1. ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION
AND ITS RESOLUTION
WTM FAQ 1.10 Why does mechanistic science ignore, even attack, Jeremy Griffith’s ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation of the human condition? / Is this pseudo-science? / If this is real science, why isn’t it published in ‘peer-reviewed’ journals? / Does this treatise present new data and is it testable; in fact is it science at all? / Is this treatise inductive or deductive science? / What historical evidence is there for the ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation? / How does science confirm the ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation? / Does the treatise have ‘explanatory power’?/ Is this a ‘non-falsifiable’, circular argument?
Contents
2. Why does mechanistic science ignore, even attack, this treatise?
3. Why isn’t Jeremy Griffith’s work published in ‘peer-reviewed’ scientific journals?
5.1 The ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation is testable through experience
5.3 We also have history’s confirmation of the ‘instinct vs intellect’ elements involved in producing the human condition, to which Jeremy Griffith has added the all-important redeeming explanation of WHY the clash between those elements produced the psychological upset state of the human condition
5.4 Science’s recent understanding of the difference in the way the gene-based, naturally selected, instinctive learning system and the nerve-based, conscious mind’s learning system work further confirms the obvious ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation of the human condition
6. Is the explanation of the human condition a ‘non-falsifiable’, circular argument?
1. Summary
Any fair scrutiny of Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith’s human-condition-confronting-not-avoiding treatise will quickly reveal it is carefully argued and evidenced, and fully accountable, first-principle-based science.
It is, however, very important to appreciate that the subject of the human condition that Jeremy’s treatise addresses is the most important but also the most difficult and thus contentious of all subjects for humans to address because it deals with the ultimate confronting issue of ‘self’. When the renowned Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson wrote, ‘There is no grail more elusive or precious in the life of the mind than the key to understanding the human condition’ (The Social Conquest of Earth, 2012, p.1), he was making this point that while ‘understanding the human condition’ is the most ‘precious’ ‘grail’ of science, it is also the most ‘elusive’ ‘grail’ because the subject is the most difficult of all subjects for humans to engage with. It therefore has to be expected that Jeremy’s treatise on the human condition can cause hostile unfair attacks on it.
With that consideration in mind, we strongly recommend that everyone who has concerns about the scientific validity of Jeremy’s treatise on the human condition read this FAQ as it addresses the full range of criticisms Jeremy’s treatise has attracted from those accustomed to science’s prevailing human-condition-avoiding, mechanistic paradigm.
To summarise the contents of this FAQ, as Jeremy explains in FREEDOM (in chapter 2:4 ‘How has science coped with the issue of the human condition’, and chapter 2:12 ‘While denial has been necessary, you can’t find the truth with lies’), human-condition-avoiding, mechanistic, reductionist, deductive science is an extremely limited and compromised form of science. As Templeton Prize-winning biologist Charles Birch, who was Jeremy’s professor of biology at Sydney University, said, ‘[mechanistic] science can’t deal with subjectivity [the issue of our psychologically distressed condition]…what we were all taught in universities is pretty much a dead end’ and ‘Biology has not made any real advance since Darwin’. Indeed, mechanistic science is now so farcically dishonest and discredited in the public’s mind that many people have lost interest in it to the point of dismissing it as of no real use to us in terms of being able to understand and manage our behaviour! Freedom Essay/Video 14 makes this discreditation very clear.
Thankfully mechanistic science can now be replaced by human-condition-confronting-and-solving, truthful, holistic, inductive science—but of course the established, entrenched, traditional mechanistic scientific paradigm resists this massive paradigm shift (see Section 2 of this FAQ). It does this by ignoring the new synthesis (see Section 3), as well as using such outrageously dishonest and irresponsible claims as ‘the new synthesis presents no new data’, is an ‘untestable’ and ‘non-falsifiable’ hypothesis, and is therefore not even science! (See Section 4.) As is explained in the presentation below, these accusations are transparently false and nothing more than the dying tremors of an old, extremely flawed form of dishonest science that has lived way past its used by date and is rapidly taking humanity to extinction!
Yes, it really is at the 11th hour that the often highly intellectualised, sophisticated-in-the-art-of-denial, pretentious, makes-it-seem-like-unreachable-knowledge-for-the-average-person, scientific presentations from the ivory towers of human-condition-avoiding academia are at last replaced by truthful, sensible, fully accountable, relatively simple and straightforward, soul-ualised not intellect-ualised scientific presentations, which is what FREEDOM provides for the human race.
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Importantly, Jeremy’s human-condition-confronting-and-solving, truthful, holistic, inductive ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation of our psychologically upset angry, egocentric and alienated state is based on two of the most important and respected elements of scientific knowledge we have: the DNA discoveries of Watson and Crick, which gives us the ability to understand that natural selection is a gene-based information processing system that is only capable of giving species ORIENTATIONS; and the discoveries of neuroscience, in particular how nerves are capable of storing impressions, which we have long been calling memories, which allows us to understand that they gave rise to a DIFFERENT form of information processing system, one that can understand cause and effect and thus become INSIGHTFUL and aware or ‘conscious’ of the nature of change. Knowing this (and ‘science’, derived from the Latin scientia, literally means ‘knowing’ or ‘knowledge’) means that SCIENCE can explain the human condition. Jeremy’s induction-derived synthesis of this knowledge is that when you have one system that gives orientations and then another that is insightful takes over, a clash is inevitable, and that psychologically upsetting clash is evidentially what produced our angry, egocentric and alienated state—and now that we can understand that, our upset goes. (Read more about science’s recent discoveries about nerves and genes in Section 5.4.)
