development of man as a whole?
- Love is inherent in an exceptional variety of forms, ranging from everyday romantic relationships to what is called in Greek agape - cosmic love, which is a kind of fundamental force built into the very structure of the universe, and is revealed to us in the experiences of mystical experiences. I believe that love, in all the variety of its manifestations, is absolutely necessary for humanity to survive. For too long, humanity has been driven by violence and unquenchable greed, and now, it seems to me, the moment has come when we simply cannot afford such a model of behavior focused on competition and belief in the survival of only the strongest. Survival now depends on whether we can tame these forces and find support not in them, but in love. As my work experience shows, such a transformation is possible, I have observed it both in other people and in myself: it is really possible to turn in the direction from focus on competition and acquisitiveness to the realization that synergy is needed, such a way of action is necessary due to which a person satisfies both his own needs and the needs of other people, and some requests of a higher order.
Working out their own programs, for example, birth trauma, programs laid down in childhood by parents, liberating a person from this kind of imprints leads him to an increasingly Taoist perception of the world, in which there is no longer a need to implement grandiose projects, overcome obstacles and defeat enemies, thus compensating for the feeling own inferiority. A person begins, rather, to peer into what is happening, to integrate into the streams of energy - it's like in martial arts, or in surfing: after all, a surfer adjusts his movement with the wave. This is closer to what Taoism calls wuwei, to inaction, to being in the flow. And here is what is interesting: when this method of action replaces the attempts, as they say, to bend this world for ourselves, then our affairs begin to argue, and the world becomes more friendly, and begins to give us the necessary information, the right people, and often money. We achieve greater results with less effort, and at the same time our activity no longer serves the interests of only an individual or a group of persons, but serves a higher purpose.
- It seems that the Earth is now going through a transitional period: people are consciously involved in the process of supporting evolution in a creative direction, in order to contribute to social development, while already realizing that we are the dominant driving force of planetary evolution. Having come a long way from unicellular organisms organizing and cooperating in living processes, now we find an increasing tendency for cooperation, greater interaction between us and other species, and we may one day be able to go beyond the solar system and establish cooperation with life existing on systems of other stars. The scientific discoveries you have made seem to play an important role in this, contributing to the development of consciousness towards a more holistic, holistic perception of the world.
- In my books, I pay special attention to the perspectives of working with those states that I have called holotropic and which represent a significant subgroup of unusual states of consciousness. Such work is essential to our survival goals, as holotropic states reveal the origins of violence and greed in a person and facilitate transformation. One of the main problems for a modern person is a feeling of loneliness, alienation, while working with holotropic states allows you to come to an awareness of yourself as an integral part of all living things, gain a sense of belonging, build connections with other people, with nature, understand that our home is the whole world, and live in it, proceeding from the positions of cooperation.
I have had the great honor of working for two and a half years with Gregory Bateson, a remarkable scientist whose field of scientific activity is difficult to describe in one word - he himself calls himself a "generalist." He explores issues related to systems theory, psychology, anthropology, and so on. Incidentally, the term "genetics" was invented by his father. Gregory Bateson talked a lot about his disagreement with the Darwinian idea of \u200b\u200bthe survival of the fittest, illustrating his point of view with many examples from the history of evolution, which give us a picture of synergy and cooperation rather than competition. Imagine, for example, a lawn on which horses graze: to grow a beautiful lawn, the grass must be cut and the soil must be fertilized. This is exactly what horses do: they nibble the grass, plow the ground with their hooves and fertilize it, and in this way they create some kind of synergistic relationship. And he cited many such examples, showing that the driving forces of evolution were often not only and not so much competition and struggle for survival, but symbiotic and synergistic connections.
- The modern society, perhaps, is inclined to consider man as the crown of creation and the pinnacle of evolution, but isn't man more likely a transitional species, if you look from the point of continuing evolutionary development? After all, if you consider yourself the final link, then you stop seeing your place in the overall long-term perspective of evolution? What could you say about how we can stay tuned in to recognize ourselves as an integral part of the global evolutionary process?
- Many of those who choose for themselves deep self-knowledge, work with the unconscious, both individual and collective, come to understand that we are living in an era of crisis. Never before has one biological species - man - had the ability to cause such damage to the environment. Even after the most serious conflicts, including military ones, ecosystems have been restored over time. Now the situation is completely different - there is, for example, the threat of radiation contamination. Humanity is now at the crossroads of evolution, and we have to either make an evolutionary leap, almost become a new species, or come face to face with the threat of extinction, and it can affect not only us, but also many other biological species.
- Is it not connected with the current scientific paradigm, which could be called one of the leading forces in our world? I would like to hear your opinion, since you have distanced yourself to some extent from the scientific establishment, at least in its materialistic and deterministic hypostasis. Your research in the field of psychotherapy and holotropic states can be called in a sense a heretical voice. We know what happened to scientists who dared to expand the boundaries of knowledge - suffice it to recall Wilhelm Reich. His laboratory was destroyed, his works were destroyed or confiscated, and he himself was arrested, all with the approval of the authorities. The scientific community did not stand up for him. As a result, until now very few scientists admit for themselves a skeptical attitude towards the established ideas about reality, they admit "heresy". Remember the shock when Stephen Hawking admitted that he was wrong about black holes? What amazement and misunderstanding was caused by this? What role do you think heresy plays in the development of modern science?
- You pointed out the need for a paradigm shift and a change in the scientific worldview in general. In fact, this has already happened, but this fact has not yet been recognized. I have already mentioned the Darwinian approach in its most simplified interpretation (the strongest survives and the like). Both Gregory Bateson and many other scientists in their studies came to the conclusion that evolution is not mechanistic in its essence, that we can say that it is driven by some kind of higher order. I'm talking about some kind of spiritual power. If we look at psychology in the context of Darwinism, at the Freudian idea of \u200b\u200bprimitive instincts as the main driving forces of the soul, then this idea can act as a kind of scientifically substantiated justification of competition and egoism, which are understood as a kind of norm of behavior determined by the very nature of man.
