Instructions for Using This Page
Each of the sections of this web page links to a resource that will help to remind you of this module of our Science, Philosophy and Spirituality course. Just click on the section, and you will be linked to the resource.
As we near the end of Season 2, the nature of the materials on individual session web pages is changing. This month, for example, there are no books referred to, and the four handouts each refer to a group of slides, and can be accessed by clicking the “i” (for “information”) button on slides 4, 9, 15, and 19 of the presentation, rather than from buttons on this page.
Enjoy!
Link to PDF of the slides shown in the session.
Human Intelligence is just one form of intelligence displayed by different parts of the cosmos. In this presentation, Human Intelligence is compared and contrasted with Thermodynamic, Biological, Ecological, and Artificial Intelligence.
Link to Article: “The Only Intelligence That Violates Its Own Limits“
After 77 years of inquiry—from engineering to theology, systems thinking to collective dialogue—I’ve realised the real puzzle: why is human intelligence the only form in cosmic history that systematically violates life’s sustaining limits? This essay offers recognition, not solutions, and an invitation to come home.
Link to Article, “The Tragic Ten-Thousand-Year History of Human Separation”
For 200,000 years humans lived within Earth’s limits. In just 10,000 years of “civilization,” we separated from the feedback loops that sustain life. Each step—empire, science, industry—seemed progress, yet led us to the cliff edge. Now we must face the predicament, not chase impossible solutions.
Link to Parable, “The Whirlpool Who Wanted to Know.”
Eddy the whirlpool spent seventy-seven years searching for the Great Stream, desperate to escape his fear of disappearing. At last, an old whirlpool revealed the truth: Eddy was never separate at all. There is no whirlpool, no “between.” There is only Stream, streaming. And that is enough.
Link to “The Consiousness Trap”
Symbolic consciousness—humanity’s capacity for language and abstract thought—uniquely violates the regulatory constraints governing all other cosmic intelligence. While thermodynamic, biological, and ecological systems self-regulate within limits, human consciousness constructs narratives overriding immediate feedback. This “consciousness trap,” now amplified by AI, threatens planetary systems that maintained life for billions of years.
Link to, “The Great Remembering.”
A 70-page PDF containing twelve essays tracing one man’s 65-year spiral blundering from mechanistic certainty to recognition of the “consciousness trap” explored during this session.
Link to the Session’s Discussion Questions
Link to a PDF containing the full text of questions for the small discussion groups.
Link to Course Home Page
Click on this link to return to the Home Page for Season 2 of the Shepway and District u3a Science, Philosophy and Spirituality programme.