Beyond its logic, we can know the ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation of the human condition is the real explanation of the human condition because we can test it through our own experience (see Section 5.1) as well as witness its extraordinary power to explain all aspects of human life (see Section 5.2). We also have history’s confirmation of the ‘instinct vs intellect’ elements involved in producing the human condition, to which Jeremy has added the all-important redeeming explanation of WHY the clash between those elements produced the psychologically upset state of the human condition (see Section 5.3). This critical clarification by Jeremy has been made possible by science’s recent understanding of the different ways in which the gene-based, naturally selected, instinctive learning system and the nerve-based, conscious mind’s learning system work (again, see Section 5.4).
So, Professor Birch’s lamentation that biology has not made any real advance since Darwin can now be replaced with celebration. No wonder the highly esteemed ecologist and Professor Emeritus of Biology at San Diego State University, Professor Stuart Hurlbert published a comment on the World Transformation Movement’s website in 2022 about Jeremy’s breakthrough biological explanation of the human condition, in which he said, ‘I am stunned & honored to have lived to see the coming of “Darwin II”.’
Indeed, the extremely eminent psychiatrist and former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association Professor Harry Prosen acknowledged how precious Jeremy’s truthful and thus effective, human-condition-confronting studies of the human condition are when he said: ‘I have no doubt Jeremy Griffith’s biological explanation of the human condition is the holy grail of insight we have sought for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race’; and that ‘Jeremy Griffith’s book FREEDOM is the book that saves the world’!
2. Why does mechanistic science ignore, even attack, this treatise?
As Jeremy Griffith explains in chapter 2:12 of FREEDOM, science’s human-condition-avoiding, mechanistic, reductionist approach has meant that science, as it has been practised, has completely lost its way in terms of providing us humans with the insights about our behaviour we now so desperately need.
The Templeton Prize-winning physicist Paul Davies was recognising this when he said that ‘For 300 years science has been dominated by extremely mechanistic thinking. According to this [whole-view-evading, human-condition-psychosis-avoiding, mechanisms-only-focused] view of the world all physical systems are regarded as basically machines…I have little doubt that much of the alienation and demoralisation that people feel in our so-called scientific age stems from the bleak sterility of mechanistic thought’ (‘Living in a non-material world—the new scientific consciousness’, The Australian, 9 Oct. 1991). Biologist Charles Birch, who, as mentioned above, was also a Templeton Prize-winner, made a similar point when he said ‘[mechanistic] science can’t deal with subjectivity [the issue of our psychologically distressed condition]…what we were all taught in universities is pretty much a dead end’ (from recording of Birch’s 1993 World Transformation Movement Open Day address). He also perceived the stultifying effects of dishonest, human-condition-avoiding, denial-based, mechanistic thinking when he said, ‘Biology has not made any real advance since Darwin’ (in recorded conversation with the author, 20 Mar. 1987), and, some 10 years later, that ‘the traditional framework of thinking in science is not adequate for solving the really hard problems’ (Ockham’s Razor, ABC Radio National, 16 Apr. 1997), with the ‘hard[est] problem’ of all for truth-avoiding thinking to solve being the all-important issue of our psychologically distressed human condition. As Professor Birch concluded, ‘Biology right now awaits its Einstein in the realm of consciousness studies’ (ibid). Note that since our corrupted human condition is consciousness-induced, ‘consciousness’ has become code word for the issue of the human condition.
The great Hungarian-English polymath and remarkably denial-free-effective-thinker Arthur Koestler was another who was frustrated by mechanistic, reductionist science’s avoidance of our species’ conscious-mind-induced, soul-corrupted, psychotic human condition, writing that ‘symptoms of the mental disorder which appears to be endemic in our species…are specifically and uniquely human, and not found in any other species. Thus it seems only logical that our search for explanations [of human behaviour] should also concentrate primarily on those attributes of homo sapiens which are exclusively human and not shared by the rest of the animal kingdom. But however obvious this conclusion may seem, it runs counter to the prevailing reductionist trend. “Reductionism” is the philosophical belief that all human activities can be “reduced” to – i.e., explained by – the [no-psychosis involved] behavioural responses of lower animals – Pavlov’s dogs, Skinner’s rats and pigeons, Lorenz’s greylag geese, Morris’s hairless apes [and, as is described in chapter 2:5 of FREEDOM, the false excuse of blaming our divisive condition on the savage, competitive, selfish and aggressive, must-reproduce-their-genes situation that other animals operate under]…That is why the scientific establishment has so pitifully failed to define the predicament of man’ (Janus: A Summing Up, 1978, p.19 of 354). Like Davies, Koestler complained too of ‘the sterile deserts of reductionist philosophy’, making the fundamental point that ‘a correct diagnosis of the condition of man [had to be] based on a new approach to the sciences of life’ (ibid. pp.19-20), concluding that ‘the citadel they [mechanistic scientists] are defending lies in ruins’ (p.192).
No wonder then that one of history’s greatest mechanistic scientists, Sir Isaac Newton, famously lamented that ‘I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.’ Yes, when the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that ‘The discovery of truth is prevented most effectively…by prejudice, which…stands in the path of truth and is then like a contrary wind driving a ship away from land’ (Essays and Aphorisms, tr. R.J. Hollingdale, 1970, p.120 of 237), he was recognising the inability of human-condition-avoiding, mechanistic, reductionist thinking to find understanding of our ‘madness’.
As is explained in chapter 2:4 of FREEDOM, science has necessarily been ‘reductionist’ and ‘mechanistic’. It has avoided the overarching whole view of life that required having to confront the issue of the human condition and instead reduced its focus to only looking down at the details of the mechanisms of the workings of our world. This was done in the hope that understanding of those mechanisms would eventually make it possible for someone who had sufficiently escaped encountering all the immense upset in the world during their infancy and childhood to not have to live in denial of all the truth about the corrupted state of the human condition, and who could therefore think truthfully about the human condition and be able to synthesise the explanation of that condition from those hard-won insights found by mechanistic science—at which point there would no longer be any need for humanity to live in a dark and horrible state of alienated mechanistic, reductionist denial of any truths that brought the issue of our corrupted human condition into focus, which is actually most truths.
