The Future Mind – A Conversation with Christof Koch
2024-02-28 19:00 - 20:30 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pBf5g_YQe8

A Conversation between Christof Koch and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday February 2810:00am PST | 1:00pm EST | 6:00pm GMT | 7:00pm CET

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Ph: Erik Dinnel – Allen Institute

Christof Koch, PhD, is best known for his work exploring the physical basis of consciousness in humans, animals, and machines. A physicist and neurobiologist, he was for more than a quarter of a century a professor of biology and engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. He remains at the Allen Institute as a Meritorious Investigator. He is also the Chief Scientist of the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation in Santa Monica, seeking to understand consciousness, its place in nature, and how this knowledge can benefit all of humanity. He is the author of five books and more than 350 peer-reviewed publications on, neuroscience, visual perception, and consciousness. A vegetarian, cyclist and dog lover, he lives on a small island in the Pacific Northwest. For more information, see www.christofkoch.com

Àlex Gómez-Marín is a Spanish physicist turned neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and a Masters in biophysics from the University of Barcelona. He was a research fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. His research spans from the origins of the arrow of time to the neurobiology of action-perception across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, where he is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. Combining computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

Book-A-Month Club - Steppenwolf
2024-03-19 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_aBKTZ_2ZQ

Steppenwolfby Herman Hesse

Hosts: David Schrum and Caroline Pawluk

Tuesday March 19, 202410:00am PDT | 1:00pm EDT | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

An informal monthly get-together to discuss books of significance for the Pari Center community.

Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf is a surreal, dreamlike narrative deeply influenced by his encounters with Carl Jung. In this writing, Harry Haller, the steppenwolf, mirrors the author in a stark psycho-confessional account of an exploration of the unconscious. Harry’s tumult and suffering portrays what may be seen as a path through purgation to synthesis on a journey that keeps redefining itself, transformation upon transformation. Steppenwolf mirrors the dark side of the human psyche and invites the reader to participate in shadow, in a movement into its chaos, through it, and to integration.

Each month we will meet with a guest presenter/moderator to discuss a book of their choice that probes important aspects of our focus—Physics and Philosophy, the work of David Bohm, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Jungian Concepts, Gentle Action, Creativity, the Arts, Ethics, Community, the Sacred.

Caroline Pawluk has explored extensively the life and writings of the author of Steppenwolf, as documented in her thesis, “Fragments of a Great Confession:” The Process of Synthesis in Hermann Hesse’s Writing.

Caroline has been involved in dialogue over the past 30 years and has presented online for the Pari Center on David Bohm dialogue. She is a longtime meditator.

David Schrum is a quantum theorist whose larger focus has become inner exploration and group enquiry through dialogue. He had a long connection with physicist David Bohm and his work on consciousness.

Schrum has been involved in local and international dialogues of various kinds for 40 years. In more recent times, he has written and presented on consciousness and inner exploration.

The Future Mind – A Conversation with Pim van Lommel
2024-03-20 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5EJwBzQm7Y

A Conversation between Pim van Lommel and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday March 2010:00am PDT | 1:00pm EDT | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Pim van Lommel, M.D., born in 1943, graduated in 1971 at the University of Utrecht, and finished his specialization in cardiology in 1976. He worked from 1977-2003 as a cardiologist in Hospital Rijnstate, a 800-bed Teaching Hospital in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and is now doing full-time research on the mind-brain relation. He published several articles on cardiology, but since he started his research on near-death experiences (NDE) in survivors of cardiac arrest in 1986 he is the author of over 20 articles (most of them in Dutch), one book and many chapters about NDE. He was co-founder of the Dutch IANDS in 1988. In 2005 he was granted with the Dr. Bruce Greyson Research Award of the International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS). In 2006, the President of India rewarded him the Life Time Achievement Award at the World Congress on Clinical and Preventive Cardiology in New Dehli. His Dutch book ‘Endless Consciousness’, was nominated for the ‘Book of the Year 2008’ in the Netherlands. In 2010 he received the 2010 Book Award from the Scientific and Medical Network, and in 2017 he received the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Award by the Dutch Society of Volunteers in Palliative and Terminal Care (VPTZ). In 2020 the Spiritual Awakenings International (SAI) honored him for his ground-breaking work about Near-Death Experiences as Circle of Honor honoree. The Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) started in 2021 an international essay contest for the best scientific evidence about a possible ‘afterlife’. With his article, entitled: ‘The Continuity of Consciousness’ he won the second Prize. See https://bigelowinstitute.org/News4.php. In 2022 he became a Honorary Member of the Scientific and Medical Network (SMN).

In November 2007 his book ‘Endless Consciousness’ (Eindeloos Bewustzijn) was published in The Netherlands, which is a bestseller with more than 155.000 copies sold (30th edition). His book was nominated for the ‘Book of the Year 2008’in the Netherlands. His book was published in Germany in 2009,and it has been published in the English language by Harper Collins in 2010, entitled: Consciousness beyond Life. The science of the near-death Experience, and in the same year the book received the 2010 Book Award by de Scientific and Medical Network.In 2011 the Polish edition was published, the Spanish translation was published in 2012, and in 2012 his book was also published in France. In 2015 the book was also published in Latvia, in 2017 the book was published in Italy, and in 2019 the book was published in Hungary. In 2020 the book was published in China, and in 2021 it was published in Russia. In 2024 the book will be published in Bulgaria. By now more than 400.000 copies have been sold worldwide.

Àlex Gómez-Marín is a Spanish physicist turned neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and a Masters in biophysics from the University of Barcelona. He was a research fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. His research spans from the origins of the arrow of time to the neurobiology of action-perception across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, where he is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. Combining computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

Book-A-Month Club - The Passion of the Western Mind
2024-04-09 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFpmyLHRYnM&t=1s

The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World Viewby Richard Tarnas

Hosts: David Lorimer with Guest and Author Richard Tarnas

Tuesday April 9, 20249:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

An informal monthly get-together to discuss books of significance for the Pari Center community.

The Passion of the Western Mind – understanding the ideas that have shaped our world view – is, along with its sequel Cosmos and Psyche – one of the most seminal and original books in the history of ideas. I read Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy in 1973 at the age of 21, and Rick covers the same territory with enormous elegance, clarity and style. However, his vision is very different from the positivism of Russell and in his epilogue he unfolds his understanding of the co-creative and participatory nature of reality that values the feminine and where ’the autonomous individual self has been forged and is now reunited with the ground of its being. Understanding how and where we have arrived enables us to understand our transformative potentials and possibilities. Join our dialogue on April 9th!

Each month we will meet with a guest presenter/moderator to discuss a book of their choice that probes important aspects of our focus—Physics and Philosophy, the work of David Bohm, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Jungian Concepts, Gentle Action, Creativity, the Arts, Ethics, Community, the Sacred.

Richard Tarnas, PhD, is Distinguished Rockefeller Faculty, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and is director of its programme in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. A graduate of Harvard University and Saybrook Institute, he was formerly director of programmes and education at Esalen Institute.

David Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA is a writer, lecturer, poet, editor and spiritual activist who is a Founder of Character Education Scotland, Programme Director of the Scientific and Medical Network (www.scientificandmedical.net) and former President of Wrekin Trust and the Swedenborg Society (www.swedenborgsociety.org.uk). He has also been editor of Paradigm Explorersince 1986 and completed his 100th issue in 2019. He was the instigator of the Beyond the Brain conference series in 1995 (www.beyondthebrain.org) and has co-ordinated the Mystics and Scientists conferences every year since the late 1980s.

Originally a merchant banker then a teacher of philosophy and modern languages at Winchester College, he is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including Survival? Death as Transition (1984, 2017) Resonant Mind (originally Whole in One)(1990/2017), The Spirit of Science (1998), Thinking Beyond the Brain(2001), The Protein Crunch(with Jason Drew) and A New Renaissance (edited with Oliver Robinson). He has edited three books about the Bulgarian sage Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov): Prophet for our Times (1991, 2015), The Circle of Sacred Dance,and Gems of Love,which is a translation of his prayers and formulas into English. His book on the ideas and work of the Prince of Wales – Radical Prince (2003) –has been translated into Dutch, Spanish and French. His new book of essays, A Quest for Wisdom was published in 2021.

David is also Chair of the Galileo Commission (www.galileocommission.org) which seeks the expand the evidence base of science of consciousness beyond a materialistic worldview.

