The Credit Crunch for Materialism

The Edge recently asked 151 scientists to contribute essays answering the question: "What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?"

One of the essays, called The Credit Crunch of Materialism, immediately caught my eye. The piece was written by RUPERT SHELDRAKE, a biologist and author of A New Science of Life.

Sheldrake writes...

"Credit crunches happen because of too much credit and too many bad debts. Credit is literally belief, from the Latin credo, 'I believe.' Once confidence ebbs, the loss of trust is self-reinforcing. The game changes.

"Something similar is happening with materialism. Since the nineteenth century, its advocates have promised that science will explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry; science will show that there is no God and no purpose in the universe; it will reveal that God is a delusion inside human minds and hence in human brains; and it will prove that brains are nothing but complex machines."

"The problems of development and consciousness remain unsolved. Many details have been discovered, dozens of genomes have been sequenced, and brain scans are ever more precise. But there is still no proof that life and minds can be explained by physics and chemistry alone."

"Confidence in materialism is draining away. Its leaders, like central bankers, keep printing promissory notes, but it has lost its credibility as the central dogma of science. Many scientists no longer want to be 100% invested in it.

"Materialism's credit crunch changes everything. As science is liberated from this nineteenth-century ideology, new perspectives and possibilities will open up, not just for science, but for other areas of our culture that are dominated by materialism. And by giving up the pretense that the ultimate answers are already known, the sciences will be freer—and more fun."

Read the whole thing.

Needless to say, I share Sheldrake's perspective, although, unfortunately I also think a large number of scientists are too "emotionally invested" in materialism to allow its foundation to crumble away without a fight. There will probably be major ideological conflict in the rising generation and it may be up to the next generation (say those born in the 21st century) to truly demolish its pillars. But like Shedlrake, I remain, on the whole, optimistic.

-Todd