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Happy New Year 2025! To celebrate, here is an encore of what proved to be the most popular episode of 2024. This rerun combines episodes 30 and 31 into one epic journey towards the frontiers of human understanding. My guest is Donald Hoffman. Our topics are consciousness, cosmos, and the meaning of life. Enjoy! Original show notes Laws of physics govern the world. They explain the movements of planets, oceans, and cells in our bodies. But can they ever explain the feelings and meanings of our mental lives? This problem, called the hard problem of consciousness, runs very deep. No satisfactory explanation exists. But many think that there must, in principle, be an explanation. A minority of thinkers disagree. According to these thinkers, we will never be able to explain mind in terms of matter. We will, instead, explain matter in terms of mind. I explored this position in some detail in episode 17. But hold on, you might say. Is this not contradicted by the success of natural sciences? How could a mind-first philosophy ever explain the success of particle physics? Or more generally, wouldn't any scientist laugh at the idea that mind is more fundamental than matter? No — not all of them laugh. Some take it very seriously. Donald Hoffman is one such scientist. Originally working with computer vision at MIT's famous Artificial Intelligence Lab, Hoffman started asking a simple question: What does it mean to "see" the world? His answer begins from a simple idea: perception simplifies the world – a lot. But what is the real world like? What is “there” before our perception simplifies the world? Nothing familiar, Hoffman claims. No matter. No objects. Not even a three-dimensional space. And no time. There is just consciousness. This is a wild idea. But it is a surprisingly precise idea. It is so precise, in fact, that Hoffman's team can derive basic findings in particle physics from their theory. A fascinating conversation was guaranteed. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, consider becoming a supporter of On Humans on Patreon.com/OnHumans. MENTIONS Names: David Gross, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Edward Whitten, Nathan Seiberg, Andrew Strominger, Edwin Abbott, Nick Bostrom, Giulio Tononi, Keith Frankish, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Roger Penrose, Sean Carroll, Swapan Chattopadhyay Terms (Physics and Maths): quantum fields, string theory, gluon, scattering amplitude, amplituhedron, decorated permutations, bosons, leptons, quarks, Planck scale, twistor theory, M-theory, multiverse, recurrent communicating classes, Cantor's hierarchy (relating to different sizes of infinity... If this sounds weird, stay tuned for full episode on infinity. It will come out in a month or two.) Terms (Philosophy and Psychology): Kant's phenomena and noumena, integrated information theory, global workspace theory, orchestrated objective reduction theory, attention schema theory Books: Case Against Reality by Hoffman, Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker Articles etc.: For links to articles, courses, and more, see https://onhumans.substack.com/p/links-for-episode-30
The world is governed by objective laws of physics. They explain the movements of planets, oceans, and cells in our bodies. But can they ever explain the feelings and meanings of our mental lives? This problem, called the hard problem of consciousness, runs very deep. No satisfactory explanation exists. But many think that there must, in principle, be an explanation. A minority of thinkers disagree. According to these thinkers, we will never be able to explain mind in terms of matter. We will, instead, explain matter in terms of mind. I explored this position in some detail in episode 17. But hold on, you might say. Is this not contradicted by the success of natural sciences? How could a mind-first philosophy ever explain the success of particle physics? Or more generally, wouldn't any scientist laugh at the idea that mind is more fundamental than matter? No — not all of them laugh. Some take it very seriously. Donald Hoffman is one such scientist. Originally working with computer vision at MIT's famous Artificial Intelligence Lab, Hoffman started asking a simple question: What does it mean to "see" the world? His answer starts from a simple idea: perception simplifies the world – a lot. But what is the real world like? What is “there” before our perception simplifies the world? Nothing familiar, Hoffman claims. No matter. No objects. Not even a three-dimensional space. And no time. There is just consciousness. This is a wild idea. But it is a surprisingly precise idea. It is so precise, in fact, that Hoffman's team can derive basic findings in particle physics from their theory. A fascinating conversation was guaranteed. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, consider becoming a supporter of On Humans on Patreon.com/OnHumans. ESSAYS AND NEWSLETTER You can now find breakdowns and analyses of new conversations from OnHumans.Substack.com. Subscribe to the newsletter to get every new piece to fresh from the shelf. MENTIONS Names: David Gross, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Edward Whitten, Nathan Seiberg, Andrew Strominger, Edwin Abbott, Nick Bostrom, Giulio Tononi, Keith Frankish, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Roger Penrose, Sean Carroll, Swapan Chattopadhyay Terms (Physics and Maths): quantum fields, string theory, gluon, scattering amplitude, amplituhedron, decorated permutations, bosons, leptons, quarks, Planck scale, twistor theory, M-theory, multiverse, recurrent communicating classes, Cantor's hierarchy (relating to different sizes of infinity... If this sounds weird, stay tuned for full episode on infinity. It will come out in a month or two.) Terms (Philosophy and Psychology): Kant's phenomena and noumena, integrated information theory, global workspace theory, orchestrated objective reduction theory, attention schema theory Books: Case Against Reality by Hoffman, Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker Articles etc.: For links to articles, courses, and more, see https://onhumans.substack.com/p/links-for-episode-30