However, the very real danger inherent in this mechanistic, reductionist, resigned-to-living-in-fearful-denial-of-the-human-condition, fundamentally dishonest approach is that it could become so entrenched that those practising it could resist the human-condition-confronting, truthful explanation of the human condition when it was finally found and continue to persevere with the dishonest strategy to the point of taking humanity to terminal alienation and extinction—even though facilitating the arrival of the full truth about humans has been science’s great objective and fundamental responsibility, and the only means by which the human race can be liberated from its condition, and thus transformed.
Indeed, the WTM, and those associated with it, have been forced to take legal action in order to counter some of the more extreme resistance it has encountered—in 2010 winning the then biggest defamation action in Australia’s history. The three judges in the Court of Appeal, led by Justice David Hodgson, who was one of the most highly regarded legal minds in Australia (and had himself written books about the nature of consciousness), unanimously overturned an earlier lower Court finding about Jeremy’s scientific synthesis on the basis that it did ‘not adequately consider’ ‘the nature and scale of its subject matter’ or that ‘aspects of Mr Griffith’s work are apt to make those who do take the trouble to grapple with it uncomfortable. It involves reflections upon subject-matter including the purpose of human existence which may, of its nature, cause an adverse reaction as it touches upon issues which some would regard as threatening to their ideals, values or even world views’. (See Freedom Essay 56.)
The critical question then is, will there be enough integrity, courage and vision amongst scientists for this world-saving understanding to receive the support it now needs to survive? And despite support from some very eminent scientists like Professor Hurlbert and Professor Prosen (for more scientific support, see FAQ 1.7), the current situation is that the scientific community is failing to demonstrate the integrity, courage and vision necessary to guarantee this understanding survives.
3. Why isn’t Jeremy Griffith’s work published in ‘peer-reviewed’ scientific journals?
As explained above, the established, entrenched, traditional mechanistic scientific paradigm resists the human-condition-confronting, truthful explanation of the human condition, and the main way it does so is by ignoring it. In the prevailing mechanistic paradigm, status and credibility are achieved through being published in a ‘peer-reviewed’ journal, which is one in which the articles it contains have been examined by people with credentials in the article’s field of study before it is published. Obviously, with mainstream science determined to deny the human condition, and with almost all humans unable to confront the human condition, Jeremy Griffith’s treatise has neither been ‘peer-reviewed’ or published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. However, many of the great breakthroughs in science have had to come from outside the prevailing paradigm; from so-called ‘outsiders’, and so mainstream science’s refusal to publish work in its peer-reviewed journals does not indicate that work is not science of the very highest quality. Sir James Black, who won a Nobel Prize for the discovery of two of the most successful drugs ever developed by the pharmaceutical industry, was pointing out this limitation of the peer review system when he said, ‘The anonymous peer review process is the enemy of scientific creativity…Peer reviewers go for orthodoxy’ (Interview by Andrew Jack, ‘An acute talent for innovation’, Financial Times, 2 February 2009). In paragraph 6 of his Introduction to Jeremy’s book FREEDOM, Professor Prosen makes this same point about paradigm shifts—which are the epitome of ‘scientific creativity’—having to come from ‘outside’ the ‘orthodoxy’, also emphasising that nowhere is this requirement to work outside the existing paradigm more necessary than when the subject is the human condition:
“In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970), science historian Thomas Kuhn noted that ‘revolutions are often initiated by an outsider—someone not locked into the current model, which hampers vision almost as much as blinders would’ (from Shirley Strum’s Almost Human, 1987, p.164 of 297). And when it comes to addressing the problem of the human condition this need to think independently of the existing details-only-focused, whole-view-of-the-human-condition-avoiding, mechanistic framework could not be more critical. For someone to be able to explain, and, through that explanation, bring reconciling, ameliorating understanding to our troubled human-condition-afflicted lives, they obviously had to be thinking from a position outside that conventional mechanistic paradigm. The situation certainly brings to mind Einstein’s famous comment that ‘We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them’! I might say that I think we have always known that profound insight into human nature wasn’t going to emerge from the ivory towers of intellectualdom, rather it was going to come from the deepest of deep left field, somewhere where some extraordinary untainted clarity of thought might still exist, such as from the backwoods of Australia where these answers are actually from.”
