Tag: science
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“Intersect: Science & Spirituality” – a conference in Telluride, CO
INTERSECT: Science & Spirituality Join us for a 2-Day Conversational Conference (July 27-29th) for the purpose of Exploring Syngergies between the world of Science and the world of Spirituality. Topics to include Cosmology, Ecology, Sustainability, and Consciousness. Speakers include: Drew Dellinger, John Hausdoerffer, Matthew Segall and Brian Swimme (via video). Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/intersect-science-spirituality-tickets-4239963846
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Searching for Stars: A Conversation with Alan Lightman
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‘Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine’ by Alan Lightman
[Update 4/19: listen to the interview here] On Thursday at CIIS, I’ll interview physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, author of the just published Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine (2018). As of this writing, Lightman’s book is #1 in Metaphysics on Amazon.com.* Lightman begins his reflections in a cave in Font-de-Gaume, France, famous for its adornment of…
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Whiteheadian commentary on contemporary scientific cosmology: Are the fundamental constants changing?
The following is a lecture from a course I’m currently teaching called Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology: Toward a Physics of the World-Soul. Watch the PBS Space Time video first for context. “The animal body is only the more highly organized and immediate part of the general environment for its dominant actual occasion [i.e., its consciousness],…
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Thinking Law, Politics, and other Modes of Existence with Bruno Latour
Below I’ve pasted a couple of excerpts from Latour’s work on politics and law. “Why do we regret that politicians ‘don’t tell the truth’? Why do we demand that they be ‘more transparent’? Why do we want ‘less distance between representatives and those whom they represent’? Even more absurd, why do we wish that ‘politicians…
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A conversation with the founders of Erowid.org in January 2017
I’ll be in conversation with Earth and Fire, the founders of Erowid.org, on Jan. 26th, 2017 at 7pm at CIIS in San Francisco, CA. If you’re not local, there will be a podcast version posted shortly thereafter. Click here for more information or to purchase tickets.
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Brian Swimme on “Why We Study the Universe”
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Essay republished in “Center for Ecozoic Studies Musings”
I forgot to link to this back in July, but Herman Greene, editor of the CES Musings newsletter, republished my essay Physics of the World-Soul: The Relevance of Alfred North Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology (2013) in their December 2014 issue. You can find the PDF of the issue by clicking here. Or…
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The Universe Story, and/or A Pluriverse Story?
Sideris’ article in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion Lisa Sideris and Mary Evelyn Tucker speak at a conference about The Journey of the Universe Brian Swimme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Swimme Lisa Sideris: http://indiana.edu/~relstud/people/profiles/sideris_lisa
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Cosmology b/w Science and Philosophy: riffing on my dissertation research…
From Whitehead’s Adventures of Ideas:
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John Cobb, Jr: Whitehead as the ecological alternative to Scientific Materialism
Scientists like to contrast themselves with others by their faithfulness to evidence. Sadly, they resist evidence that does not fit their pre-commitments. Aristotelian scientists at the papal court refused to look through the telescope because they would see what did not fit their philosophical convictions about the heavenly bodies. Modern scientists have all along ignored…
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No Newton of the Grass Blade: On the impossibility of scientific genius in Kant’s “Critique of Judgment”
In preparation for a lecture on mind and nature in German Idealism, I’m working my way through Kant’s third of three critiques, the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790). Prior to this sitting, I’ve only ever spent time with small sections of this text. For example, sections 75 and 76 in the second part…
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Bill Nye the Science Guy vs. Ken Ham the Creationist Bloke
Whatever you do, don’t go watch the entirety of the three hour debate that Bill Nye and Ken Ham just had at the Creationist Museum in Kentucky. Total waste of time. If you are interested in the “Science and Religion” dialogue, do watch at least the last 4 minutes. Here is a link. Fast forward to…
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Life in the Pluriverse: Towards a Realistic Pluralism
Levi Bryant recently called for a cross-blog discussion concerning what he perceives to be the problematic relationship between ethnographic pluralism and ontological realism. His call was instigated by Jeremy Trombley’s post on the so-called “ontological turn” in contemporary anthropology and ethnography. Trombley articulated what might be described as an ontology of the concept, wherein concepts…
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Science, Religion, and Philosophy: Responding to a conversation b/w L. Krauss, D. Dennett, and M. Pigliucci
Above is my response to the recent conversation between Krauss, Dennett, and Pigliucci. If you don’t know the context of their meeting, see the links below. I agree with Dennett that cosmology is an area of natural science where we are not even close to being done with philosophy. My own small contribution to the…
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Disenchantment, Misenchantment, and Re-Enchantment: A Dialogue with Richard Tarnas
This dialogue took place in October 2013 at Esalen in Big Sur, CA.
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Responding to comments about Bakker’s “blind brain theory”
Discussion has continued beneath my last post about Bakker. Below are a few of my comments there: rsbakkar writes: I advert to common idiom when discussing theoretical incompetence, but it certainly doesn’t turn on any commitment to representationalism – even less correspondance! The fact is, people regularly get things wrong in what appear to be…
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Reflections on Deleuze’s Engagement with Natural Science in D&R
In chapter V of Difference and Repetition, “The Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible,” Deleuze engages with the various scientific theories of 19th and 20th century thermodynamics, not by identifying his fictions with scientific facts, but by detonating the philosophical idea of “intensive depth” in range of the qualitative extensity studied in terms of the scientific…
Footnotes2Plato 