Tập #48 như đã hứa với mọi người, Trí dành 50' trả lời những câu hỏi thú vị mà các bạn gửi tháng trước. Trí rất xin lỗi vì đã kéo dài tới bây giờ mới upload, và hy vọng các bạn sẽ có dịp nghe nó trong kì nghỉ lễ 30/4 năm nay. Các topics/câu hỏi chính của ngày hôm nay: - Cách dò đường (navigate) trong cuộc sống khi còn trẻ, giữa muôn trùng góc nhìn. Trí có nhắc đến khái niệm neo-Marxism (post-modern cultural aka woke movement) mà Trí thấy không khả quan. - Chủ nghĩa tiêu dùng lãng mạn (romantic consumerism). Trí có nhắc đến cuốn tiểu thuyết Flat Land của Edwin Abbott. - Cách kết nối với anima (Trí có lấy câu chuyện của Oedipus và Sphinx trong thần thoại, Trí trích từ sách của Carl Jung). Trí có nhắc đến khái niệm Logos (masculine force) và Eros (feminine force), cũng như Anima là một chức năng cho quan hệ (a function of relationship/feeling). Anima có thể tự phát triển hoặc cần được phát triển,... - Yêu bền (di chuyển từ romantic love qua compassionate love, vẽ ra lãnh thổ, đấu tranh cho hòa bình,...) - Sự phát triển của Châu Á (Trí có đề cập đến quyển sách The Asian 21st Century của nhà ngoại giao Kishore Mahbubani) - Và một vài câu hỏi khác. --- Cám ơn sự đồng hành của Tupperware Vietnam trong podcast này. Với thông điệp "sống bền, ăn bền, yêu bền", Tupperware hướng đến một thế giới xanh và bền vững thông qua những sản phẩm gia dụng thông minh, chất lượng. Trí rất vui khi được cùng sẻ chia thông điệp này. #tupperwareVietnam --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-tri-way/message
Los títulos de la entrega de hoy de La ContraPortada, el especial de libros de La ContraCrónica son: - "The new totalitarians" de Roland Huntford - https://archive.org/details/TheNewTotalitarians - "Novela de ajedrez" de Stefan Zweig - https://amzn.to/3YBPWyE - "Planilandia" de Edwin Abbott - https://amzn.to/3yuz3v5 - "Crónicas marcianas" de Ray Bradbury - https://amzn.to/3LeVEDy - "Ray Bradbury, humanista del futuro" de José Luis Garci - https://amzn.to/3J22AkC - "Siete pistas sobre el origen de la vida" de A. G. Cairns-Smith - https://amzn.to/3JvjGc0 Consulta los mejores libros de la semana en La ContraBiblioteca - https://diazvillanueva.com/la-contrabiblioteca/ · Canal de Telegram: https://t.me/lacontracronica · “La ContraHistoria de España. Auge, caída y vuelta a empezar de un país en 28 episodios”… https://amzn.to/3kXcZ6i · “Lutero, Calvino y Trento, la Reforma que no fue”… https://amzn.to/3shKOlK · “La ContraHistoria del comunismo”… https://amzn.to/39QP2KE Apoya La Contra en: · Patreon... https://www.patreon.com/diazvillanueva · iVoox... https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-contracronica_sq_f1267769_1.html · Paypal... https://www.paypal.me/diazvillanueva Sígueme en: · Web... https://diazvillanueva.com · Twitter... https://twitter.com/diazvillanueva · Facebook... https://www.facebook.com/fernandodiazvillanueva1/ · Instagram... https://www.instagram.com/diazvillanueva · Linkedin… https://www.linkedin.com/in/fernando-d%C3%ADaz-villanueva-7303865/ · Flickr... https://www.flickr.com/photos/147276463@N05/?/ · Pinterest... https://www.pinterest.com/fernandodiazvillanueva Encuentra mis libros en: · Amazon... https://www.amazon.es/Fernando-Diaz-Villanueva/e/B00J2ASBXM #FernandoDiazVillanueva #raybradbury #planilandia Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals
Edwin Abbott was a 19th century Anglican headmaster who wrote a remarkable book, Flatland, in 1884.
Vor 140 Jahren war die 4. Dimension DER heiße Scheiß. Mittlerweile kennen wir 11 Dimensionen, sehen in die Vergangenheit, wenn wir ins Weltall schauen und abstrahieren uns vollkommen neue Welten voller Strings und Tangas zurecht. Also nicht wir, sondern die Mathematiker. Einer von ihnen, Ian Stewart, hat eine Fortsetzung zu Abbotts »Flatland« geschrieben, die folgerichtig »Flatterland. Like Flatland, only more so« heißt. Ein Alice im Wunderland äh im Reich der abstrakten Wissenschaften. Natürlich musste sich Marock das ansehen. Das Buch »Flacherland. Die unglaubliche Reise der Vikki Line durch Raum und Zeit« von Ian Stewart gibt es antiquarisch beim Großen A oder Booklooker (und natürlich auch überall anderswo), gebunden und als TB. Links zum Weiterbilden: Die Hauptfolge Das 4-D-Haus vs. Flatland – Was ballert dich heftiger aus der 3. Dimension? – Wörtgewalt IV: Video | PodcastIan Stewart in der Wikipedia »Flatterland« in der Wikipedia Möbiusband (Wikipedia)Fraktale Welt – Welt der PhysikMandelbrot-Menge (Wikipedia)Das geile Mandelbrot-Fraktal-Psychedelic-Video von Orson Wang, aus dem auch die Melodie vom Anfang stammtMehr Infos zu dem Video, technische Spezifikationen und was das mit Planetarien zu tun hat Danke fürs Lauschen, noch größeres Danke fürs Abonnieren, eine tiefe Verbeugung für eine Mail oder Kommentar mit Lob, Kritik oder sonstiger Rückmeldung und ein virtueller Handkuss fürs Teilen und Weitererzählen. Und ein digitales Abendessen bei Kerzenlicht für eine Rezension bei Podcast Addict oder iTunes/Apple Podcasts (Links unten) und ein Abo/Like auf Youtube! Zieht Euch alle Wörtgewalt-Folgen mit Video (inkl. epischem Trailer) rein. Schaut auch auf unseren Seiten vorbei: WörtwerkDer KowalMarock Bierlej Facebook & Instagram & Patreon Weitere Tags: Podcast, Bücher, Literatur, Wortgewalt, Buchkritik, Nerdtalk, Marock Bierlej,der Kowal, Flacherland, Flatterland, Ian Stewart, Vikki Line, Mathematik, Möbiusband, 3. Dimension, 4. Dimension, Dimensionen, Fraktale Dimensionen, Mandelbrot-Menge, Möbius, Fraktal, Geometrie, Buch, Nerds, Humor, Terry Pratchett, Wissenschaft, Buchvorstellung, lesen, Roman, Flatland, Flachland, Edwin Abbott, Alice im Wunderland
