Potsdam Denkschrift
Encyclopedia
The Potsdam Denkschrift is a declaration of Hans-Peter Dürr
, J. Daniel Dahm
and Rudolf zur Lippe under the patronage of the Federation of German Scientists-VDW
. It is the base – the “mother” of the abstract condensed version, the Potsdam Manifesto ‚We have to learn to think in a new way’ what was up to now signed by more than 130 scientists and personalities from all over the world.
Both were presented to the public in Berlin in autumn 2005.
The collapse of a course of action legitimised by the materialistic-deterministic world view of the classical physics is elucidated in several chapters. The "progressing uniformity of all ideas of value and affluence, habits of consumption and economic strategies on the pattern of a Western/American/European knowledge society" (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift) and its hazards is accentuated and a rethinking towards a more holistic view and behaviour is claimed.
Creativity, differentiation and connectedness are basic characteristics of life. The future is essentially open.
An interdisciplinary symposium in Potsdam
to discuss a first draft of the “Denkschrift” (therefore Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto) was carried out in June 2005. The resultant development of the critical and bracing symposium was the full backing of all participants, as well as the decision to publish a short Manifesto additionally to the “Denkschrift”.
On October 14th 2005 both - the short Potsdam Manifesto 2005 "We have to learn to think in a new way" and the more explicit Potsdam Denkschrift 2005 - were presented to the public in Berlin.
In the following months various international signees of the Potsdam Manifesto were contacted and successfully mobilized as supporters.
It could be seen as a miracle
, a very complex metaphoric appeal to the humankind. A fragmented description of the world is impossible and destroys a basic understanding of its processes and dynamics. Likewise the Potsdam Denkschrift is indivisible without destroying its sense.
Denkschrift and Manifesto connect to a central but not expanded appeal of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto of Bertrand Russell
and Albert Einstein
, published on the 9th of July 1955 in London: "We have to learn to think in a new way". The Russell–Einstein Manifesto was an ultimate calling for a new way of thinking that would guarantee war, in the future, to be completely banned as an instrument of politics and conflict resolution.
"Our deep worry that we, as members of the species homo sapiens, are increasingly reducing the living diversity of our earth and of our creative developmental possibilities, thus irreversibly endangering our survival in peace and our mutual exchange gives us the courage, and our awareness that we have to take new paths gives us the occasion, to compose this manifesto." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
In this spirit it is not adequate just to answer - to give symptom remedies - to the diverse and escalating endangerments for humankind and more over for its carrying biosphere
.
It is urgent to detect the deeper causes covert behind these various crises syndroms. They have to be searched in the grave failures of the dominant strategies in our thinking and actions. It is obviously that the existence
threatening problems of humankind are human-made too.
"This wide variety of crises today confronting us and threatening to exceed our ability to cope are the expression of a mental crisis in the relation between us humans and our living world. They are symptoms of deeper causes that we have thus far neglected to seek and reveal. They are closely connected with the materialistic-mechanistic worldview favored all over the world today and with its prior history." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto charge a unidirectional narrow-minded western-European-North American modelled way of thinking to stall the living co-action between humans and creatures and to hinder their viability via centralisation trends and averaging of living complexes from biosphere
to anthroposphere
.
and philosophy
Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto are highlighting plurality, diversity and alteration as genuine in a living cosmos
, as fundamental for a concerted evolution
.
The idea of a separated, fragmented reality
dissolves in the micro physics and dynamically transforming and differentiating relations are taking the place of substantial segregations. The image of a world
assembled from dead matter
is superseded by a cosmology
, what is based on an immaterial omni-connectedness and what is inherently “alive”.
"Instead of the world assumed until now – a mechanical, temporally determined “reality” of objectifiable things, the real “Wirklichkeit” (a world that effects) turns out to be basically “potentiality”: an indivisible, immaterial, temporally essentially indeterminate and genuinely creative bonding of relations that determines only “can”-probabilities, a differentiated potential for a material-energetic realization. The Wirklichkeit’s fundamentally open, creative, immaterial omni-connectedness permits us to regard the inanimate and the animate world as merely different – statically stable respectively open and statically unstable, but dynamically stabilized – articulations of an all-embracing “pre-living” cosmos." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
The dynamic processes of interaction
and transformation within the relational webs of quantum
s exponentiates in a “higher” living what humans experience
in the “mesosphere
” of bio- and geo-ecological animated world
.
