Ervin László is a Hungarian
philosopher of scienceThe philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
,
systems theoristSystems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...
, integral theorist, originally a classical
pianistA pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
. He has published about 75 books and over 400 papers, and is editor of
World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution. He underscores the importance of developing a holistic perspective on the world and man, an outlook he refers to as "quantum consciousness". In addition to his many writings, Laszlo has also recorded several piano concertos.
Life
László, son of a shoe manufacturer and a mother, who played the piano, started playing the piano when he was five years old, and gave his first piano concert with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra at the age of nine. At the end of the war he came to the United States.
László married Carita
Jägerhorn af SpurilaJägerhorn af Spurila is a noble family, registered with number 114 in the Swedish House of Nobility and number 5 in the Finnish House of Nobility. Members of this family live in Finland, Sweden, France and the USA....
16 November 1956. One of their two sons is
Alexander LaszloAlexander Laszlo an American systems scientist, known as co-founder and President of Syntony Quest and former Director of the Doctoral Program in Management at the Graduate School of Business Administration & Leadership , Mexico...
.
Work
In 1984, he was co-founder with
Béla H. BánáthyBéla Heinrich Bánáthy was a Hungarian linguist, systems scientist and a professor at San Jose State University and UC Berkeley. Bánáthy was the founder of the White Stag Leadership Development Program whose leadership model was adopted across the United States...
,
Riane EislerRiane Tennenhaus Eisler is an Austrian-born American scholar, writer, and social activist. Born in Vienna ca. 1937, her familyfled from the Nazis to Cuba when she was a child; she later emigrated to the United States. She has degrees in...
,
John CorlissJohn B. Corliss is a scientist who has worked in the fields of geology, oceanography, and the origins of life.Corliss is a University of California, San Diego Alumnus, receiving his PhD from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the 1960s. As part of his doctoral work under Jerry van Andel, he...
,
Francisco VarelaFrancisco Javier Varela García , was a Chilean biologist, philosopher and neuroscientist who, together with his teacher Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology.-Biography:...
, Vilmos Csanyi, Gyorgy Kampis, David Loye, Jonathan Schull and
Eric ChaissonEric J. Chaisson is an American astrophysicist and science educator best known for his research, teaching, and writing on the interdisciplinary science of cosmic evolution....
of the initially secret
General Evolutionary Research Group. Meeting behind the
Iron CurtainThe concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
, the group of scientists and thinkers from a variety of disciplines met in secret. Given the mounting threat to the human species caused by rapid proliferation of nuclear weapons and potential overkill, their goal was to explore whether it might be possible to use the
chaos theoryChaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...
to identify a new
general theory of evolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
that might serve as a path to a better world.
In 1993, in response to his experience with the
Club of RomeThe Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. Founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy, the CoR describes itself as "a group of world citizens, sharing a common concern for the future of humanity." It consists of current and...
, he founded the
Club of BudapestThe Club of Budapest is an international organization founded in 1993 by Ervin Laszlo to expand beyond the exclusively scientific purpose of The General Evolution Research Group to try to mobilize the full cultural resources of humanity to meet the challenges we face.-Club's mission:“The Club of...
to, in his words, "centre attention on the evolution of human values and consciousness as the crucial factors in changing course — from a race towards degradation, polarization and disaster to a rethinking of values and priorities so as to navigate today's transformation in the direction of humanism, ethics and global sustainability".
In an essay, Stan Grof compared László's work to that of Ken Wilber, saying "Where Wilber outlined what an integral theory of everything should look like, Laszlo actually created one."
Jennifer GidleyJennifer M. Gidley is an Australian psychologist, educator and futures researcher.Gidley is the elected President of the World Futures Studies Federation...
, President of the
World Futures Studies FederationThe World Futures Studies Federation is a global non-governmental organization that was founded in 1973 to promote the development of futures studies as an academic discipline.- History :...
, is a researcher in the areas of futures studies,
integral theoryIntegral Theory is a philosophy posited by Ken Wilber that seeks a synthesis of the best of pre-modern, modern, and postmodern reality. It claims to be a "theory of everything," and offers an approach "to draw together an already existing number of separate paradigms into an interrelated network of...
and
spiritual evolutionSpiritual evolution is the philosophical, theological, esoteric or spiritual idea that nature and human beings and/or human culture evolve, extending from the established cosmological pattern or ascent, or in accordance with certain pre-established potentials...
, which she refers to as evolution of consciousness. In an in-depth study of integral theorists she made the following claim:
A major distinction appears to be that László (2007) builds his general evolution theory in a more formal, systematic manner. He claims that he built significantly on the theoretical traditions of Whitehead’s process theory, Bertalanffy’s general system theory and Prigogine’s non-linearly bifurcating dissipative structures (p. 164). WilberKenneth Earl Wilber II is an American author who has written about mysticism, philosophy, ecology, and developmental psychology. His work formulates what he calls Integral Theory. In 1998, he founded the Integral Institute, for teaching and applications of Integral theory.-Biography:Ken Wilber was...
’s process appears to have been much broader and more diverse—but perhaps less systematic—gathering together as many theorists in as many fields of knowledge as he could imagine, then arranging them according to the system that he developed—which he calls an integral operating system (Wilber, 2004). Another difference is that although they both appear to use imagination and intuition in the construction of their theoretical approaches, Wilber does not make this explicit whereas László (2007, p. 162) does.
Ervin László is a Visiting Faculty member at The Graduate Institute Bethany.
