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1 " The argument between nature and our species is certainly not restricted to measurements of the physical universe. It includes the great variety of possible human reactions and responses to nature that the social sciences and humanities have also described. The manner in which the argument is now being conducted is less a struggle for control and more a desire for participation. Western peoples have previously believed that scientific knowledge could indefinitely provide them with techniques to control and understand nature. They partially accomplished this goal by reducing the phenomena of nature to objects valuable only because they could be measured and modified. Even while technological progress continues, scientists are retreating from an absolute stance that purports to explain everything in theoretical terms. “The primary significance of modern physics lies not in any disclosure of the fundamental nature of reality,” Ian Barbour writes, “but in the recognition of the limitations of science.”31 If we have knowledge of nature at all, we must conceive it as a “modest, sharply delimited sector of, and extract from, the multiplicity of phenomena observed by our senses,”32 Heisenberg argued. Complete knowledge of the world, either in the scientific or philosophical sense, would require the reintroduction of factors previously omitted from consideration. The metaphysical task that brings together all facets of human knowledge "
― Vine Deloria Jr. , The Metaphysics of Modern Existence
2 " in one major synthesis would seem to be the next major step in understanding that our species must take. "
3 " THE PROCESS OF LIFE The Greek conception of the kosmos was not simply that of a world of atoms, metaphysical ideas and numbers, and random energies. It also consisted of plants and animals, the life-forms of the biological world, including the human species, considered as observable phenomena. We would be remiss if we based any critique of culture and civilization on the discoveries and theories of modern physics alone. Of more importance to the layman are the principles that seem to describe and govern activities in the world of which they are a part. Therefore we must investigate other fields of knowledge to see if some of contemporary interpretations of the world can be made compatible with the discoveries in the field of physics, thereby extending the possibility of our metaphysical search into a broader perspective. The "
4 " The two revolutions, therefore, taken together, must be understood as a centuries-long process of fundamental change in which the triumphant Western worldview of colonial days is replaced by a planetary understanding of the meaning of human existence that so transcends particular national differences as to enable the human species to create a planetary peace in the absence of an imperial power to enforce its particular institutions on anyone. In short, a coming to maturity of the human species. A transformation of this profound a depth must necessarily take form in the actions of the most capable nation on the planet, and Revel, after surveying the various claimants to leadership, decided that the United States fulfilled the basic requirements such a role entailed. He acclaimed the United States as the prototype nation in a process of world transformation. He cited many factors present in the United States but absent or improperly developed in other nations as justification for his choice. The United States had a continuing pattern of growth and economic prosperity unmatched by any other nation, a technological excellence unrivaled by anyone else, and a high level of basic research that would continue to provide increasingly sophisticated insights into the nature of basic scientific and social problems. Revel also felt that the United States was culturally oriented toward the future, whereas the European countries were directed toward the past, and the Communists were mired in theoretical and doctrinal considerations, rendering them incapable of confronting rapid and continued change. The "
5 " The multiple and dissident lifestyles emerging in the 1960s also indicated to Revel that the United States had more internal flexibility to tolerate change than did any other country and that this diversity would produce sufficient human vitality to make the United States a society of experimentation in new expressions of human experience. But the most important quality Revel found in Americans was their willingness to admit collective guilt in the treatment of racial minorities. Pointing out that the educational system of the Western nations from the time of the Greeks until the present had been designed to justify crimes committed against humanity in the name of national honor or religion, Revel noted that “the Germans refused to admit the crimes of the Nazi; and the English, the French, and the Italians all refused to admit the atrocities committed during their colonial wars.”4 The United States, as Revel saw it, was the first nation in history to confront seriously its own misdeeds and to make some effort to change national policy to make amends for acknowledged wrongs. This manifestation of a collective conscience indicated a greater sensitivity to human needs and an ability to empathetically deal with foreign cultures and values. This was the vital characteristic needed to provide a stance of moral leadership to support a planetary transformation of cultures. Rather "
6 " The most common characteristic of the new interpretations modern science gives concerning the kosmos is the willingness to abandon the old belief that truth could be discovered by isolating phenomena and reducing knowledge to measurable quantities. A much more cohesive picture of the world emerges when we include rather than exclude, and the inclusionary aspect of modern science, while seeming strange at the beginning, is actually more in line with our experiences than with our previous efforts to understand things. Ian Barbour gives a clear and concise summary of the physical world as conceived by modern science when he explains that “time and space are indissolubly united in a space-time continuum. Matter and energy must be taken together as matter-energy, and according to relativity matter-energy is simply a distortion in the structure of space.”28 "