"Animate nature draws its ability for continued, creative differentiate and cooperative integration from its “pre-living” (microphysically recognizable) primordial ground, whose “information”, through instabilities, rises enhanced into the meso-sphere, where it unfolds in more intense and richer form. The “pre-living” realm thus organizes itself in the complex variety of our “higher” bio-ecological vibrancy, as we encounter it in everyday life. Cultural-ecological variety and its developmental forms, i.e., its processes of transformation and balance, ultimately also results from this context." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
Determinism
s and linear casualties are just of conditional guiltiness, are part of our instrumental knowledge
. But they are not applicable to our patterns of thinking and to determine our imagined worlds via our orientation knowledge.
The diverse processes and relations between individuals, cultures, organism
s and ecological complexes are demanding within open systems different patterns of action and creations of strategies, than it is feasible within the old mechanistic construction
s, theorems and predefinitions of the scientific description of “the” reality.
"From this new viewpoint, the world – the Wirklichkeit – no longer appears as a theoretically closed system. This leads to an inherent indeterminism that results from the fundamental indivisibility and that is expressed in an inherent limitation of the “knowable”. Strictly speaking, we are thus forced to speak about the Wirklichkeit only in parables and analogies. There are in principle no longer answers to all the questions that, from a human standpoint, we believe we can pose, because the answers go nowhere." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
With a “farewell” towards the old images of substance
and its replacement by “relatedness” and “connectivity”, the borders between power of interpretations in-between natural sciences and humanities / cultural sciences are getting bluring. The theoretical fundaments of verification
and falsification
of “reality” are - severely taken - dissolving. Also and particularly the fundaments of our social, cultural, economical and political sciences and their traditions are put basically into question, since they constructed complex, but nevertheless deterministically closed theorems in their course of emancipation to the “hard” natural sciences.
"The materialistic-mechanistic worldview of classical physics, with its rigid ideas and reductive way of thinking, became the supposedly scientifically legitimated ideology for vast areas of scientific and political-strategic thinking. The progressing uniformity of all ideas of value and affluence, habits of consumption and economic strategies on the pattern of a Western/North American/European knowledge society is still legitimated by a way of thinking that argues for a rational objectifiability of the Wirklichkeit on the basis of secured scientific foundations. Where conflicts arise, a lack of instrumental knowledge is diagnosed and compensatory delivery is prescribed. The foundations of this orientation are seldom questioned, though there is reason enough to do so." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
Via those fundamental and inelastic world views economical, political and socio-cultural strategies and forms of organisation were legitimised above centuries, and, along that way, followed by increasing perils in an animated world. The recent crises scenarios are forcing up and unloading in all societal, economical, political and cultural as well as ecological levels.
"Quantum physics – and not just it – challenges us to emancipate our thinking from rigid structures so that flexible relationships can take their place. It becomes possible to loosen and gently dissolve the monostructural, centralistic constructions, forms of expression preferred by the materialistic-mechanistic worldview." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
The relief of narrow and mechanistic strategy-patterns, reductions and averaging forms a basic matter.
"It is urgently necessary to enable an integrative cooperation among the diverse economic exchange strategies among people, communities, and their natural surroundings as well as among the patterns of distribution in production, use, and supply, in order to ensure the provision of the necessities of life and the structural and institutional prerequisites for socio-economic exchange. The development of new decentralized and polycentric structures of production, supply, and decision-making has special relevance – indeed priority." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto identify necessary drastic changes concerning our future actions.
