How may our education curricula be redesigned to avoid the fragmentation of knowledge? Lancelot Law Whyte (Alfred Korzybski Memrial Lecturer, 1969) proposed studying formative processes, the structured patterns of the sciences and the humanities. The use of language as static expressions of reality leads to absolutisms, contrary to the universality of change.

Hillel Schiller will present the unitary approach of L. L. Whyte, who wrote The Next Development in Man and The Universe of Experience. Mr. Schiller will discuss Whyte’s organic syntheses of heart, mind, and will, of emotion, thought, and action. The human imagination will be recognized as the supreme formative agent. The young in spirit may well imagine new developments. The next step is for man to surprise himself.

Janet Pfunder will introduce Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing process and his Philosophy of the Implicit. Focusing involves pausing and allowing a palpable “felt sense” to form in the experiencing body. Fresh phrases and images arise, and a new kind of knowing. As we attend to the subtle changes in our organismic happenings, and symbolize from our “felt sensing,” we gently carry life for-ard. Learning about Gendlin’s Philosophy of the Implicit will support our understanding of the Focusing process.

There are many ways of knowing and experiencing whether in schools, in nature, in ordinary conversations, in meditation, or while coming back from the Moon, as Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar Mitchell discovered. He and his colleagues founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences as a result of that profound experience, to explore and understand such events that touch the human spirit.

Jane Hughes Gignoux will relate how IONS and the New York Community Group Friends of IONS promote a greater understanding of our world by searching beyond accepted views of that world and our role in it.

FIONS brings together science and spirit through exploration, dialogue and practice, thereby affecting central quality-of-life issues.

The World Café is a dialogic system of sharing and exploring our learning and knowledge. Ms. Gignoux will facilitate our forming small groups to discuss and harvest what we have been experiencing during the evening.