Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Romer Steven Eric
Title : The Textbook of the Universe The genetic ascent to God The rise of consciousness toward reading the meaning of the universe in the modern human information society and the integration of all abstract thought in the history of life.
Year : 2003

Link download : Romer_Steven_Eric_-_The_Textbook_of_the_Universe.zip

Foreword. This book started out as a paper investigating the basis for our unified experiences in consciousness. I had read a lot about neuroscience as an undergraduate, and there seemed to be something missing from the idea of the brain as consisting of only neural circuitry. Eventually as I progressed in my academic pursuits, I came to a point where I could not even entertain the notion that these neuron theories were the only basis for our mental life. Early on, I had discovered glial cells—a type of cells in the brain long thought to provide support functions, or to provide the scaffold upon which neurons could do their things. Glial cells do not have “action potentials”, the physiological events thought to be the basis for Neuron communication and our thoughts. Ignoring action potentials, I began to focus on the glial cells—which seemed uniquely suited to playing the role of the missing factor in brain science. I began to write about the glial cells in this sense back in the late 80’s/early 90’s and sent a couple of papers to journals. They were not very well-received. The problem I was running into with these ideas was the enormous influence of neuron theories and the whole world view that gave rise to them. All of that would come to change as I followed the rabbit of glial cells down the rabbit hole of consciousness studies. The more I tried to find the pattern of what might be happening with the glial cells, and how that might relate to our world view, the more my world view changed. I began to realize that the world does not work like we think it does. A whole new world began to present itself logically from the consideration of these things. That was the source of the trouble I was running into—our very world view was seriously flawed, and we were basing our ideas about the nature of brain processes upon this seriously flawed world view. When I began to knit the wealth of knowledge from our information society into a whole, a picture emerged. A picture of an invisible world, an abstract world, existing behind the patterns of all our favorite theories and languages we use to describe the world we live in. It is a set of ideas and a theory which unifies all of our knowledge from history, just as consciousness unifies all the physical functioning and memories from eons of biological experiences across time. This is the theory of consciousness we have been looking for in our science for a long time. It is the consilience, the coming together, of the history of inquiry on a grand scale. As the implications of these ideas began to sink in, I realized that consciousness must have been building for a long time. Eventually our consciousness was meant to get to a point where it meets something greater—in the accuracy and meaning of its representations of the world. The theory of evolution found its best arguments in similarities and differences among animals and in many diverse observations over time. In a similar fashion, this theory was built with evidence as diverse as religion, physics, and brain science. There is data everywhere for this theory. It is a theory about that invisible factor which binds our world together. You need to approach this theory differently than any other theory, however, because seemingly unrelated data all provides support for it. I use references to movies, television shows, and magazine articles to show ideas related to our mindset and subconscious— things that are motivationally relevant to us via these larger patterns building in us. An invisible coherence exists beyond the “data of an experience”, and that is what a scientist seeks systematically in an experiment. In this theory, there is a metapattern to all of reality—a grand unifying scheme—which ties together diverse areas of inquiry. As you will see, physics, brain science, biology, linguistics, and cosmology are all tied logically together with this theory. As far as I can tell, this theory is the first theory of literally everything. It is the first time in the history of life that our knowledge has reached a point where we might successfully attempt such a thing with our detailed knowledge of the universe and ourselves. You get the idea—it is a wildly different world view that eventually emerges from this, and our world is going to change forever. That makes it extremely difficult to talk about these ideas because everyone has a divided-up world view, a view that is a subset of reality with an internal coherence of its own which interferes with a larger view of things. When I begin to talk about any of these subsets of reality, I attempt to speak from this larger perspective and all I get is misunderstanding. I am speaking across paradigms, not within them, with these ideas. Keep that in mind as you read, and try to see the overall pattern that emerges. This pattern is the key to our future, as you will see. Many dark areas of our knowledge are illuminated by these ideas, and many new questions are asked and answered as well. Part of these ideas is the necessity of knowing your own mind and how it works, understanding the nature and origins of your own emotions in order to rationally evaluate them. This is not something normally required of physicists, but is absolutely required to see truth laid bare without any boundaries or wishful thinking commandeering our logic. Lastly, I am only interested in truth. I am only interested in ideas that expand our knowledge and awareness, because we only have a future if we can engage well in this type of thinking. All survival, all justice, all peace, all good things that build a greater future are based on these truth-oriented things. Motivation counts for a lot—it allows us to keep moving toward truth. There are many books coming out recently on a spiritual revolution, or some type of fundamental change in our knowledge needed to explain certain things. We are gravitating toward “holistic” viewpoints in many areas of our inquiry. These books and viewpoints are like the forerunners and foundation of a new type of knowledge about our world. They are intimations of something that is coming. That knowledge finds its logical realization in this book. This book has the actual keys to this new world. There is much work to be done, and we must work quickly. There is a bridge to be crossed, and now is the time. It is a strange new world we are entering, and with this book I intend to open the door. It is the door of power and truth. It is the door of our dreams. Steven E. Romer Aug. 2002, Knoxville, TN. ...