National Humanities Center (NHC)

PUBLISHER:

redshirt

Shaun Johnston:
In modern times we've made two revolutionary discoveries. One is, how changes in physical matter can be accounted for in terms of physical laws that can predict precisely what will happen next. Having given rise to science (how this can be studied) and industry (how it can be applied) this revolution is well under way.

The second revolution is, how emergence of species of living creatures can be accounted for in terms of them evolving from one another. This revolution, despite its promise of how much it could tell us about ourselves, remains stillborn through the mistaken application to it of principles coming out of the first revolution--reductive physicalism.

For this second revolution to advance it should be taken from under the wing of science and studied on its own terms. Tip: one recent product of evolution is creatures with minds. Minds are better studied through methods of the humanities than through those of science. Tell me, does this interest you?

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The Center is a privately incorporated, independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. It exists to encourage excellent scholarship.

The Center recently organized three conferences ("Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity: The Human and The Humanities": ASC") "to discuss how new knowledge in scientific fields is shaping contemporary understanding of issues central to the humanities." This initiative spun of first the web site www.onthehuman.org where visitors can "access archives of the ASC initiative. . .and an open forum where leading minds continue the open dialogue among scientists and humanists surrounding and emerging from the project" (from the Center's website, www.nationalhumanitiescenter.org). Also being spun off from these conferences is the forthcoming volume "Creating Consilience: Evolution, Cognitive Science and the Humanities" edited by Edward Slingerland.

The NHC is therefore the complement on the humanities side to EvoS (which see) on the side of the sciences in the Great Consilience Project to which this site is also offered as a contribution.

The Center is located at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.