ABSTRACT
Why would we need a new world view? The only possible reason is if the old one is failing, and let’s be realistic: our classic, Newtonian, deterministic view of reality has been hugely successful. It has brought us modern science. It brought us the industrial revolution. It has revolutionised technology, medicine, agriculture, all aspects of our world. Why would we critique it? First of all, our thinking is so rooted in this paradigm that we have forgotten that it is a paradigm, a way of viewing the world, and not fact. As such, there may be other, perhaps complementary, ways to view the world that are equally useful and that may extend our understanding beyond what we can achieve using our conventional view. Second, there are areas in which our paradigm is beginning to falter, aspects of our reality that it does not fit. Yet, we are very attached to our world view, so we do not always want to recognise that it may be flagging. This chapter outlines three areas where our paradigm is reaching its limits to explain why we need to expand it. Furthermore, it gives some examples of how attached people are to thinking in terms of the classical paradigm.
