(1) Vernadsky spoke about the role of the individual, and the individual's contribution to society, the cognitive contribution, the noetic contribution.(2) Generally, the line taken is that although there are certain limitations to scientific knowledge, these are noetic rather than ontic.(3) It represented more than a rigid code of behavior; it ‘is not a random collection of laws, but a method, an approach which creates a noetic reality.’(4) Now foundationalism is best construed, I think, as a thesis about rational noetic structures.(5) This is the so-called noetic principle, as described by Vernadsky.(6) He describes knowing as a process of abstracting conceptual images from created beings. Knowing thus involves an ascent from the particular data of sensory experience to the noetic realm of concepts.(7) Instead, reliable human access to natural law is a matter of noetic knowledge, of personal spiritual experience with God.(8) Moroney examines the views of John Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, and Emil Brunner regarding the noetic effects of sin, the ways in which sin negatively affects and undermines human knowledge.(9) In order for us to have true beliefs we have to have properly functioning noetic equipment (brain, spinal cord, senses, etc. that operate in accordance with reality).(10) The hemispheres of the brain are now generally held to be the seat of those teleorganic processes which are coincident with noetic ideas and the active faculties of the mind.(11) In the words of one of its founders, noetic science is concerned with subjective experience as opposed to materialistic science (which is essentially interested in objective experience).(12) It's the same noetic principle, which is referred to by Vernadsky.(13) They say that one could be rational in accepting a noetic system that has atheism as its foundational presupposition, since there is no good objective evidence for God's existence.(14) These mental images have no privileged status, such as Plato gave to his noetic Ideas or Forms; they are always true, but in this do not differ from the information provided by the senses.(15) The tradition of magical drumming is alive and well, and the effect of rhythm on our consciousness is recognized by more and more students of the noetic sciences.
