Podcast: The Helix Center

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

Daily headlines have been startling and scary: “U.S. Life Expectancy Plunged in 2020, Especially for Black and Hispanic Americans,” reported The New York Times.  “The Pandemic has Made Homelessness More Visible in Many American Cities,” noted The Economist, while The Guardian  announced “The Latest UN Report is Clear: Climate Change is Here, It’s a Crisis, and It’s Caused by Fossil Fuels.”… read more »

Our panel will discuss the suggestion that we have been living in a sort of metaverse all along. This claim starts with the notion that the Universe evolves as one giant algorithmic computation, and that information is the basic substance. A variation on this line of thought asks the question: could we be living in a simulation à la the Matrix.… read more »

The program GPT-3 can create language that gives the impression that it is thinking. What will our interaction with robots of greater and greater verbal agility mean in the near future? What sort of Other will these robots become, evolve to?… read more »

The humanities deal with the manipulation of ideas. Ideas can be encoded, metabolized, and contribute to cultural evolution. What roles do cultural memes – be they fact, factoid, or fiction – play in what goes on. Does fiction provide any insight into this complex dynamic?… read more »