The primary objective of The Helix Center for Interdisciplinary Investigation is not to obtain knowledge, per se, but to aspire to an unhurried search for wisdom, emphasizing the centrality of a sense of wonder in this endeavor.
Philosophically, we stand against the trivialization of thought and the balkanization within and between the sciences and the arts. Fundamental to our promotion of these views is our roundtable format of open, spontaneous discourse, one facilitating novel encounters of questioning and understanding among participants. Each program endeavors to expand the boundaries of inquiry by facilitating a creative encounter with uncertainty in the face of scientific and artistic advances. To further nurture opportunities for creative social and intellectual exchange, we also sponsor musical performances, poetry readings, film screenings, and other opportunities for imaginative experience.
Visit https://www.helixcenter.org for more!
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The primary objective of The Helix Center for Interdisciplinary Investigation is not to obtain knowledge, per se, but to aspire to an unhurried search for wisdom, emphasizing the centrality of a sense of wonder in this endeavor.
Philosophically, we stand against the trivialization of thought and the balkanization within and between the sciences and the arts. Fundamental to our promotion of these views is our roundtable format of open, spontaneous discourse, one facilitating novel encounters of questioning and understanding among participants. Each program endeavors to expand the boundaries of inquiry by facilitating a creative encounter with uncertainty in the face of scientific and artistic advances. To further nurture opportunities for creative social and intellectual exchange, we also sponsor musical performances, poetry readings, film screenings, and other opportunities for imaginative experience.
Visit https://www.helixcenter.org for more!
What counts as a deficit? I can’t do sums in my head. I’m terrible at recognizing people’s faces. I can’t carry a tune and meanwhile truffles make me gag. I am so very overweight. Please don’t stand so close to me!… read more »
Mindfulness meditation is one of the most popular contemplative techniques in the world. Recently, however, a number of influential criticisms of the practice have emerged, many of which frame the technique as part of a larger neoliberal endeavor meant to privatize emotional well-being.… read more »
Pan played the Flute, Orpheus the lyre, Jimi Hendrix the guitar, Mickey Hart the drums. Melody, whether harmony or dissonance, could soothe the brow, agitate the body, or link with the mystical. In the 6th century BCE Pythagoras, listening to the “music of the spheres”, uncovered the celestial mechanics and mathematics inherent to music. … read more »
This question is nearly always posed rhetorically, as in: there is no “good” reason for war, is there? But responses to Why War? that grasp it literally are surely also called for. At the very least, merely insisting on war’s moral vacuity has sadly failed to drive it to extinction.… read more »
The notion of Otherness—for all its familiarity and slipperiness—has become so relevant in our era of rapid political polarization that a fresh and interdisciplinary examination of its roots seems in order. This roundtable will bring together philosophers, psychoanalysts, social theorists and historians to trace its origins and significance at multiple levels. … read more »
“So here it is at last, the distinguished thing”
So Henry James described his intimation of death. His brother, William, was grittier, but no less poetic in calling it the “worm at the core” that frightens and fascinates us.
Thoughts of aging and death have inspired some of our most beautiful poetry: “Upon those boughs which shake against the cold/Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang,” wrote William Shakespeare.… read more »
Panpsychism is the lightly subscribed philosophical position that consciousness is a property of all matter, large and small, simple and complex, alive and inert. According to panpsychism mind is everywhere.
Eliminativism is the view that consciousness, at least what most of us consider our mind’s eye access to reality (phenomenal consciousness), exists quite literally nowhere, not even in our brains.… read more »
Vibration sense is one component of touch. Refinements of this sense, and in some animals the emission of vibration – typically from the vocal cords – has evolved to echolocation, to clicks, grunts, roars and to speech.