In 2020 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award as a Visionary Leader by the Visioneers International Network and the 2021 Aboca Human Ecology Prize. He is a Creative Member of the Club of Budapest. His website is www.davidlorimer.co.uk

The Future Mind – A Conversation with Carlos Eire
2024-04-17 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGJCJ9DJfNI

A Conversation between Carlos Eire and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday April 179:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Carlos Eire is a historian of late medieval and early modern Europe at Yale University who focuses on the Protestant and Catholic Reformations; the history of popular piety; the history of the supernatural, and the history of death. At Yale he has served as chair of the Religious Studies Department and the Renaissance Studies Program. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1996, he taught at St. John’s University in Minnesota and the University of Virginia, and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for two years. He is the author of War Against the Idols (1986); From Madrid to Purgatory(1995); A Very Brief History of Eternity (2010); Reformations: The Early Modern World (2016); The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography (2019), and They Flew: A History of the Impossible (2023). He is also co-author of Jews, Christians, Muslims: An Introduction to Monotheistic Religions (1997). In 2003 he won the National Book Award in Nonfiction for his first memoir, Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003), which has been translated into more than a dozen languages. His second memoir, Learning to Die in Miami (2010), explores his early years in exile. His book Reformations won the R.R.Hawkins Prize for Best Book of the Year from the American Publishers Association, as well as the award for Best Book in the Humanities. It was also awarded the Jaroslav Pelikan Prize by Yale University Press. All of his books are banned in Cuba, where he has been proclaimed an enemy of the state – a distinction he regards as the highest of all honors.

Àlex Gómez-Marín is a Spanish physicist turned neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and a Masters in biophysics from the University of Barcelona. He was a research fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. His research spans from the origins of the arrow of time to the neurobiology of action-perception across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, where he is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. Combining computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

It’s About Time
2024-04-24 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NRnig-KI2U

It’s About Time: A Conversation on the Subject of Time

Wednesday April 24, 20249:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

with Bernard Carr and Jonathan Allday

A free, online, live event at the Pari Center.

Time is one of the central mysteries of existence. It is also a profound puzzle in physics.

We understand how the passage of time ‘expands’ or ‘contracts’ depending on how fast you are travelling compared to an observer. There is also conclusive evidence that time distorts in the presence of mass, leading to the effects we used to ascribe to a force of gravity. Some even believe that they understand how time morphs into existence, along with the universe, out of some quantum pre-stuff. This, however, is all ‘physical time’; the relationship between the physics and the experience of ‘psychological time’ is far from clear.

Is there a “block universe”, where all of time is laid out to God’s eye-view, with humans only perceiving a small slice as they advance along their world-lines? Or is the future not yet written, but exists in some quantum level of possibility and probability?

In this conversation we will touch upon the physical aspects of time, attempting to make the physics clear to non-scientists. Undoubtedly, this will lead us to psychological, and perhaps spiritual time. Who knows where the thoughts will take us, but it seems very likely that the specious present and the multiverse will also come up…

Bernard Carr is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary University of London. His professional area of research is cosmology and astrophysics and includes such topics as the early universe, dark matter, black holes and the anthropic principle. For his PhD he studied the first second of the Universe, working under the supervision of Stephen Hawking at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology. He was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1975 and moved to Queen Mary College in 1985. He has also held Visiting Professorships at Kyoto University, Tokyo University, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. He is the author of nearly three hundred scientific papers and the books Universe or Multiverse?and Quantum Black Holes. Beyond his professional field, he is interested in the role of consciousness in physics and in an expanded paradigm which accommodates mind. He also has a long-standing interest in the relationship between science and religion. He was President of the Society for Psychical Research in 2000-2004 and is currently President of the Scientific and Medical Network.

Jonathan Allday was born in Liverpool in 1960. He did his first degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge in 1982 and then returned to Liverpool to complete a PhD in elementary particle physics. As part of this, he was fortunate to spend some time working at the European particle physics centre, CERN, in Geneva.

Also, during that time he was co-opted onto a working party looking at the teaching of particle physics in schools and universities. The upshot was a new syllabus in particle physics and cosmology to be added to UK A-level (16-18) physics qualifications. The first questions were set in 1992.

On the back of the work on this syllabus, Jonathan wrote his first book Quarks, Leptons and the Big Bang, which was published in 1998 and is about to enter its fourth edition. Jonathan has also collaborated on a couple of textbooks and written his own books on Quantum Theory, General Relativity and the Apollo moon missions.

Professionally, Jonathan worked as a physics teacher for 30 years in a variety of independent day and boarding schools in the UK. He was a head of physics, a head of science and latterly an academic deputy head. He retired in 2020 and now runs a consulting company providing training and educational advice for schools.

Jonathan is married to Carolyn, and they have three sons all of whom are far better at sport than he was. Carolyn was a GB swimmer, which explains how come the boys can do sport. Jonathan and Carolyn live in a hamlet not far from Worcester in the UK. When not writing or consulting, Jonathan enjoys watching cricket, James Bond movies and Formula 1 races.

Book-A-Month Club - The Anomaly
2024-05-03 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf1Ylk6SXQA

The Anomalyby Hervé Le Tellier

Hosts: Beverley Zabriskie

Friday May 3, 20249:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

An informal monthly get-together to discuss books of significance for the Pari Center community.

The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier, winner of the 2020 Goncourt Prize and now an international phenomenon, is a novel blends crime, fantasy, sci-fi, and thriller as it plumbs the mysteries surrounding a Paris-New York flight.Who would we be if we had made different choices? Told that secret, left that relationship, written that book? We all wonder—the passengers of Air France 006 will find out. About to start their descent to JFK, they hit a shockingly violent patch of turbulence, emerging on the other side to a reality both perfectly familiar and utterly strange. As it charts the fallout of this logic-defying event, The Anomalytakes us on a journey from Lagos and Mumbai to the White House and a top-secret hangar.

Each month we will meet with a guest presenter/moderator to discuss a book of their choice that probes important aspects of our focus—Physics and Philosophy, the work of David Bohm, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Jungian Concepts, Gentle Action, Creativity, the Arts, Ethics, Community, the Sacred.

Beverley Zabriskie is a Jungian Analyst in New York City, a founding faculty member and former President of the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association (JPA), where she teaches Jungian theory and practice, theories of emotion, psychological interpretation of Egyptian Mythology, and alchemical imagery. She is past Vice-President of the Philemon Foundation which produced The Red Book, and other unpublished volumes by C.G. Jung. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Analytic Psychology, and on The Helix Center for Interdisciplinary Investigation Executive Committee. Her publications include: ‘The Spectrums of Emotion,’ in Volume 1, Research in Analytical Psychology: Applications from Scientific, Historical and Cross-Cultural Research (2018); ‘Time and Tao in Synchronicity’ in The Pauli-Jung Conjecture and Its Impact Today (2014); ‘Synchronicities: Riddles of Time and Emotion’ (2012); ‘Synchronicity and the I Ching: Jung, Pauli, and the Chinese Woman’ (2005); Imagination as Laboratory,(2004); ‘A Meeting of Rare Minds.’ Preface to Atom and Archetype, The Pauli-Jung Correspondence, (2001).

Benign Anarchy!
2024-05-25 18:00 - 2024-06-01 19:00 | Pari, Italy
Benign Anarchy!

A gathering of members of AA and NA but open to anyone interested in Dialogue..as developed by David Bohm and also Martin Bubers “I-Thou“

Dates: May 25 – June 1, 2024

Organizers: Tom C., Rose R., Jim C.

Location: Pari, Italy

Price: 890 euros for single occupancy730 euros for shared occupancy (two-bedroom apartment, shared bathroom)645 euros each for a couple sharing a room

which includes:

a 7-night stay in private accommodation;

breakfast, lunch and dinner at the local restaurant featuring locally sourced produce and traditional dishes;

programmed activities and materials;

refreshments provided at mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee breaks.

Event: The event starts on Saturday May 25 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Saturday June 1 after lunch.

Registration and Information: Please contact Tom tcallagyp@gmail.com or Eleanor eleanor@paricenter.com or Chiara chiara@paricenter.com

About the Event:

The second gathering of members of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) and NA (Narcotics Anonymous) will be held in Pari, May 25 – June 1. The week’s structure is freeform and anarchistic! There will be closed and open meetings, visits to the hot springs, long hours at the bar/restaurant talking, and wonderful food. There will also be visits to Florence and Siena for those who wish to go further afield.

It is not necessary to be a member of either fellowship in order to attend. And we hope that this year, the group will include a few friends and partners. This is also an invitation to anyone interested in Dialogue—note that the 12 Steps and the 12 Traditions for nearly 100 years ‘contain all the wisdom of all the ages.’

It is hoped to have discussion groups/workshops on the history of AA and NA; the influence of Carl Jung on Bill W; a talk on Bill W. and Jimmy K. by Irene C.; the deep wisdom of the 12 Steps and the profundity of the 12 traditions.

It is hoped the golden thread running through our week will be‘The Language of the Heart.’