Modern work in the field of consciousness research gives a completely different picture of the human psyche. Yes, of course, this psyche has a dark side, everything that Freud wrote about, but this is nothing more than a screen behind which the transpersonal area is hidden. And ultimately we find that human nature is divine rather than animal. We are able to stay in connection with the Atman, a single universal mind, discover universal love, see that the layer of Darwinian and Freudian ideas is just one of those obstacles that we must overcome. It works to some extent, it can guide people in their activities, but this is not necessary and not necessary, at least for the purposes of self-exploration and self-transformation. It can be overcome and it can be outgrown.
- That is, if we abstract from the situation in the scientific community, it turns out that the most serious problems are associated with the fact that a person perceives himself as something completely separate from the so-called surrounding world and does not see interconnections. I wonder what you are talking about Freud. I have never been particularly close to his approach, which, it seems to me, is not characterized by an excess of optimism. He believed that the autonomy of the conscious is an illusion and wrote that to be human means to rebel against the fact that this is happening. We consider ourselves conscious, self-determining, we think that we make decisions ourselves, and it seems that we strive for this autonomy, regardless of all the interconnections, the integrity of the universe, which life shows us.
Freud was significantly influenced by the ideas of Spinoza, who, however, was much more holistic than Freud, who, although influenced by him, left almost nothing of his holism. Spinoza wrote that a person considers himself free only because he is aware of his desires, however, he is just a form of manifestation of that one, which is called God or nature. He writes that to be human means to participate in the illusion that we are independent units. This puts a heavy burden on us both emotionally and politically.
Hence envy, anger, all these manifestations arise. And it is strange that in an era that is much more distant from us, people had a much more holistic worldview, while as we approach the 21st century, thinking becomes more and more deterministic, more and more narrow. We touched on the issue of science, but it is becoming increasingly clear that there is another institution that affects the feeling of a person's isolation from all living things - organized religion. I would like to hear your opinion on the impact of organized religion on the situation in the world and on how people govern it.
- There are, in fact, several questions at once. As for Freud, of course he was an old and unhappy man, but above all he was a great discoverer. He was my hero, in fact, thanks to him I became interested in psychology, but as for the worldview, yes, he tried to adhere to a very narrow, materialistic approach to science. Some of his considerations regarding the nature of civilization and religion, in my opinion, are largely reductionism. For example, the interpretation of religion as an obsessive-compulsive neurosis associated with anal impulses, the perception of religious rituals as rituals associated with obsessive-compulsive behavior.
Transpersonal psychology has gone very far from this. It became obvious to us that the basis of religions is a visionary experience, the same one that experienced their founders - a transpersonal experience, and in this sense the ritual is something deeply secondary. The essence of religion and its origins are in first-hand revelation, in the experience of the transcendent. Here you can remember the Buddha, who, after long meditation and austerity, experienced enlightenment under the Bodhi tree and achieved liberation, Jesus in the desert, the vision of the Apostle Paul on the way to Damascus, the Revelation of John the Theologian, Moses and the burning bush, Mohammed and his mystical vision ... just from such experiences and religions arose - from direct experience of the transcendent. When religion becomes organized, something completely different comes to the fore: money, property, politics, control over people - that is, considerations of a secular nature, and we get an organized religion that is completely divorced from the source. And in such cases, true spirituality is often preserved only in mystical directions. For example, among Christian mystics, among Sufis, among Hasidim, among Kabbalists - among those who retain access to mystical revelation, from which religion arose.
As far as the religious mainstream is concerned, it is very difficult to find true spirituality based on personal experience. When Abraham Maslow, Tony Sutich and Jim Feydiman and I began to develop transpersonal psychology and formulate the basic principles of a new psychology that would include spirituality, we did not intend to combine the tenets of organized religions and science, but we knew that science at its best and transpersonal experiences do not contradict each other. That is, since a person has the potential to experience the entire spectrum of such phenomena, why shouldn't science study this? Experiments of this kind have a very specific impact on human life, while they are also something that can be studied, respectively, we can combine spirituality and science at their best.
You know, Joseph Campbell, perhaps the greatest of all mythologists, came from an Irish Catholic family. He was sarcastic about the fundamentalist interpretation of religions and once remarked that if you perceive the Immaculate Conception as a problem from the field of gynecology, and the Promised Land as a property, then that means that you really have big problems. And he also said that a deity, in order to be useful, needs transparency to the transcendent. In other words, in different religions there are different archetypal figures and images, which, from Campbell's point of view, point to something beyond them, to some abstract source from which everything arose, from which all religions originated. If archetypal images lose their transparency, if we begin to worship some specific images, and not an abstract, not an absolute, which is the source of everything, then religion has problems. Because such a religion unites people who strive to believe in this way and not otherwise, and in this case, separation automatically arises: one group of people opposes another group of people.
And even within the same religion, different groups can conflict with each other, as, for example, in Ireland, where the blood of both Catholics and Protestants has been shed for centuries. Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other. This is not to say that such religiosity helps us in life. But the Latin word religio means the union of that which was divided. Such a strategy of organized religions divides the world, and it is very dangerous, it is an integral part of the problem that exists in our world.
Transpersonal psychology is not interested in organized religions, but in direct experiences of the mystical, transpersonal. Such experiences are similar to those experienced by the mystics, such experiences are all-encompassing and do not divide people along religious lines. And this really helps, as it promotes community of people and understanding of the value of spirituality and spiritual search. At the same time, it does not matter in what external forms this spiritual search will be clothed, whether it will be Christianity, Sufism, Hasidism - this is equally great. That is, the world will be boring in which there is only one nationality, one language, one and the same music ...
People, however, are often not happy with this diversity and choose for themselves adherence to one particular form of its manifestation. We can observe a similar phenomenon in a non-religious context, for example, in communist and capitalist societies. Chinese communism assumed the same living conditions, the same clothes, the same food for everyone - longing! And under capitalism, wherever you go, you will see a Shell gas station, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald's - everywhere the same set. At the same time, in the same cities, there is a wonderful old architecture, but it is limited by the boundaries of the historical center, and on the periphery, the same type and uninteresting buildings are being erected, the same wherever you look.
