On the occasion of the first anniversary of the Karl Jaspers Forum, I would like to invite the participants (and the silent partners as well) to send in commentaries on all aspects of its performance. Of particular interest are suggestions for changes which might be desirable in order to improve its qualities as a medium for discussion.

The purpose of the Forum, as I see it, is the exchange concerning basic concepts in science and related areas, in an open spirit in Jaspers' sense: to think from open experience, without pre-conceived limitations. Those who participate are thus not limited in the range of ideas which to submit, provided that they formulate them well. In turn, they should be prepared to accept frank review.

It has been gratifying to see that this goal has been largely achieved in this first year of publication. An unexpected (by me) development was the recent strong emphasis on particle physics, but in retrospect this surprise has been a consequence of my lack of imagination. There are a number of fields for which the traditional objective thinking does not work well, and QM is one of them.

The possibility of discussion within the various e-mail groups of the Dialogues network, with Drs. Louise Sundararajan and Mary Fox as editors, is an important additional helpful feature, which has been utilized and appreciated by many of our contributors.

I look forward to your commentaries and suggestions.

Herbert Muller
e-mail <mdmu@musica.mcgill.ca>

RESPONSE by Chris Nunn

Dear Herbert,

I enjoy the forum as well as finding it educational. I look forward to postings. Thanks for all the hard work you've put into making it a success.

Some contributions are, perhaps, a bit too long for easy reading. Anything of more than around 5000K can be quite hard to comprehend when read from the screen, at least for the intellectually challenged such as myself, and one does not necessarily want to print out all that arrives.

I suggest that contributors with a lot to say should be asked to provide comprehensive abstracts, or maybe should post a summary version and let people retrieve the full document if they wish. Of course some people do one or other of these already, but many abstracts attached to lengthy papers are too short to allow a decision as to whether or not to tackle the whole document.

Best wishes.
Chris
e-mail <chrisnunn@compuserve.com>

RESPONSE by Mark Seelig

Dear Dr. Muller, dear forum members,

I am grateful having the opportunity to offer some comments on the occasion of the Karl Jaspers Forum's first anniversary. While I have largely been a quiet follower of the discussion, I would nonetheless like to express my appreciation of the existence of this list. It has been a pleasure to be part of the highly qualified contributions, and the forum appears to me to be one more salient example of how modern technology can be utilized for purposes of expanding consciousness and global connectivity. The latter is a special interest of mine in many ways, and as some reader s might have noticed by way of my contribution (TA4 - An Interview with Roger Walsh on Transpersonal Psychology; Nov.'97), I am convinced that raising consciousness is a general mandate during the overall phase of evolution we, as a species, find ourselves in. For this reason I have personally taken the greatest interest in those contributions which were preoccupied with the aspect of inquiry into, and transformation of consciousness.

Speaking from a vantage point of being on quite a number of forums, I can say that it is not always selfunderstood that contributions from this transformative perspective are welcome. It has therefore given me great hope from the initiation of the Karl Jaspers Forum that one of the suggested directives spoke out for the inclusion of data gained from experiential research.

My personal history in propagating this twofold approach, practical and theoretical, and my understanding of this approach as introducing a change to scientific epistemology which needs to be made in our time, has presented me with severe professional challenges. As an avid defender of transformative views, I have lost my teaching position at the University of Frankfurt/Main, Germany. Since that time I have been looking for academic employment in the Western United States, so far with only minor success.

In spite of this personal course, however, I continue to hold that science is on the verge of a revolution Thomas Kuhn has early on so aptly described in his book titled 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'. The Karl Jaspers Forum seems to me to be facilitating a piece of this revolution.

