Readings and Videos

March 25, 2016 - Summing up

Media

• "What a Wonderful World" - with David Attenborough, BBC
• "Getting Emotions Switched On After Decades of Asberger's"  NPR Here and Now, (begins minute 10:25 on the March 22 Hour 2 Podcast  
• Paul Bloom, "Why is Empathy a Bad Thing?"  - Compare to the three types of empathy mentioned in Daniel Goleman's "Hot to Help:  When can empathy move us to action?" under February 12th reading.

Readings  

On Happiness, Utility, and Desire - And Learning as Reward

• Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book I, Chapters 1-11    An introduction to the Aristotle's view of "happiness"
• Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book III, Chapter 9, Relation of courage to pain and pleasure   
• Jeremy Bentham, the father of Utilitarianism, on Pain and Pleasure  
• Albert Einstein, "Morals and Emotions" - an essay published in the book, Out of My Later Years 
• Timothy Schoeder, excerpt from The Three Faces of Desire    Does "The Reward Theory of Desire" = "The Learning Theory of Desire"?

On Creativity, Order from Disorder, and Increasing Order from Order

• Ernest Schrödinger, excerpt from What Is Life?  
• Warren Berger, excerpt from A More Beautiful Question   

On Human Rationality

• Dan Ariely, excerpt from Predictably Irrational 
• Daniel Kahneman, excerpt from Thinking:  Fast and Slow 

On the Human Situation

• Roy Baumeister, excerpt from Evil  
• M.E. Thomas, excerpt from Confessions of a Sociopath 
• Peter C. Whybrow, excerpt from American Mania:  When More is Not Enough

On Economics

• Adam Smith, excerpts from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations - concerning money as the "wheel of exchange," and investment rather than consumption as the goal  
• Martin Nowak, excerpt from SuperCooperators, Harnessing Reputation
• Martin Nowak, excerpt from SuperCooperators, Crescendo

March 18, 2016 - Where are we now?

Readings

• Alexis de Toqueville, "How the Americans Combat Individualism by the Principle of Self-Interest Rightly Understood", from Democracy in America  
• Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law   
• Jared Diamond, Prologue of Collapse   
• Nathaniel Philbrick, excerpt from Mayflower   
• Martin A. Nowak with Roger Highfield, Preface and excerpt from Chapter 1 of Super Cooperators:  Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed  
• Peter M. Senge, Chapter 1 from The Fifth Discipline:  The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization 
• Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Eugene D'Aquili, M.D., Ph.D. and Vince Rause, excerpt from Why God Won't Go Away
• Daniel H. Pink, excerpt from A Whole New Mind 
• Roman Krznaric, Introduction to Empathy:  Why It Matters, and How to Get It  

March 12, 2016 - Evolution

Media 

• Wade Davis, TED2003, "Dreams from endangered cultures"    
• Spencer Wells, TED Talk June 2007, "A family tree for humanity" 

Readings

• Plato, "The Apology"  In this dialogue, Plato records Socrates' trial.   Do you see similarities in the Athens of Socrates' day to contemporary American society?
• Robert K. Fleck, "Natural Selection and the Problem of Evil:  An Evolutionary Model with Application to an Ancient Debate"  Fleck, an economist at Clemson, wrote a game theoretic paper that describes counter-intuitive outcomes for survival of generous versus selfish populations in an environment that includes "natural evils."
• Gerald Güther, excerpt from The Compassionate Brain on "What to do in case of Malfunction"
• Stephen Jay Gould, excerpt from Ever Since Darwin on "Bushes and Ladders in Human Evolution"     

March 5, 2016 - Flow and The Constructal Law
Media  

• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, TED Talk, February 2004, "Flow, the secret to happiness"    
• Sir Ken Robinson, TED Talk, 2006, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"   

Readings on Flow as a Peak Experience 

• Kenneth M. Keith,  The Paradoxical Commandments, from  Anyway:  The Paradoxical Commandments - Finding Personal Meaning in a Crazy World
• Jonathan Haidt, excerpt on Flow in context of voluntary components of happiness, from The Happiness Hypothesis
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, excerpt from Flow on "The Conditions of Flow" 
  

Readings on The Constructal Law - Sent by Email

• Adrian Bejan, "A Bird?  A Plane?  It's all Evolution" Aerospace America, November 2014 
• Adrian Bejan and Sylvie Lorente, "The constructal law and the evolution of design in nature," Physics of Life Reviews 8 (2011) 209-240.