Accordingly, with regard to the structure of the cosmos, as we understand it, the diversity of its external manifestations contains at its core a certain deep primordial unity, while the examples that I gave above relate to the monotony of the world and the illusion of separation, due to which it is completely lost a sense of some common underlying unity. At the moment in the world, many groups that have been oppressed are fighting for autonomy, such as the Hawaiians, an ancient people who seek to re-learn their native language, preserve their heritage, hula dance and the like. Native American peoples are also fighting to preserve their traditions, many of which were suppressed by Christianity, and these traditions were very earthly, very natural, and have long been banned.
- It seems that organized religions seek to penetrate political systems, lobby government structures, as if religions were creating a simplified narrative of being and the world, which politicians use because they have nothing more to offer voters, and they have no solution to social issues a language other than the one that was created within religions and religious sects. Religion, it seems to me, has always been involved in politics, but is it not surprising to observe such a picture in societies that are supposed to be oriented towards democratic values? Today we are witnessing an extremely strange, deep collaboration between the ruling forces and organized religion.
- You see, a mystical worldview based on spiritual experience does not contradict scientific knowledge. And the dogmas of organized religion contradict. Galileo was forced to renounce his beliefs, Giordano Bruno, Jeanne D'Arc were burned at the stake, and only after many centuries did the Church apologize for this. organized religion is serious if it believes that the main thing to be combated is the proliferation of contraceptives.
In his book "The Tao of Physics" Fridtjof Kapra showed that the discovery at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries of radioactivity and X-rays laid the foundation for the convergence of the concepts of modern physical science and the great spiritual traditions of the East. Spiritual traditions, especially the Tantric tradition, contain the same ideas. The tantric tradition had an unusually highly developed scientific knowledge. For example, she counted the age of the Universe in billions of years, like modern astronomy, and not in the six thousand years that this world, created in one day, supposedly counts - an idea that has not received any scientific confirmation at the moment.
Tantric scholars have developed a decimal system that includes zero, developed a highly developed physics of vibration. At the same time, there was also a spiritual system focused on frantic self-knowledge, and an art focused on spiritual development. In a sense, this system represented the forerunner of what we are striving to do now, namely, to combine spirituality at its best and cutting edge science. And it's easy to do. But it is impossible to combine science and dogmas of organized religions, and it does not matter whether it is Newtonian-Cartesian science or the science of a new paradigm. An important role here is played by a total misunderstanding, a completely artificial confusion of concepts - for example, since heaven seems to be in heaven, and the Hubble telescope is now flying in the sky, and it has not recorded either the Lord or the angels playing the harp, then we therefore they have proved that religion is wrong.
We also now know that the temperature at the center of the Earth is higher than at the surface of the Sun, and there is hardly Satan among the molten nickel and iron. The iPhone can now show us any place on the surface of the earth. The first travelers in ancient times were looking for an earthly paradise, too, and did not find, although they found a lot of beautiful things, and we know that there is no such paradise on earth. Huxley saw this as a fundamental error, since the concepts of paradise, ontologically true, are states of consciousness. In other words, to experience such states, it is necessary to change consciousness. Many people in unusual states experience the experience of heaven or hell, but it has nothing to do with the physical world. Thus, there is no competition between spirituality and science, they are not fighting for territory, and the only scientific discipline that can make sound judgments about such things as heaven and hell are people who study such states in the way they are experienced.
- In your work, you have always encouraged people to follow their roots, go into the depths of themselves, their psyche. And in your own quest, you have explored many new and unexplored territories. From your point of view, is it possible to do something that could move the dogmatism, hierarchy and aggressiveness rooted in human society from a dead center?
- We are really very deeply entangled in the networks of the material world and tend to believe that happiness is measured by money, social status, etc., but this is, by and large, an illusion. You can reach unprecedented material heights and still be unhappy. For example, billionaire Howard Hughes ended his days in a penthouse in the Bahamas, in the dark, collecting his own urine - it doesn't seem like all those billions of dollars have helped him much in terms of quality of life. Or, for example, Onassis - he, too, somehow did not particularly levitate. As for spiritual traditions, they contain, first of all, the basic idea that both happiness and inner peace are achieved through inner work, through the process of transformation, which leads us to the ability to rejoice in our participation in being, participation in consciousness. If we have built such a fundamental connection with all that exists, then all other benefits are already perceived as some kind of additional bonus, as a gift, but if it is not there, then material benefits by themselves, no matter how many of them we acquire, will not help us gain a sense of completeness life.
Unfortunately, the materialistic approach is also used to assess the quality of life on the scale of entire countries - we use the volume of the gross national product as a measure and give priority to issues of economic growth. At the same time, in developed countries, there is a high level of divorce, a high rate of suicide, and it cannot be said that material well-being has significantly increased the standard of living. The standard of living is the quality of life, and it is determined by our inclusion in being, and not by the level of income. You can eat simple food, walk barefoot on the seashore, listen to the cries of seagulls, admire the sunset and feel happy, or you can languish from melancholy in a luxurious setting, pouring this melancholy with alcohol and dreaming of suicide. It seems that we have not yet come to understand this idea, and this understanding comes in the process of self-knowledge, self-transformation.
- That is, the accumulation of wealth is an externalization of the problem?
- This is what existential philosophy calls "auto-projection": now I feel bad, something is wrong with my life, what should I do, how can I get where it will be good - for this I need one hundred thousand dollars, a million dollars , a bigger house, a better car, become a senator, get an academic degree ... That is, the desire to get out of the prison of one's own unconscious is translated into concrete plans for life, and they are linear: I will move in this direction, overcome obstacles, win over enemies. There can be two results here: either we do not achieve the goal, because we swung too high or failed, and continue to think that we would be happy if we achieved it, or, even worse, we achieve what should have brought us happiness, but neither a million dollars, nor a senatorial office, nor an academic degree do not significantly change our experience of life.
And it turns out that a real, full-blooded life for us is always somewhere in the future, it is not in the present, and we are waiting for this future, in which it will finally become good. I have worked with people who have worked hard for decades to achieve their goal, and when they achieved it, they fell into depression the next day, because their life was not magically transformed, and they always believed that it would happen. Joseph Campbell likened this to climbing to the very top of a staircase and finding that it had been propped against the wrong wall. Nevertheless, we continue to measure both the quality of life and happiness from the material point of view, in terms of the gross national product.
