Good Old Days
What is an Umwelt? Who introduced this term? How does this concept help us understand what makes human special?
Umwelt: the sensory world of a being.
Ed Yong.
We are the only creatures who can try to appreciate other Umwelten.
In the late Middle Ages, why did we notice a shift in animal hierarchies from Lions at the top to Sheep? What principle organized each hierarchy?
Principle of Nobility: Lions at the top.
Principle of Usefulness: Sheep at the top (anthropomorphism).
Why is Death a meaningless phenomenon in the modern world, for Weber?
Because it's impossible to die satisfied and "full of years" like the Hebrew patriarchs. There is always more progress one will miss out on, all our achievements will be surpassed.
Who referred to Nature as the "poem of creation"? What did they mean?
Henry David Thoreau: That nature is not just an intelligible Book but that it has beauty and divine wisdom to impart, to which worship is appropriate.
"...I bid you to a one-man revolution— The only revolution that is coming."
Wendell Berry (Way of Ignorance) quoting Robert Frost.
= The only solution to our major crisis is personal/individual transformation.
What "hope" does Darwin offer that the human species will gradually improve?
That "inferior" individuals will either die off or not reproduce (because they are ugly or weak).
Unlike Bacon, why does Descartes preserve a role for deduction in his approach?
Because he assumes that facts of nature are related geometrically, so that by discovering one we can logically deduce others.
What's the main difference between McCabe vs. Berry on Fido the dog?
McCabe: asking why Fido ultimately leads us to the biggest (most abstract) question: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Berry: only love and affection can allow us to see Fido (this particular dog) for what it truly is (not a representative of a class/species).
Identify 3 of the 6 areas that Rosa applies his Resonance theory to.
Birth, Child-rearing/education, Life-planning (Falling in love), Digitization, Aging, Death
"...where other creatures are concerned, 'we can speak of the priority of being over that of being useful.'"
Creatures are not reducible to our utility.
Explain the difference between deduction and induction, using an example.
Why was Bacon dissatisfied with deduction?
Deduction: All humans are mortal. Socrates is human. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Induction: The sun has risen everyday until now. It will probably rise tomorrow.
Because it preserves truth rather than discovers new facts about the world.
What are three possible candidates that Natural Selection can work on?
The Species
The Individual (person)
The Genes
For Herbert McCabe, what does it mean to assert that God exists?
For Dillard, what are the 2 ways that lead to madness? (hint: fork in the road)
Library (the world is a monster) moral world
Creek (I am a freak) amoral world
"It is not possible that God and the universe should add up to make two."
Herbert McCabe: God does not relate to the world as a being among other beings (that can be added together). God is the participatory ground of Being.
What are the 4 rules to Descartes method?
(1) Skepticism: accept nothing as true until proven otherwise
(2) reductionism: break complexity all the way down
(3) start with simple parts, build up to complex
(4) be as comprehensive as possible
What were the 4 (overlapping) causes Aquinas inherited from Aristotle?
Use a wooden table as an example.
Material cause: wood
Efficient cause: carpenter
Formal cause: the form/shape/pattern of a table
Final cause: to eat/dine properly.
What view of meta-science does Polkinghorne defend?
What's his problem with the Integration view?
Dialogue: Both science and religion are truth-seeking enterprises. As such, their answers should cohere, even if the methods differ.
Integration appears unifying but ends up subjecting one discipline to another.
What was Zadie Smith's point about Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling" (the Abraham story)?
That we must "lower our defenses," opening ourselves up to the absurd (like religion) for attunement to become possible.
"...if being against science is, as I am suggesting, being against nothing very much in particular, being against the current peer review system, or against the hegemony of Big Science, or against the way in which clinical trials are constituted and funded, is being against something substantial and important."
Steven Shapin, "How to be Antiscientific."
Local criticisms are valid, global criticisms of Science are almost impossible.
For Lewontin, what's the difference between agents and causes?
Agents: "how" x happens (local delivery mechanisms)
Causes: "why" x (really) happens
E.g. Tuberculosis =
Agent: Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Causes: Low wages, poor nutrition, and crowded housing.
In the late Middle Ages, what spiritual/theological lesson was interpreted from the clam/scallop shell?
The doctrine of the immaculate Virgin Mary (who enclosed the "Pearl of Great Price" i.e. Christ) and the Hypostatic Union of Christ's divine and human natures.
What does NOMA stand for? Who coined the term in our class? What did he mean?
Non-overlapping Magisteria
Stephen Jay Gould
= Science and Religion answer different questions in different ways (distinct teaching authorities).
Name the 4 criteria for Resonance, according to Rosa.
(1) Being effected (called/touched/moved)
(2) Self-efficacy (we respond)
(3) Adaptive transformation (never the same)
(4) Semi-controllability (not predictable/manageable)
"This is the case even though a hundred million years from now, all that we consider to be the great works of man—the sculptures and the libraries, the monuments and the museums, the cities and the factories—will be compressed into a layer of sediment not much thicker than a cigarette paper."
Elizabeth Kolbert, Welcome to the Anthropocene, "The Sixth Extinction"