User:JWSchmidt

=Possible new wiki: Science of the Soul= I am interested in the idea of starting a wiki that would be concerned with scientific investigation of the universal human cultural feature of belief in a soul. There are many websites (for example) and published books dealing with the idea that there can be a science of the soul. These various approaches to a science of the soul range from that of Francis Crick (very materialistic) to many New Age speculations about how non-material spirit links through a soul to our material bodies.

Science, Pseudoscience, Protoscience?
Two conventional positions within modern Western culture have dominated attitudes about the soul. According to one view, souls clearly exist and the idea that science could have anything to say about souls seems absurd. According to the other major perspective, souls clearly do not exist and it would be a waste of time to attempt a scientific study of the soul. One minority view suggests that there has long been available objective evidence of the soul, but that the "scientific establishment" will not admit the facts because they do not fit into conventional materialistic thinking. It is also possible that some scientists would like to work within a science of the soul, but they fear being rejected by their scientific peers.

Probably the most prominent recent attempt by a group of trained scientists to develop a scientific study of the soul comes from the efforts of quantum physicists. Some proposals have been advanced by which unconventional physical processes might account for the existence of conscious beings beyond the domain of conventional material objects. At best, such efforts are protoscience, with their advocates struggling to gain recognition from their peers to the effect that they are actually doing science. A harsher view is that such attempts to develop an physical account of the soul should be classified as being pseudoscience.

However, one aspect of the science of the soul seems to have been clearly established within the bounds of conventionl science. Francis Crick's book The Astonishing Hypothesis has the subtitle, "The scientific search for the soul". Crick holds the position that one can learn everything knowable about the human soul by studying the workings of the human brain. In his book, Consilience, E. O. Wilson took note of the fact that sociology has identified belief in a soul as one of the universal human cultural elements. Wilson suggested that biologists need to seriously investigate how human genes predispose people to believe in a soul. Daniel Dennett has championed the idea that the human survival strategy is heavily dependent on adoption of the intentional stance, a behavioral strategy that predicts the actions of others based on the expectation that they have a mind like one's own (see theory of mind). This behavioral strategy is probably facilitated by mirror neurons in brain regions such as Broca's area. The intentional stance is so successful that people tend to apply it to all aspects of human experience leading to animism and other conceptualizations of soul. Thus, we can clearly begin a scientific investigation of the soul by studying how it is that our genes predispose us to belief in a soul.

Wingmakers/Lyricus
One effort towards a science of the soul that is based on a multidisciplinary approach has its roots in the Wingmakers and Lyricus materials. Currently, the Wingmakers community is served by a discussion forum that can be accessed at the Wingmakers website. That discussion forum has about 55,000 posts (current science of the soul thread ). In addition, there are additional websites that have been developed by members of the Wingmakers community that are concerned with speculation about the meaning of the material at the official Wimgmakers and Lyricus websites. The large and distributed mass of internet documents concerning Wingmakers/Lyricus is daunting for members of the Wingmakers community and anyone who wants to become involved in the Lyricus-inspired activity of trying to develop a science of the soul.

I think it would be constructive to establish a Science of the Soul wiki that could provide a system by which members of the Wingmakers community can collaborate to make easily accessible:
 * 1) links to Wingmakers-related websites
 * 2) summaries of the most important material at the Wingmakers discussion forum
 * 3) Wingmakers-inspired speculation/interpretation/commentary by members of the greater Wimgmakers community.
 * 4) Links to websites that have useful information on branches of sciences that are relevant to a scientific study of the soul.

Genetics
One area of science that has been identified as being important for a scientific investigation of the soul is genetics. We need to understand how our genes influence and constrain our beliefs about the soul. Some have suggested that our DNA forms a link between the known physical world and other as yet unknown (to science) dimesnions or domains of the universe.

The Wingmakers website contains some suggestions for how our DNA is related to the soul. One page has the heading: "Particle physics and the human genome". It is not clear from conventional genetics that there should be a particularly close relationship between particle physics and genetics, but Lyricus materials suggest a link between DNA and "wormhole-like structures" that provide an inter-species communication network. Will that web page come to have additional information in the future? So far, the Wingmakers website only has scattered hints that might be relevant to links between physics and genetics and the soul ,.

