Kierkegaard and the Irony of Existence: From Existentialism to Modernism | The Poet of Existence: Ep. 4
Release Date: 04/14/2023
Philosophy, Roomba, and Taco Carts: A Conversation with Chef Arturo Franco Camacho, Explorations, Ep. 5
Becoming Human
Chef Arturo Franco Camacho is the Culinary Director and Executive Chef of three of New Haven’s best restaurants: Geronimo’s Southwestern Kitchen, Shell & Bones Oyster Bar, and Camacho Garage. His restaurants are not only a destination for great food but fantastic atmosphere. Trained at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), the world’s premiere culinary college, he has worked as a chef at restaurants in Spain, France, and London, and spent five years as chef aboard the world’s top cruise ship, the Queen Elizabeth II. In this conversation, Chef Franco talks about his love of...
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Scientific Facts and How They Grow: Science as Self-Subverting Tradition
Becoming Human
Science is the only tradition that actively admits its own errors, gaining deeper knowledge by overcoming its tendency to orthodoxy. This happens when scientific revolutions shatter existing paradigms. The process begins with anomalies, potential facts that do not fit the paradigm. The physicist Sabine Hossenfelder sees many anomalies in current physics, and argues that physics today has lost its way because physics has followed the wrong rules, rules of beauty rather than rules proper to science. Hossenfelder’s intervention in physics illustrates the profound relevance of Thomas Kuhn’s...
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Things Ancient and New: The Logic of Scientific Discovery in Thomas Kuhn
Becoming Human
According to Thomas Kuhn, the most mature sciences have only a limited tolerance for novelty. Contrary to the common image of scientific progress as a continuous series of discoveries, Kuhn shows it’s actually the progress of paradigms towards ever greater precision. Progress in normal science thus does not aim at novelty but the enrichment of the depth and concreteness of the theory. Drawing on the the insights of Edward Witten’s defense of string theory, Episode 5 of Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions explores the concept of novelty and discovery in Section IV: “The Nature...
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Can Science Be Complete? Thomas Kuhn, Progress, and the Eschatology of Science
Becoming Human
The longing for a complete science is one of the great dreams of modernity. Is such a complete science possible, and can Kuhn’s idea of a paradigm help us realize it? This episode explores the origins and power of the search for completeness and unity in Western science, and reveals the unexpected spiritual origins of this ideal. Ep. 4, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: An Introduction
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What is a Paradigm? Normal Science and Pseudo-Science
Becoming Human
Thomas Kuhn coined the concept of a paradigm to describe the unique achievement of science. Since Kuhn, the terms “paradigm” and “paradigm shift” have entered into popular culture, but what really is a paradigm? How does it connect to normal science? And can it help us distinguish real science from pseudo-science? All these questions, and more, are explored in this episode of my series on Kuhn. Episode 3, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: An Introduction
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The Revolution is History: Kuhn and the History of Science
Becoming Human
Thomas Kuhn argued that history would change our image of science, causing a revolution we are still unprepared to face. This Kuhnian revolution challenges traditional epistemology by arguing we must look to science itself to understand how knowledge develops, and looking to science demands facing history. This episode of my course on Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions explores these issues, and more.
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Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: An Introduction
Becoming Human
What is Science? What happened in the Scientific Revolution? How does Science progress? Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the most influential book in the history and philosophy of science, addressing these and other key questions. This public series offers an introduction to this major work and includes a discussion of Kuhn's core ideas: paradigm shifts, normal and revolutionary science, and more.
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How to Become an Individual: The Eternal in Kierkegaard
Becoming Human
On Nov. 11, 1855, after an astoundingly rich yet brief life, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard died. He requested his epitaph read simply: “That Individual.” The “single individual” is the soul of Kierkegaard’s work, but what does it mean to become an individual? This final episode of Kierkegaard: The Poet of Existence, explores the mystery of freedom and true individuality, and how they relate to the Eternal. COURSE RELEASE 8pm EST 10.27.2023 Course Link: Course Code: BECOMINGHUMANWITHSK Series Description Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and religious thinker, created one...
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October 7: Why Antisemitism is a Global Philosophical Problem and an Existential Crisis
Becoming Human
As a philosopher and scholar who writes about Christian-Jewish relations and modern German thought, I offer in this lecture an analysis of antisemitism as a philosophical problem, show its global scope, and explore its historical and existential significance as a threat to any vision of universal human flourishing. Referenced Materials
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Existential Ontology, Consumer Capitalism, & The Religious Stage | The Poet of Existence, Ep. 7
Becoming Human
Kierkegaard's theory of the three stages of life, the aesthetic, ethical, and religious offers profound insight into the existential realities of human life. Building on the prior two episodes on the aesthetic and ethical stages, this episode explores the meaning of the religious phase by exhibiting existential ontology in relationship to sexual and erotic desire, consumer capitalism, and humans' habit of turning people, including themselves, into mere things. Purchase Code: BECOMINGHUMAN | Series Description Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and religious thinker, created one...
info_outlineOn Sept 29 1841, Søren Kierkegaard defended a genre-bending dissertation at the University of Copenhagen. Both rigorous scholarship and dazzling literary genius, Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates is the first major work in Kierkegaard’s authorship.
Laying the foundation for his future pseudonymous works, the dissertation explores the importance of irony in his time, and the lecture shows how the importance of Kierkegaard’s work on irony is connected to existentialism, modernism, and the challenge of human existence today.
Series Description
Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and religious thinker, created one of the most consequential bodies of writing in human history.
One of the greatest literary writers, he is also widely regarded as the most important philosopher and theologian to create much of the 20th century: movements like existentialism, modern theology, and even forms of modern nihilism can be traced back to the work of Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard is known as a delightful and difficult figure; like Socrates, he is ironic and hard to understand. He is also my first great teacher, so to honor his personal and historical influence, I am doing an 8 episode series, Soren Kierkegaard: The Poet of Existence.