In paragraph 32 of his Introduction, Professor Prosen further explains how solving the subject of the human condition required someone working independent to the mainstream of mechanistic science, or what Koestler described as ‘the scientific establishment’:
“Jeremy once sent me a feature article that was syndicated in the weekend magazine of two of Australia’s leading newspapers about the extraordinarily enlightened Australian biologist Charles Birch, who was the head of the biology faculty at Sydney University when Jeremy was a student there, which I will quote because it describes the treatment that has been given to any scientist who dared to recognize the teleological, holistic [human-condition-confronting-not-avoiding] purpose or meaning of existence. [Jeremy explains why teleology has been an anathema for mechanistic scientists in chapter 4 of FREEDOM.] Titled ‘Science Friction’, the article referred to an emerging group of scientists who are bringing about a ‘scientific revolution’ and ‘monumental paradigm shift’ in science because they have ‘dared to take a holistic approach’ and are thus being seen by the scientific orthodoxy as committing ‘scientific heresy’. The article said that these scientists, such as the ‘physicist Paul Davies and biologist Charles Birch’, who are ‘not afraid of terms such as “purpose” and “meaning”’, are trying ‘to cross the great divide between science and religion’, adding that ‘Quite a number of biologists got upset [about this new development] because they don’t want to open the gates to teleology—the idea that there is goal-directed change is an anathema to biologists who believe that change is random’. The article summarized that ‘The emerging clash of scientific thought has forced many of the new scientists on to the fringe. Some of the pioneers no longer have university positions, many publish their theories in popular books rather than journals, others have their work sponsored by independent organisations…universities are not catering for the new paradigm’ (Deidre Macken, The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne’s The Age, 16 Nov. 1991; see <www.wtmsources.com/152>). While Jeremy gained a BSc degree at a conventional university, he didn’t continue his studies there to gain a PhD and he has ‘publish[ed his]…theories in popular books rather than journals’—but as this article points out, the very good reason for pursuing that autonomous path is that ‘Universities are not catering for the new paradigm’. In fact, as I mentioned, Jeremy had to create an ‘independent organisation’ to study the human condition from a truthful, non-mechanistic, teleology-recognizing base—and, as I mentioned, his prescience in ‘pioneer[ing]’ this now recognized all-important frontier for science reveals what an extraordinarily capable and eminent scientist Jeremy is; a professor of science in the truest sense. Thomas Kuhn was certainly right when, as I mentioned earlier, he said that ‘revolutions are often initiated by an outsider—someone not locked into the current model, which hampers vision almost as much as blinders would’. Kuhn also recognized that ‘When a field is pre-paradigmatic [introduces a new paradigm, as Jeremy’s work does]…progress is made with books, not with journal papers’ (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1970; from ‘Phillip Greenspun’s Weblog’; see <www.wtmsources.com/154>). And I might point out that just as Jeremy has had to do to create a revolution in science, Charles Darwin was ‘a lone genius, working from his country home without any official academic position’ (Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind, 2000, p.33 of 538).”
It follows from what Professor Prosen has explained about Jeremy having to create an ‘independent organisation’ to study the human condition from a truthful, non-mechanistic, teleology-recognising base, that it was also necessary for Jeremy and others who wanted to promote truthful, non-mechanistic, teleology-recognising studies of the human condition to establish an independent publishing house to publish such holistic, human-condition-confronting work. So WTM Publishing & Communications is a very specialist publisher dedicated to publishing work emerging from this incredible new paradigm.
It is clear that the independent publishing of such works is not being done because the standard of such works are low, but because the resistance to such human-condition-confronting work necessitated the creation of an independent publisher for such revolutionary thinking.
Even in the conforming mechanistic realm, independent publishing was sometimes necessary and did not necessarily mean the work was inferior. Many very famous writers had to ‘self-publish’ such as Friedrich Nietzsche, A. N. Whitehead (with Bertrand Russell), William Blake, Edgar Allen Poe, James Joyce, Henry Thoreau, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, D.H. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw and Alexandre Dumas. Indeed, in the aforementioned 2010 defamation action, the three judges unanimously found that while there were many unconventional aspects to Jeremy’s work, such as he ‘had no affiliation or association with a university or scientific establishment, had no recognition from a university or scientific establishment other than an undergraduate degree, had apparently not published in peer review publications, and had self-published the work under consideration, are not elements of the standard of the work itself, but are nevertheless factors counting heavily against the work receiving consideration and support from the scientific community. The circumstance that the work was a grand narrative explanation from a holistic approach, involving teleological elements, would also count against the work receiving consideration and support from the scientific community, without necessarily impacting on the standard of the work.’
4. Does this treatise present new data, is it testable; in fact is it science at all? Is this treatise inductive or deductive science?
As is described in chapter 6:2 of FREEDOM, the main method of rejecting the explanation of the human condition has been to simply ignore it, and—beyond that—to make the most outrageously dishonest and irresponsible claims that Jeremy’s synthesis presents no new data, is an untestable hypothesis, and is therefore not even science! The same ridiculous accusation was used against Charles Darwin’s Natural Selection synthesis. For instance, Bishop Wilberforce, the opponent of natural selection in the great debate about Darwin’s theory at Oxford in 1860, said it was a ‘theory which cannot be demonstrated to be actually impossible’ (Wilberforce’s review of Origin of Species in Quarterly Review, 1860, p.249), while the geologist and bishop Adam Sedgwick said it was ‘not a proposition evolved out of the facts’ (‘Objections to Mr Darwin’s Theory of the Origin of Species’, The Spectator, 7 Apr. 1860) and that it was ‘based upon assumptions which can neither be proved nor disproved’ (Letter from Sedgwick to Darwin, 24 Dec. 1859; The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online, ed. John van Wyhe, 2002). The palaeontologist Louis Agassiz similarly complained that ‘absolutely no facts…can be referred to as proving evolution’ (William Penman Lyon, Homo versus Darwin: A judicial examination of statements recently published by Mr Darwin regarding ‘The Descent of Man’, 1872, p.140). Even relatively recently, the philosopher Karl Popper commented, before later changing his mind, that ‘Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory’ (Unended Quest, 1976, p.168). However, Professor Scott Churchill, a former Chair of the Psychology Department at the University of Dallas, has pointed out that ‘Griffith’s ideas have been criticized for not presenting the field of science with “new data” and “testable hypotheses.” But such a complaint is disingenuous since evolutionary processes are not subjectable to the same kind of “hypothesis testing” that one finds in the other sciences. An hypothesis is a “smaller, more compact thesis” that is “deduced” from a larger idea or thesis in such a way that one can test that larger idea piece by piece. Whereas, the kind of synthesis offered in Griffith’s book is presented both conceptually and metaphorically with an aim to tie together existing data, while correcting and expanding upon the more limited existing interpretations of those data…Such a perspective comes to us not as a simple opinion of one man, but rather as an inductive conclusion drawn from sifting through volumes of data representing what scientists have discovered’ (Review of FREEDOM submitted to New York Magazine, 26 Sep. 2014). And in paragraph 31 of his Introduction to FREEDOM, Professor Harry Prosen similarly points out that:
“not only has Jeremy’s work been treated as heretical by mechanistic science because he dares to look at the real ‘psychological’ nature of the human condition, it has also been resisted because of the two reasons referred to in the ruling by the…three judges of the New South Wales Court of Appeal. Firstly, rather than being a more mechanistic and less thinking dependent, deduction-derived theory, Jeremy, like Darwin did with his theory of natural selection, puts forward a wide-ranging, induction-derived synthesis, a ‘grand narrative explanation’ for, in this case, human behavior—an approach, incidentally, that led to both Darwin’s and Jeremy’s work being very wrongly criticized by some for not presenting ‘new data’ and a ‘testable hypothesis’, and even as ‘not being science at all’! Secondly, Jeremy’s enormously knowledge-advancing (and ‘science’ literally means ‘knowledge’, derived as it is from the Latin word scientia, which means ‘knowledge’) thinking is based on ‘a holistic approach involving teleological elements’. As Jeremy beautifully explains in chapter 4, the reason that the fundamental truth of the teleological, holistic purpose or meaning of existence of developing the order or integration of matter into ever larger and more stable wholes (atoms into compounds, into virus-like organisms, into single-celled organisms, into multicelled organisms, etc) has been denied by human-condition-avoiding mechanistic science is because it implies humans should behave in an ordered, integrative, cooperative, selfless, loving way.”