In this episode, Phil shares how he learned about perspective, humility, and grace from the book Flatland. While it may not be a book about spiritual disciplines or God, it has a lot to teach us as followers of Jesus. Written over 100 years ago, this book shares how a two-dimensional being (a square) teaches […]
"True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing." -Socrates On this episode of The Alchemical Mind, I dive into an introduction to the mystical experience through a look at the 1884 book, "Flatland" by Edwin Abbott. What was originally supposed to be part of the upcoming "The mystical experience and psychedelics" episode, ended up becoming its own episode through a series of synchronicities that occurred to me this week. Through the use a Carl Sagan clip on "Flatland", I talk about why the mystical experience is important, and why having these experiences should not be discounted. I also talk about falling into the trap of thinking the journey is over, confusing belief and knowledge, the neti neti method, and more. Knowing through unknowing may just be much more powerful. Finally, I wrap up with a beautiful story from Shaolin Master Shi Heng Yi, on not giving up on the journey. If you haven't subscribed yet, be sure to do so on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a review, and share with a friend. Music provided by Kabbalistic Village. Huge thanks! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-alchemical-mind/support
Ask anyone what they think the 4th Dimension is and most likely they will say that it is 'Time.' Which is true, in some sense. But the 4th Dimension is more; so much more. It could be the lattice around which everything that has, is, and will happen- happens. The obsession with looking at higher dimensions and other worlds began in earnest in fin-de-siècle Victorian England. With figures such as Edwin Abbott and Charles Howard Hinton, people started to look closer at a dimension that we couldn't see, but perhaps we could very well experience. On this Episode on WMiT? Doug and guest Amber tackle a topic that might have ramifications as to how you see your life, and perhaps how you orchestrate it as well. Very Special thanks to Dr. Eric Wargo for his help and materials assisting in the creation of this Loopy Episode.
This week Stu tares into Edwin Abbott Abbott's 'Flatland', Dave provides the experience of a brand new cocktail, and Chris tells us all about what it's like to live with your bits in the wind.Enjoy the episode folks! Lucky number 3.Thank you to Apex Bloom for the use of our theme song 'Roll'
It’s the Draftsmen Season 1 Finale Part 2! Marshall and Stan continue going through youtube comments from the past episodes of Draftsmen. It is the last of the responses to the relevant discussions that artists posted under each episode. Call and Ask Your Art Questions: 1-858-609-9453 Some show links contain affiliate links to amazon.com The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin - https://amzn.to/2thnpoT Jim Lee - https://proko.com/draftsmen-media/jim-lee-artwork-s1e29.jpg Edmund Dulac - https://proko.com/draftsmen-media/edmund-dulac-artwork-s1e29.jpg Exit Through the Gift Shop - https://amzn.to/2rSu34K Bob Ross - https://amzn.to/2Pu61G0 Stan Lee - https://www.amazon.com/Stan-Lee/e/B000APCF62?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_6&qid=1576538411&sr=8-6 Susan Boyle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Boyle Grandma Moses - Mark Twain - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain Vincent van Gogh - https://proko.com/draftsmen-media/vincent-van-gogh-artwork-s1e29.jpg Claude Monet - https://proko.com/draftsmen-media/claude-monet-artwork-s1e29.jpg T.S. Sullivant - https://proko.com/draftsmen-media/t-s-sullivant-artwork-s1e29.jpg Heinrich Kley - https://proko.com/draftsmen-media/heinrich-kley-artwork-s1e29.jpg Chris Sanders - https://proko.com/draftsmen-media/chris-sanders-artwork-s1e29.jpg Akimbo, Seth Godin's podcast - https://www.akimbo.link/ Koyaanisqatsi - https://amzn.to/2YTNFS0 Flatland by Edwin Abbott - https://amzn.to/36EiH31 Jackson Pollock - https://proko.com/draftsmen-media/jackson-pollock-artwork-s1e29.jpg Mitch Reformer Hair Putty - John Paul Mitchell - strong hold, matte finish - https://amzn.to/35tinDZ NC Wyeth - https://proko.com/draftsmen-media/nc-wyeth-artwork-s1e29.jpg Eliza Ivanova - https://proko.com/draftsmen-media/eliza-ivanova-artwork-s1e29.jpg Jeremy Lipking - https://proko.com/draftsmen-media/jeremy-lipking-artwork-s1e29.jpg Lucas Graciano - https://proko.com/draftsmen-media/lucas-graciano-artwork-s1e29.jpg Artgerm - https://proko.com/draftsmen-media/artgerm-artwork-s1e29.jpg Learn to Draw - www.proko.com Marshall Vandruff -www.marshallart.com Stan Prokopenko -instagram.com/stanprokopenko Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
John Siracusa returns to discuss Edwin Abbott’s Flatland (1884). Will it give us a new perspective or will it leave us flat? (Spoiler, John hated it.) Host John McCoy with John Siracusa.
