The goal of my writing is to promote an unconstrained science founded upon an inclusive cognitive frame that allows us to go beyond the inherited limitations of mechanical materialism. To advance that goal, I present a novel paradigm for understanding ourselves and our world, which is called Responsive Naturing. The original genesis for this novel paradigm was my lifelong meditative and contemplative practice using a singular meditation technique, called Great Responsiveness Meditation, which I also write about.
Responsive Naturing provides a sound foundation for a veridical science, so that both science and spirituality can be founded upon a common understanding of ‘how things work’. This empowers us in ways that our disjointed and parochial schools of thought lock us out of, by opening up new possibilities, and methods of looking at problems, and finding solutions, across disciplines.
I have been an entrepreneur, inventor, an activist with a lifelong involvement in environmental and compassionate campaigns, a local elected official serving a community of 8,000, an award-winning university lecturer, philosopher, and a daily meditator for almost seven decades. I consider myself, first and foremost, a contemplative scientist. A contemplative scientist starts from contemplative insights, not abstract concepts. Einstein, for example, was a contemplative scientist – he started from a discovered 'productive principle', rather than trying to make sense out of bits and pieces of things.
I have a newly-minted (May 2025) doctorate in Philosophy from Stony Brook University in New York. My dissertation, titled "There is a Way of Seeing the World Different," is on 'Biphasic Perception', the different configurations of which explains so many open questions about perception. Some examples are why we see fluid motion when we watch films and videos; the difference between thinking, which is slow and requires language, and reasoning, which is extremely fast and does not use language; and it even explains why our early modern human ancestors used a particular painting technique as long ago as 32,000 years, to induce an actual experience of motion in some of their cave paintings. As well, I have had a 30 year career in Software Design, originally focused on automated software development, during which I was first confronted with the enigma of human creativity, which is unsolvable from within our current cognitive frame of mechanical materialism. I was a speaker at The 30th Annual Science of Consciousness Conference held in Tucson, Arizona, April 22-27, 2024, where I introduced this Paradigm of Responsive Naturing and Biphasic Perception.
I strongly believe that only by changing how we think about our problems, how we see ourselves, and how we relate to each other and our shared world, will we be able to overcome the extreme calamities that we face today. We can't fix problems with the old way of thinking and acting that caused those problems to begin with.
If you would like to contact me directly, you can email me:james@stilljustjames.com