About
Overview of Problem and Solution
| PROBLEM | SOLUTION |
|---|---|
| The vision of reality as deterministic machines is flawed and limited | The vision of reality as purposeful organisms is free of these flaws and limits |
| A machine has to be controlled, improved, and defended by an external agent | An organism is capable of self-control, self-improvement, and self-defense |
| A mechanistic education teaches universal laws and strict obedience to laws | An organismic education teaches perception and contextual response to it |
| Modern education has replaced organismic ideas with mechanistic ideas | Alternative education will replace mechanistic ideas with organismic ideas |
Mechanistic vs. Organismic Thinking
Modern science assumes: (1) all wholes can be reduced to simple parts, (2) simple parts are independent and separable entities, (3) these independent and separable entities can be counted, (4) their behaviors can be described through mathematical laws, (5) these laws are uniform for all places and times, (6) they can be gleaned by trial and error, (7) the trial and error method is progressive but never final, and (8) there is no better way. We call this “mechanistic thinking”.
In contrast, stands an “organismic thinking” under which (1) both wholes and parts are real, (2) the parts are entangled with the whole and hence with each other, (3) removing a part from a whole changes other parts, (4) organismic behavior involves self-control, self-correction, self-defense, and self-expansion, (5) theories that predict and explain such behaviors require non-binary logics and modal reasoning systems, (6) such theories constitute a consistent and complete description of reality, (7) a consistent and complete theory can be scaled from the smallest atoms to the largest universe, and (8) such a theory overcomes the limits of mechanistic thinking.
The Problem of Modern Education
If our assumptions are false, then two things happen. First, the Law of Diminishing Returns kicks in: Greater money, time, and effort must be invested to obtain lesser progress, resulting in a self-negating cycle of reducing investment and progress. Second, rejuvenating progress requires a Paradigm Shift: We have to restart from scratch after postulating new assumptions.
Modern scientific thinking is now in the self-negating cycle of diminishing returns, due to its mechanistic thinking. The next phase involves a Paradigm Shift. But the education system isn’t prepared for a Paradigm Shift. It hides all the failures of the current paradigm, keeping students unaware and unprepared, elongating the term of diminishing returns, and delaying the inevitable.
Students today are not trained to apply critical thinking to what they are being taught. They are encouraged to internalize ideas from previous thinking to an extent that they remain unaware of the problems, let alone how to solve them. University- and college-educated students, in fact, are so completely unaware of the serious problems in mechanistic thinking, that if such things are brought to their attention, they immediately consider them false and untrustworthy.
Goals of Shabda Academy
Shabda Academy aims to take students out of mechanistic thinking and inculcate organismic thinking by illustrating the problems of mechanistic thinking and how organismic thinking solves them. Present conviction in mechanistic thinking is due to the ignorance of its problems and unawareness of better alternatives. The problems of mechanistic thinking are obscured by the modern education system and the alternatives to such thinking are never presented.
We also aim to educate students about a wider set of subjects. A narrow mind always fragments the truth into imaginary compartments, produces piecemeal solutions, and lives within a bubble of a false sense of security created by blindness to the wider reality. A broad mind does not.
Finally, we aim to inculcate critical thinking over blind acceptance. By talking about problems and alternatives, we wish to take students out of a system of indoctrination operated by a priesthood attached to its dogmas rather than the truth. Students who lack critical thinking accept the sermons on dogmas as if they were the truth only because they lack critical thinking.
Methods of Shabda Academy
This education cannot be conducted in a vacuum. Rather, it should involve the same subjects that were previously learned without grasping their problems. In all these subjects, there are big problems, unsolved problems, and big unsolved problems. Unless we learn about the problems in what we have learned earlier, education is either misleading, incomplete, or both.
Shabda Academy teaches the same subjects taught in university and college courses. But unlike the modern education system, it rejects the unsubstantiated and dogmatic assumptions of materialism, reductionism, and instrumentation after demonstrating their persistent flaws. It thereby challenges what is uncritically and forcibly indoctrinated through modern education.
We present theories that (a) solve problems of modern thinking without creating new ones, (b) unify diverse subjects, (c) are proven by every subject, and (d) can be tested against as many diversified cases as we find necessary to become convinced. The mind is broadened by studying diverse subjects. The mind is deepened by discovering the same truth through diverse subjects. The truth is at once the broadest and the deepest. We can call the truth the theory of everything.