IICS

Research conducted at the International Institute of Cosmic Sciences (IICS) is guided by a vision that centers human civilization and culture within the cosmos as a whole.

The modern western scientific and cosmic world-picture had for a while divorced humanity from the rest of nature, and conceived of the universe as made up of dead matter devoid of spirit. Such a science proceeded forth with a cosmology separated from anthropology. Without a broader worldview that linked the macrocosmic universe to the human microcosm, the human and social sciences too searched for and promoted models of ethical engagement and collective living unmindful of the rhythms and cycles of the earth and the skies, and the web of relations linking the shared fate of humans and our co-habitants on this planet. As a result, a range of wisdom traditions and bodies of knowledge from around the world, rooted in notions of ecological harmony and cosmic order, came to be denigrated as irrational or fanciful. But the materialist, mechanistic, atomist and deterministic assumptions of this dominant worldview came to be challenged during the course of the twentieth century by way of newer developments within the sciences themselves, ranging from quantum physics to the non-linear sciences of complex systems. A course-correction was also introduced when it increasingly came to be recognized that the instrumental and industrial use of the fruits of science had led to large-scale ecological destruction resulting in social and political unrest.Religious leaders, activists, policy-makers and scientists have now come to realize that scientific activity has to be guided by a broader cosmic vision that incorporates the traditional wisdom passed down the millennia in diverse cultures around the world, and which cherishes the goal of a sustainable planet to be shared by humans and non-humans alike. The object of research conducted at IICS is to contribute towards the shaping of this new paradigm of scientific research that is underway in the twenty-first century.

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Our synthetic approach seeks to reconcile and combine science and religion, physics and metaphysics, technology and ecology. Opening up the boundaries of conventional science does not mean a loosening of the standards of scientific rigour and the embracing of alternative worldviews promising instant gratification or enlightenment. Rather it signifies a commitment that the fulfillment of human intellectual capacity demands the preparation and disciplining of not just the rational, but also the imaginative and the spiritual faculties. Further, from such a standpoint, intellectual activity is not to be regarded as a disembodied pursuit, but as linked with the labour of the hands and the discerning of the spirit.

In claiming that the human, the machine and nature, or the natural, the ethical and the aesthetic are all to be apprehended in a single system, we make no pretensions to complete and final understanding. Indeed, the more we know, the more we appreciate the depths of the unknown, the variety and inexhaustibility of reality, the mystery that points to the divine. Our attempt is to approach and probe this mystery in knowledge, play and prayer.