All of the above in magical Pari—the creation of David Peat and Maureen Doolan. Here we will have wonderful Italian food—and—talk, talk, talk in the outdoor café, with music and dancing in the square, soaking in the sulphur springs, and joy and laughter!

Participating in an event at the Pari Center means not only attending meetings but living for a week in a medieval village, mingling with the local population, eating local dishes, appreciating the beauty of the surrounding countryside, and participating in a very gentle way of life far from the frenzy of work and city living. David Peat compared Pari to an alchemical vessel—a place where transformation can come about—as well as an opportunity to pause for a moment and re-assess one’s life.

Additional information about the Pari Center – pdf

The Future Mind – A Conversation with Ida Cuéllar
2024-05-30 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-WObKDgxXc

A Conversation between Ida Cuéllar and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Thursday May 309:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

Ida Cuéllar is a filmmaker and musician living between Barcelona and Mexico City. He has worked all over the world as a director and screenwriter. His work in advertising has won numerous awards at Cannes, San Sebastián FIAP and the Ojo de Iberoamérica, among others. Ida has directed multiple short films, such as La muerte de Otilia Ruiz (2011) and the experimental fashion film Phasmata (2014), selected for numerous international festivals. Among other relevant commissions, he directed the pilot episode of the series Magnum Opus (2016), with James Cosmos, Arly Jover, Timothy Gibbs, Jamie Anderson and Sam Douglas. In his works, Ida explores the nature of imagination and consciousness. Hence one of his latest and greatly acclaimed works, on which he has been researching for a decade, is The Secret of Dr. Grinberg (2020).

Àlex Gómez-Marín is a Spanish physicist turned neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and a Masters in biophysics from the University of Barcelona. He was a research fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. His research spans from the origins of the arrow of time to the neurobiology of action-perception across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, where he is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. Combining computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

Consciousness for Real
2024-06-04 19:00 - 2024-06-11 12:00 | Pari, Italy
Thanks to the generous funding from a European foundation, we now have the opportunity to offer three full scholarships, preferably to young minds, for this event. For more information:

Scholarship Programme

Consciousness for Real:Towards a New Science of Human Experience

June 4 – 11, 2024

Speakers: Owen A. Barfield, Edi Bilimoria, David Glowacki, Marcello Massimini (on zoom), Jonathan Rowson, Vandana Shiva, Angela Volpini, Marjorie Woollacott

Curated and Chaired by: Àlex Gómez-Marín

Location: Pari, Italy

Ticket Prices:

Private AccommodationPrice: 2175.00 euros

Shared Accommodation – Private Room with shared bathroomPrice: 1875.00 euros

which includes:

a 7-night stay;

breakfast, lunch and dinner at the local restaurant featuring locally sourced produce and traditional dishes;

water, wine, and coffee are provided with lunch and dinner;

programmed activities and materials;

refreshments provided at mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee breaks.

There is a limited amount of accommodation in Pari and you will be placed on a first-come, first-served basis. We will also be using accommodation just outside of the village—within 3 kilometres. If you are housed outside Pari, a shuttle to and from the village will be provided.

Event: The event starts on Tuesday June 4 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Tuesday June 11 after lunch.

Download information, terms and conditions.

About the Event

Join us at the Pari Center with world-renowned leaders in consciousness studies as we deepen our insights into the many facets that such an intimate mystery entails.

This will be an informal meeting with presentations by experts followed by roundtable discussions.

Participating in an event at the Pari Center means not only meeting with scholars and experts but living for a week in a medieval village, mingling with the tiny local population, eating local dishes and drinking local wines, appreciating the beauty of the surrounding countryside, and participating in a very gentle way of life far from the frenzy of work and city living. David Peat compared Pari to an alchemical vessel—a place where transformation can come about—as well as an opportunity to pause for a moment and re-assess one’s life. It’s a unique opportunity open to everyone.

Please contact Eleanor if you would like more information about this event at: eleanor@paricenter.com

Through in-depth presentations and informal discussions in a convivial atmosphere you will learn about, and have opportunities to discuss, the insights and research findings of world-renowned experts on current consciousness research and its future.

Such a multifaceted field is currently enjoying a huge renaissance in terms of general interest and academic momentum. Consciousness is more than a ‘hard problem’—and also less. It’s the intimate mystery of our very existence. Its study thus requires an integrative and conscious approach beyond short-sighted abstractions.

From phenomenology and neuroscience to biology and sociology, we will weave together a spectrum of approaches to consciousness that have, up till now, been largely disconnected, if not avoided, by academia and left to lie beyond the border of what is typically explored scientifically or discussed in public.

We can now more openly and rigorously ask whether such approaches can actually inform us about ‘consciousness for real,’ truly advancing its scientific study as well as transforming science as we know it and, more importantly, our very understanding of the nature of reality and our collective and individual place in it.

Mindfully drawing from orthodox, heterodox, and heretic views on consciousness, our humble ambition is to tackle it ‘for real,’ overcoming our ingrained limiting habits of thought and grasping the roots of human experience and its evolutionary future.

We at the Pari Center seek to bring together world-renowned experts from a great range of disciplines, approaches, and sensibilities to meet together in person and deepen our insights on the workings and origin of human experience, while also exploring creative and rigorous frameworks to integrate such wonderful mysteries hidden in plain sight into a coherent evolutionary understanding. You are cordially invited to join us.

Information

Additional Information about the program (PDF)

Terms and conditions for this course (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)

Gentle Action: A Gathering of Shared Experience
2024-06-13 19:00 - 2024-06-20 14:00 | Pari, Italy
Gentle Action: A Gathering of Shared Experience

Dates: June 13 – 20, 2024

Location: Pari, Italy

Price: 950.00 euros, which includes:

a 7-night stay in private accommodation;

breakfast, lunch and dinner at the local restaurant featuring locally sourced produce and traditional dishes;

water, wine, and coffee served with lunch and dinner;

programmed activities and materials;

refreshments provided at mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee breaks.

Event: The event starts on Thursday June 13 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Thursday June 20 after lunch.

Download information, terms and conditions.

About the Event

Join us for a week of living moment by moment, in Pari, Italy surrounded by the peaceful hills of the Tuscan landscape. With its beautiful palazzo, rustic bar, and numerous quiet places, the medieval village of Pari acts as an alchemical vessel for transformations to take place.

Throughout the week you will have ample opportunities to connect with Nature, others, and—perhaps most importantly—yourself. Experience the power of dialogue and active listening in an atmosphere that cultivates intimacy in everyday interactions.

Embracing the present and choosing to act more gently, allows insights and interconnections to emerge and bubble up in a natural and playful manner. Such moments are often accompanied by experiences of openness, trust, joy, and a childlike sense of wonder.

Our Story

Several years ago, a small group of us were sitting outside the bar in Pari, Italy when the idea came up to bring a group of very open-minded people together for a gathering without any agenda, topic, intention, or specific purpose.

After leaving Pari, we continued to meet monthly through an online Zoom dialogue, where our small group of three individuals gradually grew in a most organic manner. More than a year of online meetings led to our first Gentle Action Gathering back at Pari in September of 2022.

Our original group of Jena, Manfred, and Tom, who hail from New York, Germany, and Ireland has gradually grown into a thriving community. Members of our online community have traveled from throughout the world to meet one another in person. Similarly, new participants who meet during our in-person Gentle Action Gatherings, frequently wish to stay in touch through our online dialogues.

Over the course of time we have come to discover that we have much to share with one another. Somewhat paradoxically, many of us believe that this is due to—rather than despite—our differing backgrounds. Throughout our interactions, we have also found that we have much in common. Perhaps most importantly, we all share a genuine interest in one another’s perspectives on the world, quite reminiscent of Rumi’s quote:

Out beyond the ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. I will meet you there.

This June we have chosen to meet once again in Pari, Italy. The medieval village of Pari, nestled in the Tuscan landscape, provides the perfect backdrop for new insights and explorations. During our Gentle Action Gatherings, participants are largely free to roam around as they please. They can meet in the newly renovated palazzo, take part in a yoga class, explore the area’s hot springs, or just sit down to have an espresso at the charming and peaceful square. Many find that leaving their daily routine behind and setting aside the expectations of the outer world allows them to reconnect with their innermost nature.

Taking the time to communicate and interact in the moment, for the moment, provides a unique opportunity to engage with the world in a much more playful manner—deepening participants relationships with themselves, others, and the world around them.

Many participants notice that an almost childlike curiosity tends to emerge, unforced and unbidden, ‘beyond the ideas of right and wrong’ allowing them to experience the innate beauty of the present moment.

More than anything, our gatherings have given us a deep sense of connection and friendships that endure beyond the limits of time and space.

This June we get to come home again. It would be wonderful if you could join us.

