Category Science

Where Science and Spirituality Meet

  God is very subtle, but he is not malicious. –Einstein Nobel winning Professor of Physics Charles H. Townes (1915-2015) explains why he believes that science and religion may ultimately converge : Some consider science and religion as fundamentally different domains in their techniques and rendering a just direct confrontation between the two impossible. Others find refuge in one of the two fields and consider the other as contingent or even harmful. To me science and religion are both universal, and very similar. The goal…

The Ones Who Will Be Saved

  The renowned neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik links the present Covid crisis with the race for the performance of our globalized societies. He attributes the differences in individual reactions to crisis to the fact that people confronting it are not in equal terms and conditions. He lucidly explains the differing human condition :  Those who grew up in a stable and reassuring family, who have a good network of friends, those who have learned to communicate by telephone, will read, write, get back on the guitar,…

Coding Universal Ethics

    “We should not be confident in our ability to keep a super intelligent genie locked up in his bottle forever. Sooner or later it will be out…The answer is to figure out how to create the superintelligent A.I. such that even if –when –it escapes, it would still be safe because it would be on our side and share our values.”   – Nick Bostrom   It was in the 1940s when Alan Turing (1912-1954), the computer scientist, mathematician, cryptanalyst and philosopher, defined artificial…

Age-old Remedies for Well-Being

600 years after the foundations of science set by Hippocrates (400 BC), the erudite shift in medicine was built up by the pioneers of Islamic medicine spreading from Alexandria to Edessa (Urfa in modern Turkey) and Athens. In the 10th century, the physicians could diagnose and treat various maladies from smallpox to removing cataracts, from relieving pain to setting fractures and to incisions to lifesaving surgical operations.  Learned in zoology and pharmacology, they were able to produce the essential medicines. The breadth of their medical…

An Astrophysicist’s Flirt with the Universe

Marcelo Gleiser, an astrophysicist and philosopher exploring the origins of the cosmos and creation accentuates humanity’s perpetual struggle to understand its place in the universe : We are naturally driven to make sense of the world and our place in it. Advances in math, technology, computers, all have revealed deeper mysteries, and the true vastness of space and time. Yet there are so many questions we still have no clue about. Because nature is smarter than we are, we’re always playing the game of catch-up.…

Inner Guide and the Imperious Self

If our celestial soul is shrouded in the dark smoke produced by the imperious self, our soul will cease to reflect the divine spark within it. – Ostad Elahi   Do you ever find yourself caught between opposing ideas when you are about to make a decision? For example, you plan to finish your work in good time, and yet switch your mind to watch a television program that you like. Meanwhile, you find yourself saying that it will not be the end of the…

A Life Truly Lived

“ Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us and take with us when we depart. ”   Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004), in her pioneering work with patients nearing the end of their lives in palliative care, interviewed them on their feelings about life and death, and how they measure the life they lived.  The results of her work show that the patients unanimously expressed their emotional state as a “yearning for love, ” a shield needed against the fear of…

Majestic Exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”   The great Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) –timeless artist, engineer, architect, mathematician, and scientist, with profound knowledge in science from anatomy and optics to physics to light –is commemorated at the Louvre Museum, Paris for the fifth centenary of his death. In his quest to understand the relation between the physical and the metaphysical, he spent a lifetime studying the human being and its place in the universe. His extraordinary…

Therapeutic Effects of Dancing

  On how dancing boosts morale and revives the soul “ In the dance, one finds the cinema, the comic strips, the Olympic hundred meters and swimming, and what’s more : poetry, love and tenderness,”  said Maurice Bejart, the exceptional choreographer, opera director and dancer. Long before neuroscience confirmed that our brains are wired to move along with music, dancing was there. Babies, children, and adults, all instinctively move to the rhythm of the music. Cognitive research states that human beings are universally synchronized with…

Intelligent Life of Plants

How the intelligence of the trees is measured and what it means for maintaining our life on earth Plants are sentient beings which have emotions, who feel the pain when damaged, enjoy Mozart, can respond to unspoken thoughts of humans and more. Cleve Backster, a former intelligence agent, best known for his experiments with plants using a polygraph (lie detector) instrument in the 1960s long before science has discovered the intelligence of plants capable of cognition, learning, memory and communication. He hooked up the galvanometer…