Lawrence L. Horstman

Lawrence Horstman is a published and peer-reviewed biochemist of repute who takes issue with the reductionist, mechanistic, consciousness-as-epiphenomenon interpretation of modern cognitive science, and indeed of the scientific mindset since the dawn of the discipline. He believes and makes quite a case that consciousness cannot be left out of the equation, as it were, in scientific inquiry henceforth. Horstman takes as his guiding-light model the hypothesis developed by Alfred J. Lotka, “a founder of mathematical ecology.”

From the blurb:

“…[The book] begins by offering a highly original perspective of the history of science, showing how certain dogmas arose to obstruct recognition of the solution to the problem [of consciousness]. It then moves into a step-by-step reformulation of Lotka’s hypothesis and a critical review of nearly all other books on the subject, new and old…”

In his assessment of Lotka’s seminal work originally published in 1926, Horstman says of Lotka “…Only in his closing chapters does his thesis emerge: rather than viewing life as an expression of dispassionate chemistry, he views chemistry as an expression of the passions of life. This in a nutshell is Lotka’s hypothesis. However, this nutshell no more conveys the import of Lotka’s hypothesis than would a statement of Newton’s second law, F = MA, convey Newton’s system in the sense that a huge corpus of physical science arises from that simple statement, F = MA. Lotka’s hypothesis has the same potential.” (p. 115)

This is an important work that deserves wider recognition, dissemination and study. It is quite in accord with Ken Wilber, B. Alan Wallace and especially Franklin Merrell-Wolff’s understandings and expositions. Wolff, who underwent an extraordinary series of breakthroughs into mystical understanding in 1936 (“The Philosophy of Consciousness Without An Object”, and “Pathways Through To Space” – more info at: [...]) regarded science as a kind of inverse path (Cf., the face of a coin to its obverse) to a common goal of, for lack of a better word, transcendence, and in “The Lotka Hypothesis” we have the glimmering of the sea change that scientific inquiry will have to undergo and a call to arms for “bright young minds” to accommodate and further the revolution necessary for surmounting the box canyon science finds itself imprisoned today by essentially ignoring the anteriority of consciousness in all things.… (meer)