In recent decades, modern science—particularly neuroscience, physics, and cognitive science—has reached a point of profound tension. Despite enormous technological progress and unprecedented volumes of empirical data, certain foundational questions remain unresolved. Among these, the problem of consciousness occupies a central position.
After more than a century of research, neuroscience has not succeeded in explaining how or why purely physical and chemical processes in the nervous system should give rise to subjective experience: sensations, perceptions, emotions, meaning, and self-awareness. What exists today are correlations between neural activity and experience, but no explanatory bridge that transforms electrochemical processes into consciousness itself. This gap, often referred to as the “hard problem of consciousness,” remains empirically untouched.
Many researchers have openly acknowledged this impasse. Competing neuroscientific theories, while sophisticated and mathematically refined, often produce divergent and mutually incompatible predictions. Rather than converging toward a solution, hypotheses multiply as empirical data increases—a classical sign, in the philosophy of science, of a paradigm approaching its limits.
Beyond Reductionism
At the heart of this impasse lies a set of implicit assumptions that dominate much of contemporary scientific thought: that consciousness is located inside the brain, that it is produced by neural activity, and that subject and world are fundamentally separate. These assumptions are rarely questioned, yet they shape the entire framework within which research is conducted.
When anomalies accumulate—such as the unity of perception despite divided neural processing, the stability of experience under changing neural configurations, or the apparent lack of causal power attributed to consciousness itself—they are often set aside rather than confronted directly. The result is a form of scientific activity that advances methodologically while remaining conceptually stationary.
The Prieuré de Sion observes in this situation a striking parallel with earlier moments in the history of science, when dominant paradigms persisted despite growing inconsistencies, until a change of perspective made previously insoluble problems suddenly intelligible. In such moments, progress did not come from refining existing assumptions, but from questioning them.
Reality as an Artificial Order
In parallel with these developments, contemporary physics and philosophy have increasingly explored the possibility that reality itself may not be the product of spontaneous, unguided processes. The so-called simulation hypothesis, discussed by philosophers, physicists, and cosmologists, suggests that the structure of reality resembles an artificial or computational order.
This hypothesis does not imply that the world is “fake” or illusory. Rather, it proposes that reality may be artificial in the sense that it is structured, constrained, and generated according to principles that are not reducible to blind chance. Limits such as the speed of light, the quantization of physical properties, and the apparent optimization of physical laws have been interpreted by some researchers as compatible with an underlying informational or computational architecture.
While official science has not adopted this position as a consensus view, it is notable that a growing number of scientists, technologists, and philosophers have argued that the probability of complex matter and living organisms arising purely by spontaneous and unguided processes approaches zero. Biological organisms, in particular, increasingly appear as highly sophisticated, information-rich systems whose defining characteristic cannot be reduced to mechanical complexity alone. Contemporary debates surrounding the problem of minimal life suggest that for a system to be genuinely alive, it must possess at least a rudimentary form of interiority or proto-consciousness, however minimal or non-reflective it may be. From this perspective, life is not merely an arrangement of biochemical processes, but the expression of an intrinsic capacity for experience, responsiveness, and self-relation. In the human case, this foundational interiority unfolds into fully articulated consciousness, while in simpler organisms it manifests as elementary, yet indispensable, forms of sentience.
Convergence of Science and Chivalric Thought
For the Prieuré de Sion, these contemporary reflections do not contradict the chivalric tradition; they resonate with it. The traditional worldview preserved by the Order has always regarded reality as ordered rather than accidental, intelligible rather than arbitrary, and grounded in principles that transcend purely material explanations.
From this perspective, modern scientific discoveries do not dismantle tradition but rather confirm, through different languages and methodologies, intuitions that were already present in ancient metaphysical and initiatic teachings. The convergence between tradition and science does not consist in replacing one with the other, but in recognizing that both may be approaching the same truths from complementary directions.
A Living Continuity
The Prieuré de Sion therefore positions itself at the intersection of tradition and inquiry. It preserves ancient rituals and chivalric values not as nostalgic gestures, but as living expressions of an anthropological and metaphysical vision that remains relevant in the present age. At the same time, it remains attentive to the most advanced scientific and philosophical debates, convinced that authentic knowledge emerges not from dogma—ancient or modern—but from the courage to question assumptions and to explore reality beyond inherited limits.
In this sense, the Order affirms continuity not only with its historical lineage, but with the enduring human quest to understand consciousness, existence, and the deeper architecture of the world we inhabit.