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Cosmos, Nature, Culture
A Transdisciplinary Conference
Metanexus Conference
July 18 – 21, 2009
Phoenix, Arizona
No one knows for sure, but it is estimated that there are something like 1024 stars in the universe. When talking about numbers so unimaginably large, our world seems cosmically insignificant. But as far as we know, we're the only ones who count—in two senses of the word: We alone can count the stars, and it seems to count for something that we do. As Aristotle begins his Metaphysics, "All men by nature desire to know." There is something within us—manifested as it is in the entire spectrum of human endeavor, from the sciences, to philosophy, to religion, to the arts, to ethics—that demands we pursue the whole story of the whole cosmos if we are to be whole persons, in order to know who we are, where we are from, where we are going, and how we should live.
According to a recent piece in Scientific American, it seems that in about 100 billion years, scientists (if there are any) will no longer be able to detect the Big Bang. As the article poetically put it, "the runaway expansion of the cosmos by then will have blown away all evidence of the big bang like dandelion fluff into the wind." The universe will look to our counterparts in the future as if it were static. There will be no ability to detect expansion, and no way to find the cosmic microwave background radiation. Astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss notes that we only discovered dark energy because we live in a 'special' time during which its mysterious influence is neither too weak nor too strong to observe. "This is about the only time in the history of the universe when you could detect it, and that's really weird," Krauss says—a weirdness that results in our time really being an "extraordinary moment." When the big bang finally and permanently recedes, "with it will go cosmology, the study of the origin and evolution of the universe." And without understanding our origins, the "whole story" will be gone forever.
So maybe we need to gather our "cosmic" rosebuds—as well as our biological, ecological, philosophical, theological, mathematical, and whatever other rosebuds—while we may. As Carl Sagan wrote, "the Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us— there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries." If we are truly to understand the cosmos and our place in it, as well as our relation to each other and to the divine, we must adopt rich transdisciplinary approaches that deeply respect yet cut across the various fields of knowledge, institutional boundaries, cultural borders, and religious traditions that frame our intellectual and spiritual pursuits.
If we wish to pursue something like the whole story of the whole cosmos for the whole person, we need to explore such questions as:
What is the state of our knowledge about our origins? What has the latest cutting edge research in cosmology, quantum physics, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience to teach us about where we are in our story and where we are going? And what do we know about the end of ourselves and of everything? What do we know about the birth of the stars and the moment of our death?
Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of interest in metaphysics, in particular the metaphysics of science. Can metaphysics give us a "whole story"? Can it at least contribute to the "story" of who we are and what we know? What role does metaphysics play in helping us get our story right? Is it essential? Could it be instead, as its critics maintain, an obstacle to knowing? What is the nature of "ultimate reality"? Are there fundamentally different levels of reality? Does science give us the final truth of reality? What is "scientific realism"? What is the metaphysical status of "universals," "substance," "causes," "ontological categories," "numbers," "properties," "time," and the other terms in which science speaks to us?
To paraphrase novelist Walker Percy, "Why it is that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos—novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes—we are beyond doubt the strangest?" There is something inescapably "first person" about consciousness. What accounts for this? Can third-person, objective science give a complete analysis of first-person, subjective experience? And can it tell us how to live our lives, how to seek virtue, or how to live together? The human brain manifests a massive complexity, comprising about 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion (1014) synapses. But are we our brains? What can the latest developments in neuroscience, which has taken on fields from psychology to religion to economics in recent years, tell us about our deepest questions and our future prospects?
D. H. Lawrence wrote, in his Apocalypse, "We and the cosmos are one. The cosmos is a vast living body, of which we are still parts. The sun is a great heart whose tremors run through our smallest veins. The moon is a great gleaming nerve-centre from which we quiver forever. Who knows the power Saturn has over us, or Venus? But it is a vital power, rippling exquisitely through us all the time." To what degree are we relational beings? Is there an essential relation between "I" and "Other"? And do animals count as "other." Does "nature" as a whole count as "other"? Are human beings "natural," or are we, as some suggest, a "threat" to nature? And what about God? Is God the "whole" which we seek , or does God somehow belong to the "whole"? Is God, instead, beyond the whole, making the whole possible?
How might we go about a search for meaning, for what is "real and important" to ourselves? Is this a spiritual quest? A philosophical practice? An empirical exercise? A potential scientific discovery? How do we best approach this search, or are these questions somehow flawed? Is there such a thing as "natural law," and can it help us to know who we are and how to live? Is there a relation between, in Kant’s words, "the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me"?
Join us for the 10th international Metanexus Conference when philosophers, biologists, physicists, cosmologists, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, theologians, scholars in religious studies, and other researchers and educators will discuss these and other profound questions of cosmos, nature, and culture in a rapidly evolving and complex world.
Among the attendees will be representatives of the Metanexus Global Network of multidisciplinary Local Societies from more than 40 countries.
Some of the speakers at previous Metanexus conferences include:
| Nancy Ellen Abrams | Mahmoud Ayoub | Ian G Barbour |
| Stephen Barr | Mario Beauregard | Arthur Caplan |
| John D. Caputo | Bruce Chilton | Philip Clayton |
| Roy Clouser | John DiIulio | George F. R. Ellis |
| Ursula Goodenough | John F. Haught | Philip Hefner |
| Gail Ironson | Antje Jackelén | Byron Johnson |
| Robert Kane | Robert Lawrence Kuhn | Timur Kuran |
| Nancey Murphy | Meera Nanda | Jacob Neusner |
| Andrew Newberg | Basarab Nicolescu | Ronald L. Numbers |
| Robert Pollack | Stephen Post | Joel Primack |
| Robert D. Putnam | Tariq Ramadan | Holmes Rolston III |
| Pauline Rudd | Norbert M. Samuelson | Jeffrey P. Schloss |
| Martin Seligman | Bülent Senay | Magda Stavinschi |
| Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz | Esther Sternberg | Marijan Sunjic |
| Hava Tirosh-Samuelson | Charles Hard Townes | George E. Vaillant |
| J. Wentzel van Huyssteen | David Sloan Wilson | Amos Yong |
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