- It is interesting that in modern culture it is difficult to find any systems that would be purposefully and consistently focused on the disclosure of human potential. Freud seems to have said that the cure of a neurosis is the return of the patient to the ordinary state of unhappiness?
- Freud in the course of therapy tried to save the neurotic from extreme suffering and return him to everyday suffering - not a very daunting task, you must agree. At the same time, by working with the tools that give us a mystical experience, we can really truly improve the quality of our being in this world.
- However, the usual forms of psychotherapy not only do not give up their positions, but continue to spread more and more, capturing more and more people and squeezing them into the framework of a system that is not capable of either unleashing our potential or improving the quality of life. This may sound like a radical question to you, but shouldn't people abandon such external forms of therapy in favor of a more holistic approach that will integrate our inner mystical experience?
“Well, I'll tell you what I think about psychiatry. I understand that many may not like this, and I myself do not really like to say that, but in psychiatry we very often see a desire to suppress a symptom. Sleep pills are prescribed for insomnia, tranquilizers for overexcitation, antidepressants for depression, and so on. But the point is, suppressing a symptom is not a therapy. In medicine, and psychiatry is a branch of medicine, two situations are possible when symptomatic treatment is prescribed: firstly, when treating the cause of the disease, if it is necessary to alleviate the patient's discomfort. Secondly, with incurable diseases, when the only thing we can do is relieve the symptoms. In somatic medicine, it might look something like this: a patient has a high temperature, in order to bring down the temperature, the patient must be put on ice, and why the temperature, why the temperature is not important. This kind of superficial approach is common in psychiatric practice.
At the same time, there are areas that work with the causes of our conditions, there are deeper approaches in psychotherapy. However, the problem is that there are a great many different schools, and each one has its own understanding of the main driving forces of the human psyche, the causes of symptoms, the meaning of these symptoms and the required course of action. The behaviorist and the Freudian will treat the same phobia in very different ways. The alternative in holotropic states would be to focus on our inner healer, the inner healing principle. In most schools, it is generally accepted that you first need to mentally understand the problem, then come up with a strategy for solving it. For example, the Freudian therapy I studied uses free association, interpretation, even the therapeutic use of silence, and so on.
As for holotropic states, they work like some kind of internal radar, which detects those areas of the unconscious that contain the strongest emotional charge, and these areas begin to surface. A person experiences the corresponding emotions, memories, releases the accumulated energies, the symptoms disappear during the experience, and this is a process led by a certain inner mind - you simply support what is happening, let it be born, let the healing therapeutic process develop, which has its own mind.
Carl Gustav Jung spoke about the individuation process. The therapist is not the main character, the therapist is not the one who, on the basis of his ingenious insights, will explain everything to the patient and correct everything. An intelligent presence is required of the therapist, intelligent support for what is being born. In Jung's technique of active imagination, the conscious ego enters into a kind of dialectical communion with that higher aspect of man himself, which Jung called the Self. At the same time, the language of symbols is used, and the healing process takes place inside, inside the person himself, while the therapist acts only as a facilitator, and not an arbiter of what is happening, not a surgeon. By the way, even in surgery, the cure is largely dependent on the body, but all the credit is attributed to the surgeon who performed the active part of the work.
- In the sixties and seventies of the last century, two views on the use of psychedelics prevailed: one supported free and uncontrolled experimentation with psychedelics, the other - their scientific research in accordance with strict rules. Now, as it seems, only the second has survived. At the same time, society seemed to have forgotten that for many thousands of years of human history, people have successfully experimented with psychedelics without any connection to medicine or science, in a variety of uncontrolled situations.
At first there was a ban on psychedelics, after which any serious work with them became extremely difficult. And now we seem to be trying to put them on their feet again, but already within the framework of a faceless and rigid scientific worldview and modern medicine, while taking psychedelics in a ritual or scientific context just gives a person access to such an experience that fundamentally refutes metaphysics modern science and industrial mass culture.
What worries me here is that we do not take into account the history of psychedelics in its entirety - I do not mean you specifically, but the whole scientific community that is interested in psychedelic research. It is as if we are striving to abandon the colossal historical legacy associated with the use of psychedelics and apply them in a clinical context - it turns out that the tool that gives us access to other levels of perception, including the transpersonal dimension, and which has always been part of the holistic process of human evolution, we dehumanize and put it in the laboratory, and the laboratory is already an integral part of the scientific organization, which has a rigid materialistic worldview. It turns out that everyone who uses psychedelics outside the laboratory context is labeled as drug addicts. I do not want to say that this is some kind of conspiracy, I just want to say that a fundamental part of the discourse is leaving, and it is about the fact that psychedelics are our human right, this is our social right, simply because for millennia they were part of human history.
- Perfectly noticed. At this point, we know that in many cultures herbal psychedelics have been used in religious ceremonies. In the US, the problem is that the right to freedom of religion is enshrined in the Constitution, and thus the ban on psychedelics is unconstitutional. This was realized many years ago and made an exception for the Native American Church, which uses peyote in its rituals. But this is also unconstitutional, since the principle of equality in rights should protect not only the minority, but also the majority. You cannot allow something to Native Americans and not allow the same to the Anglo-Saxons. In order not to delve into these issues, we were mainly engaged in capturing those who produce and sell psychedelics, avoiding starting what is called a precedent process - after all, in such a process people like Alan Watts, I, the Shulgins from Harvard could tell, that in this case we are really talking about religious activity, and that it has many hundreds of years, was practiced in preliterate societies, and that there is a healing tradition in it.