What is heaven? Throughout the bible we find different layers of meaning, including (1) heaven as sky, (2) heaven as God’s throne, and (3) heaven as God’s realm or dimension. Although heaven is a reality, it is not where we go when we die. Rather the bible teaches that the dead are asleep until the Read more about 149 Heaven’s for the Birds (Sean Finnegan)[…]
In the modern world, we often tend to view the scientific and the spiritual as diametrically opposed adversaries; we see them as fundamentally irreconcilable ways of understanding the world, whose epistemologies are so divergent that they espouse radically diverse ways of perceiving reality. However, this a rather reductive approach to what is ultimately a complex and nuanced intellectual relationship. Indeed, throughout human history the technological and supernatural, the scientific and the spiritual have repeatedly interacted, informing each other's respective discourses and reinventing themselves based on encounters with new ideas. In the nineteenth century, when a period of sustained and rapid scientific advancement transformed the human understanding of the universe, new discoveries about the invisible forces that shaped our lives – from the electromagnetic spectrum to soundwaves and the subatomic universe – encouraged many to believe that the invisible realm of the supernatural could be similarly understood through recourse to scientific principles and methodologies. It is this intersection of the scientific and the supernatural that forms the basis of Christopher G. White's exciting new publication, Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions. Published in 2018 by Harvard University Press, Other Worlds offers a unique insight into the relationship between religion and scientific thought at a time of rapid social, cultural and intellectual change. In the book, White focuses primarily on the imaginative power and pervasive influence of one key scientific concept: the possibly that the universe might hold within it unseen, higher dimensions. Over the course of his study, White analyses how a host of diverse individuals and groups – from scientists and mathematicians to writers, artists and even televangelists – have appropriated the notion of higher dimensions in order to explore, rationalise and explain supernatural phenomena. White maintains that rather than undermining religious beliefs, new scientific ideas, particularly those derived from physics, provided the faithful with a new framework for conceptualising the divine. Undertaking a comprehensive survey of various scientific, spiritual and literary discourses on higher dimensions, White moves from nineteenth-century treatises by Edwin Abbott and C. Howard Hinton to late twentieth-century science-fiction texts like A Wrinkle in Time and The Twilight Zone. In doing so, White shows how rather than opposing intellectual factions, science and spirituality have long been intertwined, with the scientific often providing individuals with new and engaging ways to imagine religious spaces and concepts. Miranda Corcoran received her Ph.D. in 2016 from University College Cork, where she currently teaches American literature. Her research interests include Cold-War literature, genre fiction, literature and psychology, and popular culture. She has published articles on paranoia, literature, and Cold-War popular culture in The Boolean, Americana, and Transverse, and contributed a book chapter on transnational paranoia to the recently published book Atlantic Crossings: Archaeology, Literature, and Spatial Culture. She blogs about literature and popular culture HERE and can also be found on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In the modern world, we often tend to view the scientific and the spiritual as diametrically opposed adversaries; we see them as fundamentally irreconcilable ways of understanding the world, whose epistemologies are so divergent that they espouse radically diverse ways of perceiving reality. However, this a rather reductive approach to what is ultimately a complex and nuanced intellectual relationship. Indeed, throughout human history the technological and supernatural, the scientific and the spiritual have repeatedly interacted, informing each other’s respective discourses and reinventing themselves based on encounters with new ideas. In the nineteenth century, when a period of sustained and rapid scientific advancement transformed the human understanding of the universe, new discoveries about the invisible forces that shaped our lives – from the electromagnetic spectrum to soundwaves and the subatomic universe – encouraged many to believe that the invisible realm of the supernatural could be similarly understood through recourse to scientific principles and methodologies. It is this intersection of the scientific and the supernatural that forms the basis of Christopher G. White’s exciting new publication, Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions. Published in 2018 by Harvard University Press, Other Worlds offers a unique insight into the relationship between religion and scientific thought at a time of rapid social, cultural and intellectual change. In the book, White focuses primarily on the imaginative power and pervasive influence of one key scientific concept: the possibly that the universe might hold within it unseen, higher dimensions. Over the course of his study, White analyses how a host of diverse individuals and groups – from scientists and mathematicians to writers, artists and even televangelists – have appropriated the notion of higher dimensions in order to explore, rationalise and explain supernatural phenomena. White maintains that rather than undermining religious beliefs, new scientific ideas, particularly those derived from physics, provided the faithful with a new framework for conceptualising the divine. Undertaking a comprehensive survey of various scientific, spiritual and literary discourses on higher dimensions, White moves from nineteenth-century treatises by Edwin Abbott and C. Howard Hinton to late twentieth-century science-fiction texts like A Wrinkle in Time and The Twilight Zone. In doing so, White shows how rather than opposing intellectual factions, science and spirituality have long been intertwined, with the scientific often providing individuals with new and engaging ways to imagine religious spaces and concepts. Miranda Corcoran received her Ph.D. in 2016 from University College Cork, where she currently teaches American literature. Her research interests include Cold-War literature, genre fiction, literature and psychology, and popular culture. She has published articles on paranoia, literature, and Cold-War popular culture in The Boolean, Americana, and Transverse, and contributed a book chapter on transnational paranoia to the recently published book Atlantic Crossings: Archaeology, Literature, and Spatial Culture. She blogs about literature and popular culture HERE and can also be found on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In the modern world, we