Jena, Lisa, Manfred, Michael, Todd, and Tom

Information

Additional Information about this Event (PDF)

Terms and conditions for this course (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)

The Future Mind – A Conversation with Patrick Harpur
2024-06-19 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

A Conversation between Patrick Harpur and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday, June 199:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

Patrick Harpur grew up in Surrey, attended Cranleigh School and travelled for a year in Africa before going to St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, to read English. Subsequently he did much of the reading and research which he would eventually use in his books, and wrote poetry, stories and plays by way of practice, while supporting himself with part-time jobs, such as teaching, market research, gardening, computer personnel etc. For five years he worked in London as a researcher and then as an editor for a book-packaging company. His first book was a ‘theological thriller’ entitled The Serpent’s Circle (UK Macmillan, 1985; Coronet, 1986, and US St Martin’s Press, 1985; Warner, 1986). His second was a novel about an autistic child, The Rapture (Macmillan, 1986; Coronet, 1986). Mercurius; or, the Marriage of Heaven and Earth, a partly fictional account of the Great Work of alchemy, was published by Macmillan in 1990 and re-issued by The Squeeze Press in 2008. His first attempt at complete non-fiction was Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld (UK Viking, 1995; Penguin, 1996 and US Penguin, 1995, 1996; re-issued by Pine Winds Press, Idyll Arbor, 2003) which attempted to make sense of visions and apparitions by recourse to Platonic philosophy, Jungian psychology, and the Romantic notion of imagination. The Philosophers’ Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination (UK Penguin, 2002 and US Ivan R. Dee, 2003; re-issued by The Squeeze Press, 2009) outlined an esoteric Western way of seeing the world which has been largely neglected. In 2010, Rider published the rather ambitiously titled A Complete Guide to the Soul which appeared a year later in the US as The Secret Tradition of the Soul (Evolver Editions, an imprint of North Atlantic Books). The Savoy Truffle (Skylight Press, 2013) is a highly autobiographical, blackish comedy set in the Home Counties of the 1960s. The Good People (Strange Attractor Press, 2017) is a modern fairytale and a sort of fictional companion-volume to Daimonic Reality. The Stormy Petrel (The Squeeze Press, 2017) is a novel based on the life and work of the Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard whose writings have gripped Patrick for years. His four non-fiction books have been translated into Spanish and published by Ediciones Atalanta. At the same time as he was writing these, Patrick was commissioned by BBC television to write an adaptation of The Rapture; plus, he has written pieces for such publications as The Guardian, Fortean Times, Gnosis, Resurgence, the New Statesman and the Independent on Sunday. He’s often invited to give talks in the UK, in Spain and in America; he’s taught post-graduate students at Schumacher College (Dartington). Patrick lives in West Dorset.

Àlex Gómez-Marín is a Spanish physicist turned neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and a Masters in biophysics from the University of Barcelona. He was a research fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. His research spans from the origins of the arrow of time to the neurobiology of action-perception across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, where he is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. Combining computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

How to Think Impossibly
2024-06-28 16:00 - 2024-07-01 14:00 | Pari, Italy
How to Think Impossibly:A mind-bending invitation to experience the impossible as fundamentally human

June 28 – July 1, 2024

Speakers: Jeffrey J. Kripal

Curated and Chaired by: Àlex Gómez-Marín

Location: Pari, Italy

Price: 725.00 euros, which includes:

a 3-night stay in private accommodation;

breakfast, lunch and dinner at the local restaurant featuring locally sourced produce and traditional dishes;

water, wine, and coffee are provided with lunch and dinner;

programmed activities and materials;

refreshments provided at mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee breaks.

Event: The event starts on Friday June 28 at 16:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Monday July 1 after lunch.

From precognitive dreams and telepathic visions to near-death experiences, UFO encounters, and beyond, so-called impossible phenomena are not supposed to happen. But they do happen—all the time. Jeffrey J. Kripal asserts that the impossible is a function not of reality, but of our everchanging assumptions about what is real.

Download information, terms and conditions for this course.

About the Event

How to Think Impossibly invites us to think about these fantastic (yet commonplace) experiences as an essential part of being human, expressive of a deeply shared reality that is neither mental nor material but gives rise to both.

Thinking with specific individuals and their extraordinary experiences in vulnerable, open, and often humorous ways, Kripal interweaves humanistic and scientific inquiry to develop an awareness that the fantastic is real, the supernatural is super natural, and the impossible is possible.

Prof. Kripal’s new book, How to Think Impossibly, will be published on July 3rd, 2024.

As complimentary preparation material, participants will receive an exclusive digital copy of the Prologue and Introduction of the book before its publication, as well as a signed physical copy of the book while in Pari.

Participating in an event at the Pari Center means living for a week in a medieval village, mingling with the tiny local population, eating local dishes and drinking local wines, appreciating the beauty of the surrounding countryside, and participating in a very gentle way of life far from the frenzy of work and city living. David Peat compared Pari to an alchemical vessel—a place where transformation can come about—as well as an opportunity to pause for a moment and re-assess one’s life. It’s a unique opportunity open to everyone.

Please contact Eleanor if you would like more information about this event at: eleanor@paricenter.com

SCHEDULE

Intro (Friday afternoon): Thinking-with experiencers…

Part 1 (Saturday morning): World of the dead and the nature of soul

Part 2 (Saturday afternoon): Praying mantises, flying sauces and professional comedians

Part 3 (Sunday morning): Neuro-diversity and multi-verses

Part 4 (Sunday afternoon): Time travel, quantum physics

Outro (Monday morning): How to pull it all together

Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He also helps direct the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California and sits on numerous advisory boards in the U.S. and Europe involving the nature of consciousness and the human, social, and natural sciences. Most recently, Jeff is the author of The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities (Chicago, 2022), where he intuits an emerging order of knowledge that can engage in robust moral criticism but also affirm the superhuman or nonhuman dimensions of our histories and futures. His forthcoming book is How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else (Chicago, 2024). He is presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents in the sciences, modern esoteric literature, and the hidden history of science fiction collectively entitled The Super Story: Science (Fiction) and Some Emergent Mythologies. His full body of work can be seen at http://jeffreyjkripal.com He thinks he may be Spider-Man.

Information

Additional information on this program (PDF)

Terms and conditions (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)

Book-A-Month Club - Syntropy: The Spirit of Love
2024-07-05 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSOwD8r3S0o

Syntropy: The Spirit of Loveby Ulisse Di Corpo and Antonella Vannini

Hosts: Dr. Jeffrey Dunne

Friday July 5, 20249:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

An informal monthly get-together to discuss books of significance for the Pari Center community.

Many people are familiar with the concept of entropy, the dissipative process that indicates the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a closed physical system. Entropy is sometimes called ‘the arrow of time’, and describes a forward-in-time causal universe, but fails to account for many scientific paradoxes… such as life itself. The subject of this book is a complementary, albeit less well known, principle called syntropy. Syntropy describes aspects of reality that follow an increase in complexity through the action of attractors in the future, explaining the relationship of systems with their purposes. Rather than progressing towards disintegrated disorder, syntropy “draws together” through commonality and intertwined purposes. In a way, syntropy can be regarded as the life force that emanates from the unifying action of love.

Dr. Jeffrey Dunne is President of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL, www.icrl.org), an organization dedicated to understanding the nature of consciousness for the betterment of humanity. Beyond his work with ICRL and several decades of research at the Johns Hopkins University in fields ranging from acoustics to data science and AI, Dr. Dunne is an award-winning playwright and author. His recently published novel, Nexus, weaves the concept of syntropy with the implications of the nature of consciousness into a story that speaks to the challenges humanity is facing, sharing a vision for finding a healthier, more balanced future.

Beyond Bohm 2024
2024-07-13 17:58 - 2024-08-25 19:30
Solidarity tickets available. Click for Part 1 and Part 2

Beyond Bohm 2024

Saturday July 13 – Sunday August 25, 2024 The Beyond Bohm 2024 series is oriented toward sharing unique and unusual perspectives that complement and amplify the work of David Bohm. Now in our fourth year, we are continuing that tradition with an array of new faces and presenters that we are especially excited about.

Part 1

Our first weekend begins with some “basics”: a roundtable discussion of a foundational Bohm text, Thought as a System. We are pleased to welcome members of the David Bohm Society into this discussion. The following day, we will hear from Dr. Elizabeth Henderson, whose 40 years of work in education suggest multiple perspectives for establishing wholeness in human beings, from their earliest years. Dr. Henderson uses autoethnography to help illustrate the possibilities and tensions facing practitioners as they try to help children build their interior worlds.

Our second weekend opens by taking us directly into the “deep time” geology of Dr. Marcia Bjornerud. Here we are asked to sense Earth through the fourth dimension of time, as a living, moving, process-oriented phenomenon. The next day, abstract artist Pam Harris shares with us the nature of her experience in contemplating scientific and philosophical questions, and how that experience translates to canvas.

