Science describes the philosophy that everything is alive as Hylozoism and the philosophy that everything is conscious as Panpsychism. One of the main representants of Panpsychism is the German Theodor Fechner (1801-1887).
This is a quote from the philosopher William James’s (Pluralistic Universe) , describing Fechner’s work:
“For him the abstract lived in the concrete, and the hidden motive of all he did was to bring what he called the daylight view of the world into ever greater evidence, that daylight view being this, that the whole universe in its different spans and wave-lengths, exclusions and envelopment, is everywhere alive and conscious… The original sin, according to Fechner, of both our popular and our scientific thinking, is our inveterate habit of regarding the spiritual not as the rule but as an exception in the midst of nature. Instead of believing our life to be fed at the breasts of the greater life, our individuality to be sustained by the greater individuality, which must necessarily have more consciousness and more independence than all that it brings forth, we habitually treat whatever lies outside of our life as so much slag and ashes of life only; or if we believe in a Divine Spirit, we fancy him on the one side as bodiless, and nature as soulless on the other. What comfort, or peace, Fechner asks, can come from such a doctrine? The flowers wither at its breath, the stars turn into stone; our own body grows unworthy of our spirit and sinks to a tenement for carnal senses only. The book of nature turns into a volume on mechanics, in which whatever has life is treated as a sort of anomaly; a great chasm of separation yawns between us and all that is higher than ourselves; and God becomes a thin nest of abstractions.”
And on another page he writes:
Where there is no vision the people perish. Few professorial philosophers have any vision. Fechner had vision, and that is why one can read him over and over again, and each time bring away a fresh sense of reality.
How true! For me there is no doubt that everything is not only alive but conscious, each cell, each atom – be it organic or mineral. It might be in very different state of being compared to Humans however it lives its own live. A look through the electron microscope shows already how everything is living and moving. Our eyesight is limited such as are all the other senses and that gives the illusion that things are “dead” or inert. But the question is, what would change if one realizes that everything is alive and conscious?
Already now billions of animals are killed each year although even the greatest hardcore “realist” can see that they are alive. But of course, also millions of humans are killed in silly wars. Added to this is pollution of the earth which is detrimental for all live – even the mineral life. So I don’t know if anything would change. The only change would probably occur if the individual himself would really feel alive and reestablishes the connection to himself which is to AllThatIs. That would change everything!
Inspired by Rudy Rucker