So the suggestion that the only valid biological ‘research’ is deductive (where an existing theory is tested) not inductive (where an overarching theory is developed from specific observations) is clearly wrong; as Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, the father of modern experimental design, wrote, ‘Inductive inference is the only process known to us by which essentially new knowledge comes into the world’ (The Design of Experiments, 1935). (You can read more about the difference between inductive and deductive science in chapter 2:4 and chapter 6:12 of FREEDOM.)
Sir Francis Bacon, the father of the scientific method, was one of the first to recognise how hopelessly compromised deductive science can be by the limitations of the practitioner, declaring that ‘The subtilty of Nature far surpasses the subtilty of [our current human-condition-afflicted] sense and intellect; so that men’s fair meditations, speculations and reasonings are a kind of insanity, only there is no one standing by to notice it…The Logic which is in vogue [deductive reasoning] is rather potent for the confirming and fixing [of] errors [rather] than for the investigation of Truth: so that it is more harmful than useful…And so our only hope is in a true Induction’ (Novum Organum; or A True Guide to the Interpretation of Nature, 1620; Book 1, Aphorisms 10-14). Essentially, ‘true’ ‘induction-derived’ knowledge requires fearless, free, imaginative thinking—as Koestler has pointed out: ‘Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, wrote in his autobiography that the pioneer scientist must have “a vivid intuitive imagination for new ideas not generated by deduction, but by artistically creative imagination”’ (The Act of Creation, 1964, p.147 of 751). And with regard to the human-condition-confronting fearlessness of such a free ‘imagination’, the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev said that ‘Knowledge requires great daring. It means victory over ancient, primeval terror. Fear makes the search for truth and the knowledge of it impossible. Knowledge implies fearlessness…Particularly bitter is moral knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil…Moral knowledge is the most bitter and the most fearless of all for in it sin and evil are revealed to us along with the meaning and value of life’ (The Destiny of Man, 1931; tr. N. Duddington, 1960, pp.14-15 of 310). So declaring ‘induction-derived’ ‘new ideas’ and ‘knowledge’ as ‘not being science at all’ is simply mechanistic science saying it doesn’t want to participate in ‘the search for truth’ and ‘knowledge’; basically, it doesn’t want to practise science—because again, ‘“science” literally means “knowledge”’!
Clearly, human-condition-confronting inductive research into the human condition is ‘biological research’; in fact, because it is not hampered by denial, it is the most effective and penetrating research of all.
With regard to the comparisons with Darwin’s work, it is worth noting Darwin even anticipated a time when the human condition would be addressed and solved. In his seminal work, The Origin of Species, he shed illuminating light on the origin of the variety of life and thereby connected humans with nature—but there biology (and thus humanity) has been stalled, unable to explain our human condition, the riddle of human nature, our capacity for ‘good’ and ‘evil’. However, at the end of The Origin of Species Darwin predicted that ‘In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.’
Darwin has here recognised that for ‘Light’ to ‘be thrown on the origin of man and his history’ and a new meaningful, ‘important’ world of understanding to be ‘open[ed]’ up, ‘Psychology’ will ‘be based on a new foundation’, ‘that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation’—namely, it will recognise the involvement of the emergence of our ‘mental power’ of consciousness in creating our species’ unique ‘psycholog[icall]y’ troubled human condition. Yes, the key to understanding the origin of man’s ‘psychology’ is to recognise the ‘acquirement’ of our ‘mental power’ of consciousness.
What Darwin has predicted here is precisely what Jeremy presents; the ‘new’ ‘research[ed]’, i.e. scientific, ‘foundation’ for the ‘psychology’ ‘of man and his history’—because our human condition IS a PSYCHOLOGICAL problem that emerged when we became CONSCIOUS, which the ‘new’ ‘foundation’ of scientific ‘research’ (in particular the work of Watson and Crick and what the discoveries of neuroscience can tell us about consciousness) at last enables us to explain.
And again, as the highly esteemed ecologist Professor Stuart Hurlbert stated in 2022 about Jeremy’s treatise, ‘I am stunned & honored to have lived to see the coming of “Darwin II”.’
