CULTURE

THE POLITICS OF CHRISTIANITY

Elaine Pagels
[7.15.03]

The kind of Christianity that pervades the religious right in this country divides the world between the saved and the damned, between God's people and Satan's people, between good and evil. We have all seen how this is played out in our politics. I used to think that President Bush was using this language as a political ploy. I still think he is, but I also think—to my disappointment—that he also believes it. His conviction that he is God's chosen one to "rid the world of evildoers" blinds him to the evil that he—and we, as Americans—are capable of doing. The conviction that we are on the side of good—of God—is, however, an ancient one—enormously powerful.

Christians invoking terms such as "evil-doers" read the bible, as anyone does, selectively. They choose the parts they like and they leave out the parts they don't. In this case the parts they like are the parts about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, that is—and a life for a life. If someone's taken a life, then their life is required. And that's certainly a biblical tenet. Of course, it's from the Old Testament. You don't hear much about forgiveness and turning the other cheek from our President and his administration. The Old Testament is what they choose for this occasion because it suits their purpose.

What I've learned through studying the Gospel of Thomas and the context of the politics of early Christianity, is that anyone who participates in Christian tradition without having learned anything about it—and that's most people who participate in it, because it's not taught in public or private schools for the most part—often think of their traditions as immutable, as if they've just come down from God.

video

Introduction
by John Brockman

"Does President George W. Bush speak for God?," asks the eminent religious historian Elaine Pagels. "Are the acts of war he demands 'what Jesus would do'? Do we believe that those who disagree with his policy and question his tactics stand on the side of evil?"

Pagels, author of the seminal book The Gnostic Gospels (1979) and the recently published Beyond Belief, is well-suited to appraise these issues. To begin, she looks at the discovery made in Upper Egypt of ancient Christian texts from the beginning of the Christian era. These discoveries, according to Pagels, are transforming the way we look at Western culture and the history of religion in the West. Her work centers on the diversities of the beginning of Western religion and how our perception of that is being transformed through these discoveries.

"What was discovered in December, 1945, was a large library of ancient manuscripts which ranged from classical texts to early Christian texts, which transformed the way we see the beginning of the Christian movement. Many people have seen it as monolithic, as if it were a tradition that just keeps accreting and building and basically saying the same thing. We now see that Christianity, like Judaism, like Islam, is enormously diverse in its beginning and could have turned out very differently from what we see now. Some of the most fascinating discoveries in this find include the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of early sayings attributed to Jesus—it starts out with the words 'These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke and which the twin Thomas wrote down.'"

"What I've learned through studying the Gospel of Thomas and the context of the politics of early Christianity," she says, "is that anyone who participates in Christian tradition without having learned anything about it, and that's most people who participate in it, because it's not taught in public or private schools for the most part—often think of their traditions as immutable, as if they've just come down from God."

The end result, she notes, is that "one can see how appeals to religion, like those that are currently being made by the religious right, can work in a democracy to subvert all of the values to which they give lip service. It worked brilliantly with the Roman Empire. Beliefs are overrated in Christianity. Religious traditions have to do with a lot more than beliefs."

As far as Bush's war to save the world from evil, she points out that as "president, not Messiah, he has a humbler, more human-sized task—and a great one: to uphold the Constitution and to serve and protect our people. The founding fathers of this nation, most of them Christians who were painfully aware of the horrors enflamed by religious wars, wrote into our Constitution a clear separation of the federal government from religion—including their own."

"While the Constitution does protect religious freedom of worship, it's supposed to protect secularism."

— JB

As a young researcher at Barnard College, ELAINE PAGELS changed forever the historical landscape of the Christian religion by exploding the myth of the early Christian Church as a unified movement. Her findings were published in 1979 in the best selling book, The Gnostic Gospels, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award. The is was followed later that year with her selection as one of the first three recipients of the MacArthur Award.

Pagels' latest book, Beyond Belief, was published in May. Her other books include The Origin of Satan and Adam and Eve and the Serpent. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University and has published widely on Gnosticism and early Christianity.

Elaine Pagel's Edge Bio Page

THE POLITICS OF CHRISTIANITY

Topic: 

  • CULTURE
http://vimeo.com/79461345

"The kind of Christianity that pervades the religious right in this country divides the world between the saved and the damned, between God's people and Satan's people, between good and evil. We have all seen how this is played out in our politics. I used to think that President Bush was using this language as a political ploy. I still think he is, but I also think—to my disappointment—that he also believes it. His conviction that he is God's chosen one to "rid the world of evildoers" blinds him to the evil that he—and we, as Americans—are capable of doing.