Our third weekend continues the thread of artistic and scientific complementarity. Artist-engineer Cheryl Brant walks us through the unfolding of her own 40-year artistic process, and its culmination in questions of consciousness and the living world. Finally, closing out the series, Melissa Nelson (Turtle Mountain Chippewa / Métis) and friends will share indigenous perspectives on a variety of culturally-oriented issues and concerns.

Part 2

After an introduction to Bohm’s physics, we will explore the relations between Russellian monism, William James’s radical empiricism and Bohm’s implicate order; some traditional and recent (e.g., Johanna Seibt’s) work on process philosophy and how it connects with Bohm’s ideas; the idea of quantum properties of matter as potentialities in Bohm’s early thought; the influence of Hegel on Bohm’s ideas about fragmentation and wholeness; and whether Bohm’s notion of active information is a candidate for a unifying notionof information.

Every session will have openings for question / answer and discussion with presenters.Tickets are available for the whole series, for three presentations of your choice, or for single presentations.

Program of Event

Part 1

Saturday July 13Thought as a Systemwith Matthew Capowski, Melissa Nelson, Igor Topilsky and Aja Bulla Zamastil

Sunday July 14Inner Freedom and Early Childhoodwith Elizabeth Henderson

Saturday July 20Discovering the Deep Logic of Earthwith Marcia Bjornerud

Sunday July 21Finding David Bohm – and Beyondwith Pam Harris

Saturday July 27Science and Art: Squaring the Circlewith Cheryl Brant

Sunday July 28Vortex of Indigenous CosmologiesWith Melissa Nelson and Friends

Part 2

Sunday August 4Introduction to Bohm’s PhysicsJonathan AlldaySunday August 11The Relations Between Russellian Monism, James’s Radical Empiricism and Bohm’s Implicate OrderWilliam Seager

Saturday August 17A Comparative Overview of Process Metaphysics and Substance Metaphysics & Indeterminate Concrete Individuals in Johanna Seibt’s General Process TheorySamuli Isotalo and Thelma Nylund, with comments by Paavo PylkkänenSunday August 18Quantum Properties of Matter as Potentialities in Bohm’s 1951 Book Quantum TheoryPaavo Pylkkänen

Saturday August 24Fragmentation and Wholeness: Bohm and G.W.F. HegelBoris Koznjak

Sunday August 25 Is There a Unifying Notion of Information? Jens Allwood, with comments by Michael Richter and Paavo Pylkkänen

Beyond Bohm 2024 - Part 1
2024-07-13 17:59 - 2024-07-28 20:00
The Beyond Bohm series is oriented toward sharing unique and unusual perspectives that complement and amplify the work of David Bohm. Now in our fourth year, we are continuing that tradition with an array of new faces and presenters that we are especially excited about.

Part 1

Our first weekend begins with some “basics”: a roundtable discussion of a foundational Bohm text, Thought as a System. We are pleased to welcome members of the David Bohm Society into this discussion. The following day, we will hear from Dr. Elizabeth Henderson, whose 40 years of work in education suggest multiple perspectives for establishing wholeness in human beings, from their earliest years. Dr. Henderson uses autoethnography to help illustrate the possibilities and tensions facing practitioners as they try to help children build their interior worlds.

Our second weekend opens by taking us directly into the “deep time” geology of Dr. Marcia Bjornerud. Here we are asked to sense Earth through the fourth dimension of time, as a living, moving, process-oriented phenomenon. The next day, abstract artist Pam Harris shares with us the nature of her experience in contemplating scientific and philosophical questions, and how that experience translates to canvas.

Our third weekend continues the thread of artistic and scientific complementarity. Artist-engineer Cheryl Brant walks us through the unfolding of her own 40-year artistic process, and its culmination in questions of consciousness and the living world. Finally, closing out the series, Melissa Nelson (Turtle Mountain Chippewa / Métis) and friends will share indigenous perspectives on a variety of culturally-oriented issues and concerns.

Every session will have openings for question / answer and discussion with presenters.Tickets are available for the whole series, for three presentations of your choice, or for single presentations.

Program of Event

Saturday July 13Thought as a Systemwith Matthew Capowski, Melissa Nelson, Igor Topilsky and Aja Bulla Zamastil

Sunday July 14Inner Freedom and Early Childhoodwith Elizabeth Henderson

Saturday July 20Discovering the Deep Logic of Earthwith Marcia Bjornerud

Sunday July 21Finding David Bohm – and Beyondwith Pam Harris

Saturday July 27Science and Art: Squaring the Circlewith Cheryl Brant

Sunday July 28Vortex of Indigenous CosmologiesWith Melissa Nelson and Friends

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 1 – Thought as a System
2024-07-13 18:00 - 20:00
Thought as a System

with Matthew Capowski, Melissa Nelson, Igor Topilsky and Aja Bulla Zamastil

Saturday July 139:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session.

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Thought as a System is David Bohm’s ur-text pertaining to his views regarding the nature of collective thought. It elucidates core themes of awareness, collective assumptions, social conditioning, dialogue, fragmentation, the self-image, insight, meaning, the observer and the observed, proprioception of thought, thinking vs. thought, and many more.

In this session our roundtable will open up these various facets of Bohm’s perspective, both theoretically as well as in terms of direct personal experience. We will invite members of the audience to contribute to the session, based on their own experience of the many issues raised in this seminal Bohmian text.

Matthew Capowski works in the field of child protection, with a background in psychology. He is a lifelong student of Ayurveda. As a teenager he encountered a book that contained interviews with David Bohm, and would go on to become a serious student of Bohm’s work pertaining to the problems of humanity. This would lead him to found the David Bohm Society in 2012, both to ensure preservation of Bohm’s invaluable legacy and to attempt to realize some of Bohm’s proposals by creating living examples.

Melissa K. Nelson is an ecologist and Indigenous scholar-activist. She earned her Ph.D. in ecology at the University of California, Davis. Formerly a professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, she now teaches at Arizona State University in the School of Sustainability, Global Futures Laboratory. From 1993 to 2021, she served as the founding executive director and CEO of the Cultural Conservancy. She now serves as their president emerita. Melissa is the Bundle Holder for the Native American Academy. She is a contributor and co-editor of Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability, published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. She is also a contributor and the editor of Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (2008). She is Anishinaabe/Métis/Norwegian and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

Igor Topilsky is an active participant in poetic arts, music and theatre, and has spent numerous years working with David Bohm’s dialogue proposals. He has been serving on the board of directors for the David Bohm Society since 2015.

Aja Bulla Zamastil is an architectural and landscape architectural designer, public artist, and educator. As a Lecturer in the Landscape Architecture and Urbanism graduate program at the University of Southern California, she leads design studios that address adapting our constructed world to shifting natural and socio-cultural forces. As the Creative Director at Watershed Progressive, she is responsible for managing and designing landscape projects and educational programs throughout California. These projects explore how we can transform monolithic systems into resilient ecological cycles that re-enchant everyday experience and promote alternative cultural practices.

Aja is a contributor to Holoflux: Codex – Form/Movement/Vision inspired by David Bohm (Pari Publishing 2022). She is a founding member of the Pari Holoflux experiments, and was formerly a student at the Oak Grove School in Ojai, California, and Brockwood Park in England.

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 1 - Inner Freedom and Early Childhood
2024-07-14 18:00 - 20:00
Inner Freedom and Early Childhood

with Elizabeth Henderson

Sunday July 149:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

The constraints and limitations on inner freedom imposed by contemporary society run broad and deep. As adults, many of us struggle to establish any significant degree of such freedom, any enduring sense of true individuality. There are, however, strategies and skills which, if inculcated at an early age, significantly increase the prospects for inner wholeness and the flowering of creative individuality. In this session, Dr. Elizabeth Henderson will share with us aspects of her 20 years of engagement with Early Years (Early Childhood) education, oriented toward a process of nurturing that is fundamentally different from contemporary quantitative educational systems.

Dr. Elizabeth Henderson is an experienced practitioner, manager, lecturer, trainer, and author with more than 40 years of experience in education. For the last 20 years, she has focussed on the early childhood sector. Using autoethnography as a methodology, Elizabeth seeks to humanise data to reveal the multiple complexities at work in a practitioner’s relationship with young children and their families. Her current research is on sustainability, indigenous pathways, and their relationship to Early Years work.

After completing her Doctorate in Early Childhood Education and Care in 2016 at Sheffield University, England, she went on to publish the first book in the Early Years sector on autoethnography – Autoethnography in Early Childhood Education Care: Narrating the Heart of Practice. She has also published further work on sustainability, outdoor work with young children, arts-based research in early childhood, and inclusion and diversity.