They demand "... a strategic orientation toward the paradigm of what lives" (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift). Because "if we continue to “tilt” our common playing field of life by unrestrainedly striving for power, so that the majority of humankind and a great part of all living creatures are slipping off, our problems will grow into a catastrophe." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
via our mindset:
"The confrontations and distortions we daily experience in our civilization should not allow ourselves to be led astray. Our existence as human beings today shows us that we, too, are the successful result of a similar development that has already gone on for billions of years." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifest finalise with the position, that the humankind is not imprisoned in its self-constructed conditions, but - as result of an animated, basically cooperative embedding - is capable of acting and transformation:
"For omni-connectedness, which we can also call love and from which life springs, is fundamentally inherent in us and in everything else." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Dürr
, Dr. Daniel Dahm
, Prof. Dr. Rudolf zur Lippe, the former ambassador of the Netherlands and Honorary President of the World Conference on Religion and Peace Edy Korthals Altes
, the head of the Environmental Protection Authority of Ethiopia and Alternative Nobel Prize laureate Prof. Dr. Tewolde Gebre Berhan Egziabher, the climate scientist and former Director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology Prof. Dr. Hartmut Grassl, Nobel prize winner for physics Prof. Dr. Klaus von Klitzing
, the Founder and President of the People-Centered Development Forum Prof. Dr. David C. Korten from Harvard Business School, the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Dr. David Krieger, the Co-ordinator of the German-Iranian Co-operation in the fields of climate protection, energy policy and sustainable development Prof. Dr. Mohssen Massarrat, the Philosopher and Anthropologist Prof. Dr. Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich, the Founding Director Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Prof. Dr. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
, the Economist and former member of the German Council of Economic Advisers Prof. Dr. Gerhard Scherhorn
, the physicist and Alternative Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Vandana Shiva
and 18 other Alternative Nobel Prize laureates (Right Livelihood Award
).
Hans-Peter Dürr
Hans-Peter Dürr is a German physicist. In addition to nuclear and quantum physics, elementary particles and gravitation, epistemology, and philosophy, he has advocated responsible scientific and energy policies.-Biography:...
, J. Daniel Dahm
Daniel Dahm
Johannes Daniel Dahm is a German geographer, ecologist, activist, consultant and entrepreneur.As a transdisciplinary scientist he works in the fields of sustainability and development research, ecological economics and ecological creation of values, future of work, plurality and diversity of...
and Rudolf zur Lippe under the patronage of the Federation of German Scientists-VDW
Federation of German Scientists-VDW
The Federation of German Scientists - VDW is a German non-governmental organization in the field of sciences....
. It is the base – the “mother” of the abstract condensed version, the Potsdam Manifesto ‚We have to learn to think in a new way’ what was up to now signed by more than 130 scientists and personalities from all over the world.
Both were presented to the public in Berlin in autumn 2005.
The collapse of a course of action legitimised by the materialistic-deterministic world view of the classical physics is elucidated in several chapters. The "progressing uniformity of all ideas of value and affluence, habits of consumption and economic strategies on the pattern of a Western/American/European knowledge society" (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift) and its hazards is accentuated and a rethinking towards a more holistic view and behaviour is claimed.
Creativity, differentiation and connectedness are basic characteristics of life. The future is essentially open.
Process
For the initiation, scientific feedbacking in content and composition and for the multiplication of Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto an intensive international scientific discourse was carried out since beginning of the Einstein-Year 2005.An interdisciplinary symposium in Potsdam
Potsdam
Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....
to discuss a first draft of the “Denkschrift” (therefore Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto) was carried out in June 2005. The resultant development of the critical and bracing symposium was the full backing of all participants, as well as the decision to publish a short Manifesto additionally to the “Denkschrift”.
On October 14th 2005 both - the short Potsdam Manifesto 2005 "We have to learn to think in a new way" and the more explicit Potsdam Denkschrift 2005 - were presented to the public in Berlin.
In the following months various international signees of the Potsdam Manifesto were contacted and successfully mobilized as supporters.
Background
The Potsdam Denkschrift is the more explicit, detailed and deepened “mother” of the Potsdam Manifesto‚We have to learn to think in a new way’.It could be seen as a miracle
Miracle
A miracle often denotes an event attributed to divine intervention. Alternatively, it may be an event attributed to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that a god may work with the laws...
, a very complex metaphoric appeal to the humankind. A fragmented description of the world is impossible and destroys a basic understanding of its processes and dynamics. Likewise the Potsdam Denkschrift is indivisible without destroying its sense.
Denkschrift and Manifesto connect to a central but not expanded appeal of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto of Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
and Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
, published on the 9th of July 1955 in London: "We have to learn to think in a new way". The Russell–Einstein Manifesto was an ultimate calling for a new way of thinking that would guarantee war, in the future, to be completely banned as an instrument of politics and conflict resolution.
