March 2024
It may sound like a truism that science must not ignore the human experience, but in its search for an objective reality, reductionist science actually does precisely that.
“The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience”, a book published March 5 by astrophysicist Adam Frank, theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser, and philosopher Evan Thompson, the authors contend that we need a radically renewed scientific worldview. Why? Because of a blind spot in science, which is also the title of the book. The authors explain it like this:
“At the heart of science lies something we do not see that makes science possible, just as the blind spot lies at the heart of our visual field and makes seeing possible” … “In the visual blind spot sits the optic nerve, in the scientific blind spot sits direct experience.”
The blind spot is hidden in plain sight wherever a scientist looks – the origin of the universe, time, quantum physics, life, AI, the mind, consciousness, and Earth as a planetary system.
The three authors observe that in no part of science is the need for realizing there is a blind spot more acute than in quantum physics, with its weirdly subjective-like features, such as superposition, entanglement and the measurement problem. Another area where this is true is, obviously, the study of consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness “is an artifact of the Blind Spot”, the authors affirm.
“We neglect the place of human experience at our peril”, it reads in the publisher’s description. “To finally ‘see’ the Blind Spot is to awaken from a delusion of absolute knowledge and to see how reality and experience intertwine.”
Anders Bolling
Frontier Journalists' Network 