Elizabeth is the founder of several innovative projects in Scotland which include: Nature Nurture a project for children under the age of three years from challenging backgrounds, offering the opportunity to be in Nature and to connect therapeutically with the cycle of the year; and WIGLS, a Community of Practice to help support practitioners working with Nature and the outdoor context in their Early Years settings. Elizabeth also sowed the seeds that initiated the opening of the first Outdoor Nursery in her local authority, in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Elizabeth’s work is underpinned by love and the understanding that we build interior worlds with our children during their early development. She is a mother to two adopted children and grandmother to eight little people.

The Future Mind – A Conversation with Federico Faggin
2024-07-15 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYa6OFqPm64

A Conversation between Federico Faggin and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Monday, July 159:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

Federico Faggin is a physicist born and educated in Italy who co-invented and developed the MOS Silicon Gate Technology at Fairchild Semiconductor and designed the world’s first microprocessor at Intel. Faggin also co-founded and led Zilog and Synaptics, two successful high-tech companies, before founding the non-profit Federico and Elvia Faggin Foundation, dedicated to the science of consciousness. He received the 2009 National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Barack Obama.

Àlex Gómez-Marín is a Spanish physicist turned neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and a Masters in biophysics from the University of Barcelona. He was a research fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. His research spans from the origins of the arrow of time to the neurobiology of action-perception across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, where he is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. Combining computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 1 - Discovering the Deep Logic of Earth
2024-07-20 18:00 - 20:00
Discovering the Deep Logic of Earth

with Marcia Bjornerud

Saturday July 209:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Rocks as verbs? Stones with subtle wisdom? Experiencing Earth with the fourth dimension of Deep Time? Marcia Bjornerud is doing in geology what Tim Ingold has done in anthropology and David Bohm has done in physics: make new levels of embodied meaning available to non-specialists while challenging our reflexive perceptions of the world.

In this two-hour session, Dr. Bjornerud will discuss her forthcoming book, Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks, as well as her current book, Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World.

Marcia Bjornerud (she/her/hers) is Walter Schober Professor of Environmental Studies and Professor of Geosciences at Lawrence University. She is a structural geologist whose research focuses on the physics of earthquakes and mountain building. She combines field-based studies of bedrock geology with quantitative models of rock mechanics. She has done research in high arctic Norway (Svalbard) and Canada (Ellesmere Island), as well as mainland Norway, Italy, New Zealand, and the Lake Superior region.

Bjornerud is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Oslo, Norway and University of Otago, New Zealand. A contributing writer to The New Yorker, Wired, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, she is also the author of several books for popular audiences — Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth; Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World and Geopedia: A Brief Compendium of Geologic Curiosities. Timefulness was longlisted for the 2019 PEN/E.O.Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing, and was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in Science and Technology.

Education:B.S., Geophysics, University of Minnesota, 1983M.S., Structural Geology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1985Ph.D., Structural Geology and Rock Mechanics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1987

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 1 - Finding David Bohm - and Beyond
2024-07-21 18:00 - 20:00
Finding David Bohm – and Beyond

with Pam Harris

Sunday July 219:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Pam Harris is a contemporary abstract painter with a special interest in the nature of our existence and its intrinsic connectedness to the universe. Philosophy, poetry, and science – particularly quantum physics – inform her explorations. She has exhibited in France, the Netherlands, and Italy and her work is held in many private and corporate collections, including the Irish State Collection.

It has been remarked of Pam’s work, “In the anti-intellectual climate of today, it is refreshing to find an artist who is not afraid to ask the big questions and give them some form of visual reality through painting. Although seeing has been the privileged sense in Western aesthetics, Harris’ art brings the rationalism usually associated with scientific and philosophical concepts into direct contact with aesthetics, the intuitive and deeply emotional.

…Her achievement is to produce paintings that are not only visually compelling using the minimal means of line and colour, but that she also manages to convey the fragility of existence in the Heraclitean flux.”
— (Extract from “Enfolded” by Brenda Moore-McCann, Art Historian, Dublin 2008. From the catalogue “Enfolded”).

In this session, Pam will share with us some of her contemplations of scientific and philosophical questions—including those of David Bohm—and how those contemplations translate to canvas. If contemporary abstract painting has eluded you, this is an opportunity to get a first-hand sensibility of how one artist creates such works.

www.pamharris.ie

‘Union Painting no. 7’. 1999. Oil on canvas. 66 x 66 x 7.5cm.

‘Subject and Object’ diptych 2003
oil on canvas with lead
21 x 21 x 5cm (each square).

‘Subject and Object’ diptych 2003
oil on canvas with lead
21 x 21 x 5cm (each square).

Free Science in a Free Society: Celebrating Feyerabend’s Centennial
2024-07-23 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BruT-EHF-iE

Free Science in a Free Society: Celebrating Feyerabend’s Centennial

With Vandana Shiva and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Tuesday July 23, 20249:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

The Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994) has been regarded as “the worst enemy of science” (Nature, 1987) but also a “breath of fresh air” (Science, 1979). He is the fourth iteration of the great philosophers of science of the 20th century, after Karl Popper (1902-1994), Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996), and Imre Lakatos (1922-1974), standing as one of the most relevant thinkers ever in our understanding of what science really is and does.

His works —Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (1975), Science in a Free Society (1978), and Farewell to Reason (1987), amongst other books, lectures, and essays— revealed that the so-called scientific method is not so well defined and stable as commonly thought or proclaimed, but crowded with notable anomalies. In fact, the history of science shows that progress often takes place when scientists actually break (rather than follow) the methodological rules and standards we so much venerate.

He also denounced that science is too often entangled with politics while pretending it isn’t, which enables its misuse for ideological and authoritarian reasons. He deliberately promulgated his famous motto “anything goes” in order to point to another kind of rationality (which some disdain as irrationalism), beyond the dogmatic mechanistic deductive order that seeks to dominate nature and people. Cartesian-Baconian rationality is one (but not the only) valuable tradition in science. One must address the relation between Reason and Practice.

In order to celebrate the centennial of his birth (and three decades since he passed away), Vandana and Alex will be in dialogue for about one hour, reflecting on Feyerabend’s legacy and its impact today. They will discuss current pernicious monotheisms of the mind and, based on general principles and concrete examples, entertain and illustrate alternatives in physics, neurobiology, agriculture, and economy. We would then open it up for questions and comments from the audience.

Science needs boundaries indeed, but they need to be porous. The role of scientists (and the authority of experts) in a genuine democratic society is at stake. The complex dynamics between truth, post-truth, and totalitarianism needs to be put on the table. The tension between dogmatism and anarchism can be resolved via an ecological pluralism applied to our minds and lives.

Dr Vandana Shiva is an Indian scholar, activist, and author. A food sovereignty advocate, environmentalist, and ecofeminist, Shiva holds a PhD in physics and has written more than 20 books, including Making Peace with the Earth, Staying Alive, Monocultures of the Mind, Democratizing Biology, Soil Not Oil, and Stolen Harvest. Based in Delhi, she is referred to as “Gandhi of grain” for her activism associated with the anti-GMO movement. Shiva is one of the leaders and board members of the International Forum on Globalization, and a figure of the anti-globalization movement. She has worked as a consultant for the Indian government and abroad, and in NGOs such as the International Forum on Globalization, Women’s Environment & Development Organization and Third World Network. She is a co-founder of the gender unit of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, and of the Women’s Environment & Development Organization. Shiva has received numerous international honors, such as the John Lennon-Yoko Ono Grant for Peace (2008), Sydney’s Peace Prize (2010), Calgary’s Peace Prize (2011), and the Right Livelihood Award (1993), which is regarded as the “alternative Nobel Prize”.

Àlex Gómez-Marín is a Spanish physicist turned neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and a Masters in biophysics from the University of Barcelona. He was a research fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. His research spans from the origins of the arrow of time to the neurobiology of action-perception across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, where he is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. Combining computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 1 - Science and Art: Squaring the Circle
2024-07-27 18:00 - 20:00
Science and Art: Squaring the Circle

with Cheryl Brant

Saturday July 279:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Cheryl Brant’s work finds her working at the intersection of art and science. Her formal education began with a Bachelor of Science in Art, and continued with an MFA in sculpture. Her professional life has been in engineering for the past 36 years—first in Geotechnical engineering, and for the past 22 years in Structural, Civil, and Coastal engineering. Her artwork has been exhibited in numerous galleries through the years. She is a founding member of the Pari Holoflux experiments.

Of her recent work, Cheryl says, “I hadn’t heard about David Bohm until I attended a conference at the Pari Center given by David Peat. At the time, he (Peat) was working on the film ‘Infinite Potential.’ Since then, Bohm’s work has become integral in my approach to art.”

