A post-materialist science: the coming reality

‘Scientific materialism has … brought a severely distorted and impoverished conception of ourselves and of our place in nature’.
Mario Beauregard

The history of science has been marked by special moments leading to major paradigm shifts: the transition from flat-earth theory to the concept of a spherical planet, from geocentrism to heliocentrism, and to Darwinism and the recognition of deep time.

‘It seems we are now approaching another crucial paradigm shift — the transition from materialist science to post-materialist science,’ says neuroscientist Mario Beauregard in Expanding Reality: The emergence of post-materialist science (Iff Books, UK £12.99 / US $19.95, November, 2021).

This is an excellent guide for anyone interested in the future of science and what must be the change to a new paradigm; indeed, what will be the most profound ‘Copernican revolution’ with the greatest import yet for human evolution. The book will meet increasing aspirations to a wider agreement that reality is much more than that presented to us by the physical world.

It seems to me that an expanded reality means an expanded consciousness; the two surely go hand in hand, and perhaps are the same thing. The optimism in the title that Beauregard has chosen for his book suggests simultaneously that reality will be expanded, and probably is already expanding, under the influence of the new science.

Being a prominent scientific spokesperson for the post-materialist movement, Beauregard is the ideal author to go to for the necessary insights into the reasons for the momentum being gathered by its thought and practice. He is co-author of the Manifesto for a Post-Materialist Science, which has been signed by several hundred scientists, and a founder of the Academy for the Advancement of Post-Materialist Sciences.

It must be admitted that scientific methods based on materialist philosophy have proved highly successful, having led to a better understanding of nature, as well as greater control and freedom through technological advances. But the almost absolute dominance of materialism…