For the past forty years, the use of psychedelics for spiritual or therapeutic purposes has been banned, and there have been few exceptions to this rule. Therefore, from a certain point of view, what is happening now can be called progress - at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, California State University, State University of New York, California State University at San Francisco, Arizona State University now operate psychedelic research programs, some of which replicate our work with patients with terminal cancer, where psychedelics have been used to alleviate fear of death and change the experience of dying. Research from Johns Hopkins University has shown that psilocybin can induce a mystical experience, which is a sacrament if you like. And the Canadian Jessica Rochester, with whom we conducted a joint training, obtained permission to conduct rituals using ayahuasca, and now it is no longer an offense to take ayahuasca in a ritual context. At the same time, the ban on the use of ayahuasca outside of rituals remains. That is, the fact that the use of psychedelics is a religious activity is beginning to gain recognition, albeit unusual for the Christian community or some other communities, but at the same time counting for many centuries of application in religious and spiritual contexts. This is definitely a religious activity, and suppressing it means suppressing religious freedom. Although the influence of Christian fundamentalism is strong in the United States, the law supports all religions - we have Sufis, Buddhists, Native Americans, other groups of believers, and the Constitution applies to everyone. Now in the United States, too, attempts are being made to legitimize the use of ayahuasca for ritual purposes.
I once took part in a Potawatomi ceremony in which peyote was used — the Indians were allowed to use it and they invited me and four other Americans to the ceremony. And it happened legally, while the rest of the situation with psychedelics was very problematic. So this is a rather shadowy area, since there is no doubt that the responsible reception of psychedelics during the ritual belongs to the realm of genuine religious activity. I don’t know how things are in Russia, but in the United States this is a real problem, since the Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of religion.
- You mentioned another extremely interesting topic, namely: working with patients in the terminal stage of the disease and alleviating their fear of death through psychedelic experience. And here I have a question: all people are afraid of death, not only the terminally ill ...
- Do you know Becker's book "Death Denial"? It describes all this with the utmost clarity.
- The fear of death is inherent in every person, but the impression is that the scientific community only allows the terminally ill to deal with this fear. However, I can assume that it was precisely the fact that, while still in good health, they, like most of us, had no opportunity to somehow face this fear of death, led them to a state of fatal illness. And again, do you have any concerns that we will have the opportunity to use psychedelics in the work with the terminally ill, while those who are not yet terminally ill, but face the same set of problems, will not be able to access experiments of this kind?
- You see, you have to be realistic here. When we were doing legal research, it was much easier to get permission to use psychedelics with a sick person who was about to die than it was much easier to get permission to use them for educational purposes in healthy people.
- And this is in the 60s?
- I came to the United States in 1967, we got permission to use psychedelics for educational purposes, but it was very difficult, and getting permission to use them in work with the terminally ill was relatively easy. It was assumed that they would die anyway, so there is no need to stand on ceremony. Again, there are realities of life - the law is the law, and regardless of whether you agree with it or not, it must be observed, otherwise problems will arise. Unfortunately, in the sixties, the hysterical reaction of legislators virtually killed off legal research because scientists had to abide by the law. Moreover, this did not affect street consumption in any way, teenagers still bought themselves a dose on the street, and the ban only added attractiveness. When we were doing the research, we got a call from the National Institute of Mental Health and asked what they should do, how to deal with the growing consumption among young people. They did not like our answer, we said that we need to create a network of centers in which those people who already take something on the street could take pure substances under supervision, and this would provide valuable material, would help to understand the effect of psychedelics on the human psyche. In the meantime, the street teen knows more about psychedelics than the professionals. Of course, our advice was not heard, but it would be necessary to act exactly according to this scheme: pure substances, under supervision, people who are so eager to get such an experience that they are ready to receive it in other, much more dangerous circumstances.
- But do you agree that if, in addition to the clinical and scientific use of psychedelics, we allow their controlled use in religious and therapeutic contexts, then this will have a positive impact on our society and the future that awaits it?
- We have already talked about this, yes, it will provide a legitimate tool for those people who are looking for spiritual experience. This is how psychedelics were used. Interestingly, if we take shamanism, for example, we will see that healing and spirituality are one. And in ancient Greece, for example, being in the temple was seen as both a healing and a spiritual experience. Then the division into medicine and religion arose, but truly effective healing work will always be spiritual work as well. I was educated in clinical psychiatry, I was looking for a more powerful tool that would allow me to go into the depths of the unconscious, and I found that when people find the roots of their problems, spiritual opening occurs, and here it can no longer be said that this is healing. , but this is a spiritual search. Spiritual and philosophical search may even seem more interesting, and although a person came to therapy, he will already perceive it as a side effect, while self-exploration and the process of spiritual search will be the main one. Andrew Weil in his book "Natural Mind" writes that the need for transcendental experiences is the most powerful driving force of the human psyche, it is stronger than sex, to which Freud attached such great importance. If there is no access to transcendental experiences, then this striving takes various deviant forms - addictions, alcoholism, etc. appear.
- That is, externalization occurs due to the impossibility of internal work, internal self-examination?
- Then it turns out that our health care system should take into account spiritual issues, but this is not yet noticeable.
- In my opinion, a paradigm shift is taking place now. Thomas Kuhn, in his work on the structure of scientific revolutions, writes that science in its historical development goes through certain stages, certain periods, which are accompanied by a particular worldview - he calls this a paradigm, a system of metaphysical implications and beliefs, as well as methods of assessment and strategies of scientific research. During such periods, scientists are busy with what he calls "normal science" - they solve problems within the framework of the currently accepted scientific worldview. But at some point, new data appear, new observations that the existing paradigm cannot explain - for example, the Michelson-Morley experiment, which led to the creation of the theory of relativity, the discovery of radioactivity, X-rays, etc. And it becomes obvious that the old paradigm cannot explain the new data. At first, they can be rejected, declared unscientific, unreliable, accuse the researcher of dishonesty, declare that he is insane - Einstein, for example, was called insane, and at that time six people at the most understood his ideas. Then a crisis occurs, during which more and more daring alternatives appear, which provide answers to these new questions, and ultimately one of them is accepted, which becomes the leading paradigm of the next period.
We're talking about a major paradigm shift here, not just any particulars. We say that consciousness is at least equal in size to matter, if not superior to it in importance. For example, it is much easier for me to believe that the material world is a kind of virtual reality, a kind of arrangement of various experiences, than to believe that matter was able to give rise to such a phenomenon as consciousness - this is ridiculous. However, such a belief exists, and it is very deeply rooted, so it will take a lot of time and a lot of observation to abandon it.