According to the mythology of the Ancient Arrow site (see question 2 ), the materials attributed to this site were divided into 24 parts "because this site is concerned with the genetic architecture of the neuroanatomical human structure. This site is encoded with information specific to genetics, thus its structure takes on the form of a single helix with the (24) chambers symbolic of the dormant, yet-to-be-activated protein clusters that will shift consciousness to a six-sensory human existence." This statement directs us to think about the genetics of the neurvous system. The reference to "dormant protein clusters" is rather mysterious, but seems to imply that the human genome codes for proteins that can be activated and cause an alteration in brain function and consciousness.

The relationship between neuroscience and a scientific understanding of the soul is mentioned several times in the Wingmakers material. One comment indicates that "medical technologies in the field of genetics and neural mapping will proceed in the 21st century to enable a new, spatial intelligence to anyone who desires it. This technology will accelerate a portion of the brain center that is responsible for spatial, multidimensional constructs and highly abstract thought processes."

There has been much speculation about the relationship between the 24 chambers of the the Ancient Arrow site and human chromosomes. If we count each sex chromosome (X and Y) and the 22 autosomes the total is 24. Alternatively, the strange 24th chamber could symbolically represent the fact that during human evolution two of the ape clade chromosomes combined, reducing the number of human chromosomes by one. Another possible interpretation is that the 24th chamber represents the human mitochondrial chromosome. The emost explicit link between chambers and chromosomes is for chamber 10,.

"Chamber 10, in the context of the human genome, is analogous to the genetic structure of the human chromosome 10. This chromosome regulates, in large measure, the condition of well-being within the human instrument and its relationship to physical, emotional, and mental forms of stress." It has been noted that human genetic studies have linked some key genes that are expressed in the autonomic nervous system to chromosome 10. For example, the article "A genetic polymorphism of the alpha2-adrenergic receptor increases autonomic responses to stress" is an example of research on a gene from chromosome 10 that has different versions in humans with implications for human stress response.

The Luricus website (music introduction ) describes effects of vibrations on DNA. "Certain acoustic and scalar vibrations cause the helix within the DNA molecule to unwind, extending the DNA backbone and making the exposed bases more accessible for base pairing and activation, particularly as this relates to what scientists refer to as “junk” or dormant DNA. Sound frequencies can be contoured to penetrate the DNA molecule, and expose and activate the nucleotides and, when useful, the corresponding nerve cells." Within conventional science there have been some studies of effects of vibrations on DNA, but mainly in the context of doing damage to DNA structure. It has been reported that ultrasound can break the hydrogen bonds of DNA, but it is not clear that this can be done in a controlled way in living tissue.

Multidisciplinary studies
This Science of the Soul Wiki would be fundamentally multidisciplinary and it would be desirable to invite others from outside of the Wingmakers community to join in and share their perspectives. Since science as a human enterprise and investigation of the soul have often diverged, it will be important restrict material at this proposed wiki to efforts that have a real connection to science. Much of the material in this proposed wiki is expected to be speculative, but the wiki's rules for article style should force participants to try to frame all discussion in the language of science. Speculations about the nature of the soul will need to be expressed in terms of hypotheses and the goal of finding objective methods to test those hypotheses.

The neurobiology of consciousness
Biologists such as Francis Crick have suggested that all of the information-processing capacities normally attributed to souls can be accounted for by conventional physical processes that take place within brains. According to this view, the commonly held idea that souls can have some existence beyond the conventional materials of the human body is an illusion, also traceable to conventional brain physiology and brain-generated experiences.

The Wingmakers material points to the same part of the brain that people such as Crick have suggested is important for human consciousness. "There is within the thalamocortical system what scientists refer to as the reticular thalamic nucleus (nRt). It's widely accepted by neuroscience that nRt plays a vital role in the judicious regulation of the flow of neural information between the thalamus and cortex. What is not understood is how specific sensory information (light frequencies, sound frequencies, rhythmic synchronization, ULF, symbolic images) can influence how the ILN and nRt systems interoperate to form a hybrid functional cluster that enhances fluid intelligence and accessibility to the Genetic Mind." (source: see question 1 )

Much of the material at the Lyricus website seems inspired by existing science, art and New Age culture. It will be interesting to see the extent to which it stimulates interest science among members of New Age groups.

