Is transhumanism the great promise of technoscience or "the world's most dangerous idea"? The debate is an extremely fruitful field for philosophical and theological inquiry.
ThinkBIG: BIG Questions
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Metanexus is happy to plug the late David Foster Wallace's 2005 Commencement Speech at Kenyon College in this season of graduations. Here are some wise words and compelling prose from the literary and existential genius.
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Astronauts who have seen the Earth from space have often described the ‘overview effect’ as an experience that has transformed their perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it, and enabled them to perceive it as our shared home, without boundaries between nations or species.
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In 2012, the dangers of human-caused climate disturbance became undeniable, making this the fundamental moral issue of our time.
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Joel Primack is a professor of physics and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His wife, Nancy Abrams, is a specialist in the history and philosophy of science. Together they deliver this motivational TEDx talk, which calls for a cosmological, Big History perspective as a means to solving some of our most difficult problems as a society.
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Videos from a gathering of philosophers, physics, biologists, and others who met for a three-day seminar.
Essay:
Social media was a major force behind last year’s Arab Spring, after communities organized and overthrew tyrannical dictators, as well as last month’s riots across the Muslim world, after the trailer for The Innocence of Muslims circulated on the Internet. Like most technologies, social media can promote the good or accentuate the bad.
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Recognizing the foundational role of purpose in the unfolding of evolution helps us see that the purpose of evolution is increasingly up to us.
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Big History is an example of a new systems level in the complexification of intellectual history, in which new insights can emerge out of the attachment of separate visions.
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Accepting our status as a highly reflective species of animal may be an entry point to understanding the ripples of natural patterns that define our cultures’ proclivities to compete and cooperate.