I think it’s incredibly telling that the hard sciences have practically stalled out in terms of advancement, only ever capable of spiraling deeper and deeper down their holes of “specialization”, while the polymaths, the true geniuses capable of bridging the gaps between these chasms seem to be so few and far between.

Rupert Sheldrake, if you haven’t heard of him, is unorthodox when it comes to the priesthood of science. A highly accomplished biochemist by training - but openly religious (Anglican upbringing) - he is one of the relative few in the scientific world who is capable of entertaining ideas without necessarily believing them which I think helps contribute to his ability to bridge these wide divides and come upon what could end up being the early markings of a paradigm shift (or even multiple).

The basic idea presented here is “panpsychism”, the idea that psyche, aka consciousness, exists in some form or another, infused throughout the entire universe. This would not only explain the “consciousness of degrees” that we observe in, for example, animals like dogs, whales, dolphins, elephants, etc (i.e. a more “limited” or different form of consciousness than our own) but also bridge a long-standing gap that has been created between “religious understandings” and “scientific understandings” of the universe, imo