CC BY
15
The Theory of Education: "Those Who Transform the Universe" (New Book Announcement)
Oleg Bazaluk — Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, Professor International Society of Philosophy and Cosmology (ISPC) (Kyiv, Ukraine)
E-mail: bazaluk@ukr.net
The book proposes the theory of education as the consequence of the theories of evolution and noo-genesis developed by the author. The author introduces the education as neuro-programming of the human brain that is, deliberately moulding of the common understanding and evaluation of the three fundamental meanings of Being in the rising generations: the philosophy of knowledge, the meaning of human life and the cultural ideal. Being united by the metaphor "Those who transform the Universe," these meanings not only serve as key markers for the self-identification of man, but also are used as guiding force in particular technologies to influence the brain, answering the question "Whom and How should the older generations educate in the rising generations?"
The meanings of the theory of education "Those who transform the Universe" upon which the theory is built, and which it generates, are much broader than the ideas of transhumanism, philosophical post-humanism and cosmism. This is an introduction to the ontology of philosophy of the cosmos, in which man appears as a "mentality about," which is freeing from his biological nature, in order to find himself in a new qualitative state that is the Intelligent Matter of Earth. In this new state for himself, man is given the opportunity to influence the continuous and nonlinear complication of the Universe.
Key Words: transhumanism, noogenesis, neuro-programming, education, mentality about, Intelligent Matter, the Universe
The work on this book began in 2004, at that time the author began to deliver lectures on the philosophy of education to the graduates of the Faculty of Education at Pereyaslav-Khmel-nitsky State Pedagogical University (Ukraine). To the traditional lecture course, the author began to add the information concerning the results of his research in the field of neurosciences, psychology, and cosmology. The author's work on the theory of evolution of the Universe led him to a number of discoveries in the field of the formation and development of the structure and functions of the human brain, which he began testing, involving students in this process. The author has written a course of lectures: "The Philosophy of Education on the Basis of the New Cosmological Concept", in which the author set out the basis of the emergence of the human brain at the scale of the Earth and the Universe, as well as the features of its formation and development in ontogenesis under the influence of educational technologies. In 2010, a course of lectures was published in Russian language [Bazaluk, 2010].
The book "The Theory of Education: Those Who Transform the Universe" is based on the author's theoretical and practical research. The theoretical basis of the book includes the analysis and synthesis of ideas of the previous generations of scientists, mainly in five scientific fields: neuroscience, psychology, pedagogy, philosophy and cosmology. The list of research,
© Bazaluk, Oleg, 2017
on which the author relied when studying theoretical, interdisciplinary understanding of the problem, is given at the end of the book. Over the period 1999-2016, the author has written more than 100 works on this research subject, in which, to a varying degree, the aspects of the proposed theory of education, are explored.
The practical basis of the book is made up from many research projects, which the author organised with the purpose to study the problem more deeply and to verify the experimental results of theoretical understandings. For example, since 2008, the author began to study the features of the development and manifestations of the human brain in confined spaces (spacecraft, religious organisations, private educational institutions, etc.) as well as under the influence of educational technologies. The author visited and familiarised himself with the possibilities of educational technologies in private and public boarding schools and universities in Europe, Asia and the USA; with the psychological training methods of astronauts and the preparation of monks in religious communities. The intermediate research results in this field were:
1. The book "Crazy: a Fundamental Principle of Life and Death", in which, on the basis of theoretical and practical research, was described the author's understanding of a number of neurobiological and mental processes associated with the recovery brain functions in the post-traumatic period [Bazaluk, 2011].
2. The international project "Space Travels", which the author organised and carried out in cooperation with astronauts Sergey Krichevsky and Leonid Kadenyuk, as well as the director of the Kharkiv Planetarium Galina Zheleznyak. For four years from 2010-2014, within the framework of the project, the three conferences were held and the two collective monographs were published [Space Travel, 2010; Space Travel, 2012]. During the project implementation, the following issues were studied:
- The technical features of long-term space travels.
- The features of the development of the structure and functions of the human brain under prolonged radiation exposure, weightlessness and other factors of the space environment.
- The impact of long-term space travels on the mental state of astronauts.
- The possibility of conception and the features of fetal development in weightlessness.
- The features of the impact of educational technologies under long-term space travels.
- The prospects of space colonisation, and others.
During that period, the author's research was published: "Space Travels — Travelling Mentality," in which a common understanding of the development of the human brain in confined spaces of a spacecraft for long-term space travels was expounded [Bazaluk, 2012].
