The Reflexive Universe: Evolution of Consciousness

Arthur Middleton Young (1905-1995) was the son of Eliza Coxe and the Philadelphia landscape painter Charles Morris Young. Born in Paris, he attended Haverford School and then earned a degree in mathematics from Princeton. Always intrigued by the challenges of invention, in 1929 he selected the development of the helicopter as his first career goal. For twelve years he worked alone, using small models to test his ideas, until Bell Aircraft Company invited him to build full-scale experimental helicopters of his design. On March 8, 1946, his "Bell Model 47" received the first commercial helicopter license ever issued. By this time, he was embarking on a more philosophical quest. After the shock of seeing nuclear weapons used in World War II, he decided that science was in need of a comprehensive paradigm or "unified theory" which would bring to light the moral and spiritual implications of new scientific knowledge, and help guide its use. To this end, he established the Foundation for the Study of Consciousness in 1952 in Philadelphia, sponsoring parapsychological research and publishing an interdisciplinary journal. In 1973, the Institute for the Study of Consciousness was founded in Berkeley, California. Here, he worked with his students, and hosted symposia until his death on May 30, 1995. Arthur Young's "theory of process" cosmology is presented in his seminal books, THE REFLEXIVE UNIVERSE and THE GEOMETRY OF MEANING, published by Delacorte Press in 1976. In 1984, his helicopter, the Bell 47D1, "an object whose delicate beauty is inseparable from its efficiency," was placed on exhibit as part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.