often tend to view the scientific and the spiritual as diametrically opposed adversaries; we see them as fundamentally irreconcilable ways of understanding the world, whose epistemologies are so divergent that they espouse radically diverse ways of perceiving reality. However, this a rather reductive approach to what is ultimately a complex and nuanced intellectual relationship. Indeed, throughout human history the technological and supernatural, the scientific and the spiritual have repeatedly interacted, informing each other’s respective discourses and reinventing themselves based on encounters with new ideas. In the nineteenth century, when a period of sustained and rapid scientific advancement transformed the human understanding of the universe, new discoveries about the invisible forces that shaped our lives – from the electromagnetic spectrum to soundwaves and the subatomic universe – encouraged many to believe that the invisible realm of the supernatural could be similarly understood through recourse to scientific principles and methodologies. It is this intersection of the scientific and the supernatural that forms the basis of Christopher G. White’s exciting new publication, Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions. Published in 2018 by Harvard University Press, Other Worlds offers a unique insight into the relationship between religion and scientific thought at a time of rapid social, cultural and intellectual change. In the book, White focuses primarily on the imaginative power and pervasive influence of one key scientific concept: the possibly that the universe might hold within it unseen, higher dimensions. Over the course of his study, White analyses how a host of diverse individuals and groups – from scientists and mathematicians to writers, artists and even televangelists – have appropriated the notion of higher dimensions in order to explore, rationalise and explain supernatural phenomena. White maintains that rather than undermining religious beliefs, new scientific ideas, particularly those derived from physics, provided the faithful with a new framework for conceptualising the divine. Undertaking a comprehensive survey of various scientific, spiritual and literary discourses on higher dimensions, White moves from nineteenth-century treatises by Edwin Abbott and C. Howard Hinton to late twentieth-century science-fiction texts like A Wrinkle in Time and The Twilight Zone. In doing so, White shows how rather than opposing intellectual factions, science and spirituality have long been intertwined, with the scientific often providing individuals with new and engaging ways to imagine religious spaces and concepts. Miranda Corcoran received her Ph.D. in 2016 from University College Cork, where she currently teaches American literature. Her research interests include Cold-War literature, genre fiction, literature and psychology, and popular culture. She has published articles on paranoia, literature, and Cold-War popular culture in The Boolean, Americana, and Transverse, and contributed a book chapter on transnational paranoia to the recently published book Atlantic Crossings: Archaeology, Literature, and Spatial Culture. She blogs about literature and popular culture HERE and can also be found on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In the modern world, we often tend to view the scientific and the spiritual as diametrically opposed adversaries; we see them as fundamentally irreconcilable ways of understanding the world, whose epistemologies are so divergent that they espouse radically diverse ways of perceiving reality. However, this a rather reductive approach to what is ultimately a complex and nuanced intellectual relationship. Indeed, throughout human history the technological and supernatural, the scientific and the spiritual have repeatedly interacted, informing each other’s respective discourses and reinventing themselves based on encounters with new ideas. In the nineteenth century, when a period of sustained and rapid scientific advancement transformed the human understanding of the universe, new discoveries about the invisible forces that shaped our lives – from the electromagnetic spectrum to soundwaves and the subatomic universe – encouraged many to believe that the invisible realm of the supernatural could be similarly understood through recourse to scientific principles and methodologies. It is this intersection of the scientific and the supernatural that forms the basis of Christopher G. White’s exciting new publication, Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions. Published in 2018 by Harvard University Press, Other Worlds offers a unique insight into the relationship between religion and scientific thought at a time of rapid social, cultural and intellectual change. In the book, White focuses primarily on the imaginative power and pervasive influence of one key scientific concept: the possibly that the universe might hold within it unseen, higher dimensions. Over the course of his study, White analyses how a host of diverse individuals and groups – from scientists and mathematicians to writers, artists and even televangelists – have appropriated the notion of higher dimensions in order to explore, rationalise and explain supernatural phenomena. White maintains that rather than undermining religious beliefs, new scientific ideas, particularly those derived from physics, provided the faithful with a new framework for conceptualising the divine. Undertaking a comprehensive survey of various scientific, spiritual and literary discourses on higher dimensions, White moves from nineteenth-century treatises by Edwin Abbott and C. Howard Hinton to late twentieth-century science-fiction texts like A Wrinkle in Time and The Twilight Zone. In doing so, White shows how rather than opposing intellectual factions, science and spirituality have long been intertwined, with the scientific often providing individuals with new and engaging ways to imagine religious spaces and concepts. Miranda Corcoran received her Ph.D. in 2016 from University College Cork, where she currently teaches American literature. Her research interests include Cold-War literature, genre fiction, literature and psychology, and popular culture. She has published articles on paranoia, literature, and Cold-War popular culture in The Boolean, Americana, and Transverse, and contributed a book chapter on transnational paranoia to the recently published book Atlantic Crossings: Archaeology, Literature, and Spatial Culture. She blogs about literature and popular culture HERE and can also be found on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In the modern world, we often tend to view the scientific and the spiritual as diametrically opposed adversaries; we see them as fundamentally irreconcilable ways of understanding the world, whose epistemologies are so divergent that they espouse radically diverse ways of perceiving reality. However, this a rather reductive approach to what is ultimately a complex and nuanced intellectual