3. The project "The Heroes of Ukraine on Education" (unfortunately, it was interrupted because of the war in Ukraine), in which the author planned to show the role of educational technologies in the formation of national elites, in particular, Ukrainian. The first volume of research was published [Bazaluk, 2014].
4. The period from 2013 to present, the educational project "Cosmic Ukraine" under the author and the director of the library of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky State Pedagogical University Olha Shkyra has been organised in Ukraine. The idea of the project is to promote the theme of space and the formation of cosmic thinking in Ukrainians. Within the framework of the project, the joint meetings of scientists, writers, poets, artists, musicians, astronauts and people who take interest in the theme of space have been holding in different regions of Ukraine. At the meetings, the issues, relating to the development of near and far outer space, are raised; the human place at the scales of the Earth and the Cosmos; the features of long space travels, etc. In Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky State Pedagogical University, in the format of the "round table,"
the meetings were organised with cosmonaut Leonid Kadenyuk1, astronomer Klim Churyu-mov2, director of the Kharkov Planetarium named after Yuri Gagarin Galina Zheleznyak3. The almanac "Cosmic Ukraine, Pereyaslav region" was published [Cosmic Ukraine, 2012].
Moreover, since 2010, in order to broaden the understanding of the possibilities of the influence of educational technologies on the complicating structure and functions of the human brain, the author initiated a project entitled "Future Human Image: Whom and How should We Educate in the Rising Generations?" The project was conducted through Web conferencing, the results of which were published in the collective monographs. Three Web conferences were held: September 2010 — September 2011, September 2011 — September 2012 and October 2012 — September 2013. The three-volume collective monograph "Future Human Image: Whom and How Should We Educate in the Rising Generations?" was published in Russian.4 The representatives of more than 20 countries took part in the project. The Organizing Committee of conferences chose and published 61 papers of more than 300 ones written by specialists in the field of psychology, pedagogy and philosophy of education.
Since 2013, with the purpose of expanding the audience of participants, the Russian-language project "Future Human Image" was reformatted to the international academic journal (http://www.fhijournal.org/). At present, the journal is included into the leading international scientific metric databases and regularly publishes articles in English, Ukrainian and Russian languages, in which the possibilities of modern educational technologies are explored.
The cooperation between the author and the members of International Society of Philosophy and Cosmology (ISPC) (http://en.bazaluk.com/) as well as the activity in the Editorial Boards of authoritative scientific journals "Philosophy and Cosmology" (http://ispcjournal. org/) and "Noospheric Studies" (http://glonoos.com/) provided an important assistance in understanding the features of the formation and development of the structure and functions of the human brain under the influence of internal and external causes.
In the proposed book "The Theory of Education: Those Who Transform the Universe", the author has formulated the theory of education as the consequence of his theory of evolution.5 It is a deeper understanding of certain provisions and consequences of the theory of evolution that are connected with the individual development of the human brain under the influence of internal, neurobiological processes and the external environment: the cosmos, the biosphere, and the micro and macrosocial groups. This is kind of modelling the stages of the complication of the human brain and its manifestations in ontogeny under the influence of internal and external causes.
Exploring the main provisions of the theory of education as the consequences (a special case) of the theory of evolution, the author consistently solves the following objectives:
1. Define the research strategy by which the diversity of empirical and theoretical knowledge on the problem of education in the history of culture is systematised.
2. Clarify the main provisions of the theory of evolution and the philosophy of knowledge, which as axioms are laid in the basis of the theory of education.
1 November 19 — December 5 1997, Leonid Kadenyuk made a short-term (15 days 16 hours) space flight as a payload specialist on STS-87 Space Shuttle Columbia.
2 The co-discoverer of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko (September 1969), which was being investigated by the probe of the European Space Agency Rosetta more than two years. November 12 2014, the world is first soft landing of "Philae Lander" on a comet.
3 The member of the International Planetarium Society.
4 [Future Human Image, 2011; Future Human Image, 2012; Future Human Image, 2013].
5 [Bazaluk, 2016].
3. Suggest the theory of noogenesis as an answer to the question: "What is man and what is the meaning of his being at the scale of the Universe?"
4. Suggest the cultural ideal, for the achievement of which, it is necessary to direct the potential of educational technologies.
5. Formulate the new theory of education, its consequences and the philosophy of education.
6. Explore the main stages of development of a mentality as a "mentality about."
7. Explore the practical possibilities of the formulated theory.
Essentially, the author offers a theoretical basis and practical recommendations to answer the question: "Whom and How should the older generations educate in the rising generations?"