Biology of Belief
One of the areas of science that is mentioned in the Wingmakers material as being important for scientific understanding of the soul is they study of cultural evolution. Just as the study of genes has become central to biology, memes (cultural units of inheritance) are central to the study of culture. Beliefs are memes and and we can describe beliefs as being formed by neuronal networks in brains. Complex human behaviors such as belief in a non-material soul may be shaped by the human genome.

Philosopher Dan Dennett has popularized the idea that humans make use of "the intentional stance" as a key component of the human survival strategy. Evolutionary psychologists have introduced the related term "theory of mind" to describe the fact that for some species of animals each individual seems to have an innate ability to respond to other individuals by making the assumption that other individuals have a mind own mind and think about things in the same way. There is currently a lot of experimental work being done to determine which species are able to constructively shape their social behavior by making correct assumptions about what other members of their social group are likely to know at any given time.

The intentional stance is such a successful behavioral strategy that people tend to automatically apply it all the time. In many situations we even try to understand and interact with inanimate objects as if they have a human-like mind. As our scientific understanding of the natural world has grown, we have been able to increasingly account for many processes in nature by making use of the "physical stance". We can come to identify sets of mechanical rules which govern many natural processes.

In the past few decades it has become possible to ask if purely physical processes can account for human thought, beliefs, consciousness and what people in all human cultures have conceptualized as the human soul. Some neurobiologists have suggested that we can account for human beliefs about the soul in terms of conventional physical processes that take place in our brains. A path of discovery that is open to us is by way of biology and our increasing understanding of how the brain allows us to have the beliefs that we have. Our innate use of the intentional stance is fundamental to the kinds of beliefs we tend to have.

To what extent does the intentional stance shape human beliefs about the nature of the soul? The ability of the human brain to adopt the intentional stance makes it natural for people to imagine spirit or mind in all parts of the world we find ourselves in. Since the physical basis of most complex and interesting phenomena are not easily accessible to our senses, it is easy for us to imagine that there are non-physical spirits or minds or souls that make things happen in the world.

If this view is correct, then we have to expect a natural progression of change in human thinking about why things happen in the world. Our species evolved under conditions of ignorance about physical processes, conditions that have favored the idea that non-material spirits are dominant. As hard-won scientific knowledge about the physical world has accumulated, the number of processes that might require the intervention of spirit has decreased and it has been possible to assume that purely mechanical forces account for what happens in many situations. 100 years ago there was much debate about what Life is. Vitalists were sure that physical objects such as dead molecules could never account for Life. However, biochemists were able to discover the special molecules that make life possible and now we have an excellent physical account of the difference between living things and non-living things in terms of molecular and cellular processes. Neurobiologists are now asking if our beliefs about the nature of the soul can all be accounted for by the activity of neuronal networks in our brains.

Neo-sciences
As an example of a topic that would require speculation, the Lyricus website mentions "neo-sciences". It is expected that there will be additional information about the nature of "neo-sciences" in the future at the Lyricus website, but for now the Wingmakers community must speculate. One idea is that neo-sciences center on efforts such as the field of quantum consciousness and the study of interactions between conciousness, spirit and matter.

Historical perspective
A portion of the wiki should provide an historical perspective from Aristotle to Blavatsky and on in to the 20th century approaches towards a science of the soul that have been suggested by workers in specialized fields such as physics, computer science, and neurobiology.

=Other Wiki projects= My Wikipedia user page.

Wikicity Places

 * Possible home for Science of the Soul wiki?
 * A place for fiction construction
 * I want to bring Asimov's time travel novel into the Asimov wiki project
 * Macintosh wiki
 * An interesting "alternate history" and my Robotics Althist
 * LOGO

A city is a complex organism with centers of entertainment and governement. A wiki has an evolutionary growth pattern like that of a city.