How easily we can be drawn into moods of deep pessimism. Media are filled with images from around the world of violence and tragedy, and active fundamentalist ideologies and authoritarian governments threaten intellectual freedom, toleration and democracy—the core values of creative, open societies. Too frequently political leaders are speaking the language of demagoguery, not truth. And the recent 100-plus years have seen a succession of violent conflicts and disruptive cultural changes on national, regional and world-wide scales. Rapid and pervasive changes have placed many in states of emotional and intellectual anomie. And superimposed over these changes, we face the unprecedented crises of human-induced alteration to earth’s climate, threatening humanity in ways our recent ancestors could not have imagined.

But despair is but one reaction to living in our era, and can easily become a debilitating one if carried too far. Far better is an honest realism admitting some elements of pessimism, but also embracing our era’s knowledge and intellectual renaissance, bringing transformative consequences. And if, for a moment, we imagine historians of the 23rd century reflecting on the last 100 years, they may place us within an intellectual renaissance, the postmodern renaissance. And even today, when we mask the darker aspects of recent history, the early postmodern era emerges as a vibrant and intellectually exciting time. This knowledge renaissance may allow our species to culturally evolve, initiating the fundamental changes needed for creating sustainable societies, stabilizing and eventually reversing the crisis of climate change.

The remainder of this essay describes the character, origins and significance of the postmodern renaissance. Our era’s intellectual transformation is driven by multiple and convergent developments in the sciences and science-based inquiry. Described as revolutionary, the hundred-plus years of accelerating knowledge has formed the nucleus of the postmodern renaissance, an intellectual trend embracing a cluster of related ideas, irreversibly altering our species’ quest to understand the universe and ourselves—epistemological considerations, to adopt an infrequently used, but helpful descriptor:

Belief in Absolute Truth is rejected as a false idol, replaced with an empirically based, open-ended, iterative style of inquiry. The incompleteness of knowledge becomes a presupposition of the very process of knowing. Even the most useful and tested explanatory theories may eventually be supplanted by more inclusive ones, with the quest for knowledge maturing into a continual process of discovery and refining. And knowledge is cumulative; our understanding of the world becomes more integrated and inclusive as free inquiry progresses.
The postmodern growth of knowledge through evidenced-based reasoning—science in the most inclusive sense—is universal and inherently cross-cultural. Contemporary science is no longer culture specific, having dispersed globally from its European genesis several centuries ago. The scientific revolution that began in the 17th Century has evolved into an inclusive way of thinking, giving our species new approaches to centuries-long questions.
A feature singular to postmodern inquiry—and I believe historically unprecedented—is the systematic convergence of disciplines traditionally viewed as separate: the physical sciences, engineering, the life sciences, cognitive psychology and neuroscience, the humanistic/social sciences, as well as science-grounded philosophy. Their convergence—a merging of disciplinary approaches, technologies, as well as intense collaboration—have amplified the speed at which inquiry has progressed, adding to our overall understanding at a scale unthinkable in the early decades of the 20th Century. An open-ended epistemology paired with innovative inquiry, now offer a consistent and inclusive postmodern natural philosophy and world-view.

While the Internet appears to have brought a series of unintended and less desirable elements to postmodern culture, the Internet’s impact on the expansion and convergence of knowledge has been profound, with universal and nearly instantaneous communication between scientific teams on all continents. The digital flow of data, ideas, stimulation and support on a global scale reinforces inquiry at every stage, advancing the intellectual climate for creative thinking and research. And importantly, digital communication has made the suppression of free inquiry increasingly difficult.

Looking at earlier centuries reveals interesting parallels to elements of the postmodern renaissance, especially the period of the European Renaissance and the developing scientific revolution. And a sense of history helps in interpreting the character of the conflict between the intellectual foundations of the postmodern renaissance and reactionary elements present in some of today’s cultures, including the United States.

The European Renaissance and the Beginning of the Scientific Revolution

At the same time Renaissance-period natural philosophers were forging the intellectual foundation for the scientific revolution—initially Copernicus, then Kepler, Galileo and eventually Newton—contravening trends were contributing to periods of harsh persecution, as well as the destructive religious and dynastic conflicts of the Thirty Years War. Demonological beliefs were common, and rigidly-held world-views led to widespread suppression of free inquiry, seriously constraining free-thinking challenges to established authority. Yet, progressive elements of European culture continued to grow, evolving further during the 18th Century—the scientific revolution expanded as the European Enlightenment continued.