relationship. Indeed, throughout human history the technological and supernatural, the scientific and the spiritual have repeatedly interacted, informing each other’s respective discourses and reinventing themselves based on encounters with new ideas. In the nineteenth century, when a period of sustained and rapid scientific advancement transformed the human understanding of the universe, new discoveries about the invisible forces that shaped our lives – from the electromagnetic spectrum to soundwaves and the subatomic universe – encouraged many to believe that the invisible realm of the supernatural could be similarly understood through recourse to scientific principles and methodologies. It is this intersection of the scientific and the supernatural that forms the basis of Christopher G. White’s exciting new publication, Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions. Published in 2018 by Harvard University Press, Other Worlds offers a unique insight into the relationship between religion and scientific thought at a time of rapid social, cultural and intellectual change. In the book, White focuses primarily on the imaginative power and pervasive influence of one key scientific concept: the possibly that the universe might hold within it unseen, higher dimensions. Over the course of his study, White analyses how a host of diverse individuals and groups – from scientists and mathematicians to writers, artists and even televangelists – have appropriated the notion of higher dimensions in order to explore, rationalise and explain supernatural phenomena. White maintains that rather than undermining religious beliefs, new scientific ideas, particularly those derived from physics, provided the faithful with a new framework for conceptualising the divine. Undertaking a comprehensive survey of various scientific, spiritual and literary discourses on higher dimensions, White moves from nineteenth-century treatises by Edwin Abbott and C. Howard Hinton to late twentieth-century science-fiction texts like A Wrinkle in Time and The Twilight Zone. In doing so, White shows how rather than opposing intellectual factions, science and spirituality have long been intertwined, with the scientific often providing individuals with new and engaging ways to imagine religious spaces and concepts. Miranda Corcoran received her Ph.D. in 2016 from University College Cork, where she currently teaches American literature. Her research interests include Cold-War literature, genre fiction, literature and psychology, and popular culture. She has published articles on paranoia, literature, and Cold-War popular culture in The Boolean, Americana, and Transverse, and contributed a book chapter on transnational paranoia to the recently published book Atlantic Crossings: Archaeology, Literature, and Spatial Culture. She blogs about literature and popular culture HERE and can also be found on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In the modern world, we often tend to view the scientific and the spiritual as diametrically opposed adversaries; we see them as fundamentally irreconcilable ways of understanding the world, whose epistemologies are so divergent that they espouse radically diverse ways of perceiving reality. However, this a rather reductive approach to what is ultimately a complex and nuanced intellectual relationship. Indeed, throughout human history the technological and supernatural, the scientific and the spiritual have repeatedly interacted, informing each other’s respective discourses and reinventing themselves based on encounters with new ideas. In the nineteenth century, when a period of sustained and rapid scientific advancement transformed the human understanding of the universe, new discoveries about the invisible forces that shaped our lives – from the electromagnetic spectrum to soundwaves and the subatomic universe – encouraged many to believe that the invisible realm of the supernatural could be similarly understood through recourse to scientific principles and methodologies. It is this intersection of the scientific and the supernatural that forms the basis of Christopher G. White’s exciting new publication, Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions. Published in 2018 by Harvard University Press, Other Worlds offers a unique insight into the relationship between religion and scientific thought at a time of rapid social, cultural and intellectual change. In the book, White focuses primarily on the imaginative power and pervasive influence of one key scientific concept: the possibly that the universe might hold within it unseen, higher dimensions. Over the course of his study, White analyses how a host of diverse individuals and groups – from scientists and mathematicians to writers, artists and even televangelists – have appropriated the notion of higher dimensions in order to explore, rationalise and explain supernatural phenomena. White maintains that rather than undermining religious beliefs, new scientific ideas, particularly those derived from physics, provided the faithful with a new framework for conceptualising the divine. Undertaking a comprehensive survey of various scientific, spiritual and literary discourses on higher dimensions, White moves from nineteenth-century treatises by Edwin Abbott and C. Howard Hinton to late twentieth-century science-fiction texts like A Wrinkle in Time and The Twilight Zone. In doing so, White shows how rather than opposing intellectual factions, science and spirituality have long been intertwined, with the scientific often providing individuals with new and engaging ways to imagine religious spaces and concepts. Miranda Corcoran received her Ph.D. in 2016 from University College Cork, where she currently teaches American literature. Her research interests include Cold-War literature, genre fiction, literature and psychology, and popular culture. She has published articles on paranoia, literature, and Cold-War popular culture in The Boolean, Americana, and Transverse, and contributed a book chapter on transnational paranoia to the recently published book Atlantic Crossings: Archaeology, Literature, and Spatial Culture. She blogs about literature and popular culture HERE and can also be found on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In the modern world, we often tend to view the scientific and the spiritual as diametrically opposed adversaries; we see them as fundamentally irreconcilable ways of understanding the world, whose epistemologies are so divergent that they espouse radically diverse ways of perceiving reality. However, this a rather reductive approach to what is ultimately a complex and nuanced intellectual relationship. Indeed, throughout human history the technological and supernatural, the scientific and the spiritual have repeatedly interacted, informing each other’s respective discourses and reinventing themselves based on encounters with new ideas. In the nineteenth century, when a period of sustained and rapid scientific advancement transformed the human understanding of the universe, new