Here are some interesting examples. For example, at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, Lord Kelvin noticed that all the discoveries in physics had already been made, there was nothing more to discover, all that remained was to improve the measurement accuracy. This was five years before Einstein's discoveries. Darwin said about the opponents of his theory that all that remains is to wait until the old generation dies out, the younger generation will find his theories more acceptable, and the old generation is too attached to the previous paradigm, in which they taught, in which they published books, in which they were authorities in various fields ... And it is difficult for them to admit that they understand something wrong.
- Generations change each other, but at the same time we have created such systems of school education that do not develop a person as he is, which are more focused on teaching him to follow orders, to act within the framework of religious or economic structures. Henry Ford noted that creative or intuitive knowledge provides little narrowly practical benefit, so he promoted a modern approach to education that zombies people to follow orders, show punctuality, stay in the system, adapt to it, etc. Modern school systems education is like a virtual lobotomy of schoolchildren, who are taught to correspond, so as not to be thrown into outer darkness, outside the framework of society. What advice would you give to parents and families on how to welcome and support children who come into this world and face such an aggressive brainwashing system?
- It is already generally recognized that the foundations of personality are laid in infancy and childhood. However, the discoveries that we have made and which relate to the perinatal area are something completely new. Otto Rank mentioned this, but only in the course of work with holotropic states did we see perinatal material in an unprecedented amount. The importance of the prenatal period has also become clear. Thanks to these discoveries, the Association of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology was created, which holds annual conferences, international conferences gathering obstetricians-gynecologists, child psychiatrists and other specialists involved in this field. At the moment, the need for pregnancy hygiene is obvious, that is, the need for the right environment, the right environment for a pregnant woman. Manhattan, for example, with its cars and noise, is certainly not what a pregnant woman wants. This is not provided by nature, such an environment has existed for only a hundred years approximately, and for biology it is approximately like a Tyrannosaurus in an airplane, it is wild and strange. For a pregnant woman, I would prefer not the conditions of a big city, but beautiful places in the bosom of nature. In communist Czechoslovakia, women had to work during their entire pregnancy because the maternity leave was very short. Pregnant women worked in factories, worked with heavy equipment, and this is not the best environment for them.
The concept of natural parenting now exists; The pioneer of water birth was Igor Charkovsky, but some moments in his work, for example, tying hands, diving in newborns, caused antagonism in many. Charkovsky's ideas in a milder format were developed, in particular, by Michel Auden, in whose clinic women could give birth with their husbands, without bright light, without loud noise. The environment in childbirth is extremely important. In one of her books, Michelle Auden connects aggressiveness and love with the circumstances of a person's birth. In childbirth, two groups of hormones are involved, one is stress hormones, catecholamines, adrenaline, norepinephrine, they are associated with the fact that childbirth in an open area could, for example, attract predators, respectively, a person has such an alarm signal. Another group of hormones, also important from an evolutionary point of view, are those hormones that provide bonding between parent and child, which is important for the survival of offspring. These are endorphins, prolactin and another hormone. Michelle Auden writes that in a hospital it is possible to create a quiet and calm atmosphere for a woman in childbirth, and in this case bonding will dominate, but if a woman gives birth in the midst of noise, bright light and medical students, then this activates catecholamines, and in the first case, the child will line up loving relationships with other people, and in the second - a feeling of hostility in the world, in which you must constantly be on the alert. And, of course, physical contact is absolutely necessary, what is called anaclitic satisfaction. Breastfeeding, contact with the mother, a loving atmosphere is necessary. To create it, parents need to first work out some of their own problems before becoming parents, because they are like a curse passed from one generation to another.
If parents themselves were abused in childhood, if it is difficult for them to be good parents, then rituals of transition, some kind of their own work, which will precede the creation of a family, can help them. And then - the birth of children, breastfeeding, natural physical contact. In the USA, women are often so zombified that they prefer to feed their babies with artificial formula because it is "scientific"! Therefore, it is very important how exactly people will come to this world. It is also important that the society they come to is sane. You see, one of the difficulties that people who have done any significant work with holotropic states, since the sixties, when all this happened spontaneously and rather insanely, face, is the lack of a supportive context. For example, if you live in the Huichol Indian tribe and participate in the ritual of passage using peyote, then you experience experiences that bring you closer to the tribe, because they confirm the philosophy, mythology, and psychology of this tribe. And Europeans and Americans who have experienced similar experiences have come to a value system that does not correspond to the way their culture lives. Well, for example, "no - war", "make love, not war", "get out of the system."
I do not want to live in a world that ruins nature, in which killing is considered an acceptable form of problem solving. Let's adopt a constitution that will protect life! That is, this value system completely contradicts the philosophy of industrial civilization, which is ultimately destructive and self-destructive. That is, humanity is moving towards suicide, predatory exploitation of non-renewable natural resources, pumping out oil and polluting the environment, thus creating a threat to our biological survival. And it is wrong to think that this can happen in thirty, fifty or a hundred years, because we impose linearity on a process that must be cyclical, nature is always renewing, nature does not produce anything that it could not destroy. And we shouldn't produce something that is not recyclable, that is not recycled. The nature of life is cyclical, and if we try to make it linear, then sooner or later we will face problems.
Leonid Alexandrovich,Dan Brown in the book "Origin", reflecting in which direction the vector of evolution is directed, suggests that in the coming decades, man will increasingly integrate with technical devices, and such a species as Homo sapiens will disappear. Do you share this point of view?
There is a curve that expresses the ratio of the number of individuals of a certain species to body weight. According to these calculations, there should be several hundred thousand people on the globe. And there are seven billion of us! How did man manage to break this pattern and win evolution? In scientific circles, a lot of hypotheses are discussed, but the essence of most of them boils down to a simple formula: humans have learned to predict the future better than other animals. It was thanks to the ability to foresee the course of events that primitive man, relatively speaking, "ate" the leopard, and not vice versa: he studied its habits, knew which path he would take to the watering hole, and dug a hole there. And what is science? A body of knowledge that not only describes processes and gives us a deeper understanding of them, but also predicts new, still unknown facts. Prediction is the ultimate goal of knowledge. Intuitive foresight has become a science - and now we have lived to see the creation of artificial intelligence. Which has two main functions: image recognition, primarily sound and visual, and forecasting how different objects will behave. The rapid development of AI technologies has been going on for three years now - and now everything just flies into space: the number of algorithms, their complexity, the accuracy of predictions. The machine already recognizes faces better than a living operator, and is capable of predicting the most complex, multidimensional processes, creating mathematical models of the development of the universe.
