It’s High Time for Science: Psychedelics as Tools for Scientific Discovery

From Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein to today, Science has relied upon its own brand of “mystical experience” to make substantial progress. For certain kinds of minds, intense downloads of visionary experiences arrive at opportune moments to transform a long-sought inquiry into discoveries which change history. It might be argued that these endogenously-sourced experiences bear some resemblance to a tryptamine trance. In 1966, James Fadiman published the first pilot study of creative problem solving with groups of engineers after exogenously-ingesting psychedelics such as LSD. Perhaps it is now possible to synergize these two sources of visionary states to achieve even more potent products of human intellect? Dr. Damer will recount his own experimentation in this realm which led to the conception and publication of an internationally recognized hypothesis for the origin of life on Earth, and how it can arise elsewhere in the universe. Long a tool for artists and musicians, could psychedelics refined with endogenous practices yield a high-octane fuel to advance science and engineering? If so, this capability will come just in time to tackle the hard problems of human and planetary survival.