Starting situation
Following the basic ideas of Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto the global situation at the beginning of the 21st century, 50 years after the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, confronts the humankind in an even more dangerous and more complex form."Our deep worry that we, as members of the species homo sapiens, are increasingly reducing the living diversity of our earth and of our creative developmental possibilities, thus irreversibly endangering our survival in peace and our mutual exchange gives us the courage, and our awareness that we have to take new paths gives us the occasion, to compose this manifesto." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
In this spirit it is not adequate just to answer - to give symptom remedies - to the diverse and escalating endangerments for humankind and more over for its carrying biosphere
Biosphere
The biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth, a closed and self-regulating system...
.
It is urgent to detect the deeper causes covert behind these various crises syndroms. They have to be searched in the grave failures of the dominant strategies in our thinking and actions. It is obviously that the existence
Existence
In common usage, existence is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. In academic philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning, being contrasted with essence, which specifies different forms of existence as well as different identity...
threatening problems of humankind are human-made too.
Re-orientations for Sustainable Development
In accordance Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto enquire for the deeper sub-structures of the diverse crises symptoms. They show radical and deep going re-orientations for the sustainable development of humankind and for our thinking."This wide variety of crises today confronting us and threatening to exceed our ability to cope are the expression of a mental crisis in the relation between us humans and our living world. They are symptoms of deeper causes that we have thus far neglected to seek and reveal. They are closely connected with the materialistic-mechanistic worldview favored all over the world today and with its prior history." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto charge a unidirectional narrow-minded western-European-North American modelled way of thinking to stall the living co-action between humans and creatures and to hinder their viability via centralisation trends and averaging of living complexes from biosphere
Biosphere
The biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth, a closed and self-regulating system...
to anthroposphere
Anthroposphere
The anthroposphere is that part of the environment that is made or modified by humans for use in human activities and human habitats...
.
Bridging Quantum Physics, Ecology and Philosophy
Via the linking up between quantum physics, ecologyEcology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
and philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto are highlighting plurality, diversity and alteration as genuine in a living cosmos
Cosmos
In 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...
, as fundamental for a concerted evolution
Evolution
Evolution 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...
.
The idea of a separated, fragmented reality
Reality
In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible...
dissolves in the micro physics and dynamically transforming and differentiating relations are taking the place of substantial segregations. The image of a world
World
World is a common name for the whole of human civilization, specifically human experience, history, or the human condition in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth....
assembled from dead matter
Matter
Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume...
is superseded by a cosmology
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
, what is based on an immaterial omni-connectedness and what is inherently “alive”.
"Instead of the world assumed until now – a mechanical, temporally determined “reality” of objectifiable things, the real “Wirklichkeit” (a world that effects) turns out to be basically “potentiality”: an indivisible, immaterial, temporally essentially indeterminate and genuinely creative bonding of relations that determines only “can”-probabilities, a differentiated potential for a material-energetic realization. The Wirklichkeit’s fundamentally open, creative, immaterial omni-connectedness permits us to regard the inanimate and the animate world as merely different – statically stable respectively open and statically unstable, but dynamically stabilized – articulations of an all-embracing “pre-living” cosmos." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
The dynamic processes of interaction
Interaction
Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another. The idea of a two-way effect is essential in the concept of interaction, as opposed to a one-way causal effect...
and transformation within the relational webs of quantum
Quantum
In physics, a quantum is the minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction. Behind this, one finds the fundamental notion that a physical property may be "quantized," referred to as "the hypothesis of quantization". This means that the magnitude can take on only certain discrete...
s exponentiates in a “higher” living what humans experience
Experience
Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event....
in the “mesosphere
Mesosphere
The mesosphere is the layer of the Earth's atmosphere that is directly above the stratosphere and directly below the thermosphere. In the mesosphere temperature decreases with increasing height. The upper boundary of the mesosphere is the mesopause, which can be the coldest naturally occurring...
” of bio- and geo-ecological animated world
World
World is a common name for the whole of human civilization, specifically human experience, history, or the human condition in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth....
.
