Simon Duan discusses his hypothesis of Platonic computation, a postmaterialist model proposing that consciousness, mind, and matter emerge from a deeper non-physical realm of forms. He explains how this framework may illuminate the enigmatic Dodleston Messages, a decades-old case involving anomalous communications that appear to originate from both the past and the future. Duan explores [...]

The late philosopher Huston Smith is emeritus professor of philosophy at Syracuse University. He has also taught at M.I.T. and at U.C. Berkeley. He is author of The World’s Religions, The Primordial Tradition and Beyond the Post-Modern Mind. Here he points out that we confront three essential relationships with nature, with other people, and with ourselves, and that [...]

He explains that the many tests performed with regard to Bell’s Theorem in physics have now clearly demonstrated that what we conventionally consider the objective world does not exist independent of our own observations. This is a serious problem for metaphysical materialism. However, it is easily reconciled by the metaphysics of the nineteenth century philosopher, [...]

He discusses a constellation of philosophical perspectives – going back to Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger – and their implications for science in general and parapsychology in particular. The discussion is also peppered with references to feminism, psychoanalysis, marginalized social groups, post-structuralism, and the European Enlightenment. He points out that William James was, essentially, a phenomenologist.

Regardless of the physical reality of UFOs, says Jacques Vallée, PhD, the fact that people believe they have experienced contact with alien entities is an appropriate subject for scientific scrutiny. Vallée is a computer scientist, UFO researcher and author whose books include Challenge to Science, Anatomy of a Phenomenon, The Edge of Reality, The Invisible [...]

She describes the many historical descriptions of spirit materialization, observed under well-controlled conditions by experienced researchers such as Nobel laureate Charles Richet. She acknowledges that such phenomena are ostensibly unbelievable, no matter how well-attested. She describes her own experience witnessing such phenomena in the presence of the spiritualist circle in England centered on the physical [...]

Kevin Kelly is the founding executive editor of Wired Magazine. He posits that our increasingly complex and autonomous machines and systems are becoming indistinguishable from living things. The “neo-biological civilization” is one where the principles of biology—such as decentralized control, evolution, and error-honoring institutions—are necessary to design and manage our technological and social systems. This [...]