[p2p-research] bk: New Renaissance

[Michel Bauwens]

via http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs10s/rebirth.php


At the time of writing, the New Renaissance is articulated through a book of
that title edited by David Lorimer and Oliver Robinson (*A New Renaissance:
transforming science, spirit and
society*<http://www.scimednet.org/assets/public/images/events/ContentsNewRenaissance.pdf>,
2010). It was launched to the
media<http://www.scimednet.org/assets/public/pdf-leaflets/NewRenaissancedialoguebooklaunch.pdf>in
London (6th November 2010) at a conference by the Scientific
and Medical Network <http://www.scimednet.org/>, whose speakers including
many of the contributors to the book. This helps to make the point that the
New Renaissance is neither the event launching the book, nor the
contributions, nor the themes they evoke. Or is it necessarily all those,
and more?

The book's contributors stress:

... an urgent need for change and renewal in a period of crisis for
philosophy, science and society. The Florentine Renaissance, some six
hundred years ago, took a huge leap forward into realism, rationality and
self-awareness. It was born out of the waning authority of medieval
institutions and beliefs. We stand now at a similar junction in history. It
is apparent to many that reductionist science with its materialist values -
the worldview that has driven modern culture for the last two centuries - is
losing credibility.... The essays gathered in *A New Renaissance* are a
cultural response to the failings of the materialist worldview.

The contributions are clustered into four parts:

   - diagnosis of the sources of the crisis in the current worldview.
   - the search for a new understanding of consciousness and mind, based on
   findings in new non-materialist philosophy.
   - renewal of spirituality beyond religion, aiming to recapture the
   personal depth and connection to the cosmos that materialism denies or
   ignores.
   - possible reforms in politics, economics and education to help bring
   forth a society that can sustain the flourishing of human beings in the
   globally interconnected world of the twenty-first century.

The distinguished contributors have all written extensively in other works
on the themes which variously address the question of what is the New
Renaissance. Such themes include, or touch upon, according to the
preoccupation of each:

   - change of paradigm
   - new thinking
   - transdisciplinarity
   - transcending polarity
   - collective intelligence and wisdom
   - personal transformation -- rebirth
   - planetary consciousness
   - new conscience
   - emergence of new spiritual leadership
   - new harmony



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