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Brian Josephson's home page

Updated News: Road-crossing crash on its way?  We have learnt that Greater Cambridge Partnership (better named Greatly Confused Partnership perhaps?) want to get rid of the traffic island in this picture as part of their Greenways project, saying "this island will be removed to create the proposed new junction design".  We are sceptical; this does not sound to us like a good idea from the safety perspective (according to that web site: "on a road where pedestrians often cross without a crossing facility (and the proposed design does not appear to have anything suitable, judging by the diagram sent), a refuge will decrease pedestrian accidents by around 40%"), and we have contacted the Council's road safety unit to see if they agree that this is a problem.

A preprint entitled 'Beyond the ‘theory of everything’ paradigm: synergetic patterns and the order of the natural world' is now available at researchgate.net, advancing further our project of 'rescuing fundamental physics' from the problematic state it is currently in.  The key point in the paper is the applicability of the insights of Coordination Dynamics to physics issues.  Combining these insights with computer-based studies of language processing argues for a picture, analysed in detail, involving 'experts' working together in harmony.  The preprint was uploaded to the physics preprint server arXiv on June 13, 2021 but, ever anxious to protect its readers from novel kinds of thinking, the archive's moderators rejected the paper, on the basis of it not containing any new ideas.  I suggested that if one read the paper carefully enough one would see what the new ideas were.  They responded (more or less) that their moderators were not into taking the time that that would involve, but they would reconsider if the paper were published in a reliable journal.  Really?  Wasn't the whole point of the archive to make papers available to people quickly, not to have to wait for publication in a journal?

Videos are now available for the talks given at the conference 'New Horizons in Water Science: Evidence for Homeopathy?'.

The video of my lecture on Complex Organisation and Fundamental Physics is now available on the web. It argues that "rather than regular physics underpinning biology, biological mechanisms involving 'structures of power' underpin the kinds of situations addressed in current physics". The slides shown in the lecture are also available.

How observers create reality  Wheeler proposed that repeated acts of observation give rise to the reality that we observe, but offered no detailed mechanism for this. In this paper this creative process is accounted for on the basis of the idea that nature has a deep technological aspect that evolves as a result of selection processes that act upon observers making use of the technologies, leading to the conclusion that our universe is the product of agencies that use these evolved technologies to suit particular purposes.
Some links of the day’ are available in this archive.

Follow this link for sundry Mind-Matter Unification Project video lectures (many now available at 720p quality), including:


Brian Josephson photograph

Welcome to the home page of Professor Brian Josephson, director of the Mind-Matter Unification Project of the Theory of Condensed Matter Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, a project concerned primarily with the attempt to understand, from the viewpoint of the theoretical physicist, what may loosely be characterised as intelligent processes in nature, associated with brain function or with some other natural process. Project members: Brian Josephson, Takeo Oku, Plamen L. Simeonov, Madan Thangavelu, Steven M Rosen, Alex Hankey, Mrittunjoy Guha Majumdar.

'From the viewpoint of the theoretical physicist' here means that there is a particular concern with general principles and the way these may help to reshape one's perspective on a problem. One of my guiding principles, also, has been the scientist's motto 'Take nobody's word for it' (nullius in verba), a corollary of which is that if scientists as a whole denounce an idea this should not necessarily be taken as proof that the said idea is absurd: rather, one should examine carefully the alleged grounds for such opinions and judge how well these stand up to detailed scrutiny.

See the cognitive science page for details of research relating to brain functioning; other topics with which the project is involved include


The publications list has been reorganised. It is now divided into categories and is no longer split between two servers.
Information of topical or other special interest is included on this page.


A selection of publications, and other activities of the Mind-Matter Unification Project follows:

In view of the increasing importance of the subject, there is now a separate Parapsychology Page

[WARNING] Major journal's attempts to mislead its readers regarding evidence for parapsychology

(added June 2nd., 1998) Michael Rossman characterises such behaviour as 'undignified and shameful for a journal of [Nature's] stature'

You can get many of these pages in book form in Japanese translation

Alternative Trinity Fellows' home page (available to Trinity Fellows only)


Cultural Area


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