Authors: David Jay Brown,Rebecca McClen Novick
Excitatory: Excites, speeds up. To describe the other type of neurotransmitter.
Field: A region of physical influence that interrelates and interconnects matter and energy. Fields are not a form of matter; rather matter is energy bound within fields.
Fractal: Computer-generated images corresponding to mathematical equations, that repeat self-similar patterns at infinitely receding levels of organization.
Gaia: A model for interpreting the dynamics that occur on planet earth as being part of a single self-regulating organism.
Genome: The complete set of genetic material or genes for a single organism.
Gylanic: See "Partnership Society."
Holographic: The condition upon which the information for creating a whole system is stored in each of its parts.
Hypnogogic: The twilight state of awareness, characterized by vivid dream-like imagery, that occurs as one is falling asleep.
Hypnopompic: The dream-like state of awareness that occurs as one is waking up from sleep.
Information: Non-predictable patterns that carry a message.
Information Theory: A branch of cybernetics that attempts to define the amount of information required to control a process of given complexity.
Ketamine: A dissociative anesthetic agent with profound psychedelic properties.
Left Brain: The left hemisphere of the human brain associated with the processing of symbolic information in a linear, analytical mode.
Limbic System: A region of the brain believed to be important in the processing of emotions.
Lucid Dreaming: The phenomenon of being conscious and aware that one is dreaming, while one is in the process of dreaming.
Mechanism of Non-locality: See "Bell's Theorem."
Meme: A term coined by Richard Dawkins, who defines it as "a unit of cultural inheritance, hypothesized as analogous to the particulate gene and as naturally selected by virtue of its 'phenotypic' consequences on its own survival and replication in the cultural environment."
Metaprogramming Circuits: A hypothesized part of the brain that is responsible for over-riding social and cultural conditioning.
Morphic Field: Defined by Rupert Sheldrake as "a field within and around a morphic unit which organizes its characteristic structure and pattern of activity. They underlie the form and behavior of holons or morphic units at all levels of complexity. This term includes morphogenetic, behavioral, social, cultural, and mental fields. They are shaped and stabilized by morphic resonance from previous similar morphic units, which were under the influence of fields of the same kind. They consequently contain a kind of cumulative memory and tend to become increasingly habitual."
Morphic Resonance: The influence of previous structures of activity on subsequent similar structures of activity organized by morphic fields.
Morphogenesis: The coming into being of form.
Morphogenetic Field: A non-material region of influence that guides the structural development of organic forms.
MRI: Magnetic Resonance Imagery-- A scanning technique that creates a visual image using electro-magnetic fields to see inside the body.
Nanotechnology: Atomic engineering--the ability to devise self-replicating machines, robots, and computers that are molecular sized.
Natural Selection: Charles Darwin's theory of biological evolution, based on the survival and replication of the fittest and most adaptable genes, through competition over limited natural resources.
Neural Network: An interconnected system of brain cells. Neurophysiology: The physiological study of the nervous system.
Neurotransmitter: Chemicals that transmit impulses between nerve cells or between nerve cells and effector cells.
Non-linear Dynamics: The study of chaotic processes.
Noosphere: A term coined by Teilhard de Chardin, defined as a non-material sheath that surrounds the earth, containing all of humanity's cultural achievements.
Ontology: Metaphysics is customarily divided into ontology, which deals with the question of how many fundamentally distinct sorts of entities compose the universe, and metaphysics proper, which is concerned with describing the most general traits of reality.
Paradigm: A cognitive model for explaining a set of data. Paradigm Shift. A change in the perception of information.
Paranormal: Phenomena that are out of the realm of that which is explainable through conventional science.
Partnership Society. A type of society in which both sexes and all people have complete equal rights and representation, and live together in peaceful cooperation. Also known as "Gylanic."
PCP: Phencyclidine-- an analgesic-anesthetic compound with powerful hallucinogenic effects.
Peptides: A compound consisting of two or several amino acids.
Phase Portrait: Images that display the state of a system at a moment frozen in time.
Phenome: The smallest linguistic unit.
Phenomenology: 20th-century philosophical movement dedicated to describing the structures of experience as they present themselves to consciousness, without recourse to theory, deduction, or assumptions from other disciplines such as the natural sciences.
Pheromone: Odor produced by an animal that affects the behavior of other animals. The way pheromones work is analogous to the way hormones in the body send specific chemical signals from one set of cells to another, causing them to perform a certain action.
Precursor: A chemical that precedes another in a series of metabolic breakdowns.
Quantum Physics: The scientific study of sub-atomic reality.
REM: The phase of the sleep cycle where there are "rapid eye movements," and dreaming occurs.
Right Brain: The right hemisphere of the human brain which is associated with pattern recognition and nonlinear holistic thinking.
Selfish Gene Theory: Darwin's theory of natural selection applied at the genetic level, which proposes that the unit of selection in evolution is not the species or the organism, but the gene.
Separatrix: The threshold between attractors in a dynamic system.
Sociobiology: The biological study of social behavior in animals, based upon the understanding that social behaviors can be genetically encoded and evolve through the evolutionary process of natural selection.
Space-time Warp: A crinkle, tear, or bend in the space-time continuum.
Strange Attractor: The orbital point in the mathematical mapping of a dynamic system that is neither fixed nor oscillating, but rather spirals inward.
Symbiosis: (Greek
symbioun,
"to live together"), in biology, term for the interdependence of different species, which are sometimes called symbionts.
Tangles: Diagrams that map the skeletal structure of a dynamical system.
Teleology: The study of ends or final causes; the explanation of phenomena by reference to goals or purposes.
Theory of Formative Causation: The hypothesis that organisms or morphic units at all levels of complexity are organized by morphic fields, which are themselves influenced and stabilized by morphic resonance from all previous similar morphic units.
Topological Manifold: A multi-leveled surface area.
Unified Field Theory: The Holy Grail of physics, which would mathematically unite all the known forces of the universe under a single comprehensive framework.
Virtual Reality: Interactive technology which totally controls sensory input and creates the convincing illusion that one is completely immersed in a computer-generated world.
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Bios
David Jay Brown is the coauthor of three other bestselling volumes of interviews with leading-edge thinkers,
Voices from the Edge,
Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse
, and
Mavericks of Medicine.
He holds a master’s degree in psychobiology from New York University, and was responsible for the California-based research in two of British biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s books on unexplained phenomena in science:
Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home
and
The Sense of Being Stared At
. David’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, including
Wired
,
Discover
, and
Scientific American,
and he is periodically the Guest Editor of the
MAPS
(Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies)
Bulletin
. David is also the author of two science fiction novels,
Brainchild
and
Virus
, and is the coauthor of the health science book
Detox with Oral Chelation
. To find out more about David’s work see: www.mavericksofthemind.com
Rebecca McClen Novick is the author of
Fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism
(Ten Speed Press 1999),
Portraits of Tibetan Buddhist
Masters (University of California Press, 2005), and a number of other books on Tibetan culture. She is also the co-author of the interview anthology
Voices From the Edge
. Rebecca currently lives in India, where she produces The Tibet Connection radio program for the Pacifica Network in the United States and writes for
The Huffington Post
.
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