5. Why it is being so strongly asserted that Jeremy Griffith’s scientific explanation of the human condition is the real explanation of the human condition
5.1 The ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation is testable through experience
It may at first seem unscientific to say unequivocally that this is the understanding of the human condition that humanity has so tirelessly sought, and that actually, what is being put forward at this stage is no more than a hypothesis. As Jeremy explains in par. 73 of FREEDOM and in Freedom Expanded, for a hypothesis to become accepted as true the scientific method dictates that it must first be tested—and in the case of a hypothesis about the human condition the ultimate test is how accountable it is of our own lives. That greatest of all physicists, Albert Einstein, once said that ‘truth is what stands the test of experience’ (Out of My Later Years, 1950). And so, fantastic a claim as it may seem, what is being presented here is the long-sought-after, desperately needed, psychosis-addressing-and-resolving, human race-transforming explanation of the human condition and the reason you will know this is that breakthrough explanation is because once you understand the explanation and begin to apply it, you will discover it is so able to make sense of human behaviour it makes it transparent. This transparency of ourselves and our world—for example, the exposure of all our falseness—that understanding of the human condition brings is the ultimate ‘test of experience’ that confirms that what Jeremy has presented is the ‘truth’ about our human condition. In this particular scientific study—the biological analysis of the human condition—we are the subjects, which means we can experience, feel and know the truthfulness or otherwise of the explanations being put forward.
5.2 The truth of the ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation is confirmed by its ability to explain all aspects of human life
Throughout FREEDOM it is demonstrated how the ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation demystifies not just the human condition, but all aspects of human behaviour.
It quickly becomes clear that not only are the facts and logic underlying the ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation established and unarguable, the theory also has an extraordinary ‘explanatory power’, which is one of the essential qualities of a scientific theory.
Indeed, the strength of a scientific theory is related to the diversity of phenomena it can explain. As the physicist Stephen Hawking wrote, ‘A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations’ (A Brief History Of Time, 1988).
The evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould was applying a similar methodology to Hawking’s when he argued that Darwin’s theory of natural selection pointed to the coordination of so many pieces of evidence that no other configuration other than his theory could offer a conceivable explanation, and that in this way natural selection has, in effect, been proven (The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, 2002).
Jeremy’s ‘instinct vs intellect’ theory is very similar to Darwin’s in its ability to coordinate so many pieces of evidence that it is clearly the only conceivable explanation, in this case, for the human condition. For example, it directly explains why humans are angry, egocentric and alienated, but in doing so also explains human development, the hominid fossil record, why science has been mechanistic, the relationship between men and women, sex as humans practice it, the role of nurturing, the source of our morality, why bonobos are the most cooperative of all extant apes, why humans are the only animal to develop consciousness, the divide between children and adults, teenage angst, racism, materialism, politics, political correctness, culture (including art, humour and swearing), the alarming growth in mental disease, all manner of mythology (e.g. Adam and Eve, Judgment Day, Prometheus, Noah’s Ark), the practice of religion, Christ, the development of order in the universe, what we mean by ‘God’, and much more.
It should be noted, that even in Darwin’s own time, despite genes and the mechanics of genetic heredity not yet being known, the theory of natural selection was able to be verified because it met Hawking’s and Gould’s criteria of simply coordinating so much evidence that it was clearly true; and, sure enough, it was effectively applied in plant and animal breeding. And while we already know a great deal about the mechanics of the gene-based and nerve-based learning systems, no doubt there is still more to be learnt, however, like Darwin’s idea of natural selection being verifiable before the current understanding of genetics, an excess of evidence also already exists to establish the scientific validity of Jeremy’s ‘instinct vs intellect’ treatise.
Accordingly, Jeremy’s treatise has received significant scientific evaluation, and, subsequent to that, support from such extremely eminent scientists as the earlier mentioned Professor Stuart Hurlbert, emeritus professor of biology at San Diego State University, who in 2024 elaborated on his praise, writing, ‘I am stunned & honored to have lived to see the coming of ‘Darwin II’. I say this because after Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection explained the variety of life, Jeremy Griffith has gone on to solve the other four main questions science had to answer about our world and place in it. They are: 1) the dilemma of the human condition, which his instinct vs intellect explanation in chapter 3 of his main, seminal book FREEDOM finally solves; 2) how we humans became fully conscious when other species haven’t, which he answers in chapter 7; 3) the origins of humans’ unique moral nature, which he answers in chapter 5, which it turns out American philosopher John Fiske had already explained in 1874 but mechanistic science had ignored; and 4) the truth of the Integrative Meaning of existence (which we have personified as ‘God’), in chapter 4, which only a rare few thinkers in history have been able to recognize. A most phenomenal scientific achievement!’; and Professor Harry Prosen, a former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Society, who, along with quotes from him that have already been included, wrote in his Introduction to FREEDOM, ‘all the great theories I have encountered in my lifetime of studies of psychiatry can be accounted for under his explanation of human origins and behavior’; and even Stephen Hawking, one of the most esteemed scientists of all time, was ‘impressed’ by Jeremy’s treatise (see Hawking’s response, along with those of others leaders in the scientific community, in the Commendations section on the WTM’s homepage).
5.3 We also have history’s confirmation of the ‘instinct vs intellect’ elements involved in producing the human condition, to which Jeremy Griffith has added the all-important redeeming explanation of WHY the clash between those elements produced the psychologically upset state of the human condition
As Jeremy has pointed out, “Certainly history teems with non-scientific mystical, superstitious and super-natural reasons for humans’ often brutally aggressive and selfish nature or condition, such as that an evil force called Satan came out of some terrifying realm and dragged us humans into the clutches of evil and sin, condemning most of us to a dreadful purgatory in a fiery Hell. However, for anyone who has been prepared to stop and think sensibly about our existence, the rational, scientific ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation of the human condition is actually very obvious—because of course when we humans became conscious that self-adjusting capability must have clashed with our already established dictatorial instincts’ orientations that had been managing our lives prior to us becoming conscious—and many thinkers, in fact many of the recognised greatest thinkers in history, such as Moses and Plato, recognised that the emergence of our conscious mind is what led to our departure from our species’ original ‘Garden of Eden’ instinctive state of innocence.”