WHY DO SOME SOCIETIES MAKE DISASTROUS DECISIONS?

Jared Diamond
[4.26.03]

What I'm going to suggest is a road map of factors in failures of group decision making. I'll divide the answers into a sequence of four somewhat fuzzily delineated categories. First of all, a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives. Secondly, when the problem arrives, the group may fail to perceive the problem. Then, after they perceive the problem, they may fail even to try to solve the problem. Finally, they may try to solve it but may fail in their attempts to do so. While all this talking about reasons for failure and collapses of society may seem pessimistic, the flip side is optimistic: namely, successful decision-making. Perhaps if we understand the reasons why groups make bad decisions, we can use that knowledge as a check list to help groups make good decisions.

Honoring The Scientist As Poet
Lewis Thomas Prize Lecture
The Rockefeller Institute, New York City
Thursday March 27, 2003

video

Introduction

At the end of March, Jared Diamond was in New York to receive THE LEWIS THOMAS PRIZE Honoring the Scientist as Poet. The prize was presented to Jared by Thomas P. Sakmar, Acting President, The Rockefeller University.

"Throughout history," states the LEWIS THOMAS PRIZE literature, "scientists and poets have sought to unveil the secrets of the natural world. Their methods vary: scientists use tools of rational analysis to slake their compelling thirst for knowledge; poets delve below the surface of language, and deliver urgent communiqués from its depths. The Lewis Thomas Prize honors the rare individual who is fluent in the dialects of both realms — and who succeeds in spinning lush literary and philosophical tapestries from the silken threads of scientific and natural phenomena — providing not merely new information but cause for reflection, even revelation."