discoveries about the invisible forces that shaped our lives – from the electromagnetic spectrum to soundwaves and the subatomic universe – encouraged many to believe that the invisible realm of the supernatural could be similarly understood through recourse to scientific principles and methodologies. It is this intersection of the scientific and the supernatural that forms the basis of Christopher G. White’s exciting new publication, Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions. Published in 2018 by Harvard University Press, Other Worlds offers a unique insight into the relationship between religion and scientific thought at a time of rapid social, cultural and intellectual change. In the book, White focuses primarily on the imaginative power and pervasive influence of one key scientific concept: the possibly that the universe might hold within it unseen, higher dimensions. Over the course of his study, White analyses how a host of diverse individuals and groups – from scientists and mathematicians to writers, artists and even televangelists – have appropriated the notion of higher dimensions in order to explore, rationalise and explain supernatural phenomena. White maintains that rather than undermining religious beliefs, new scientific ideas, particularly those derived from physics, provided the faithful with a new framework for conceptualising the divine. Undertaking a comprehensive survey of various scientific, spiritual and literary discourses on higher dimensions, White moves from nineteenth-century treatises by Edwin Abbott and C. Howard Hinton to late twentieth-century science-fiction texts like A Wrinkle in Time and The Twilight Zone. In doing so, White shows how rather than opposing intellectual factions, science and spirituality have long been intertwined, with the scientific often providing individuals with new and engaging ways to imagine religious spaces and concepts. Miranda Corcoran received her Ph.D. in 2016 from University College Cork, where she currently teaches American literature. Her research interests include Cold-War literature, genre fiction, literature and psychology, and popular culture. She has published articles on paranoia, literature, and Cold-War popular culture in The Boolean, Americana, and Transverse, and contributed a book chapter on transnational paranoia to the recently published book Atlantic Crossings: Archaeology, Literature, and Spatial Culture. She blogs about literature and popular culture HERE and can also be found on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Neil deGrasse Tyson, mathematician John Allen Paulos, physicist James Kakalios, and comic co-host Harrison Greenbaum investigate the fourth dimension, hypercubes, wormholes, Edwin Abbott’s “Flatland,” and much more! NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/cosmic-queries-time-and-higher-dimensions/
#doctorwho #flatline #epub reprinted from wiki Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is an by the English schoolmaster . Writing pseudonymously as "A Square", the book used the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland to comment on the hierarchy of culture, but the novella's more enduring contribution is its examination of . Several films have been made from the story, including the feature film (2007). Other efforts have been short or experimental films, including one narrated by and the short films (2007) and starring and . Contents [] Plot[] Illustration of a simple house in Flatland. The story describes a two-dimensional world occupied by geometric figures, whereof women are simple line-segments, while men are polygons with various numbers of sides. The narrator is a , a member of the caste of gentlemen and professionals, who guides the readers through some of the implications of life in two dimensions. The Square dreams about a visit to a one-dimensional world (Lineland) inhabited by "lustrous points", and attempts to convince the realm's monarch of a second dimension; but is unable to do so. He is himself visited by a three-dimensional , which he cannot comprehend until he sees Spaceland (a tridimensional world) for himself. This Sphere visits Flatland at the turn of each millennium to introduce a new apostle to the idea of a third dimension in the hopes of eventually educating the population of Flatland. From the safety of Spaceland, they are able to observe the leaders of Flatland secretly acknowledging the existence of the sphere and prescribing the silencing of anyone found preaching the truth of Spaceland and the third dimension. After this proclamation is made, many witnesses are massacred or imprisoned (according to caste). After the Square's mind is opened to new dimensions, he tries to convince the Sphere of the theoretical possibility of the existence of a fourth (and fifth, and sixth ...) spatial dimension; but the Sphere returns his student to Flatland in disgrace. The Square then has a dream in which the Sphere visits him again, this time to introduce him to Pointland, whereof the point (sole inhabitant, monarch, and universe in one) perceives any communication as a thought originating in his own mind (cf.): 'You see,' said my Teacher, 'how little your words have done. So far as the Monarch understands them at all, he accepts them as his own – for he cannot conceive of any other except himself – and plumes himself upon the variety of Its Thought as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction.' — the Sphere The Square recognizes the identity of the ignorance of the monarchs of Pointland and Lineland with his own (and the Sphere's) previous ignorance of the existence of higher dimensions. Once returned to Flatland, the Square cannot convince anyone of Spaceland's existence, especially after official decrees are announced that anyone preaching the existence of three dimensions will be imprisoned (or executed, depending on caste). Eventually the Square himself is imprisoned for just this reason. Social elements[] Men are portrayed as whose social status is determined by their regularity and the number of their sides, with a Circle considered the "perfect" shape. On the other hand, females consist only of lines and are required by law to sound a "peace-cry" as they walk, lest she be mistaken face-to-face for a . The Square evinces accounts of cases where women have accidentally or deliberately stabbed men to death, as evidence of the need for separate doors for women and men in buildings. In the world of Flatland, classes are distinguished by the "Art of Hearing", the "Art of Feeling", and the "Art of Sight Recognition". Classes can be distinguished by the sound of one's voice, but the lower classes have more developed vocal organs, enabling them to feign the voice of a polygon or even a circle. Feeling, practised by the lower classes and women, determines the configuration of a person by feeling one of its angles. The "Art of Sight Recognition", practised by the upper classes, is aided by "Fog", which allows an observer to determine the depth of an object. With this, polygons with sharp