From her website: “Circle-Squaring is a process of finding ways for seemingly opposite things to work together. Squaring the circle has been thought of as ‘doing the impossible… turning one into its opposite.’ However, circles and squares to me are complements much like earth and water or art and science. In seeing these as complements rather than opposites, we can gain a more nuanced understanding of the microcosm, macrocosm, and ultimately ourselves. They work together to provide a more all-encompassing picture which should hopefully be closer to the truth.”

In this session, Cheryl will share with us various aspects of her work spanning four decades, culminating in current explorations of the nature of consciousness as an innate aspect of the living world.

www.circlesquaring.net

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 1 – Vortex of Indigenous Cosmologies
2024-07-28 18:00 - 20:00
Vortex of Indigenous Cosmologies

with Melissa Nelson and friends

Sunday July 289:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session.

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Melissa K. Nelson is an ecologist and Indigenous scholar-activist. She earned her Ph.D. in ecology at the University of California, Davis. Formerly a professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, she now teaches at Arizona State University in the School of Sustainability, Global Futures Laboratory. From 1993 to 2021, she served as the founding executive director and CEO of the Cultural Conservancy. She now serves as their president emerita. Melissa is the Bundle Holder for the Native American Academy. She is a contributor and co-editor of Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability, published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. She is also a contributor and the editor of Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (2008). She is Anishinaabe/Métis/Norwegian and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

Terrellyn Fearn is a Mi’kmaq scholar-practitioner, Snake clan from Glooscap First Nation and a citizen of the Wabanaki Confederacy. Terrellyn is the Project Director of Turtle Island Institute, a global Indigenous social innovation think and do tank (a learning lodge) grounded in Metuaptmumk: All Around Seeing, a uniquely Indigenous approach to wholistic human development and systems transformation.

Her work spans 30 years exploring the human dimensions of transformative change where systems science, arts and the sacred meet by amplifying Indigenous languages, ancient wisdom traditions and Ancestral sciences. She is a Research Associate with the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation & Resilience and holds a Masters degree in Education. She has worked with over 380 Indigenous communities across Turtle Island (North America) to advance wellbeing and create communities of practice dedicated to social change and heart centred leadership. Terrellyn is a mother and believes large-scale systemic change begins through restoring the sacred feminine and reawakening the human Spirit by connecting to self, each other, our Earth Mother and all of Creation

Isabel Hawkins, Senior Scientist (she/her/ella), grew up in Córdoba, Argentina, where the beauty of the night sky and a childhood visit to the Planetario charted the course of her career as an astronomer and science educator. Reaching for the stars, Isabel came to the United States as an American Field Service exchange student when she was sixteen. In 1981, she received a BS in physics from UC Riverside, where she was asked to join Phi Beta Kappa. Subsequently, she obtained an MS and a PhD in astrophysics from UCLA. Before joining the Exploratorium in 2009, she spent 20 years as an astrophysics researcher and science educator at the University of California, Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory. Isabel’s work at the Exploratorium is focused on NASA, NSF, and museum-funded efforts related to Latinx audience engagement, such as Solar Eclipse, GENIAL: Generating Engagement and New Initiatives for All Latinos, and Cambio, a professional development approach for building Latinx-focused cultural competence in museums. Through cultural astronomy, she fosters science pluralism by making visible The Cultural Roots of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), a research synthesis effort that has been funded by the NSF. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific bestowed on her the prestigious Klumpke-Roberts Award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy, an honor that she shares with fellow awardees Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Julieta Fierro, and Tim Ferris, among others. Isabel is also a consultant for the Smithsonian Institution, a volunteer coordinator for the YAKANAL, Indigenous Youth Cultural Exchange program, and a 2018 to 2022 Fulbright US Global Scholar. Her interests include salsa and bachata dancing, yoga, drawing Maya classic period glyphs, and the study of native languages.

Marcus Briggs-Cloud is a language revitalizer, scholar, and musician. He is co-director of Ekvn-Yefolecv, an off-grid, climate-positive, income-sharing Indigenous ecovillage community centered in Weogufka, Alabama, comprised of Maskoke persons who have returned to their ancestral homelands—after 180 years of having been forcibly removed—for the purpose of embodying sustainable lifeways through language/cultural revitalization, ecological restoration, regenerative agriculture, and natural building. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Marcus has a PhD in interdisciplinary ecology from the University of Florida, where his work intersected ecology, linguistics, genetics, ecofeminism, and liberation theology. He received awards for his Maskoke hymn album Pum Vculvke Vrakkuecetv (To Honor Our Elders), and in 2012, he served as composer and choir director for the Vatican canonization liturgy with Pope Benedict XVI for Indigenous Saint Kateri Tekakwitha. He is partnered to Tawna Little (Maskoke); they have two children, Nokos-Afvnoke and Hemokke, with whom Marcus enjoys speaking exclusively in the Maskoke language.

Beyond Bohm 2024 - Part 2
2024-08-04 17:59 - 19:30
The Beyond Bohm series is oriented toward sharing unique and unusual perspectives that complement and amplify the work of David Bohm.

Part 2

After an introduction to Bohm’s physics, we will explore the relations between Russellian monism, William James’s radical empiricism and Bohm’s implicate order; some traditional and recent (e.g., Johanna Seibt’s) work on process philosophy and how it connects with Bohm’s ideas; the idea of quantum properties of matter as potentialities in Bohm’s early thought; the influence of Hegel on Bohm’s ideas about fragmentation and wholeness; and whether Bohm’s notion of active information is a candidate for a unifying notion of information.

Program of Event

Sunday August 4Introduction to Bohm’s PhysicsJonathan AlldaySunday August 11The Relations Between Russellian Monism, James’s Radical Empiricism and Bohm’s Implicate OrderWilliam Seager

Saturday August 17A Comparative Overview of Process Metaphysics and Substance Metaphysics & Indeterminate Concrete Individuals in Johanna Seibt’s General Process TheorySamuli Isotalo and Thelma Nylund, with comments by Paavo PylkkänenSunday August 18Quantum Properties of Matter as Potentialities in Bohm’s 1951 Book Quantum TheoryPaavo Pylkkänen

Saturday August 24Fragmentation and Wholeness: Bohm and G.W.F. HegelBoris Koznjak

Sunday August 25 Is There a Unifying Notion of Information? Jens Allwood, with comments by Michael Richter and Paavo Pylkkänen

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 2 - Introduction to Bohm's Physics
2024-08-04 18:00 - 19:30
Introduction to Bohm’s Physics

with Jonathan Allday

Sunday August 49:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session.

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

David Bohm made very important contributions to a range of different areas in Physics. Amongst these, his work on quantum theory is possibly the most relevant to Pari discussions. In this talk I will attempt to outline Bohm’s ontological interpretation of quantum theory, which has since been developed by Basil Hiley amongst others. I will also discuss Bohm’s development of the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paper which lead to John Bell’s work and our current understanding of entanglement.

Jonathan Allday was born in Liverpool in 1960. He did his first degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge in 1982 and then returned to Liverpool to complete a PhD in elementary particle physics. As part of this, he was fortunate to spend some time working at the European particle physics centre, CERN, in Geneva.

Also, during that time he was co-opted onto a working party looking at the teaching of particle physics in schools and universities. The upshot was a new syllabus in particle physics and cosmology to be added to UK A-level (16-18) physics qualifications. The first questions were set in 1992.

On the back of the work on this syllabus, Jonathan wrote his first book Quarks, Leptons and the Big Bang, which was published in 1998 and is about to enter its fourth edition. Jonathan has also collaborated on a couple of textbooks and written his own books on Quantum Theory, General Relativity and the Apollo moon missions.

Professionally, Jonathan worked as a physics teacher for 30 years in a variety of independent day and boarding schools in the UK. He was a head of physics, a head of science and latterly an academic deputy head. He retired in 2020 and now runs a consulting company providing training and educational advice for schools.

Jonathan is married to Carolyn, and they have three sons all of whom are far better at sport than he was. Carolyn was a GB swimmer, which explains how come the boys can do sport. Jonathan and Carolyn live in a hamlet not far from Worcester in the UK. When not writing or consulting, Jonathan enjoys watching cricket, James Bond movies and Formula 1 races.

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 2 - The Relations Between Russellian Monism, James's Radical Empiricism and Bohm's Implicate Order
2024-08-11 18:00 - 18:30
The Relations Between Russellian Monism, James’s Radical Empiricism and Bohm’s Implicate Order

with William Seager

Sunday August 119:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session.

