Friday, November 15, 1991 - North Shore News - 7

‘The vast, fluid, complex universe of new

B MODERN DISCOVERIES,
as everyone knows, have
ay charged the face of science,
and new technologies have
changed society. Never-
mtheless, our perception of
the natural world lags
BS behind what science has
# discovered.

» By Rex Wyler
Contributing Writer

We still teach cbsolete ideas in
our schools, and we still make ob-
solete assumptions about the way
the world and the universe work.

Rupert Sheldrake, one of the
most influential proponents of the
new science, says flatly, ‘‘every
major assumption of 19th century
mechanistic science — objectivity,
earth as inanimate machine, the
inert atom, eternal laws, deter-
minacy — has been overturned in

f the 20th century, and yet we still
teach our students the
mechanistic, reductionistic world
view. The current science cur-
riculum in most schools is 50, if
not 100 years out of date.”’

The 19th century saw the uni-
verse as an inanimate machine,
explainable as a vast system of
moving parts linked together as if
by a series of gears. We now
know that the world is not a
machine. It is animate, a living
organism, evoiving, self-organiz-
ing and self-regulating. .

British scientist James Lovelock
has shown that the Earth’s at-
mosphere maintains a_ self-
regulating equilibrium with the
biosphere which helps to keep the
whole thing alive.. Our under-
standing of evolution has matured
into co-evolution, that is, the en-
tire Earth and all the species that
live on it evolve together.

+ Geneticist Barbara McClintock
says, “Everything is one. There is
no way in which you can draw a
line between things. We make
these subdivisions, but they are
not real.’”’

Another outdated notion that
persists is the idea of the inert
atom, the tiny ‘‘building block’’

of nature, We know that there are
hundreds of ‘‘subatomic parti-
cles,’ (a self-contradictory term
since ‘‘atom’ means ‘‘indivisi-
bie’’), and science now sces the
atom as a structure of activity, or
energy. The so-called subatomic
particles are not particles at all,
but ‘energy clunips.’’

it is likely that there is no such
thing as an indivisible particle.

Subatomic physics has also laid
to rest the notion of the predict-
able universe, and astrophysics
has laid to rest the notion of the
knowable universe.

The uncertainty principle
discovered in the 1920s states that
there are certain qualities of
subatomic particles, such as posi-
tien and momentum, which can-
not be precisely known at the
same time. That is, the more
precisely one measures the
momentum of an electron, the Jess
precisely one can measure the

MAIL!

Ox

position of that electron.

Modern chaos theory has also
demonstrated that the universe is
not predictable.

Scientists once thought that the
universe was ultimately knowable,
but this idea has come under
serious question.

Astronomers predict now that
as much as 99% of the matter in
the universe is undetectable except
by inference. That is, they can
observe the gravitational effects of
the matter, but they cannot ‘‘see’’
tt.

They call this unknowable ma-
terial ‘dark matter.’’

One of the most stubborn no-
tions to fall in the 20th century is
that of the objective observer.
Science now accepts the fact that
the observer always participates in
the world he or she observes.

The question one asks, the
methodology one uses to collect
information, the calibration of in-

No luxury ghettos, please!

Dear Editor:

Can anyone tell us what's going
on in North Vancouver City? Are
we, as the draft revision to the
Official Community Plan (OCP)
suggests, to be a mixed communi-
ty of different ages, incomes and
housing accommodations? Or are
we to be a condo ghetto for the
rich who will be ‘‘living in the iap
of luxury’’?

A page 3 article in your
November 1 edition suggests that
the ‘‘market’’ will turn us from a
“‘sleepy, family-oriented suburb’’
into one of ‘‘luxury towers’’ built
to meet the needs of well-heeled
“‘empty-nesters.””

We in The Lonsdale Citizens’
Association (TLCA) reject the no-
tion that the bottom line is the
only criterion for pianning our
community. We also reject the
notion that any one group (e.g.
“the market,’’ ‘‘realtors’’ or ‘‘de-
velopers’) should dominate the

. process of deciding what our
community wili become in the 21st

centrry. :

TLCA strongly believes that we
should strive to develop a diverse
community comprising:

®© the old and the young;

@ renters and owners;

@ the physically fit and the
physically challenged;

@ singles and various family
groups;

© a combination of races and
religions; and

@® groups of varying income
levels.

It is not for the developers and

real estate agents to determine the
fate of this city.

The citizens and their elected
tepresentatives are in the process
of updating the OCP. Thus, resi-
dents should study the changes be-
ing suggested and participate in
the process of revision.

Otherwise, the ‘‘market’’ will
once again squeeze out the ordi-
nary citizens of North Van City
who live here — and wish to re-
main.

The Lonsdale Citizens’
tion (FLCA)

Associa-

The picketing was partisan

| Dear Editor:
Well, now, isn’t this interest-
ing? The lunatic fringe of the
environmental movement isn’t

going to picket the logging
roads to a certain stand of
mature timber any longer

because the NDP government
is now in power.

So it was political after all,
and to hell with the trees!

Eileen M. Scott
West Vancouver

struments, and even the mind of
she observer, all affect the obser-
vation. There is no such thing as
purely objective knowledge.
Finally, there is the notion of
eternal laws cf nature, from the
laws of motion to the laws of
animal and human behavior.
There is some evidence that what
we used to think of as laws are
perhaps better described as habits.

It is known that every energy
packet, subatomic particle, aiom,
every molecule, and every complex
organism is associated with certain
fields, and that these fields (simi-
lar to magnetic or electrical fields)
interact in organizing patterns.
These patterns of organizations,
such as the pattern that forms a
molecule of salt, or a pattern that
forms a particular bacteria, are
themselves evolutionary.

The patterns come into ceing,
and matter and energy ‘‘learn’’ to
form along these lines of patterns.
it is possible that none of this is
governed so much by law, as by
habit. .

For example, it is believed now
that morphogenetic fields carry
much of the information that
guides an acorn to become an oak
tree, or guides a fertilized ovum to
become a particular human being.
The notion that all this informa-
tion is carried by chemical code
alone is obsolete.

For students or others interested
in pursuing some of these ideas
there are many books available.

Here are four good ones:
Chaos, by James Gleick (Penguin
Book, 1987); A New Science of
Life by Rupert Sheldrake (Tar-
cher, 198!); The Ages of Gaia by
James Lovelock (Norton, 1988);
and Turbulent Mirror by John
Briggs and David Peat (Harper
and Row, 1989). '

David Peat, a former member
of Canada’s Wational Research
Council, describes the universe we
inhabit as ‘‘vaster, more complex,
more fluid and less secure than
the one that has been portrayed
by reductionist science.”’

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