Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Age of Enlightenment”
Download this episode (right click and save) “Stop Progress?” After thousands of years of little progress, human achievement took off in the 1700s with the Enlightenment, and remained in an upward direction — until the 1970s, when we managed to stop it. What now?
Are these really enlightened times? C’mon! – Energy Stew interview with Jason Gregory
A groundbreaking study published has found that high-quality birth-to-five programs for disadvantaged children can deliver a 13% per child, per year return on investment through better outcomes in education, health, social behaviors and employment — which reduce long-term taxpayer costs and equip country’s workforce for a competitive future. Nobel economics laureate and Institute for New Economic Thinking Advisory Board member Professor …
“The Beginning of Infinity.” What are the sources of knowledge and science? In his brilliant book “The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World” the physicist and computer scientist, David Deutsch, shows that the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution are unique moments coming from Explanations, and that humans have a unique role in the universe in the creation of knowledge.
“Becoming Creative.” Most of the books about creativity are about mastery, not creativity. Creativity begins with mastering existing traditions, but then goes on to overthrow those traditions and build new traditions. We look at creativity from the point of view of Nietzsche’s parable of the camel, the lion, and the child. More at: http://visionarycreativity.com/wp1/
Geologists are convinced that humans have left a mark upon the planet that will detectable millions of years from now. Long after human civilisation has perished, there could be a stratum of fossilised rock and a geological time zone that says: “We were here.” So there is a case for calling the present epoch “the Anthropocene” − probably dating from …
“This is what democracy looks like” goes the popular protest chant. However, it’s not democracy that captures the imagination, provides answers, and drives today’s resistance movement. Something much more interesting has been taking place during protests, forums and intentional communities. In his book The New Left the anthropologist David Graeber states that anarchy has become the logical and probably last hope of …
Back when we got basic information from encyclopedias instead of Wikipedia, politicians were at the mercy of the encyclopedia-writers’ particular biases. Take the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Apparently controlled by smug British nationalists, it described the important Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell as “not over-scrupulous,” “repellent,” “powerful for evil,” and, owing to the “mental affliction of his ancestors,” …
Ed Snowden is right. We have lost too many of our freedoms. What the hell happened? The United States has entered its third great era is what happened. The first, starting from the colonists’ arrival, saw the principles of the Enlightenment used to push back the abuses of an imperial government and create the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. …
Whether you look at superhero-besotted Hollywood, the clothes alleged grownups wear in public, or the spread of video games out of the suburban family room, it’s hard to miss noticing that much of contemporary culture is caught in childhood. Susan Neiman, an American philosopher who lives in Berlin and directs the Einstein Forum, tries to figure out the causes and …
