Here are some thoughts on the nature of values —Piet Hut

Values in a world of facts

Modern science has given us tremendous insight into the nature of matter within only four centuries, from its modest beginnings around 1600.

Building on millennia of observation, starting with the Babylonians, and of theorizing, beginning with the Greeks, natural science has offered us—more than anything else—the gift of science itself: the scientific method. It rests on empirical investigation, the use of working hypotheses, the formation of self-governing communities of experts, an “open-source” sharing of both theoretical and experimental results, and a resistance to schism.

During those four centuries, human values with ancient roots have gradually lost their appeal, displaced by a shift from traditional belief to scientific fact—or so it seems, in naïve readings of what science actually tells us. We have gained ever-expanding knowledge, coupled with ever-increasing power over nature, while losing the forms of wisdom that once accompanied earlier traditions.

As a result, in the twenty-first century we find ourselves in a widening vacuum of values, drawn between two tendencies: one toward a ruthlessness bordering on nihilism, and another, gentler one, reaching toward new forms of wisdom. Yet unless these emerging forms of wisdom are at least in harmony with the findings of science, they will lack the strength to transform the prevailing cultural mindset of sheer materialism.

What if we begin instead from the phenomenology of reality itself—from a rich tapestry of appearances in which mind and matter form the two sides of the same coin? What if we adopt, as a working hypothesis, that matter and mind are equally fundamental aspects of reality—not as dogma or belief, nor as disbelief, but as a neutral assumption that can guide open inquiry among experts in the nature of both?

Such a move would allow us to explore whether a science of mind might become as rich and powerful as our existing science of matter. To my knowledge, this has never been attempted in the radical way I am sketching here. But to study mind as we study matter, we must begin on the same foundation: with an empirical body of knowledge already available.

This means that, just as the science of matter arose from Babylonian astrology and Greek philosophy and mathematics, a science of mind should draw on a shared empirical core within the contemplative traditions. My second working hypothesis is that this core can be found in nondual traditions, where reality transcends the subject–object split that shapes our everyday awareness.

We have little to lose and much to gain from such exploration. After spending two years writing a book-length manuscript called FEST Log—where FEST stands for Fully Empirical Science and Technology (of matter and mind), and Log evokes a ship’s log recording the voyage I have undertaken during the past half-century—I am now opening this FEST website, in the hope that it will become a watering hole for a new community, in whatever form it may naturally take.

Piet Hut,

October 15, 2025