"The Lewis Thomas Prize was established in 1993 by the trustees of The Rockefeller University and presented to Lewis Thomas, its first recipient, that year. Other recipients have been François Jacob (1994), Abraham Pais (1995), Freeman Dyson (1996), Max Perutz (1997), Ernst Mayr (1998), Steven Weinberg (1999), Edward O. Wilson (2000), and Oliver Sacks (2001)."

~~~

Jared is an early and frequent contributor to Edge. In his first feature in 1997 ("Why Did Human History Unfold Differently On Different Continents For The Last 13,000 Years?") he stated:

"I've set myself the modest task of trying to explain the broad pattern of human history, on all the continents, for the last 13,000 years. Why did history take such different evolutionary courses for peoples of different continents? This problem has fascinated me for a long time, but it's now ripe for a new synthesis because of recent advances in many fields seemingly remote from history, including molecular biology, plant and animal genetics and biogeography, archaeology, and linguistics."

Underlying his task is the question of how to turn the study of history into a science. He notes the distinction between the "hard sciences" such as physics, biology, and astronomy — and what we sometimes call the "social sciences," which includes history, economics, government. The social sciences are often thought of as a pejorative. In particular many of the so-called hard scientists such as physicists or biologists, don't consider history to be a science. The situation is even more extreme because, he points out, even historians themselves don't consider history to be a science. Historians don't get training in the scientific methods; they don't get training in statistics; they don't get training in the experimental method or problems of doing experiments on historical subjects; and they'll often say that history is not a science, history is closer to an art.

He comes to this question as one who is accomplished in two scientific areas: physiology and evolutionary biology. The first is a laboratory science; the second, is never far from history. "Biology is the science," he says. "Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique." He continues to bring together history and biology in new and interesting ways to present global accounts of the rise and fall of civilizations.

More than one million copies of the U.S. edition of Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize winning Guns, Germs, and Steel:The Fates of Human Societies have now been sold. Jared hopes to deliver his much-anticipated new book, Ecocide, at the end of this year for publication in 2004.

Following the Prize Presentation, Jared delivered the Lewis Thomas Prize Lecture "Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions?" The next morning, he stopped by to videotape a reprise of the opening of his talk which Edge is pleased to present as a streaming video along with the text of his lecture.

JB

JARED DIAMOND is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Until recently he was Professor of Physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the widely acclaimed Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies, which also is the winner of Britain's 1998 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize.

He is also the author of two other trade books: The Third Chimpanzee, which won The Los Angeles Times Book award for the best science book of 1992 and Britain's 1992 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize; and Why is Sex Fun? (ScienceMasters Series).

Dr. Diamond is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship ("Genius Award"); research prizes of the American Physiological Society, National Geographic Society, and Zoological Society of San Diego; and many teaching awards and endowed public lectureships. In addition, he has been elected a member of all three of the leading national scientific/academic honorary societies (National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society).

His field experience includes 17 expeditions to New Guinea and neighboring islands, to study ecology and evolution of birds; rediscovery of New Guinea's long-lost goldenfronted bowerbird; other field projects in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. As a conservationist he devised a comprehensive plan, almost all of which was subsequently implemented, for Indonesian New Guinea's national park system; numerous field projects for the Indonesian government and World Wildlife Fund; founding member of the board of the Society of Conservation Biology; member of the Board of Directors of World Wildlife Fund/USA.

Jared Diamond 's Edge Bio Page 


 

WHY DO SOME SOCIETIES MAKE DISASTROUS DECISIONS?

Topic: 

  • CULTURE
http://vimeo.com/79456779

"What I'm going to suggest is a road map of factors in failures of group decision making. I'll divide the answers into a sequence of four somewhat fuzzily delineated categories. First of all, a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives. Secondly, when the problem arrives, the group may fail to perceive the problem. Then, after they perceive the problem, they may fail even to try to solve the problem. Finally, they may try to solve it but may fail in their attempts to do so.

On Scanner Photography

Katinka Matson
[2.23.03]

 

"One of the reasons—besides sheer artistry—that Katinka Matson's work resonates so strongly with us is that the insect-like vision that results from scanning direct-to-CCD runs so much deeper in us than vision as processed through a lens. By removing the lens, Katinka's work bypasses an entire stack of added layers and takes us back to when we saw more by looking at less." — George Dyson 


TWELVE FLOWERS BY KATINKA MATSON

Katinka Matson
[6.3.02]

[Click on Images to Enlarge]

 

Introduction by Kevin Kelly

I have mounted on my wall a most remarkable image. It's a gloriously vibrant water lily, with creamy colors and almost infinite deepness in detail and tone. It's large, about two feet square. It was neither painted, nor is it technically a photograph. It's beautiful. Everyone who has seen it has remarked on how stunning it looks, and how unlike a typical photograph. It looks like a painting but it is much to finely tuned and rendered, too polished. It's different.

This flower is one of a series of ravishing images made by Katinka Matson; the images in both her series, Forty Flowers (January, 2002) , and the current Twelve Flowers, can be seen here on Edge in low resolution versions. Katinka Matson's digital images are both pioneering and representative. She is in the venerable mode of following the technology.

Painting, the technology, changed how we use our eyes. Photography, another technology, changed how we painted. According to painter David Hockney's controversial theory, early experiments with optics and drawing "put a hand in the camera." Painters like Vermeer traced images from convex mirrors and simple lenses—thus the hand in the camera. Now the newest technology, digital gear, is overhauling photography, in part by putting the hand back into the camera. That's what we call Photoshop. Whatever distinction there may have been between painting and photography, Photoshop has completely vanished it. We can put our fingers into photographs, or mechanicize hand-crafted paintings. However this vanishing act required not only Photoshop, but two other technologies: a digital retina, and ink jet printing.

