Science beyond the materialistic worldview

Galileo Report for the Scientific and Medical Network

Abstract

Modern (natural) science has a materialistic worldview. This worldview has surreptitiously permeated other scientific disciplines and our culture at large. It assumes that, ultimately, everything that claims to be real in our universe is material by definition or can be reduced to material entities. This also pertains to consciousness, which is believed to arise from the material activities of our brain, even though we might not be able to understand it yet in its entirety. The Galileo Report, which I have compiled for the Scientific and Medical Network, presents a dense body of arguments challenging the viability of such a worldview. It argues that this worldview lacks sufficient conceptual coherence, neglecting important areas of reality that have been well documented empirically, such as the entire phenomenal realm of non-local perception or reincarnation type experiences. We should therefore strive to broaden this supposedly proven worldview. This would mainly entail adopting a more comprehensive view of consciousness. An expanded concept of science would include both consciousness and different means of access to the subjective perspective of experience, that is, not only an outer but also an inner experience of the world, such as structures of value and meaning. This would require psychology to be expanded towards a methodologically controlled introspection, as envisaged by Franz Brentano, one of the founding fathers of psychology.