Doha Meeting
           "Science, Culture, and the Future of Humanity;
      Could Knowledge, Spirituality, and Action Re-Shape the World"

                       Concluding Talk

                      "The Way Forward"

                           Abstract


The future of humanity will probably depend, more than anything else,
upon our emerging self image: upon our coming beliefs about our own
nature in relation to the whole of which we are parts. Such beliefs will fix
our core values, and thereby determine the kind of world we humans will
strive to create.

Self image and values are determined jointly by culture, intuition, and
science. The claims stemming from these three sources have not been 
harmonious. However, the message from science has been shifting.
Within the deterministic framework of classical physics every human action
was asserted to be completely determined by the physical past. Hence every 
human idea, to the extent that it is physically effective, became reduced, 
causally, to its physical counterpart in the brain. However, this classical-
physics-based reduction of the human person to his physical aspects is 
rescinded by quantum mechanics. In orthodox quantum theory our conscious 
choices of our actions are NOT causally determined in any known way 
by the physically described aspects of nature. Yet these choices can be 
at least partially understood as arising from reasons and values, which 
reside in the realm of mind. Thus the transition from classical to quantum 
physics allows a person's science-based self-image to be elevated from 
that of mechanical automaton to that of active psychophysical agent.

Any switching to new beliefs requires a re-shaping of old ones. At this 
meeting we have heard reports from many scientific fronts---from basic 
physics, to biology, to cosmology---of evidence-based challenges to
prevailing scientific dogmas. In basic physics the classical notion 
that the physical past fully determines the physical future has been upset 
by the occurrence in orthodox quantum dynamics of physically effective 
choices that are not governed by any known laws. In biology the 
probability of a purely physics-based emergence of cellular life on earth 
is argued to be effectively zero. In cosmology there is the analogous 
problem of an apparently effectively null likelihood that the laws and 
initial conditions of the universe would be as hospitable to life as they 
in fact are. And in the area of culture, religious dogmas, both Christian
and Muslim, are being increasing disputed, both by scholarship and in 
practice.

All of this activity suggests that our ideas about ourselves, and about our
connection to the rest of reality, are in a state of flux, preparatory to 
a major paradigm shift that will achieve a new level of integration, this 
time of the physical and mental aspects of human beings. To allow the 
emergence of a more accurate conception of ourselves, based on evidence 
that transcends cultural and religious divides, it is imperative, in order 
allow the influx of needed diverse insights, to maintain the scientifically 
and religiously appropriate attitude of humility and openness to rational 
dialog. Only in an environment of tolerance and rationality can we come 
to understand and utilize all dimensions of the human potential.