I want to see this for scientists! Via Crooked Timber, a new film by Astra Taylor: Examined Life, featuring interviews with various philosophers in everyday surroundings.
Žižek says “Nature is a big series of unimaginable catastrophes.” I think he meant “the blogosphere,” not “Nature.”
Do I really want to see this for scientists? They might not make the same impression on film — scientists aren’t trained to connect what they do to the concerns of the wider world (although the connections are there).
The first thing I thought of when I read the quote was Nature, the journal.
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http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/street-corner-science-with-leon-lederman/11104458/
“Anxiety is the mood par excellence of ethicity”
(par excellence in painfully attempted French accent, three studders on of)
Im terms of communicating with the public, I think scientists do better, poor as we are.
Slavoj Žižek? really? are you serious? like….. really? I dare you to try watching something like this for more than 5 minutes without desperately yearning for a nearby shotgun so you can blow your brains out. I DARE YOU. It’s HORRIBLE, the worst kind of navel-gazing, pointless, fatuous, nauseatingly ultra-pretentious postmodernist drivel. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2530392910118230001&ei=Yr5mSd3rCovCrQLT5OTCDQ&q=%C5%BDi%C5%BEek
Honestly, philosophers sometimes talk in a language I don’t understand.
What is “ethicity”???
@hi: I’m watching the Zizek video you linked to and I find him fascinating and funny. Thanks for the link.
I think scientists could have a similar show and have much more success. I’ve met so many people who, once they find out I studied physics, have questions about quantum mechanics, relativity, the big bang, and science in general. People want to know what we do. They want to know how our world works.
I think ethicity is the discussion or creation of ethics, at least judging from the OED definition of “ethicize.”
The (Zizek) jokes were good at least to 31st minute, I stopped about that time. I laughed at the one where his publisher wanted him to write a line about his personal life, to show to the readers, the human side of him. He offered ( in protest), “During my free time I search the internet for pedophiles and pull the legs off the insects.” Though he blew his nose ever so often like hay fever of sort, he had some points to listen to.
One of his (Zizek) ecological question, was it along the lines, about human versus nature, are they separate or is man part of nature ( on subject of man and technology’s destruction of nature) , is a philosophical question of an outer coating, of the age old question about nature of reality and human.
Coincidentally, this evening, I found out my prior error, on Theravada Buddhism’s explanation of ‘reality & non self’, when I read Dalai Lama’s (Tibetan Buddhism) question and answer in “The Meaning of Life- Buddhist Perspective of Cause and Effect” 1992, translated by former Emeritus Professor Jeffrey Hopkins, Virginia University, where Dalai Lama said, “Most likely this is the misunderstanding I mentioned earlier : wrong interpreting the emptiness of inherent existence as the emptiness of existence itself, such that it seems that nothing exists. This is wrong. If you think you do not exist, then stick a pin in your finger! Even if you cannot identify the I, that it exists is clear.” (page 73)
There are three things in that book, I found worth noting, for it seems this is the point of divergence of idealism (in philosophy) with its counterpart philosophies:-
i) 12 links of dependent arising, if properly grasped, makes the foundation validly founded, and consciousness can become limitless, while mistaken consciousness cannot be increased limitlessly. (page 77)
ii) Overcoming the predispositions that accompany the incorrect conception of inherent existence, overcomes the obstruction to omniscience in our own mental continuums ( page 85, 100)
iii) Predispositions to incorrect conception of inherent existence, prevents simultaneous knowledge of all objects of existence ( page 95) , direct perception of that object (page 78)
To tease out the difference between correct “dependent origination/dependent existence” but incorrect “inherent existence”, page 64 reads, “Thus there is a discrepancy between the way the whole and the parts appear and the way they actually exist, in that they seem to be their own separate entities but actually are not. However this does not mean there are no objects that are wholes, because if there were no wholes, we could not speak of something as being a part of anything for a whole for a whole is that in relation to which something is posited as its part. Hence there are wholes, but their mode of existence is that they are designated in dependence on their parts- they do not exist in any other way.”
We need more scientists who, like Leon Lederman, take real pleasure in talking to the general public and make science fun to listen about.
“Nature is a big series of unimaginable catastrophes.”
And then sometimes it’s full of surprises:
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/01/07/cosmic-radio-noise-booms-six-times-louder-than-expected/
Curious if Sean or anyone else has any thoughts about this?
nice video really, thank u for sharing it with us
“Nature is a big series of unimaginable catastrophes.” i totally agree with him
keep up the good work
i will be aregular reader of ur blog
Astra Taylor must be a philosophy fan, because she directed a documentary about Slavoj Zizek that was released (in America) in 2005. (One of its virtues is that, in one segment, Zizek teaches someone how to pronounce his last name: it’s ZHEE-zhek, as I recall.) He’s a pretty good subject; other philosophers, however, are not necessarily as provocative, stimulating, funny, or clear. Surely it’s the same among scientists: I’d imagine some are better than others at communicating with interested general audiences (Sean himself seems quite skilled at it, judging from a lecture), and it may relate to whether they spend much of their working life communicating with lower-level students or not (which I believe Sean does). There’s probably more to it than the student question; I don’t know whether Freeman Dyson has had to deal with students in ages, but the most recent thing I heard him say was just as clear as a memoir of his that I read years ago.
Incidentally, I suggest regular visits to the Edge Foundation, at edge.org, for anyone interested in reading or hearing thinkers talk.