Akashic Field Theory
László's 2004 book,
Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything posits a field of information as the substance of the
cosmosIn the general sense, a cosmos is an orderly or harmonious system. It originates from the Greek term κόσμος , meaning "order" or "ornament" and is antithetical to the concept of chaos. Today, the word is generally used as a synonym of the word Universe . The word cosmos originates from the same root...
. Using the
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
and Vedic term for "
spaceSpace is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...
",
AkashaAkasha is the Sanskrit word meaning "aether" in both its elemental and metaphysical senses.-Hinduism:...
, he calls this information field the "Akashic field" or "A-field". He posits that the "quantum vacuum" (see
Vacuum stateIn quantum field theory, the vacuum state is the quantum state with the lowest possible energy. Generally, it contains no physical particles...
) is the fundamental energy and information-carrying field that informs not just the current universe, but all universes past and present (collectively, the "
MetaverseThe Metaverse is our collective online shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the internet...
").
László describes how such an informational field can explain why our universe appears to be
fine-tunedThe fine-tuned universe is the proposition that the conditions that allow life in the Universe can only occur when certain universal fundamental physical constants lie within a very narrow range, so that if any of several fundamental constants were only slightly different the universe would be...
as to form galaxies and conscious lifeforms; and why
evolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
is an informed, not random, process. He believes that the
hypothesisA hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...
solves several problems that emerge from
quantum physicsQuantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...
, especially
nonlocalityQuantum nonlocality is the phenomenon by which measurements made at a microscopic level necessarily refute one or more notions that are regarded as intuitively true in classical mechanics...
and
quantum entanglementQuantum entanglement occurs when electrons, molecules even as large as "buckyballs", photons, etc., interact physically and then become separated; the type of interaction is such that each resulting member of a pair is properly described by the same quantum mechanical description , which is...
.
Gidley's research also discusses László's Akashic Field theory, including a three page hermeneutic analysis of his theory compared to the similar theories a century ago of Rudolf Steiner.
Some of the terms Steiner used to characterize his spiritual-scientific methodology, such as cosmic memory and Akashic record, are currently being reintroduced into the scientific discourse by László...
Macroshift Theory
László stated in his book
You Can Change the World that there is global choice for the coming
world crisisAn energy crisis is any great bottleneck in the supply of energy resources to an economy. In popular literature though, it often refers to one of the energy sources used at a certain time and place, particularly those that supply national electricity grids or serve as fuel for vehicles...
, which could come in the form of a global breakdown centred on increasing fragmentation of
economic inequalityEconomic inequality comprises all disparities in the distribution of economic assets and income. The term typically refers to inequality among individuals and groups within a society, but can also refer to inequality among countries. The issue of economic inequality is related to the ideas of...
and a new
arms raceThe term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation...
between rising powers. The other choice would be a global breakthrough led by international organizations. This would be by the linking of non-government organizations promoting
sustainable developmentSustainable development is a pattern of resource use, that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come...
, using the internet.
A Macroshift is defined as a popular movement to turn the tide from a global breakdown to a global breakthrough. László sees the years 2012-2020 as a critical period to change course as the coming crisis is taking shape in geopolitical current.
Global shift University
His latest project involves creating a university based on integral teaching over the internet offering a Graduate Program. Its goal is creating change accelerators which he defines as coalescing agents for social action and cultural awareness.
Autobiography
László has written an autobiography entitled
Simply Genius! And Other Tales from my Life, published by Hay House Publishers in June 2011.
Honors
In 2002, László received honorary doctorate from the
University of PécsThe University of Pécs is the Hungarian university with the largest number of students and faculties.-History:...
.
Ervin László participated in the
Stock Exchange of VisionsThe Stock Exchange of Visions is a project initiated in 2006 by Fabrica, Benetton's research center. It gathers visionaries from diverse nationalities and cultures, who hail from a wide range of specialties, to provide insight into their vision for the future....
project in 2006. In 2010, Laszlo was elected an external member of the
Hungarian Academy of SciencesThe Hungarian Academy of Sciences is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest.-History:...
.
In Hungary, the minister of environment appointed Laszlo as one of the leaders of the ministry's campaign concerning
global warmingGlobal warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
.
Publications
Recent works, a selection
- The Systems View of the World: A Holistic Vision for Our Time (Hampton Press, 1996)
- The Whispering Pond: A Personal Guide to the Emerging Vision of Science (Element Books, Ltd., 1996)
- Evolution: The General Theory (Hampton Press, 1996)
- The Connectivity Hypothesis: Foundations of an Integral Science of Quantum, Cosmos, Life, and Consciousness (State University of New York Press
The State University of New York Press , is a university press and a Center for Scholarly Communication. The Press is part of the State University of New York system and is located in Albany, New York.- History :...
, 2003)
- You Can Change the World: The Global Citizen's Handbook for Living on Planet Earth: A Report of the Club of Budapest (Select Books, 2003)
- Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything (Inner Traditions International, 2004)
- Science and the Reenchantment of the Cosmos : The Rise of the Integral Vision of Reality (Inner Traditions, 2006)
- The Chaos Point: The World at the Crossroads (Hampton Roads
Hampton Roads is the name for both a body of water and the Norfolk–Virginia Beach metropolitan area which surrounds it in southeastern Virginia, United States...
, 2006)
- Quantum Shift in the Global Brain: How the New Scientific Reality Can Change Us and our World [Rochester VT: Inner Traditions, 2008]
- WorldShift 2012: Making Green Business New Politics & Higher Consciousness Work Together (McArthur & Company, 2009)
External links