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Willam James’s Radical Empiricism and cognate views going under the general title of Neutral Monism encompass a picture of reality with many attractive features. It presents a straightforward and intuitively attractive solution to the so-called Hard Problem of Consciousness. It endorses a view of perception and cognition which puts us in direct contact with the world, indeed, in direct contact with the fundamental nature of reality, where mind does not mirror nature so much as inhabit it. It supports the idea that the world can be scientifically described in terms of structural relations without lapsing into implausible scientistic reductionisms. One aspect of James’s view that has been little explored is the its relation to some views of David Bohm’s. In particular, what is the relation between Bohm’s “Implicate Order” and what James called “Pure Experience”? There is a question whether Bohm’s view dovetails with James’s, or whether it is more akin to what has come to be called “Russellian Monism”. I’ll argue that Bohm’s view might well count as a form of Neutral Monism, but point out some key differences between Bohm and James.

William Seager is Professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He has been working on the the philosophy of mind and especially the problem of consciousness for about 45 years, but still hasn’t gotten very far. Two recent books of his are Theories of Consciousness (2nd ed. 2016) and The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism (2020).

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 2 - A Comparative Overview of Process Metaphysics and Substance Metaphysics & Indeterminate, Concrete Individuals in Johanna Seibt's General Process Theory
2024-08-17 18:00 - 19:30
Part 1: A Comparative Overview of Process Metaphysics and Substance Metaphysics

with Samuli Isotalo

Part 2: Indeterminate, Concrete Individuals in Johanna Seibt’s General Process Theory

with Thelma Nylund

Saturday August 179:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session.

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Part 1: A Comparative Overview of Process Metaphysics and Substance Metaphysics with Samuli Isotalo

Process metaphysics is an approach in philosophy according to which reality in its fundamental nature is processual. That is to say, processes rather than things are taken to be the most fundamental phenomena existing in nature. Although process metaphysics is usually attributed immediately to the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), process metaphysicians do not as such have to commit themselves into the particular views of him. Rather, process metaphysics should be looked at as a general manner of approach in metaphysics instead of a fixed set of doctrines centred around a particular thinker. Faithful to its own teachings, process metaphysics should be looked at as an ongoing process which attempts to understand the most fundamental nature of reality.

On the other hand, the more influential and more mainstream approach—substance metaphysics—takes things as the fundamental building blocks of reality. This approach usually sees these things as substances, that is to say, as some kinds of independent, discrete and static sort of entities, where the relatedness and interconnectedness of these things is quite often taken to be something secondary in nature, if not altogether irrelevant. Thus, it can be said that while process metaphysics emphasizes interactive relatedness, wholeness, activity and interdependence, substance metaphysics in contrast emphasizes discrete individuality, separateness, fixity and independence.

In my talk, I shall present these two ways of doing metaphysics in their general outlines, but I do so from the perspective of process metaphysics. I’ll do this by mostly relying on the ideas of Nicholas Rescher (1928-2024).

Samuli Isotalo is a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Turku, Finland. His dissertation focuses on metaphysics, the study of Being itself. More specifically, what it is to be, what is its nature, and how to understand and think of the whole, that is, Being itself as a totality. The project has recently begun by first focusing on the metaphysics of the medieval period, especially St. Thomas Aquinas (1224?-1274). The project is not, however, meant to be purely historical. Rather, the insights of the medieval metaphysicians are intended to be brought into such present-day discussions where metaphysics intersects with natural science. It is here where process metaphysics has come to be of much interest to this project.

Part 2: Indeterminate, Concrete Individuals in Johanna Seibt’s General Process Theory with Thelma Nylund

Johanna Seibt has been developing a process ontological theory called ‘general process theory’ in which the category of functionally individuated dynamic processes is the only category. Since entities are more or less general and can be multiply located in the theory of general processes, ordinary objects such as a singular cat, but also traditional class-like entities like biological species, are both thought of as concrete individuals. Seibt divides entities into different types of dynamics based on their ‘spatio-temporal signature’ which tells us how the entity is located in space and in time using the notions of like-partedness or homeomereity and self-containment or automereity. Spatio-temporal self-containment can only make sense for entities individuated functionally and can only be defined in terms of a non-standard mereology of general process theory in which parthood is a non-transitive relation.

In this talk I will argue that Seibt rejects successfully several traditional ontological presuppositions and that understanding entities as the more or less indeterminate, yet concrete individuals of general process theory, provides philosophers with novel tools for ontological inquiry.

Thelma Nylund is a Master’s level student in philosophy at Tampere University, Finland. She is finishing her Master’s thesis in which she compares the neo-Aristotelian four-category ontology of E. J. Lowe to Johanna Seibt’s process-ontological theory. After graduation she is planning to continue studying process metaphysics in doctoral studies.

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 2 - Quantum Properties of Matter as Potentialities in Bohm’s 1951 Book Quantum Theory
2024-08-18 18:00 - 19:30
Quantum Properties of Matter as Potentialities in Bohm’s 1951 Book Quantum Theory

with Paavo Pylkkänen

Sunday August 189:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session.

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

One year before his 1952 ‘hidden variables’ paper David Bohm presented a physical-ontological interpretation of standard (‘Copenhagen’) interpretation of quantum theory in his 1951 646-page textbook. He proposed that properties of quantum particles such as electrons ought to be seen as ‘opposing potentialities.’ They are ‘potentialities’ in the sense they typically do not exist in a well-defined sense before measurement and ‘opposing’ in the sense that if one measures, say, position accurately, one cannot measure momentum accurately at the same time in the same experimental situation (‘complementarity’). Bohm’s discussion is philosophically intriguing—for one thing he suggests that we cannot derive the macroscopic world (which we need to actualize the potentialities of quantum particles) from quantum theory. And yet the behaviour of the macroscopic, classical level can only be understood in terms of a quantum theory of its component molecules. Bohm’s discussion anticipates the implicate order framework, where he introduces the notion of an ‘intrinsically implicate order,’ which means an order all of which cannot be made ‘explicate’ at a given moment. In this sense Bohm’s 1951 electron (conceived of as consisting of opposing potentialites) is an intrinsically implicate order, as we cannot manifest position and momentum at the single moment of time. The relation of the macroscopic world to the underlying quantum level of reality continues to be a subject of philosophical discussion, as we still cannot experimentally distinguish between, say, many worlds, pilot wave or spontaneuous collapse interpretations. I will argue that Bohm’s 1951 discussion still provides a valuable perspective to the meaning of quantum theory.

Paavo Pylkkänen, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Theoretical Philosophy and Director of the Bachelor’s Program in Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is also Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy (currently on leave) at the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, University of Skövde, Sweden, where he initiated a Consciousness Studies Programme. His main research areas are philosophy of mind, philosophy of physics and their intersection. In his book Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order (Springer) he proposed that new notions emerging from quantum physics (especially Bohm and Hiley’s interpretation) provide new ways of approaching key problems in philosophy of mind, such as mental causation and time consciousness. In 2018-2020 working as the Vice Dean of Research at the Faculty of Arts he had the main responsibility for developing the new profiling area Mind and Matter for the University of Helsinki https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/mind-and-matter.

Paavo Pylkkänen has been a visiting researcher in Stanford University, Oxford University, London University, Charles University Prague and Gothenburg University and was a member of the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence in the Philosophy of Social Sciences (TINT). https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/paavo-pylkkänen/publications/

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 2 - Fragmentation and Wholeness: Bohm and G.W.F. Hegel
2024-08-24 18:00 - 19:30
Fragmentation and Wholeness: Bohm and G.W.F. Hegel

with Boris Koznjak

Saturday August 249:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session.

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Among the many well-known philosophical influences on the physics and philosophy of science of David Bohm—ranging from Marxism to Krishnamurti—one important influence has remained almost completely unknown: the German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, one of the most important systematic philosophers in the history of Western philosophy and a prominent figure in philosophical idealism. This is indeed an unfortunate historical state of affairs, since Hegel was in fact Bohm’s strongest philosophical influence throughout his mature intellectual life, particularly in his abhorrence of fragmentation and his affection for wholeness, which is prominently reflected in both his physics and his philosophy of science. Moreover, speaking of Bohm as a person, his worldview can also be seen as strongly influenced by specific social propensities and psychological determinants from his early emotional and intellectual development, for which Hegel’s philosophy later served as a rational catalyst. Interestingly, but not unexpectedly, these determinants were strikingly similar to those that led the young Hegel to engage with the concepts of fragmentation and wholeness throughout his philosophical life.

Boris Kožnjak is a historian and philosopher of science, working as a scientific advisor at the Institute of Philosophy in Zagreb, Croatia. He graduated in physics from the Physics Department of the Faculty of Science and Mathematics at the University of Zagreb and received a PhD in philosophy from the Faculty of Philosophy at the same university. His scientific work particularly involves research in the history and philosophy of modern physics, with great attention paid also to the sociology and psychology of science. His work on Bohm includes research on Bohm’s Hegelianism as well as the scientific, historical, and social conditions of the ‘turn’ in the reception of Bohm’s ‘alternative physics’ during the late 1950s.
