Understanding Our Moment in History: An Interview witih Richard Tarnas:
www.scottlondon.com/intervie...rnas.html

Scott London: You point out that a widespread sense of urgency is tangible on many levels today, as if one historical era is coming to an end and another is about to begin.

Richard Tarnas: Yes, there is a real awareness that things have to change. People are becoming increasingly conscious of the fact that the ecological situation is critical and that we cannot continue to live according to the same assumptions with which we have lived blithely for the past several hundred years. There are also social, economic, and political dimensions to the crisis. There is the unprecedented plurality of perspectives and worldviews and religious and philosophical and political perspectives that are in the air. And, when it comes down to it, there is a spiritual crisis that pervades our world.

I think it affects everybody, but the more informed and thoughtful a person is, the more aware they are of the reality of the spiritual crisis. We live in a world in which mainstream, conventional modern science has essentially voided the cosmos of all intrinsic meaning and purpose. There is no spiritual dimension to it from its point of view. The intellectual power of mainstream modern science has effectively defined what kind of cosmos we live in. And yet human beings aspire for spiritual significance in the life that they lead and in the world that they live in. It is only, I think, though going through a profound inner transformation, and also an intellectual transformation, that one can see beyond that crisis and come into a world of a different kind.

London: There is a lot of talk now about paradigm shifts, about the emergence of new conceptual frameworks and intellectual orientations. Is that what you are talking about?

Tarnas: Very much. We're in what people call the postmodern era. If we are to define what postmodern is, it is in many ways the era between eras. Every era, in a sense, has a worldview that informs its ways of looking at history, at the human being in the world, and so forth. In the postmodern era, our worldview is so fraught with uncertainty that we don't know for sure what is objectively out there. So there is a kind of skepticism about any worldview, about any paradigms. Our postmodern paradigm is, in a sense, "anti-paradigmatic" — it is against the very idea that there could be a compelling, comprehensive Worldview

London: When Thomas Kuhn introduced the idea of paradigms back in the early sixties, he was speaking of them in the context of science. One of the points he made is that young scientists, or people who are new to the profession, tend to be the most important carriers of the new paradigm. Also, a paradigm shift is never really complete until the old guard dies. Are we are seeing the death of the old order?

Tarnas: Yes, very much. I think Thomas Kuhn quoted Max Planck about the idea that a paradigm in science does not shift simply because the evidence in favor of the new one begins to outweigh the old paradigm. It's not a rational, empirical shift. That is because there is so much investment — psychological, unconscious, as well as economic — in the old paradigm by individuals who have lived their whole lives within it. They can't go through that kind of gestalt switch. As Kuhn says, two people who are working within different paradigms are almost, in a sense, in different universes. If you have lived within one long enough and you are not graced with a kind of illumination which helps you break out of the old worldview, it is very difficult to make your way into it.

London: Can you offer any examples?

Tarnas: Oh, sure. There are all kinds of implications of David Bohm's work in physics, for example, or Rupert Sheldrake's work in biology, or Gregory Bateson's work in systems theory. But if you were to read most of the conventional papers or commentaries in physics or biology journals, you would see that one those rare occasions when Rupert Sheldrake or David Bohm come into their discussion, it is with total scorn or rejection, and very little sensitive appreciation for what is actually happening.

That is fairly typical. When Copernicus said what he had to say in 1543, very few people were ready to hear it and it took a generation or two before enough intelligent people were able to marshal enough evidence, and enough other factors — sociological, religious, philosophical, technological (like the coming of the telescope into Galileo's hands) — to bring about a paradigm shift, even though the basic framework of the new paradigm was totally in place and articulated fifty years earlier. So one has to be patient.

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