A New Scientific Consciousness

In a 1961 paper, Susanne Langer explained that a new culture was probably in the making. Her optimism told her that although science was destroying the old world, it was also bringing on the new. “A scientific mentality capable of engendering a world culture will have to go far beyond what we call by its name today”

Langer saw how scientific productions were stripping us of cultural habits of feeling; she saw, in other words, the same old alienation in the modern world. Yet she knew that science was “not likely to beget a [new] culture unless, and until, a truly universal artistic imagination catches fire from its torch...to give shape to a new feeling, such as generally initiates a new epoch of society.”

Langer wasn't imagining a world of ipods, ephones, and facebook, for that stuff was still science fiction when she wrote. And even if she were here today she might still think that all these gadgets are just so many toys and distractions, and not the emergence of a real culture.

However, the potential is there, and the web is full of new life symbols, new motifs of art which formulate and fix human new ways of feeling. I have a friend who puts mind-bending videos up for his facebook friends to see, videos which present the ideas of physics and mathematics in ways that make them relevent to living a meaningful life.

Rather than teaching us ways to compete in the business of destroying the planet for human profit, these videos teach us a new ethic. They teach us new ways of looking at life. They do not merely distract us from the fact that most of us have nothing better to do at the end of an unfulfilling day than watch reality tv and chat on facebook; these viral, living ideas place our consciousness at the center of the universe.

Langer says that “a scientific mentality capable of engendering a world culture will have to liberate and yet discipline a great imagination, encompass such subjects as mind, growth, language, and history, and produce social concepts that have meaning for a humanity which inhabits the whole earth and reaches for other stars.”

It's all there, baby. A new, scientific culture is ours for the taking if we have the guts. We are the new pioneers.

Be Qualiadelic. Be Conscious. Change the routine.