There are many ways to make an artificial eye. We assume a central lens is needed because that's how our eyes work and cameras, too. That's why it is a shock to hear that Matson's images weren't made with a camera. How else could it be done? In 1975 Ray Kurzweil explored a different route by inventing a flat bed scanner. The eye became a sensitive stick that floated along the object to be seen. When the object was a flat piece of paper this was easy. A room, or the world outside, however was too distant for the sensitivity of the scanning eye without a lens, so in our minds we kept the scanner enslaved to papers and books.

Like the many people who xeroxed their body parts for fun, or used a copy machine for art, Matson discovered that the scanning eye stick was far better at depth that was assumed. More importantly as color scanning became cheap, and then became super hi-res, the final image of a quick scan had all the detail of a painting. She began composing cut flowers on a scanner bed and capturing the color images. So the images you see here were not photographed but scanned with an ordinary office scanner. The grace of the images is self-evident. But there was one more needed technology to bring them to life: ink jet printing.

Scale is an important aspect of the visual world. Paintings could be made larger than photographs because of the constraint the falloff of light had on the physics of photographic printing. It was difficult (expensive) to keep the tones on a wall-size photographic print even from the center to the edges because of the differential in distance from the projecting lens. It was difficult (expensive) to chemically treat paper in the dark evenly at this scale. It was difficult (expensive) to maintain temperature (which affected color) at this scale. It was difficult (expensive) to capture sufficient resolution at this scale. Therefore photographs were created smallish. All these constraints have been removed by digital photography and ink jet printing.

It is now possible to make a very, very large ink jet print that has more resolution that your eye can discern, that has as much color as oil paint (and as permanent), that is critically even from edge to edge, and that is reproducible in however many quantities you need. I recently finished a book of color photographs published by the world's best art house publisher, printed in the best printer in Italy, and the colors of these pages can't compare to the ink jet prints that I made of the images as a proof. And this technology will only get better.

When I saw Matson's images I was blown away. Erase from your mind any notion of pixels or any grainy artifact of previous digitalization gear. Instead imagine a painter who could, like Vermeer, capture the quality of light that a camera can, but with the color of paints. That is what a scanner gives you. Now imagine a gifted artist like Matson exploring what the world looks like when it can only see two inches in front of its eye, but with infinite detail! In her flowers one can see every microscopic dew drop, leaf vein, and particle of pollen—in satisfying rich pigmented color.

Matson has a gift with design. I delight in her new images, particularly the sly one with a wood mushroom and flower. She is at the forefront of a new wave in photography, or what we should call new imaging. New cameras, like the Foveon, new scanning technology, and new pigmented printers like the Epson series, are all going to give artists like Matson room to reinvent how we see again.

Kevin Kelly
February 2002

Kevin Kelly helped launch WiredMagazine in 1993 and served as Executive Editor. In 1994 and 1997, during Kelly's tenure, Wired won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence.

A MUTUAL, JOINT-STOCK WORLD IN ALL MERIDIANS

James J. O'Donnell
[6.3.02]

Introduction by John Brockman

Jim O'Donnell is the penultimate contemporary rennaissence man. He is Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania and is also a Professor of Classical Studies. After 21 years at UPenn, he departing to become Provost of Georgetown University, effective July 1st.

I recently ran into him on the street in Philadelphia where he had just addressed the graduating senior class. The title of his talk was "A Mutual, Joint-Stock World In All Meridians." "The title," he said, "comes from Moby Dick, ch. 13, and is meant to be slightly misleading, inasmuch as the full text, spoken by Queequeg, is: 'It's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians.' "

I am pleased to present Jim's talk to readers of EDGE.

—JB

REFLECTIONS ON MODERN TERRORISM

Gerald Holton
[2.3.02]

GERALD HOLTON is Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He obtained his Ph.D. at Harvard as a student of P. W. Bridgman. His chief interests are in the history and philosophy of science, in the physics of matter at high pressure, and in the study of career paths of young scientists.

Among his recent books are Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought ; Science and Anti-Science; Einstein, History, and Other Passions; The Advancement of Science, and its Burdens; Scientific Imagination; two books with Gerhard Sonnert: Gender Differences in Science Careers: The Project Access Study, and Who Succeeds in Science? The Gender Dimension;  Physics, The Human Adventure: From Copernicus to Einstein and Beyond (with S.G.Brush).

Professor Holton is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Life Honorary Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, and Fellow of several Learned Societies in Europe. Founding editor of the quarterly journal Daedalus,and founder of Science, Society, & Human Values, he is also on the editorial committee of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein (Princeton University Press). Among the honors he has received are the Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society, and the selection by the National Endowment for the Humanities as the Jefferson Lecturer.

THE NEW HUMANISTS

John Brockman
[12.31.01]

Something radically new is in the air: new ways of understanding physical systems, new ways of thinking about thinking that call into question many of our basic assumptions. A realistic biology of the mind, advances in physics, electricity, genetics, neurobiology, engineering, the chemistry of materials—all are challenging basic assumptions of who and what we are, of what it means to be human. The arts and the sciences are again joining together as one culture, the third culture. Those involved in this effort—scientists, science-based humanities scholars, writers—are at the center of today's intellectual action.  

They are the new humanists.

THE NEW HUMANISTS 
By John Brockman


[Copyright © Tobias Everke]

JOHN BROCKMAN is publisher and editor of Edge. His most recent book (as editor) is The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century.

John Brockman's Edge Bio Page


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