Humanity is constantly improving various technologies - primarily to make life easier for people. We've really started to do many things faster and easier. But did we become happier from this?
If you go back thousands of years and think about whether we have become happier than primitive man? I think no. It does not seem that progress has given us universal grace, but I am sure that human evolution is driven by the pursuit of happiness, and everyone has their own. For example, in the minds of children, this is the fulfillment of desires. It came true that he made a plan - this is true happiness. In fact, adults are not that far from this. I remember my parents bought their first car. Happiness! Life is good! If you look at life from this angle, then artificial intelligence today is able to predict and fulfill desires, even not fully realized. It's not difficult at all: we leave a bunch of footprints. Phones, bracelets and other gadgets that collect a ton of data about a person's behavior, habits, and preferences around the clock. Imagine, you woke up in the morning, just opened your eyes, and artificial intelligence has already predicted that now you will want to turn on the TV, and immediately on your favorite channel. In the evening we came home from work - the refrigerator has already ordered the food itself, having foreseen what you would like to eat for dinner today, depending on your health and mood. By the way, a huge number of applications have already appeared on the software market that teach you to think positively, breathe correctly, monitor your heart rate and mood swings. They are based on a scientific basis, consisting of numerous studies in the field of psychology.
British economist William Davis defined this phenomenon as "the happiness industry." In the bestseller of the same name, he argues that such gadgets can collect information and suggest what to do to improve mood, but they are not able to make a person truly happy.
I agree with this opinion, but now we are not talking about the peculiarities of the worldview (mentality), but about the tools that can support us at the right time. No gadget will solve problems of a higher, spiritual level, for example, a broken heart. However, artificial intelligence is able to predict that you need an emotional shake-up to be completely happy before you yourself realize it and get bored of life. A push message will arrive with an invitation to a concert, personal growth training or an extreme tour - depending on your preferences. From the point of view of our current mentality, such predictability is bad. Elon Musk said that artificial intelligence is almost a greater danger to humanity than nuclear weapons, to which Mark Zuckerberg, in a friendly way, advised him not to escalate drama. I am a supporter of the second camp. What's wrong with being able to foresee and influence the future? In particular, many people have problems when making decisions. At the same time, if you read a person, it turns out that he subconsciously made a choice a long time ago, and the machine will prompt him.
And personally, you easily make decisions, never doubt?
I live by the principle: a task has arrived - go and do it! Go where it's scary. This is my path to development.
Doesn't the simplification of life, which technology and artificial intelligence provide, harm us? Will the machines take over and the man himself will become unnecessary?
Artificial intelligence is such a thing in which neither the five principles of robotics nor the ten commandments can be written. There is no such line. This is a program that seeks to most accurately satisfy your desires: it continually throws up different options, analyzes and the second time is no longer mistaken. But what is completely absent in artificial intelligence is aggression! Yes, humanity is now experiencing not one technical revolution, but a whole cascade of them. Already today, some of the professions can be discarded as unnecessary. As sociologists rightly say, what is happening at the moment is not an employment crisis, but a crisis of the meaning of work. Having dealt with the latter, we will solve the problem of our own importance and find our niche in life. Remember, not so long ago, most of the Russian population was engaged in agriculture, as it was necessary to solve the problem of hunger. But with the advent of machines, labor productivity increased, and the need for workers in subsistence farming became less relevant. More and more people instead of plowing the land are working in offices. Physical labor was replaced by intellectual labor. The same happens in the creative field. People are adjusting to modern technologies: artists paint in graphic editors, and musicians create arrangements in special programs. Occupations appear that have never been heard of: professional sleepyhead, iceberg cleaner, toilet guide, brain remover. Google, for example, has formally created a position of "pretty good guy." It is now occupied by one of the very first engineers of the Chade-Men Tan Corporation. His duties include "educating minds, liberating hearts and creating peace in the world." I think self-improvement and a genuine interest in life will not let anyone get lost, even in the world of the most advanced technologies. You can always find a use for yourself.
And what if people do rebel against the dominance of technology?
I doubt it ... (long pause) It never occurs to anyone today to organize rallies against smartphones or social networks? On the globe, the number of Internet users is already greater than the number of water toilets. It is hard to believe that the rebels will sit in the underground bunkers and plan subversive operations. But also there will not be a single control center - the conditional "Great Google", which would govern the entire globe. On the contrary, the tendency is more and more clearly manifested that the world wide web is being divided into national segments, and that borders in the virtual world are still needed. The Internet has become a platform on which more and more politics are technological, investment-intensive, where money is turned into another currency - the impact on the audience. Some countries have moved a little further in this direction, some are still lagging behind, and therefore are forced to take a defensive position. But there is no doubt that the Chinese fire-wall will gradually extend to all BRICS countries and create obstacles for information.
Is your company's technical developments capable of driving human emotions?
Artificial intelligence that programs human behavior is not our topic. Although we are not staying away from technologies that allow us to predict certain things. So, by the end of the year we plan to roll out the project, the essence of which is reduced to predicting accidents. Today, millions of pieces of equipment are included in our network, the monitoring system monitors certain parameters, in the event of an emergency, a signal is sent to the operator, and he already finds out what is the cause of the malfunction. The new project is that the algorithm, that is, the robot, constantly monitors the entire network, and long before the breakdown predicts the moment when the equipment begins to behave in a strange way. Trying to understand all this for a person is useless, a huge amount of data pours in a continuous stream, no specialist will analyze them in his entire life. And at the level of artificial intelligence, this thing is solved instantly! Brain explosion, I can't believe that it is possible to predict an accident on the network in advance, but the first results are already there. The robot is constantly learning from real life examples by downloading huge amounts of data about how different equipment behaved before the breakdown.