Using the metaphors and constantly appealing to the ideas of Plato and Martin Heidegger, the author introduces the education as neuro-programming of the human brain. Under the influence of the special impact technologies, among which the educational technologies play an important role, as well as under the influence of consciously adopted decisions, an individual structure and functions of the human brain are formed, which directly influence the manifestations of a mentality in ontogeny and the history of culture.
The theory of education proposed by the author allows to make three qualitative transitions in the understanding of the fundamental meanings of Being:
1. Understanding oneself as a separate "mentality about"
2. Understanding oneself as "born to create."
3. The ascent toward understanding oneself as those who transform the Universe.
The meanings of the theory of education "Those who transform the Universe" upon which the theory is built, and which it generates, are much broader than the ideas of transhumanism, philosophical posthumanism and cosmism.6 They reveal the ontological cosmic nature of man; give the possibility of the ascent from the understanding of "I" as self, toward the understanding of oneself as that who transform the Universe for good of future generations.
The theory of education "Those Who Transform the Universe" is an opportunity to acquire a single philosophy of knowledge, the meaning of human life and the cultural ideal for the Earth civilisation. This is the genesis of the idea of man transforming the Universe. This is an introduction to the ontology of philosophy of the cosmos, in which man appears as a "mentality about," which is freeing from his biological nature, in order to find himself in a new qualitative state that is the Intelligent Matter of Earth. In this new state for himself, man is given the opportunity to influence the continuous and nonlinear complication of the Universe.
CO References
Bazaluk, Oleg. Philosophy of Education on Basis of the New Cosmological Concept. Kyiv:
Condor, 2010.
Bazaluk, Oleg. Crazy: a Fundamental Principle of Life and Death. Kyiv: Condor, 2011.
Bazaluk, Oleg. Space Travels — Traveling Mentality. Kyiv: KNT, 2012.
Bazaluk, Oleg. The Heroes of Ukraine on Education: Book One. Kyiv: ISPC, 2014.
6 For example [Blondé, 2016; Collado-Ruano, 2016; Krichevsky, 2017; Nazaretyan, 2017; Oleksen-ko & Fedorova, 2017; Ursul et al, 2017; Voronkova & Kyvliuk, 2017].
Bazaluk, Oleg. The Theory of Evolution: From a Space Vacuum to Neural Ensembles and Moving Forward. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016.
Blondé, Ward. Can an Eternal Life Start From the Minimal Fine-Tuning for Intelligence? In Philosophy and Cosmology, Volume 17, 2016: 26-38.
Collado-Ruano, Javier. Transdisciplinary Perspectives in Bioethics: A Co-evolutionary Introduction from the Big History. In Philosophy and Cosmology, Volume 17, 2016: 52-63.
Cosmic Ukraine. Pereyaslav Region: almanac. Edited by Oleg Bazaluk and Olha Shkyra. Kyiv: TSUL, 2012.
Future Human Image: Whom and How should We Educate in the Rising Generations. Vol. 1. Edited by Oleg Bazaluk. Kyiv: Condor, 2011.
Future Human Image: Whom and How should We Educate in the Rising Generations. Vol. 2. Edited by Oleg Bazaluk. Kyiv: Skif, 2012.
Future Human Image: Whom and How should We Educate in the Rising Generations. Vol. 3. Edited by Oleg Bazaluk. Kyiv: ISPC, 2013.
Krichevsky, Sergey. Cosmic Humanity: Utopia, Realities, Prospects. In Future Human Image, Volume 7, 2017: 50-70.
Nazaretyan, Akop. Mental Dimension in Social Causalities: Past and Future. In Philosophy and Cosmology, Volume 18, 2017: 193-207.
Oleksenko, Roman, and Lidiia Fedorova. Homo Economicus as the Basis of "Asgardia" Nation State in Space: Perspective of Educational Technologies. In Future Human Image, Volume 7, 2017: 113-119.
Space Travel. Volume 2. Edited by Oleg Bazaluk. Kharkov: ISPC, 2012.
Space Travel: Science, Education, Practice. Proceedings of the International Scientific and Practical Conference, December 2 2010. Kyiv: KUTEP, 2010.
Ursul, Arkady, Tatiana Ursul and Mideg Dugarova. New Goals of Sustainable Future. In Philosophy and Cosmology, Volume 18, 2017: 37-50.
Voronkova, Valentina, and Olga Kyvliuk. Philosophical Reflection Smart-Society as a New Model of the Information Society and its Impact on the Education of the 21st Century. In Future Human Image, Volume 7, 2017: 154-162.