Yes, in Video/Freedom Essay 4 (which is further elaborated on in Freedom Essay 53) Jeremy presents a description of many of these great thinkers from both ancient and contemporary times who have recognised the ‘instinct vs intellect’ elements involved in producing the human condition.
This quote from researcher Richard Heinberg’s book Memories & Visions of Paradise summarises how universal the acknowledgement of the ‘instinct vs intellect’ elements involved in producing the human condition has been: ‘Every religion begins with the recognition that human consciousness has been separated from the divine Source, that a former sense of oneness…has been lost…everywhere in religion and myth there is an acknowledgment that we have departed from an original…innocence and can return to it only through the resolution of some profound inner discord…the cause of the Fall is described variously as disobedience, as the eating of a forbidden fruit [from the tree of knowledge], and as spiritual amnesia [forgetting, blocking out, alienation, denial, psychosis]’.
While many of the great thinkers in history, such as those Jeremy describes in F. Essay 4 and F. Essay 53, have recognised the instinct vs intellect elements involved in producing the human condition, the all-important contribution that Jeremy has made is the explanation of WHY those elements of instinct and intellect led to the psychologically upset state of the human condition. As Heinberg wrote, we could only ‘return to’ our ‘original’ healthy, upset-free state of ‘oneness’ ‘through the resolution of some profound inner discord’, and it is precisely that ‘resolution of’ that ‘profound inner discord’ that Jeremy has supplied.
5.4 Science’s recent understanding of the difference in the way the gene-based, naturally selected, instinctive learning system and the nerve-based, conscious mind’s learning system work further confirms the obvious ‘instinct vs intellect’ explanation of the human condition
As mentioned in the opening Summary, it was Darwin’s mid-1800s discovery of natural selection (as well as Watson and Crick’s subsequent discovery of the DNA molecule, the mechanism behind natural selection), and science’s discovery of how the nervous system works, in particular that nerves are able to remember events, that allowed Jeremy to explain that the nerve-based learning system operates from a basis of understanding cause and effect while the gene-based, natural selection learning system can only give species’ orientations to the world around them, and that this difference explains WHY an upsetting clash must have occurred between our instincts and conscious intellect; that upsetting clash being the reason for our angry, egocentric and alienated human condition. (See chapter 3:3 of FREEDOM, in particular paragraphs 247-248, but please note that the description that is given in paragraphs 247-248 of what instincts and consciousness are has been elaborated on since FREEDOM was printed, so to see this more complete description of what instincts and consciousness are please see the revised pars 247-248 in the Second Edition of FREEDOM that is available in all versions of FREEDOM on our website but not yet in the printed copies which are all First Editions.)
So the scientific basis for the confirming and clarifying difference between instincts and intellect is not in contest—in fact, natural selection and the discovery of DNA, and our understanding of the nervous system and how it is able to remember events and by so doing make sense of experience, are among the most important and respected elements of scientific knowledge we have—it just needed a human-condition-confronting-not-avoiding, holistic-not-mechanistic approach to recognise and acknowledge the significance of that difference.
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To elaborate, using this key, confirming and clarifying difference between nerves and genes, Jeremy has logically explained that when we humans became fully conscious some 2 million years ago a battle for the management of our lives must have broken out between our already established gene-based, naturally-selected instinctive orientations and our newly emerged nerve-based, understanding-dependent, self-adjusting, fully conscious mind. As he explains in THE Interview and in Video/Freedom Essay 3 and in chapter 3 of FREEDOM, when our intellect began to experiment in understanding as the only means of discovering the correct and incorrect understandings for managing existence, the instincts—being in effect ‘unaware’ or ‘ignorant’ of the intellect’s need to carry out these experiments—‘opposed’ any understanding-produced deviations from the established instinctive orientations: they ‘criticised’ and ‘tried to stop’ the conscious mind’s necessary search for knowledge.
Like the science that underlies the clarifying difference between nerves and genes, the elements of the ‘instinct vs intellect’ clash are also scientifically accepted.
For example, it is scientifically accepted that prior to becoming conscious our forebears were, like all other animals, instinctively controlled. It is also accepted that at a subsequent point we became conscious—the evidence about the increase in brain size, especially of the association cortex, that is given in chapter 8 of FREEDOM is one of the indicators that this occurred some 2 million years ago with the advent of Homo habilis. Thirdly, it is also accepted that humans today are governed by their conscious intellect, not their instincts. So it is unarguable that at some point our conscious mind wrested control of the management of our lives from our instincts.
What would have happened at that point? It is not in question that the intellect is insightful—for example, as just mentioned, our brain’s main reasoning centre is called the ‘association cortex’, i.e. it can (as explained in paragraph 61 of FREEDOM) ‘associate’ or compare experiences and by so doing identify regularly occurring experiences and on the basis of what has regularly occurred in the past, make predictions about what is likely to happen in the future, and adjust behaviour accordingly. In time this self-modifying behaviour starts to provide feedback, refining the insights further—predictions are compared with outcomes and so on. Our ‘association cortex’ can learn or reason or understand or gain insight into the relationship between ‘cause and effect’. It is a reasoning, insightful self-adjusting system. And it is also elementary science that instincts are, at a point, inflexible. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, instincts are, ‘a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason.’ And so, as Jeremy explains: “when our [insightful] conscious intellect emerged it was neither suitable nor sustainable for it to be orientated by instincts—it had to find understanding [use ‘reason’] to operate effectively and fulfil its great potential to manage life. However, when our intellect began to exert itself and experiment in the management of life from a basis of understanding, in effect challenging the role of the already established instinctual self, a battle unavoidably broke out between the instinctive self and the newer conscious self.” (The Book of Real Answers To Everything!).
