Sensory information is what nature provides the scientist.  We could not know or be aware of anything much less functionally exist without the information that nature provides through sensory contact; it's experiential communication.  That which we perceive, experience or sense is information given to us and as such is, in a manner of speaking, natures voice.  It's our creator telling us about itself and about us, and in the process revealing its secrets.  Environmental information accumulated by our planet is a tool to understanding.

Sensory contact:  Observations of our surrounding environment indicate that some kind of active communication goes on between parts and groups of parts of reality.  Mutually sensed information is transferred back and forth between parts and groups of parts in the form of problem solving activity that ultimately resolve into more complex combinations of parts.  This activity organizes more intricate interdependent forms into physical reality.  Physical reality is a single active matrix of integrated, interacting, self perpetuating forms appearing out of the invisible field of energy.  All this interdependency points to intentionality and purpose.  Consciousness through sensory derived information inputs, even at the most elemental levels, is a creative happening brought about through mutual awareness; through sensory communication.

Conscious functioning whole:  Starting with wholes rather than starting with parts in scientific research seems more reasonable than starting only with discrete fundamental particles.  Revelations of quantum physics indicate that everything is tied together into one functioning whole.  Thus, in order to understand the purpose of discrete parts one must come to discover the functional relationships between the parts and how the parts serve each other and the whole.  In other words, the purpose of or reason behind a discrete part can only be discovered by examining the whole that contains the part.  The context of containment is what is essential.

The whole of reality is a continuous, active self-transcending process.  Each part of that whole from the largest to the invisible smallest is seamlessly interconnected.  This interconnectedness is the seamless fabric that holds the parts together to manifest the one single reality.  The process of creating forms within physical reality involves the force of self-transcendence inherent even in the smallest particles.  This self-transcendent energy results in particles combining together in a mutually serving, interdependent manner creating the moving, changing picture of forms that we experience as physical reality.  This self-transcending energy produces life out of matter, and mind or self-awareness out of life.