The End Of An Era.

The end of an era is the beginning of a new era.

We have evolved, consciously or not, for better or for worse, a system that rewards people with a power over mindset. The instrumentalist, mechanistic, reductionist and objectifying nature of modern reason makes this so and now it has been consummately expressed in technologies like AI and the Internet that allow for automated and ceaseless, limitless coercion and exploitation.

Those people that have a power over mindset and that are the most aggressive are using this new potential of the system for selfish economic and political gain. It is now possible to buy the minds and hearts of people and entire governments with very little relative investment— but with the tactical use of these intensely powerful and unregulated technologies.

We have created a complex technological environment that reinforces a power over mindset. It was conceived with the dream of total control but, lacking the organic wisdom of nature, that vast power over has become a nightmare. In this mindset the ends justify the means, the winners write the history, money is meaning, and power is proof. It is tempting to take the side of the victors except that everything they build crumbles and we are left with nothing but regret.

Modern science was always built upon an expediency, because the methodology of reductionism and objectification is completely unsustainable— especially when it comes to living things. Galileo, Newton, Maxwell…all the leaders in this mathematical tradition knew this—that is, until they became intoxicated with their own success.

Science is an experimental methodology, not a way of life. We agreed to the Cartesian conceit that the body (and also the earth) didn’t matter because we saw the benefit of this form of science for the intellect. But that was more than three centuries ago. We are not in the same situation today and what was once discovery has become excess.

We are at the end of an era. This means that we are at the beginning of a new era.

Modernity began and has always continued with two distinct traditions. We have forgotten this because of the overconfidence and egotism of the intellect. We can call these two different traditions mathematical and somatic or organic. Copernicus published his mathematical text in the same year, 1543, as the brilliant young professor of anatomy at the University of Padua, Andreas Vesalius, published his anatomical text on the “Fabric of the Human Body”. These two texts are at the origin of the world we live in today. One shaped our understanding of physics, matter and energy, while the other provided the foundation for our understanding of medicine and the body.

Where Vesalius used an organic metaphor, fabric, in contrast Copernicus used a much simpler geometric one. His book was titled the “The Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres”. The mathematical tradition was about inanimate matter and nonliving structures that are far simpler and easier to theorize. The ascendancy of this tradition is understandable but it’s arrogance is not.

The somatic tradition of natural philosophy has always focused on the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, complexity and structure. We can see this in the study of living organisms and the anatomy of the human body. The power with mindset in science is this somatic tradition and this organic appreciation of the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

There have always been two traditions. The mathematical tradition of natural philosophy was about power over and this is not bad, until we lose sight of the larger picture and life itself is endangered. This has been a methodological struggle that we see expressed, by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in the institutionalization of things like shoulder surgery and neuroscience.

The somatic pursuit of the natural philosophy of living organisma, that recognizes and cherishes the whole, has been developing alongside the mathematical tradition consistently. Although it is overshadowed today we are experiencing major breakthroughs in every different field of knowledge, from complexity theory and cybernetics to synergistic anatomy and holistic medicine.

It is the end of an era and it is painful. However the somatic tradition of natural philosophy that I have been describing is beginning to mature and take coherent visible form.