Science Unshackled - Restoring Causality in a World of Chaos

Matthew Ehret has written a series of thought-provoking essays, arguing that we should revive a minority position in science, whose roots go back at least to Pythagoras and Plato, a position which was held and supported by some of the greatest artists and scientists in history. This tradition is based on the certainty that the universe is organized according to higher principles, which are both knowable and discoverable, through study, observation and introspection. This tradition, called "Platonic" in the West, is opposed to the Aristotelian tradition of deduction from a priori principles, deemed to be self-evident, often anything but that; as well as to the (Francis) Baconian tradition of empiricism, i.e., induction from observations, also known as sense perceptions.

Throughout the book, Ehret makes it clear that the manner in which science is undertaken and the manner in which society is organized are directly intertwined. Not only do the scientific ideas of a given period reflect the dominant social ideas of the time, but, correspondingly, existing scientific ideas serve to buttress the current social order.

For Ehret, the Platonic tradition, which assumes that the universe is knowable, and that discoveries are, in the Christian vision, a means of participating in the divine -- with correspondences in other cultures, such as in Chinese Confucianism -- is categorically in opposition to the oligarchical model implicit in Aristotle, who wrote that slavery is a norm in society because some men are born to be masters and others slaves.

Looking at the content of science, Ehret insists on the interconnectedness of the cosmos, this at three levels. First, the different scientific disciplines should share the same metaphysical principles, as opposed to all being based on mutually contradictory ideas. Second, the universe is, as assumed by both Plato and Kepler, harmonic, with resonances ensuring the stability of entities such as the Solar System. Third, the different levels of the universe should all work with the same universal principles.

The essays cover a wide variety of topics, including an openly political essay about Edgar Allan Poe, as well as the presentation of several non-mainstream scientists, such as Halton Arp about the nature of quasars, Vladimir Vernadsky about the nature of the noösphere, and Luc Montagnier about the memory of water.

I encourage people to read this book, and take advantage of each of the chapters to do their own research, and begin their own discoveries.

-Dr. John Plaice