COLLOQUIUM ARTS MEET SCIENCES/John Torday
Organisation and Chair:
Prof. Violeta Dinescu, Dean EASA, Class III
Prof Dr.Dušan Šuput, Dean EASA, Class II
ART & SCIENCE:
JOHN TORDAY: Professor and Director of Guenther Laboratory for Cell-Molecular Biology, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Philadelphia
TOPIC:
Symbiogenesis as Scientific Evidence for Non-Dual Monism
Symbiogenesis (Sagan, 1967) - the assimilation of factors in the environment that pose existential threats- has been exploited to finally understand consciousness as the aggregate of our physiology - the Symbiogenic mechanism for the uptake and synthesis of factors in the environment, formulating the continuum from inside the cell to the Cosmos (Torday, 2023a) constitutes what we think of as consciousness, both consciousness and cosmology superimposably ascribing to the Laws of Nature. Given that Symbiogenesis is ‘constructive’, whereas eliminating what threatens us is ‘destructive’, why do we opt for the former? I hypothesize that it is because Symbiogenesis is an exaptation (Gould, S.J., Vrba, E.S., 1982) i.e. reprise of past traits for adaptation to present conditions, for the homeostasis by which we continually try to reconstitute the Singularity that produced the Cosmos, recognizing ‘something greater than ourselves’. That perspective explains many heretofore unexplained aspects of consciousness, such as mind, epigenetic inheritance, physiology, behaviors, social systems, mathematics, the Arts from an a priori perspective. Seen in this way, we should be paying more attention to the energy flows in our lives (Whitehead, A.N., 1929) than to matter. The former is consistent with Alfred North Whitehead’s ‘Process Theory’. Moreover, it has been shown experimentally that there is a continuum from Newtonian to Quantum Mechanics (Torday, 2023b), opening up to a novel way of understanding the ‘true nature of our being’ that is 180 degrees from the way we traditionally have thought of our ‘being’. Such a paradigm shift is way overdue, given that we are destroying our planet, and ourselves in the process, which will be exacerbated by Artificial Intelligence if we continue doing the same old same old. In short, we need a paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1962) away from matter, toward energy if we are to survive as a species.
Short CV Prof. Dr. S.John Torday
Dr. Torday studies the cellular-molecular development of the lung and other visceral organs. Using the well-established principles of cell-cell communication as the basis for determining the patterns of physiologic development, his laboratory was the first to determine the complete repertoire of lung alveolar morphogenesis. This highly regulated structure offered the opportunity to trace the evolution of the lung from its unicellular origins forward, developmentally and phylogenetically. The lung is an algorithm for understanding the evolution of other physiologic properties, such as the kidney, skin, liver, gut, central nervous system. Such basic knowledge of the how and why of physiologic evolution is useful in the effective diagnosis and treatment of disease. https://lundquist.org/john-torday-phd
Introduction: Prof. Dr. Klaus Mainzer, President EASA, Former Full Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy of Science at TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology, Munich: https://www.emeriti-of-excellence.tum.de/e...
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