This is no time to be a reductionist!The false dilemma of the misleading opposites rationalist-irrationalist must be left behind

Darwin's living legacy: An International conference on Evolution and Society. 14-16 November

Dr. Biljana Papazov Ammann, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Evolution and Involution. A new approach to understanding the modern and post-modern society

The movie, “The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean”, based on the novel by Alessandro Barico, is an epic directed by the Oscar Award Winner, Giuseppe Tornatore.

As long as you have a good story and someone to listen to it, you arenot yet lost.

My daughter Sophie, who is a ballet student, has chosen the threshold between the artist and the audience as a field of impact and communication. She believes that today’s biologists have a similar and equally dramatic task to accomplish in today’s world - in the communication between science and the public, to define a humane approach for the future. Where conflict exists, tension and force demand solutions.

1. Is the scientific world really superior to the fantastic, the imaginative world? Can we identify this superiority?

2. Is it science that makes us happy? Can it actually make us happy, if it only speaks in the neutral language of measurable facts?

Good solutions speak for themselves, but the tacit requirements for this attitude lead us into the incorrect attitude that the “survival of the fittest” is the main purpose of our being in this world.

We forget the internal message that should be central in our lives, where it is necessary to cultivate our human consciousness.

This is the principle that carries us forward and motivates us.

I hope that we haven’t surrendered ourselves irreversibly to the dynamic of a “win or lose” way of the thinking!

That is why we must ask ourselves if the dynamic of the symbiotic development between science/technology really is in the name of improvement for humankind.

The performer and the audience, the scientist and the public, provided that they can access the emotional and actual word, image, dance, gesture and discussion together, also have access to the power of transformation that lies within themselves. In that way, they can reunite the good, the truthful, and the beautiful, and develop it further.

Rudolf Steiner:

• Evolution is expansion of the spirit outside of the material,• Involution is the concentration of the spirit inside of the soul.

From today, we should start to break free from the old ways of thinking.

My proposition is to orient ourselves briefly in the different world views of the last 100 years…

The father bridging emotion and science of today:I feel, therefore I exist!

I, as a mother and participant at this symposium in Alexandria, propose:I love, therefore I act!

We should emphasize that the conviction that the relationship of the human mind to the world is not only evolutionary and dualistic, rather it is partipatory and involutionary