No one is immune from the influence of their particular cultural milieu, including the gifted natural philosophers of the scientific revolution—Newton and his predecessors assumed world-views containing Aristotelian and religious elements common at the time. But their genius lay in thinking beyond the more limiting of their age’s presuppositions, conceiving a new natural philosophy emphasizing the experimental, empirical and quantitative analysis of the natural world. This natural philosophy, with its rejection of the presumptive authority of the past, set the scientific revolution on a track it has never abandoned. Creative giants like Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo challenged previously held beliefs, breaking free of classical world-views that had been paradigmatic for centuries. And enhancing every aspect of the scientific revolution was the invention and growth of printing, rapidly expanding the flow of information and innovative thinking, making the suppression of new ideas increasingly difficult, a clear parallel to today’s internet technology.

Even in the presence of trenchant, contravening trends, the scientific revolution and Enlightenment were able to thrive, and their successes offer optimism for our present time of antithetical cultural trends. Intellectual freedom, the use of reason and empiricism, the role of science in gaining insight and also the ethics of toleration and justice, all survived even when vigorously challenged.

Why Epistemology Matters

Tracing an evolutionary path over the past century and one-half, contemporary science-based reasoning—knowing in general—accepts the iterative, non-absolute nature of even its greatest achievements. Just as Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity superseded Newton’s work on gravity in the early 1900s, theoretical frameworks in the future will offer more inclusive and powerful concepts. Superior theories are more useful theories, richer in their predictive power and more convergent and consistent with related fields of inquiry, illuminating previously unknown relationships between well-established principles. While instrumentally superior theories most often become preeminent, their status retains a measure of uncertainty. The search for understanding remains open-ended and incomplete, even if singularly useful and well-accepted theories are unchallenged for decades or more, passing all experimental tests and becoming part of the standard scientific repertoire. Perhaps the best contemporary example is Quantum Field Theory, the outstanding achievement of 20th century physics. While its tenets are fundamental to physics today, forming the basis for much of recent technological advances, few physicists would claim it is more than a good approximation of the world. Some future unified theory will be more inclusive. Human creativity finds stimulation in this intrinsic incompleteness of knowledge—the core of postmodern epistemology.

Given the counter-intuitive nature of so much contemporary physics and cosmology, the ease with which the history of physics fits the open-ended, iterative model may appear ironic, but the humanistic sciences—cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, economics, plus the traditional life sciences—have progressed applying an identical epistemology and world-view. Our growing understanding of ourselves and the world around us is imposing, but any claim to certainty should be met with some measure of skepticism. Even conceptual frameworks as well-supported and useful as genetics and natural selection require re-formulation and clarification, as new inquiry and experimentation deepen our knowledge.

The Expansion of our Collective Knowledge and the Convergence of Disciplines

While it has become commonplace to note the speed at which the traditional physical sciences, neuroscience, genomics and the other life sciences have advanced over recent decades, both the rate and breadth of increasing knowledge are so exceptional that its full appreciation can be challenging for the educated layperson, and perhaps as well for highly specialized scientists. Much of recent progress, across all disciplines, has relied on widespread use of supercomputers, advancements in complex computer modeling and simulation, nanotechnology, imaging and innovative materials. These technological adaptations will continue to bring new insights in all areas of inquiry, while at the same time facilitating their further convergence. While there have been signs that a degree of stagnation is creeping into some areas of science, where riskky or adventurous inquiry is receiving less funding compared to more conservative research, a change in the culture of research priorities would likely boost the creativity index. Knowledge breakthroughs emerge from thinking anew—intellectual risk-taking. The postmodern convergence of disciplines will act as a catalyst in pushing greater creativity, re-shaping how scientific thinking and research are carried out, and re-defining the perception of traditional fields of study—crucial for the expansion of knowledge. An enhanced trans-disciplinary approach engages more than a discipline’s specific technology—interactions of conceptual viewpoints and models from one discipline to another bring reciprocal influences. For example, the life sciences’ understanding of complex, self-organizing evolutionary systems informs AI, and some aspects of cosmology. Even philosophy and ethics are affected. Our understanding of any human act, experience, idea or emotion is informed by the life sciences.