Do you see Intercommunication as part of the global structure?
Are you talking about offers to sell your business? They have been doing it, and with enviable regularity for ten years already. But no. Otherwise it will be boring. There will be no happiness (laughs)... Happiness, of course, is not about going to work every day, but about having challenges. To overcome, to invent, to invent.
What is the main challenge facing you this year?
Get another plus three percent of the market.
It's a lot?
Yes. We now have more than seventy, and three more is cool. This can be achieved only due to the fact that in partnership with our company it will be easier, more convenient and more comfortable to live. This is a rather fine tuning, but we constantly measure this level of convenience and try to make it higher. We strive so that a person is not distracted by everyday trifles, but finds time to be in harmony with himself, to hear himself, and then even such trifles as reading an interesting book, walking in the park, good music, meeting friends ... They say that the world responds to your mood. It's time to make yourself happy, and robots will take over everyday chores.
What drives evolution?
The idea of \u200b\u200bevolution is not new. It was developed by many researchers, but only Darwin managed to make it so that literally everyone knew about his work - even in the most primitive form: they say, man descended from a monkey. Thus, the idea of \u200b\u200bevolution has become not only a scientific phenomenon, but also a fact of social consciousness. The name of Darwin stood on a par with the names of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and became one of the symbols of a new science, free from the influence of religion.
Development idea
Before the publication of Darwin's books, people believed that humans and animals were created by God and remained unchanged from the moment of their creation. Darwin in "The Origin of Species" argued the opposite: all life on Earth develops and changes in time, ascending from lower forms to higher ones. Many - not only believers - did not want to agree with this: they say, it's ridiculous to think that humans and monkeys have the same ancestors.
Interestingly, The Origin of Species does not say anything about the origin of man. Its 600 pages tell about the biological mechanisms of development of living nature as a whole.
Researchers have long sought to uncover these mechanisms. French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck in his book "Philosophy of Zoology" argued that the leading role in the transformation of organisms is played by function: intensively acting organs strengthen and develop, which do not find application - weaken and decrease, and most importantly, such changes are inherited. To explain this, the scientist formulated several laws. One of them is "the law of exercise and not exercise of organs." His example with giraffes is best known. Giraffes have to constantly stretch their necks to reach the leaves,
Alfred Wallace, independently of Darwin, came to the same conclusions about the course of the evolution of living nature.
growing over their heads. Therefore, their necks were gradually extended.
British publicist Robert Chambers published Traces of the Natural History of Creation in 1844. In it, he presented the history of the development of life from its emergence from inorganic matter to its gradual evolution into increasingly complex forms, which ultimately led to the emergence of man.
However, these theories did not attract much attention from scientists and were considered amateurish.
And Many newspapers and magazines published cartoons, mocking Darwin and his theory.
Discovery of "natural selection"
Darwin's theory is based on three postulates: biological species change over time; this happens under the influence of natural selection; there is a fierce struggle for existence in nature, and the one who adapts best survives.
Darwin's first conclusion came from observing fossils of the giant sloth Megatherium and comparing finches from different islands in the Galapagos archipelago. He showed that initially these and some
First edition of The Origin of Species.
Human evolution is a theory of the origin of humans created by the English naturalist and traveler Charles Darwin. He claimed that the ancient descended from. To confirm his theory, Darwin traveled a lot and tried to collect different ones.
It is important to emphasize here that evolution (from the Latin evolutio - "deployment"), as a natural process of development of living nature, accompanied by a change in the genetic composition of populations, really takes place.
But regarding the origin of life in general and the appearance of man in particular, evolution is rather scarce in scientific evidence. It is no coincidence that it is still considered only a hypothetical theory.
Some are inclined to believe in evolution, considering it the only reasonable explanation for the origin of modern humans. Others completely deny evolution as an anti-scientific thing, and prefer to believe that man was created by the Creator without any intermediate options.
So far, neither side has been able to scientifically convince opponents that it is right, so we can confidently assume that both positions are based purely on faith. What do you think? Write about it in the comments.
But let's take a look at the most common terms associated with the Darwinian idea.
Australopithecus
Who are the Australopithecines? This word can often be heard in pseudo-scientific conversations about human evolution.
Australopithecus (southern monkeys) are upright descendants of Driopithecus, who lived in the steppes about 4 million years ago. They were fairly highly developed primates.
Skillful man
It was from them that the most ancient species of people came, which scientists call Homo habilis - "skillful man".
The authors of the theory of evolution believe that in appearance and structure, a skilled man did not differ from great apes, but at the same time he was already able to make primitive cutting and chopping tools from roughly processed pebbles.
Homo erectus
The fossil species of people Homo erectus ("Homo erectus"), according to the theory of evolution, appeared in the East and already 1.6 million years ago spread widely across Europe and Asia.
Homo erectus was of average height (up to 180 cm) and had a straight gait.
Representatives of this species learned how to make stone tools for labor and hunting, used animal skins as clothing, lived in caves, used fire and cooked food on it.
Neanderthals
The Neanderthal man (Homo neanderthalensis) was once considered the ancestor of modern man. This species, according to the theory of evolution, appeared about 200 thousand years ago, and 30 thousand years ago it ceased to exist.
Neanderthals were hunters and had a powerful physique. However, their height did not exceed 170 centimeters. Scientists now believe that the Neanderthals were most likely just a side branch of the evolutionary tree from which humans descended.
Homo sapiens
Homo sapiens (in Latin - Homo sapiens) appeared, according to Darwin's theory of evolution, 100-160 thousand years ago. Homo sapiens built huts and huts, sometimes even dwelling pits, the walls of which were sheathed with wood.
They skillfully used bows and arrows, spears and bone hooks for fishing, and also built boats.
Homo sapiens were very fond of painting the body, decorating clothes and household items with drawings. It was Homo sapiens who created the human civilization that still exists and is developing.
Stages of development of ancient man according to the theory of evolution It should be said that this entire evolutionary chain of human origin is exclusively Darwin's theory, which still has no scientific evidence.