I’ve put together here a list of books, scientists, philosophers and organizations (online and “physical”!) who are challenging the materialistic views which are perhaps the greatest impediment to the progress of science.
Here are some recommendations of books to read that in some way or other challenge materialism. This is from Dr. Larry Dossey. Among his recommendations, I would particularly cite Smith’s “Beyond the Postmodern Mind”, Radin’s “Conscious Universe”, “van Lommel’s “Consciousness Beyond Life”, Carter’s “Parapsychology and the Skeptics”, and Tart’s “The End of Materialism.” Perhaps the best of all – though a challenging read, heavily researched – is Kelley’s ‘Irreducible Mind.”
Larry Dossey’s recommendations; Among the books that are accessible to laypersons and professionals alike are Peter Russell’s The Global Brain,33 David Lorimer’s Whole in One,34 Nick Herbert’s Elemental Mind,35 Huston Smith’s Beyond the PostModern Mind,36 David Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicate Order,37 David Darling’s Soul Search,4 Robert G. Jahn and Brenda J. Dunne’s Consciousness and the Source of Reality,38 Rupert Sheldrake’s A New Science of Life,39 Lynne McTaggart’s The Field,40 Ervin Laszlo’s The Akashic Experience,41 and Science and the Akashic Field,42 Menas Kafatos and Robert Nadeau’s The Conscious Universe: Parts and Wholes in Physical Reality,43 and The Non-Local Universe,44 Dean Radin’s The Conscious Universe,45 and Entangled Minds,46 Stephan A. Schwartz’s Opening to the Infinte,47 Pim van Lommel’s Consciousness Beyond Life,48 Charles T. Tart’s The End of Materialism,49 Russell Targ’s Limitless Mind,50 and The Reality of ESP,51 Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer’s Extraordinary Knowing,52 Chris Carter’s Parapsychology and the Skeptics,53 Mario Beauregard’s Brain Wars,31 Edward F. Kelley and colleagues’ Irreducible Mind,5 Eben Alexander’s Into the Afterlife: A Neurosurgeon’s Near Death Experience,54 my forthcoming book The One Mind,55 and many, many others that are too numerous to name.
Here is a list of philosophers of science from the authors of “The Waning of Materialism”. These are individuals who either have rejected materialism (and physicalism and naturalism and whatever else you want to call it – for the rest of this blog post I’m sticking with “materialism”) or are coming to question it. It’s a particularly interesting list as some – like Searle and Kim – have been stalwart proponents of materialism for years and are just starting to question their faith. Others gave up on fundamaterialism many years ago.
Hilary Putnam, John Searle, Jerrold Katz, Alvin Plantinga, Charles Parsons, Jaegwon Kim, George Myro, Thomas Nagel, Robert Adams, Hugh Mellor, Saul Kripke, Eli Hirsch, Ernest Sosa, Stephen Schiffer, Bas van Fraassen, John McDowell, Peter Unger, Derek Parfit, Crispin Wright, Laurence BonJour, Michael Jubien, Nancy Cartwright, Bob Hale, Kit Fine, Tyler Burge, Terence Horgan, ColinMcGinn, Robert Brandom, Nathan Salmon, Joseph Levine, TimothyWilliamson, Mark Johnston, Paul Boghossian, Stephen Yablo, Joseph Almog, Keith DeRose, Tim Crane, John Hawthorne, Richard Heck, David Chalmers.
To be continued…
Let’s see, here’s some more:
Alan Wallace, The Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies
Thomas McFarlane. A student of Franklin Merrell-Wolff and mathematician, he has an “integral science” website with some very interesting articles.
A number of members of Wisdom’s Goldenrod, who are students of Paul Brunton and Anthony Damiani, have written articles on science and spirituality.
The Institute of Noetic Sciences has a great deal of non-materialist research.
There are mindfulness-related centers at Emory University and Brown University. There is actually a non-duality based center at New York University.
Of course, the “science and non duality” website is a good place to look – it has a very wide range of quality – from almost commercial neo-vedanta nonduality talks to very high quality videos of people talking about new and at times visionary ways of doing non materialist science. Check out Tom McFarlane and Bernardo Kastrup who have particularly good videos (Tom has a great presentation on Vimeo also).
Don DeGracia is a physiologist who has a site on lucid dreaming and out of body experence. He is not only interested in subtle or subliminal phenomena; he has some interesting philosophic writings as well.
Douglas Harding’s outstanding book, “The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth” is long and difficult to read, but it is an amazing revisioning of a wide range of science from a nondualist view.
Did I mention Ulrich’s site, www.anti-matters.org – there is no longer any new material being added, but still lots of good stuff there.
Dean Radin has a blog with ongoing reports of his research.
Another good book: Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos.
There is a group that I think is called “International Association for the Study of Subtle Energies. You might look that up and find some interesting material, though I imagine the quality will be quite varied.
There is the online Journal For Scientific Exploration (I think that’s the title) and another called “Frontier Science”.
That should keep y’all busy for a few days!