Psience Quest

Quote:One of the most respected psychologists in the Slavic world—where materialist prejudices are less pronounced—Prof. Victor Petrenko, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, discusses his views on the nature of mind and reality. He shows, through remarkable experiments, that our very perception is conditioned upon our ability to tell ourselves, conceptually, what we are perceiving. It is possible that we simply do not perceive what we have no conceptual categories to make sense of. This way, we may be immersed in effectively alien aspects of reality that we cannot cognize. This captivating essay introduces to a Western audience the high-quality—and arguably less metaphysically biased—scholarship of the Slavic world in an area of knowledge whose relevance to our lives cannot be overestimated.

Quote:Both the positive and destructive influences of unconscious processes on human psychosomatics are well researched and documented in psychology. And according to religious systems, not just deeds, but evil thoughts alone, influence a human being’s spiritual and physical well-being. Through acts of self-contemplation and repentance we can perhaps experience that influence first-hand. However, all these levels of interrelatedness in complex systems, in which the human being is a constituent part, are poorly studied, reflected or represented in a conceptual psychological framework.

To remain in the field of science rather than religion or art, two comprehensive strategies are possible. The first one is when we adhere strictly to the paradigm of natural sciences and operate with notions underpinned by readily observable phenomena, at the risk of reducing the whole to its fragments. As a result, we would remain blind to the multidimensionality and multi-levelness of the world; for a successfully functioning individual in the everyday life could, at the same time, be bare and helpless against extraordinary existential problems of life and death, or the meaning of life and faith. An alternative strategy would be to construct concepts containing ‘room for growth,’ whereby we accept a degree of uncertainty and gaps in our knowledge. One such notion that could enter the theoretical framework of psychology is the concept of fate, for it has a rich mythological tradition, a complex symbolic representation and a vivid history of conscious expression through artistic means.