The Creating Consciousness: Science as the Language of God

A former professor of the Royal Swedish Academy and director of its solar observatory in Capri, Italy, Wyller joins the ranks of Paul Davies and Michael Behe as a scientist who believes that the latest advances in knowledge shake the foundations of scientific materialism rather than strengthen it. In 1996 Behe's Darwin's Black Box revived the ""argument by design,"" which had been used for centuries by theologians to show that even the simplest bacteria are extraordinarily complicated life machines. Although Behe was careful not to identify the possible designer, Wyller uses these same arguments to postulate the existence of an intelligence that predates the appearance of life on this planet. Like Davies, Wyller contends that DNA represents a new order of information in the universe. From where could this information have come? In Wyller's view, the intricately complex information contained in DNA and anatomical structures, such as the eye, are ideas made manifest by a primordial consciousness, which is itself evolving. Wyller is leery of being associated with flighty New Ageism, so at first glance his term for this intelligence, ""the Planetary Mind Field,"" seems ill-advised. Later, it becomes clear that Wyller wants readers to conceive of the Mind Field as they would any other field theory, such as quantum field theory. To rebut the view that consciousness is only a recent evolutionary innovation, Wyller invokes the pantheistic philosophies of Aristotle, Plotinus, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell. Although Wyller strays far afield from his own area of research, his book reflects the measured arguments of one steeped in the scientific method. It will interest readers enamored of the recent crop of books speculating on a radical departure from the traditional scientific worldview. (Oct.)