Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Science”

Episode 151: The Real and the Possible: Live at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, with Jacob G. Foster

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 09:00:00 -0400

In The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, the cultural historian William Irwin Thompson predicted the rise of a new form of knowledge building, a direly needed alternative to the Wissenshaft of standard science and scholarship. He called it Wissenskunst, "the play of knowledge in a world of serious data processors." Wissenskunst is pretty much what JF and Phil have been aspiring to do on Weird Studies since 2018, but in this episode they are joined by a master of the craft, the computational sociologist and physicist Jacob G. Foster of UCLA. Jacob is the co-founder of the Diverse Intelligence Summer Institute (DISI), a gathering of scholars, scientists, and students that takes place each year at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. It was there that this conversation was recorded. The topic was the Possible, that dream-blurred vanishing point where art, philosophy, and science converge as imaginative and creative practices.

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REFERENCES

Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute
"Deconstructing the Barrier of Meaning," a talk by Jacob G. Foster at the Santa Fe Institute
William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture
Frederic Rzewski, “Little Bangs: A Nihilist Theory of Improvisation”
Brian Eno, Oblique Strategies
The accident of Bob in Twin Peaks
Carl Jung, “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry
August Kekule,, German chemist
Robert Dijkgraaf, “Contemplating the End of Physics”
Richard Baker, American zen teacher
Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Shoggoth, Lovecraftian entity Special Guest: Jacob G. Foster.

Episode 141: Actual Magic: On Ramsey Dukes' SSOTBME

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 10:30:00 -0500

Ramsey Dukes, also known by his real name of Lionel Snell, may be one of the most important thinkers on magic since Aleister Crowley. In the impishly-titled Sex Secrets of the Black Magicians Exposed (or SSOTBME for short), Dukes accomplishes something few writers on the topic have been able to do: he gives us magic without asking us to sacrifice anything that makes us sensible modern people. He makes magic seem like the most obvious thing in the world, and he does it without taking away any of its, well, magic. How he does it and what it means are questions that would take several episodes to unpack. In this one, Phil and JF begin the work by discussing how Dukes situates magic in an epistemic compass that also includes science, art, and religion. This set of tools is as essential to a holistic view of reality as the four suits in a deck of cards are essential to a proper poker game. In other words, when we lose magic, we lose a way of dealing with reality.

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REFERENCES

David Lynch (dir.), Mulholland Drive
Ramsey Dukes, SSOTBME
Slavoj Žižek, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema
C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures
Weird Studies, Episode 139 on Art Power
Marshall McLuhan, Gutenberg Galaxy
“Virtual” and “Actual”, as developed by Bergson and Deleuze
Pragmatism, philosophical school
Jack Parsons, American rocket scientist
Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return
William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Episode 131: Knocking on the Abyssal Door: Live at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 11:00:00 -0400

The historian of religion Jeffrey J. Kripal writes, "The world is one, and the human is two." The line captures the riddle of reality. What is it with our species? Equipped with an intellect able to grok the basic laws that govern the physical universe, we seem unable to wrap our heads around as simple a question as "What is real?". Recorded live before a learned audience at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) in August of 2022, this episode approaches the enigma by teasing the Weird out of the very idea of intellection. If the architects of DISI are right to say that mind, far from being confined to human skulls, enjoys wide distribution across nature, what might such ideas as magic, synchronicity, and prophecy tell us about intelligence and meaning?

DISI is a three-week interdisciplinary event held each year at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The hosts are grateful to Jacob Foster and Erica Cartmill of UCLA for inviting them to speak at the institute.

**Header image: **Detail of The Ancient of Days by William Blake.

SHOW NOTES

Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI)
Earlier iteration of Jacob Foster's talk, "Toward a Social Science of the Possible"

Pauline Oliveros's Tuning Meditation
Norbert Wiener, American mathematician
Joshua Ramey, "Contingency Without Unreason: Speculation After Meillassoux"
E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande
Aristotle, Physics and Metaphysics
Jeffrey J. Kripal, "The World is One, and the Human is Two: Tentative Conclusions of a Working Historian of Religion"
Jeffrey Kripal on Weird Studies: episodes ## and ##
Aleister Crowley, See The Vision and the Voice and Magick in Theory and Practice
The "Unwritten Doctrines" of Plato
Plato, Republic, "Seventh Letter" & Phaedrus
Phil's prophetic dream report (Patreon supporters only)
H. P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (for description of Azathoth)
C. G. Jung, Synchroncity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Alchemical Studies & Mysterium Coniunctionis
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age
New York Times article on 2022 UFO hearings

Episode 123: Off-Week Patreon Bonus: On Modern Miracles

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 18 May 2022 09:00:00 -0400

Every off-week, JF and Phil record a bonus episode for Patreon supporters. The conversations on that stream are shorter, less formal, and more improvisitory than those of the flagship show. To give the wider public a glimpse of this hidden dimension of the WS universe, we decided to make this week's "audio extra" available to everyone. As it happens, this episode also contains an important announcement concerning next week's event at Illuminated Brew Works in Chicago: tickets must be purchased via Eventbrite using the link below. No tickets can be sold at the door.

Click here to purchase tickets to the Weird Studies beer launch at Illuminated Brew Works in Chicago on May 23.

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Episode 119: Behind the Cosmic Curtain: On Stanislaw Lem's 'The New Cosmogony,' with Meredith Michael

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 10:30:00 -0400

Over the last several centuries, there has been one thing on which science and religion have generally agreed, and that is the fixity of the laws under which the universe came to be. At the moment of the Big Bang or the dawn of the First Day, the underlying principles that govern reality were already set, and they have never changed. But what if the laws of nature were not as chiseled in stone as Western intellectuals on both sides of the magisterial divide have assumed them to be? What if creation was an ongoing process, such that our universe in its beginning might have behaved very differently from how it does at present? This is the central conceit of Stanislaw Lem's story "The New Cosmogony," the capstone of his metafictional collection A Perfect Vacuum, originally published in 1971. In this episode, Meredith Michael joins JF and Phil to discuss the metaphysical implications of the idea that nature is an eternal work-in-progress.

Support us on Patreon
Find us on Discord
Get the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
Get your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop
Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack

REFERENCES

For more information JF's new course, Groundwork for a Philosophy of Magic, visit Nura Learning.

Stanislaw Lem, “A New Cosmogony” in A Perfect Vacuum
Weird Studies, Episode 118 The Unseen and Unnamed
Ramsey Dukes, SSOTBME
Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude
M. John Harrison, The Course of the Heart
Michael Harner, The Way of the Shaman
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
Stanislaw Lem, His Master’s Voice
David Pruett, Reason and Wonder
Andrei Tarkovsky (dir.), Solaris
Philip K. Dick, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”
Andrew W.K., “No One to Know”

Special Guest: Meredith Michael.