angles relative to the observer will fade more rapidly than polygons with more gradual angles. Colour of any kind is banned in Flatland after Isosceles workers painted themselves to impersonate noble Polygons. The Square describes these events, and the ensuing at length. The population of Flatland can "evolve" through the "Law of Nature", which states: "a male child shall have one more side than his father, so that each generation shall rise (as a rule) one step in the scale of development and nobility. Thus the son of a Square is a Pentagon, the son of a Pentagon, a Hexagon; and so on". This rule is not the case when dealing with (Soldiers and Workmen) with only two congruent sides. The smallest angle of an isosceles triangle gains thirty arc minutes (half a degree) each generation. Additionally, the rule does not seem to apply to many-sided polygons. For example, the sons of several hundred-sided polygons will often develop fifty or more sides more than their parents. Furthermore, the angle of an isosceles triangle or the number of sides of a (regular) polygon may be altered during life by deeds or surgical adjustments. An equilateral Triangle is a member of the craftsman class. Squares and Pentagons are the "gentlemen" class, as doctors, lawyers, and other professions. Hexagons are the lowest rank of nobility, all the way up to (near) circles, who make up the priest class. The higher-order polygons have much less of a chance of producing sons, preventing Flatland from being overcrowded with noblemen. Regular polygons were considered in isolation until chapter seven of the book when the issue of irregularity, or physical deformity, became considered. In a two dimensional world a regular polygon can be identified by a single and/or . In order to maintain social cohesion, irregularity is to be abhorred, with moral irregularity and criminality cited, "by some" (in the book), as inevitable additional deformities, a sentiment with which the Square concurs. If the error of deviation is above a stated amount, the irregular polygon faces ; if below, he becomes the lowest rank of civil servant. An irregular polygon is not destroyed at birth, but allowed to develop to see if the irregularity can be “cured” or reduced. If the deformity remains, the irregular is “painlessly and mercifully consumed”. As a social satire[] In Flatland Abbott describes a society rigidly divided into classes. Social ascent is the main aspiration of its inhabitants, apparently granted to everyone but strictly controlled by the top of the hierarchy. Freedom is despised and the laws are cruel. Innovators are imprisoned or suppressed. Members of lower classes who are intellectually valuable, and potential leaders of riots, are either killed, or promoted to the higher classes. Every attempt for change is considered dangerous and harmful. This world, as ours, is not prepared to receive 'Revelations from another world'. The satirical part is mainly concentrated in the first part of the book, 'This World', which describes Flatland. The main points of interest are the Victorian concept on women's roles in the society and in the class-based hierarchy of men. Abbott has been accused of misogyny due to his portrait of women in 'Flatland'. In his Preface to the Second and Revised Edition, 1884, he answers such critics by stating that the Square: was writing as a Historian, he has identified himself (perhaps too closely) with the views generally adopted by Flatland and (as he has been informed) even by Spaceland, Historians; in whose pages (until very recent times) the destinies of Women and of the masses of mankind have seldom been deemed worthy of mention and never of careful consideration. —the Editor Critical reception[] Although Flatland was not ignored when it was published, it did not obtain a great success. In the entry on Edwin Abbott in the Dictionary of National Biography, Flatland is not even mentioned. The book was discovered again after 's was published, which introduced the concept of a fourth dimension. Flatland was mentioned in a letter entitled "Euclid, Newton and Einstein" published in on February 12, 1920. In this letter Abbott is depicted, in a sense, as a prophet due to his intuition of the importance of time to explain certain phenomena: Some thirty or more years ago a little was written by Dr. Edwin Abbott entitled Flatland. At the time of its publication it did not attract as much attention as it deserved... If there is motion of our three-dimensional space relative to the fourth dimension, all the changes we experience and assign to the flow of time will be due simply to this movement, the whole of the future as well as the past always existing in the fourth dimension. —from a "Letter to the Editor" by William Garnett. in Nature on February 12, 1920. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography now contains a reference to Flatland. Editions in print[] Flatland (5th edition, 1963), 1983 reprint with foreword by , HarperCollins, bound together back-to-back with 's (1994), HarperCollins, The Annotated Flatland (2002), coauthor , Perseus Publishing, Signet Classics edition (2005), Oxford University Press (2006), Dover Publications thrift edition (2007), CreateSpace edition (2008), Adaptations and parodies[] Numerous imitations or sequels to Flatland have been written, and multiple other works have alluded to it. Examples include: In film[] (1965), an animated short film based on the novella, was directed by Eric Martin and based on an idea by . (2007), a 98-minute animated independent feature film version directed by , updates the satire from Victorian England to the modern-day United States. (2007), by Dano Johnson and Jeffrey Travis, is a 34-minute animated educational film voice acted by, , , and . Its sequel was (2012), inspired by the novel by and starring , , , , , and. In literature[] An Episode on Flatland: Or How a Plain Folk Discovered the Third Dimension by (1907), by (1965), by (1984), by (2001), and by (2002). Short stories inspired by Flatland include "" by (1963), "The Incredible Umbrella" by (1980), and "Message Found in a Copy of Flatland" by Rudy Rucker (1983) Physicists and science popularizers and have both commented on and postulated about the effects of Flatland. Sagan recreates the as a set-up to discussing the possibilities of higher dimensions of the physical universe in both the and , whereas Dr. Hawking notes the impossibility of life in two-dimensional space, as any inhabitants would necessarily be unable to digest their own food. In television[] Flatland features prominently in episode "The Psychic Vortex", when Sheldon Cooper declares it one of his favorite imaginary places to visit. It also features in the episode "2-D Blacktop", when Professor Farnsworth's adventures in lead to a foray of drifting in and out of inter-dimensional spaces. See also[] (1945), novella by George Orwell , Indian parable (1999-2007 webcomic) (1963 book) (1941 short story) Dimension-bending video games: (2007) (2012) (2013)
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