While I must admit that I haven't been able to follow all contributions due to their length and due to my personal infatuation with internet forums, I still admire the contributors willingness to go to detailed depths in order to clarify their points. I'd like to end on a note of suggesting additional areas of discussion, which - as might be expected from my background -are obviously controversial. The two research fields I presently consider to be among the most valuable and promising belong to the large frame of Transpersonal Psychology. One field is Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine, and its relation to the study of human consciousness. The other field is the scientific study of the so called 'entheogens' and 'psychedelics', sacred plants and compounds which have been used for ritual and healing purposes throughout millennia, and which are receiving enormously increasing attention in transpersonally oriented circles. It is my prediction that these two fields will be among the foremost areas of a kind of research which is capable of contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of human consciousness and life per se. I believe that such amplification is mandatory for the sake of credibility of the humanities in particular, as well as for our respective roles in a transculturally connected world in general.

My sincere thanks to both the initiator and host of this forum, Prof. Dr. Herbert Muller, for the time and dedication required to establish and maintain the Karl Jaspers Forum, and to the many contributors for their thoughts and participation.

Mark Seelig, Ph.D.
- Transpersonal Psychotherapy -

Feldbergring 15
37249 Neu-Eichenberg
Germany
e-mail <Amaresh@compuserve.com>

RESPONSE by Henry Swift:

... I greatly appreciate the efforts which you have taken to make this forum available. It is the only place I know of where unconventional concepts such as Goswami's can be published at this time. The opportunity to obtain comment and feedback is admirably set up. As to another criticism that posting should be limited in length, perhaps others could do as I do herein – to refer for details to another source, such as a personal home page, etc.

Henry Swift
e-mail <hswift@swcp.com>

Comment by HFJ Muller:

I do agree that it is important to accept ideas which do not conform to established views. This is in fact, I think, a point which still limits discussion, despite the professed wish of most communications media to be open. Instead of a censorship before acceptance of an article, I have been of the opinion that the chief requirement for acceptance is that the ideas are formulated in such a way that others can comprehend them even if they disagree entirely. In return, the authors agree that their papers are thoroughly discussed, even if that may mean a blow to their self-esteem.

I hope that this policy is acceptable to our participants, and I would appreciate knowing what others think about this.

Herbert Muller
e-mail <mdmu@musica.mcgill.ca>

RESPONSE by Gary Schouborg

Herbert,

I think you have found a good balance in FORUM. I chafe sometimes that I cannot just fire off a short response to something, but having to formalize it is a discipline that saves this group from reading a lot of ill-thought-out crap. By allowing short notes, but requiring they be submitted in the FORUM format, you strike a good balance between flexibility and serious discussion. Time is an unknown for me in this sense -- my online expectations are that any email will be responded to quickly, if not immediately; if not, the conversation moves on to other topics. I have a folder of several FORUM contributions that I would like to respond to but have not had the time. Your structure allows me to wait months, perhaps even years, and respond later -- as is done as a matter of course with print journals. The unknown for me is if I respond a year later to a particular article, will there be anyone around interested? I'm not asking for an answer, just noting that this seems an unknown aspect of this new medium.

Thanks once again for your efforts.

Gary Schouborg
e-mail <garyscho@worldnet.att.net>

Note by Herbert FJ Muller

My present intention is to keep all texts on the web-site

(www.mcgill.ca/douglas/fdg/kjf)

for as long as possible, since the main purpose of the Forum is the facilitation of discussion. The limiting factor is the use of disk space at the McGill Computing Center. If they tell me to discard some of the earlier material, my present idea is to then make all texts which are no longer on the web-site available on demand directly from me, I keep them on disquettes. So if nothing else goes wrong, the texts should remain open for discussion for an unlimited period of time.

The idea of this Forum came to me when I fully realized the limitations of time for discussions inherent in the usual meeting format, where you present a paper on which you may have worked for years, and are allowed time for two or three questions at the end. Compared to paper publications, the possibility for discussions is also much greater, as has become evident during this past year. Compared to e-mail groups, this format encourages thinking things through before writing, as Gary writes.

Thus the purpose of the Forum is to stimulate discussion, rather than, let us say, to become known, or provide a means for obtaining tenure.

To help with this aim, the authors should make efforts, at the time of submission of their papers, to provide a list of possible discussants.

I would be interested in suggestions on how to improve the discussion aspect further.

Herbert FJ Muller
e-mail mdmu@musica.mcgill.ca