Inevitably, when an insightful management system emerges in the presence of a non-insightful system, the insightful system will experiment in managing the world around it from a basis of understanding, and the non-insightful system will blindly resist; it will, as mentioned, ‘oppose’ any understanding-produced deviations from the established instinctive orientations—there is no other possible outcome.
Jeremy then explains how the intellect then defied this opposition or ‘criticism’ from the instincts, resulting in the defensive and retaliatory anger, egocentricity and alienation that characterises the human condition (see par. 257 of FREEDOM).
6. Is the explanation of the human condition a ‘non-falsifiable’, circular argument?
People have accused Jeremy Griffith’s explanation of the human condition of being ‘circular’ or ‘non-falsifiable’—that if you oppose this information you are said to be suffering from denial, leaving you no way to disprove or falsify the explanation being put forward.
The first point to consider is that Jeremy did not create the dilemma of the human condition that produced alienation in humans and this conundrum. It is not a ploy to defeat criticism as some have implied.
Secondly, and more importantly, the problem only exists at the superficial level because the ideas being put forward are not untestable hypotheses that must be accepted on blind faith—they can be tested as true or otherwise. In fact, as mentioned above in Section 5.1, because these explanations relate to our human behaviour we can experience the truthfulness of them; indeed we can experience their truthfulness to the extent that the explanations make our behaviour transparent!
The existence of denial in the human mind is a recognised and accepted coping mechanism that humans use to ward against unbearable subject matter. And the existence of denial of the historically unbearable issue of the human condition can easily be established by scientific investigation. Indeed, to look at the reality of its existence we only have to look at the occurrence of the ‘deaf effect’ that this denial produces, which is our inability to take in or ‘hear’ discussion of the human condition (see WTM FAQ 1.16). As Jeremy explains in THE Interview and the first four Videos/Freedom Essays on our homepage, while we didn’t have the biological understandings of how genes and nerves work we couldn’t explain why we had corrupted our species’ original state of innocent togetherness, and as such we had absolutely no choice but to live in denial of our corrupted condition, our shameful ‘fall from grace’. As Jeremy documents in some detail in Video/Freedom Essay 11, the great philosopher Plato described our state of having to live in fearful denial of our corrupted condition as us humans having to hide ‘a long way underground’ in a ‘cave’ of darkness. So clearly when we do finally find the redeeming biological explanation of our corrupted condition, which Jeremy presents, we are going to have to go through a process of shock at having all the truth about ourselves revealed; we are going to be resistant to hearing the truth, we are going to suffer from ‘the deaf effect’. It just makes sense that that would happen. Indeed, Plato predicted that ‘deafness’ would be so great we initially wouldn’t be able to hear ‘a single one of the things we were now told were real’. So the human condition exists, and the ‘deaf effect’ denial of it is a reality; again, Jeremy didn’t invent that denial as a way of defeating any arguments against what he is saying, it’s just a fact.
Significantly, in describing how when the cave prisoner first ‘emerged into the light…he wouldn’t be able to see a single one of the things he was now told were real’, Plato went on to say, ‘Certainly not at first. Because he would need to grow accustomed to the light [of the understanding] before he could see things in the world outside the cave’. Yes, our historic denial of the human condition can be overcome with patient reading and watching of the information presented. (See also The Great Guilt that causes the Deaf Effect and Video/Freedom Essay 11 for more on Plato’s cave allegory, the ‘deaf effect’ and how to overcome it.)
7. Conclusion
So rather than not even being science at all, Jeremy Griffith’s treatise on the human condition could hardly be more impressive science, especially since it solves the holy grail of science of the issue of the human condition! This further review from Professor Churchill acknowledges just some of the brilliance of Jeremy’s work: ‘I have recommended his [Griffith’s] more recent work to my students precisely for his razor-sharp clarifications of positions of contemporary authors like Edward O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Robert Wright. Griffith manages to summarize book-length expositions of these oftentimes obtuse and varying perspectives on human evolution with clarity and brilliance’ (Expert Report, 2007). It is actually dishonest mechanistic science that is now not really science at all, with its ‘oftentimes obtuse and varying perspectives on human evolution’ now replaced by Jeremy’s human-condition-confronting-not-avoiding, ‘razor-sharp clarifications’ of the ‘varying perspectives on human evolution’!
Science, being practised by insecure, human-condition-afraid humans, had to go about the search for the explanation of the human condition in a denial-complying, mechanistic way, avoiding any confronting truth about the human condition, but that was always only the first stage of science’s quest for understanding of the human condition. It always had to be remembered that at some point the second stage had to take place, where someone secure enough in self could confront the human condition and synthesise the explanation of it from those hard-won insights into the mechanisms of the workings of our world that its practitioners had found. Science had to remain open to the possibility that the human-condition-confronting truthful explanation of the human condition would one day be found. It has been said that denials fight back with a vengeance when faced with annihilation, and that has certainly been the case with the mechanistic paradigm, but science holds the ultimate responsibility to consider, not ignore, or worse, falsely dismiss and even persecute, well-reasoned and evidenced scientific analysis of the human condition, so to fail in that mandate has been obscenely irresponsible. The time for this truthful, holistic thinking has arrived. As Jeremy says in THE Interview, ‘the scientific community definitely, definitely needs to get its act together and support this breakthrough!’
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For further reading about the extraordinary nature of Jeremy Griffith’s human-condition-confronting-not-avoiding, non-mechanistic, absolutely authentic and hugely important scientific research we recommend reading FAQ 2.4.
We also recommend chapter 2 of FREEDOM about ‘The threat of Terminal Alienation from Science’s Entrenched Denial of the Human Condition’, and about how farcical science has become in Part 4:12K of Freedom Expanded: Book 1.
