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But Kauffmann makes important sense for the first half of the interview. Emergence is the scientific challenge of our day: the entire universe is an emergent phenomenon, and everything in it, from the periodic table to consciousness and everything in between. (According to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, the infinitely small, hot undifferentiated lump of the big bang should have produced nothing more than infinitely large, cold undifferentiated lump, not hydrogen even, and certainly not this marvellous world.) We need a science of creation.
But when he starts babbling about quantum consciousness, he loses my sympathy, and when he talks about hijacking words like 'God' and 'sacred' he seems to be losing his mind. Haven't all religious wars always been fought, not over God, but, precisely, over that meaning of the word 'God'? If we are to outgrow,as we must, both superstition and reductionism, we are going to need a different language, rather than recycling one with millennia of nonsense behind it.