The vibration of one special membrane, the ear drum, creates that wonderful interface that enables us to appreciate and locate sounds in 3-dimensional space and to discern what the source of that sound is.… read more »
Where life begins to distinguish the edible, the nutritious, the appealing, from the insipid, the poisonous, and the disgusting; this is where taste and discernment come into being. From a bag of Cheetos to Michelin 3-star fare we cover a lot of ground, yet financial means alone fails to account fully for the popularity of both ends of this culinary spectrum.… read more »
“Now the touch only is common to all animals.” Agrippa
The very notion of sentience, with its root in feeling, cannot be understood without some reference to sensation. And sensation itself has at its bare core a “something” we feel. The response to that feeling is the mark of life: “quickening” upon touch is how we distinguish the animate from the inanimate. … read more »
As the first sense to engage the world “remotely”, beyond the boundary of an organism’s body, olfaction delivers news from “over there”. But whereas it adumbrates a space beyond, what kind of space, what sort of world does it proffer? Smell engages the world as a series of pathways laid out on gradients.… read more »
“The Aleph was probably two to three centimeters in diameter, but universal space was contained inside it . . .” – JL Borges
Our eyes move. They rove and they direct attention. Indeed, vision and our ability to focus attention more generally are intimately intertwined.… read more »
What are the effects of media today? What exactly is “social” about social media? How do media shape reality? Are developments in AI changing media as we understand communications technologies? Sixty years ago, the Canadian Professor of English and Media, Marshall McLuhan published the unexpectedly popular volume Understanding Media (1964), which would go on to establish a vocabulary addressing these questions — a vocabulary and set of ideas that scholars continue to grapple with to this day.… read more »
Fractured: Covid 19 – Memento Mori vs. Memento Vivere; “COVID-19 Betrays America’s Cult of Curdled Optimism”; This Exquisite Loneliness; The Lonely Stories; 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed; The Quarantine Tapes; these titles were all attempts by our panelists to endure and make sense of the Pandemic. … read more »
What do you think of when you think of the number five? Do you think of symbol like 5, a pattern like ⁙, or the fifth item on a list? Today, the concept of number is fixed and eternal, unlinked to anything in the universe. … read more »
What is human life without emotion? Could the “dawn of humankind” even be imagined without emotion exerting its effects right there from the start? And across the millennia emotion has forever been at the heart of most matters. Human history has been shaped by emotion and reshaped by attitudes toward emotion; a powerful human force philosophers and theologians confront and reckon with again and again throughout history and in every culture.… read more »
The date of this Round Table is not a coincidence: William Shakespeare was born on or about April 23, 1564, and he died on April 23, 1616. This is a particularly auspicious year for celebrating Shakespeare: 2023 is the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, the first collected printing of Shakespeare’s plays and one of the most important books in all of English literature. … read more »
Astrobiology is the study of life on the universe. It uses an understanding of the nature and history of life on this planet to frame expectations for biology beyond Earth. Starting in 1995, astronomers have discovered exoplanets: planets orbiting other stars. Over 5300 have been confirmed, and it’s likely there are more planets than stars in the universe.… read more »
What is memory? How does it determine our experience and identity? To what extent does memory influence our understanding of the future? Or of time itself? How do individual memories differ from collective ones? What happens to our sense of belonging and selfhood when our memories are externalized in digital devices?… read more »
A new movement within Cognitive Psychology, known as 4E Cognition, views thought and behavior as embodied, embedded, enactive & extended. Each of these four strands has a rich (and ongoing) philosophical history. Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Bahktin, Vygotsky and others have drawn attention to the role of action and interaction in (in)forming our experience. … read more »
The primary objective of The Helix Center for Interdisciplinary Investigation is not to obtain knowledge, per se, but to aspire to an unhurried search for wisdom, emphasizing the centrality of a sense of wonder in this endeavor.
Philosophically, we stand against the trivialization of thought and the balkanization within and between the sciences and the arts. Fundamental to our promotion of these views is our roundtable format of open, spontaneous discourse, one facilitating novel encounters of questioning and understanding among participants. Each program endeavors to expand the boundaries of inquiry by facilitating a creative encounter with uncertainty in the face of scientific and artistic advances. To further nurture opportunities for creative social and intellectual exchange, we also sponsor musical performances, poetry readings, film screenings, and other opportunities for imaginative experience.
Visit https://www.helixcenter.org for more!