February 26, 2016 - Evolution of the Metallome (Professor Alvin Crumbliss)
Media

• Richard Feynman answers questions about magnetism by explaining why we need implicitly held common understandings in order to understand anything.
  

Reading - sent via email

• Preprint of article by Alvin L. Crumbliss, "The Metal Bridge Between Geology and Biology"
• Alvin L. Crumbliss, "The Classic Metal Behind the Origin of Life."  Nautilus, March 24, 2016.
  

February 19, 2016 - Relationships and Space-Time
Media

• Quantum Cuteness:  Neutron Beta Decay - This is a one minute video on Scientific American's website.  Of special interest to me is the description of the "W Boson" which "doesn't really exist".
• Viktor Frankl speaks to a group of youth about "Man's Search for Meaning." 
  

Readings - sent via email

• Bruce Lipton, excerpt from The Biology of Belief   - easy and fun to read descriptions of how cells operate.
• "How the Brain Makes and Breaks Habits", Scientific American, June 2014.
• Clancy Martin, "The Lie Guy" - an article published in The Chronicle of Education, December 2010.

February 12, 2016 - The Role and Mechanisms of Emotions
Readings

• Daniel Goleman, "Hot to Help:  When can empathy move us to action?"  Greater Good Science Center, March 1, 2008
• Candace Pert, "The Science of Emotions and Consciousness," An essay in the book, Measuring the Immeasurable:  The Scientific Case for Spirituality

February 5, 2016

Media

• Karen Armstrong, TED Prize-Winning Talk:  The Charter for Compassion
• Frans de Waal, TED Talk:  Moral Behavior in Animals  
• Rupert Sheldrake, Google Tech Talk:  The Extended Mind:  Recent Experimental Evidence  - an alternative view of consciousness
• Dean Radin,  January 10, 2015 Youtube:       Entangled Minds and Beyond  - quantum theory entanglement and consciousness
• A Starling Murmuration 

Readings

• Malcolm Gladwell, excerpt from Blink  
•  Carl Zimmer, "The Brain," Discover Magazine, November 2010
• Jonathan Haidt, excerpt from The Happiness Hypothesis 
• Donald Pfaff, excerpt from The Altruistic Brain:  How We Are Naturally Good 
• Gerald Hüther, excerpt from The Compassionate Brain:  How Empathy Creates Intelligence 
• Jonathan Haidt, excerpt from  The Happiness Hypothesis 
• James W. Felt, excerpt from Human Knowing 
• John Locke,  excerpt from "On the Conduct of Understanding:  Reason"

January 22, 2016 -->  January 29, 2016

• Jill Bolte Taylor, TEDX Indianapolis on human ability to reframe and reshape consciousness based on neuro-function:  "Neuroanatomical Transformation"  (This talk is given to a youth conference, and the middle section focuses on the brain's changes during adolescence.  In this part, she explains about what allows us to feel safe - or not.  The end returns to our class's main themes.)
• Jill Bolte Taylor TED Talk on her experience of left and right brain functions:  "My Stroke of Insight" 
• Michael Graziano, excerpts from Consciousness and the Social Brain (sent via email). 
• "The Weirdest People in the World," a paper by Joseph Henrich, Steven Heine, and Ara Norenzayan
• Tor Nørretranders, excerpts from The User Illusion:  Cutting Consciousness Down to Size  (sent via email)
• Jonathan Haidt and Craig Joseph, "Intuitive ethics:  how innately prepared intuitions generate culturally variable virtues"