"Animate nature draws its ability for continued, creative differentiate and cooperative integration from its “pre-living” (microphysically recognizable) primordial ground, whose “information”, through instabilities, rises enhanced into the meso-sphere, where it unfolds in more intense and richer form. The “pre-living” realm thus organizes itself in the complex variety of our “higher” bio-ecological vibrancy, as we encounter it in everyday life. Cultural-ecological variety and its developmental forms, i.e., its processes of transformation and balance, ultimately also results from this context." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
Determinism
Determinism
Determinism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...
s and linear casualties are just of conditional guiltiness, are part of our instrumental knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
. But they are not applicable to our patterns of thinking and to determine our imagined worlds via our orientation knowledge.
The diverse processes and relations between individuals, cultures, organism
Organism
In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole.An organism may either be unicellular or, as in the case of humans, comprise...
s and ecological complexes are demanding within open systems different patterns of action and creations of strategies, than it is feasible within the old mechanistic construction
Construction
In the fields of architecture and civil engineering, construction is a process that consists of the building or assembling of infrastructure. Far from being a single activity, large scale construction is a feat of human multitasking...
s, theorems and predefinitions of the scientific description of “the” reality.
"From this new viewpoint, the world – the Wirklichkeit – no longer appears as a theoretically closed system. This leads to an inherent indeterminism that results from the fundamental indivisibility and that is expressed in an inherent limitation of the “knowable”. Strictly speaking, we are thus forced to speak about the Wirklichkeit only in parables and analogies. There are in principle no longer answers to all the questions that, from a human standpoint, we believe we can pose, because the answers go nowhere." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
With a “farewell” towards the old images of substance
Substance theory
Substance theory, or substance attribute theory, is an ontological theory about objecthood, positing that a substance is distinct from its properties. A thing-in-itself is a property-bearer that must be distinguished from the properties it bears....
and its replacement by “relatedness” and “connectivity”, the borders between power of interpretations in-between natural sciences and humanities / cultural sciences are getting bluring. The theoretical fundaments of verification
Verification theory
The verification theory is a philosophical theory proposed by the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. A simplified form of the theory states that a proposition's meaning is determined by the method through which it is empirically verified. In other words, if something cannot be empirically...
and falsification
Forgery
Forgery is the process of making, adapting, or imitating objects, statistics, or documents with the intent to deceive. Copies, studio replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries, though they may later become forgeries through knowing and willful misrepresentations. Forging money or...
of “reality” are - severely taken - dissolving. Also and particularly the fundaments of our social, cultural, economical and political sciences and their traditions are put basically into question, since they constructed complex, but nevertheless deterministically closed theorems in their course of emancipation to the “hard” natural sciences.
"The materialistic-mechanistic worldview of classical physics, with its rigid ideas and reductive way of thinking, became the supposedly scientifically legitimated ideology for vast areas of scientific and political-strategic thinking. The progressing uniformity of all ideas of value and affluence, habits of consumption and economic strategies on the pattern of a Western/North American/European knowledge society is still legitimated by a way of thinking that argues for a rational objectifiability of the Wirklichkeit on the basis of secured scientific foundations. Where conflicts arise, a lack of instrumental knowledge is diagnosed and compensatory delivery is prescribed. The foundations of this orientation are seldom questioned, though there is reason enough to do so." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
Via those fundamental and inelastic world views economical, political and socio-cultural strategies and forms of organisation were legitimised above centuries, and, along that way, followed by increasing perils in an animated world. The recent crises scenarios are forcing up and unloading in all societal, economical, political and cultural as well as ecological levels.
Guiding to New Requirements
Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift are guiding to new requirements on our organisation and our handling within a multifarious living world."Quantum physics – and not just it – challenges us to emancipate our thinking from rigid structures so that flexible relationships can take their place. It becomes possible to loosen and gently dissolve the monostructural, centralistic constructions, forms of expression preferred by the materialistic-mechanistic worldview." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
The relief of narrow and mechanistic strategy-patterns, reductions and averaging forms a basic matter.
"It is urgently necessary to enable an integrative cooperation among the diverse economic exchange strategies among people, communities, and their natural surroundings as well as among the patterns of distribution in production, use, and supply, in order to ensure the provision of the necessities of life and the structural and institutional prerequisites for socio-economic exchange. The development of new decentralized and polycentric structures of production, supply, and decision-making has special relevance – indeed priority." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto identify necessary drastic changes concerning our future actions.
