Welcome

“Humanity is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your life unravelling it, don’t say you’ve wasted your time.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Most of humanity’s problems, such as war, poverty, and climate change, are self-inflicted. Sustainable, long-term solutions can only be found by unravelling Dostoevsky’s mystery of humanity. But this can only be done through an honest, rational, objective, and scientific understanding of human nature. I will post one article a week on a Wednesday morning (GMT). These articles will discuss human nature from the ground floor up. They include, therefore, articles on evolution and systems science. The topics that I have covered to date, and will cover in the future, are listed on the Index page. I would recommend reading them in the order listed, as each article builds on those previously published. You can also see the articles in my Quora space at rational-understanding.quora.com.  If you would like to receive articles by email, please click the subscribe button. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, I will be pleased to hear from you. My email address is email@johnachalloner.com.

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Most Recent Posts

An Imagined Conversation Between Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Roy Bhaskar

The following is, of course, an imaginary conversation, but one I suspect might have taken place had Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Roy Bhaskar ever met. Bertalanffy: For many years I have argued that science has become fragmented into isolated disciplines. We need a General Systems Theory capable of describing organised wholes wherever they occur. Bhaskar:…

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Productive Coordination

Why is it so difficult to combine knowledge from different disciplines? An economist, sociologist, psychologist, engineer, and biologist may examine closely related aspects of reality, yet describe them using different concepts, terminology, and forms of explanation. The problem may not be disagreement. They may simply be unable to see how their different perspectives fit together.…

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Three Skills for Better Outcomes

Reality exists whether we understand it or not. The challenge is that none of us ever see it completely. Reality is far more complex than the human mind can fully comprehend, so we all rely on simplifications. Those simplifications differ from person to person because they are shaped by our experiences, education, profession, culture, and…

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Here are five simple questions for you to meditate upon:

  1. How confident are you that you know the problems of humanity?
  2. To what extent do you care about those problems?
  3. How confident are you that you understand why these problems exist?
  4. How confident are you that you know the solutions to these problems?
  5. How empowered do you feel to make a difference?

If you would like to reply to these questions (and only these questions) in a 90 second, anonymous questionnaire, click here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/S2CQBGL.

When sufficient people have responded I will publish the results here.