The Natural Philosophy and World-View of the Postmodern Renaissance

To believe the expansion of our collective knowledge implies no more than a greater number of more sophisticated machines, robots or computers, is to misconstrue the character of the threshold we are experiencing. A natural philosophy and overall way of thinking have emerged with the power to render traditional world views increasingly irrelevant and awkward to justify. Yet traditional ways of thinking—notably fundamentalist strains of the Abrahamic faiths—retain a powerful influence over sub-cultures and entire societies. Further, rigid political ideologies with a tendency to deny well-grounded scientific models—a prime example is climate-change denial—clash with the core of the postmodern knowledge expansion and its epistemic philosophy. An ideology that rejects the primacy of knowledge confronts the worldview of the postmodern renaissance. Let’s examine more closely this knowledge-based point of view.

By means of inquiry spanning nearly two centuries, the life sciences, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, including philosophy, offer a conception of the human animal that connects us wholly to the natural world. Cartesian mind-body dualism has been discarded, replaced by a naturalistic orientation rich in complexity and variety, embracing the interrelationship of all reality. The world-view of the postmodern renaissance rejects the idea of two differing planes of possible experience, the natural and supernatural, and substitutes a nuanced form of monism. Its natural philosophy embraces the salient distinctions between categories of what we can know, spanning both simplicity and complexity—from the simplicity of fundamental particle physics to the complexity of living organisms, including the human animal with our creative thought processes and ability to reflect on our short and contingent existence. Both the simple and the complex are studied through science-based inquiry, although the appropriate theories and descriptions relevant for each differ. Simply expressed, in the new natural philosophy, the concept of emergence can be more helpful than reductionism in studying complex systems. Systems biology can equal the rigor of molecular biology, and provide insight that otherwise would be lost.

Postmodern naturalism can likewise accommodate wisdom found in earlier traditions—insights concerning natural philosophy and ethics, spanning Aristotle, Confucius, the Stoics, Taoism and other traditions—given the proviso these ideas become re-imagined to be consistent with elements of current knowledge. Integrating older thinking captures important ideas relevant today, especially in personal and social ethics. It is revealing that ancient views of the human psyche include elements also present in contemporary views, especially in their appreciation for complementary aspects of the mind.

Although developing ethical choices, at either the personal or societal level, engages the vocabulary of values, ethical discussions risk irrelevancy and failure if they do not acknowledge what we know about the human animal and the world at large—being informed by science. The most central ethical questions—what kind of life we want to experience and what kind of society we want to build—will find their most fruitful answers if the humanistic sciences are fully engaged. If we lump the humanistic sciences—cognitive, evolutionary, social, and moral psychology—what emerges is a picture of ourselves that is complex and filled with seeming contradictions. Our evolutionary past gives us a psyche with both rational and intuitive-emotional aspects, and our varying cultures reflect these aspects uniquely. And while our ability to reason is essential to our long-term success as a species, our rationality is constrained by frequent cognitive biases and rationalizations. The humanistic disciplines provide us with self-knowledge as individuals and as a species, and using that knowledge will enhance our capacity to think and evaluate, less burdened by biases. Embracing cognitive candor will help ethical thinking match more closely who we are and what we might be capable of achieving. And embracing the primacy of knowledge can help in reducing the influence of cultural and ideological tribalism, creating a more open, cosmopolitan perspective.

The Postmodern Renaissance, Open Societies and the Challenge of Climate Change

During some of the darkest days of World War II, Karl Popper completed his monumental The Open Society and Its Enemies, an impassioned defense of democratic liberalism—social systems with few fetters allow for the flourishing of human creativity, where a plurality of ideas are open to critical scrutiny, where free inquiry and toleration become fundamental principles of social and intellectual life. In an open society epistemological absolutism—the assumption of Certainty or Absolute Truth—loses intellectual and ethical traction. While this ideal has never been fully realized, its approximations are requisite for the postmodern renaissance to flourish. Intellectual freedom, an open-ended vision of life and enhanced creativity, will allow our species to live more rationally balanced and compassionate lives. And large measures of both rationality and compassion are essential for our species to face the life-changing transformations necessary to limit the effects of climate change, and over time, establish uniquely structured societies and economic systems. The postmodern renaissance can provide the knowledge base and epistemological mind-set to empower humanity in meeting its most challenging confrontation.