They demand "... a strategic orientation toward the paradigm of what lives" (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift). Because "if we continue to “tilt” our common playing field of life by unrestrainedly striving for power, so that the majority of humankind and a great part of all living creatures are slipping off, our problems will grow into a catastrophe." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
Appeal to Stop the Suppressing of the Potentials of Evolution
They close with the urgent appeal to stop the suppressing of the potentials of evolutionEvolution
Evolution 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...
via our mindset:
"The confrontations and distortions we daily experience in our civilization should not allow ourselves to be led astray. Our existence as human beings today shows us that we, too, are the successful result of a similar development that has already gone on for billions of years." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifest finalise with the position, that the humankind is not imprisoned in its self-constructed conditions, but - as result of an animated, basically cooperative embedding - is capable of acting and transformation:
"For omni-connectedness, which we can also call love and from which life springs, is fundamentally inherent in us and in everything else." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift)
Signees
The Potsdam Manifesto ‚We have to learn to think in a new way’ up to now was signed by more than 130 scientists and personalities from all over the world, inter alia:Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Dürr
Hans-Peter Dürr
Hans-Peter Dürr is a German physicist. In addition to nuclear and quantum physics, elementary particles and gravitation, epistemology, and philosophy, he has advocated responsible scientific and energy policies.-Biography:...
, Dr. Daniel Dahm
Daniel Dahm
Johannes Daniel Dahm is a German geographer, ecologist, activist, consultant and entrepreneur.As a transdisciplinary scientist he works in the fields of sustainability and development research, ecological economics and ecological creation of values, future of work, plurality and diversity of...
, Prof. Dr. Rudolf zur Lippe, the former ambassador of the Netherlands and Honorary President of the World Conference on Religion and Peace Edy Korthals Altes
Edy Korthals Altes
Edy J. Korthals Altes, studied economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is a former Dutch diplomat, resigned in 1986 from his post as ambassador in Madrid in connection with his public stand on the arms race...
, the head of the Environmental Protection Authority of Ethiopia and Alternative Nobel Prize laureate Prof. Dr. Tewolde Gebre Berhan Egziabher, the climate scientist and former Director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology Prof. Dr. Hartmut Grassl, Nobel prize winner for physics Prof. Dr. Klaus von Klitzing
Klaus von Klitzing
Klaus von Klitzing is a German physicist known for discovery of the integer quantum Hall Effect, for which he was awarded the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physics....
, the Founder and President of the People-Centered Development Forum Prof. Dr. David C. Korten from Harvard Business School, the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Dr. David Krieger, the Co-ordinator of the German-Iranian Co-operation in the fields of climate protection, energy policy and sustainable development Prof. Dr. Mohssen Massarrat, the Philosopher and Anthropologist Prof. Dr. Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich, the Founding Director Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Prof. Dr. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
Hans Joachim "John" Schellnhuber is the founding Director of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change. He is also providing advice to the President of the European Union Commission, José Manuel Barroso....
, the Economist and former member of the German Council of Economic Advisers Prof. Dr. Gerhard Scherhorn
Gerhard Scherhorn
Gerhard Scherhorn is a German Professor and economist.- Career :* Doctoral thesis on "Needs and Wants" 1959* Qualification as a university lecturer in Economics at the University of Cologne 1965...
, the physicist and Alternative Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva , is a philosopher, environmental activist, and eco feminist. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than 20 books and over 500 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. She was trained as a physicist and received her Ph.D...
and 18 other Alternative Nobel Prize laureates (Right Livelihood Award
Right Livelihood Award
The Right Livelihood Award, also referred to as the "Alternative Nobel Prize", is a prestigious international award to honour those "working on practical and exemplary solutions to the most urgent challenges facing the world today". The prize was established in 1980 by Jakob von Uexkull, and is...
).
External links
- Download of Potsdam Manifesto – English (PDF)
- Download of Potsdam Denkschrift – English (PDF)
- German and English book (Potsdam Manifesto and Potsdam Denkschrift)
- Vereinigung deutscher Wissenschaftler: Potsdam Denkschrift - Potsdam Manifesto 2005 (selected press reviews, comments and additions, list of signees)