An announcement from the Centre for Cultural Ecologies, a quondam partner of Newcastle Philosophy:
We are pleased to announce Psycho-Physical Causations, a seminar with HENRI ATLAN, on occasion of the publication of his new book on Spinoza and Contemporary Biology (Odile Jacob, 2018).
Prof. Atlan will offer a reading of Spinoza’s Ethics, Part III, Proposition 2:
“The body cannot determine the mind to thinking, and the mind cannot determine the body to motion, to rest, or to anything else (if there is anything else).”
The seminar will include the response of Dr. Michael Mack (Durham University) and a Q&A.
Wednesday 16th May, 4pm to 6pm (venue TBA)
Suggested reading: Henri Atlan, The Sparks of Randomness, Vol. II Chapter 6 (“A Spinozist Perspective on Evolution and The Theory of Action”)
Henri Atlan is an emeritus professor of biophysics, as well as the founder and director of the Research Centre in Human Biology at the Hadassah Hospital, in Jerusalem. He is also directeur d’études in philosophy of biology at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in Paris. He is the author of seminal works such as Entre le cristal et la fumée (Editions du Seuil, 1979), Les Étincelles de hazard (Editions du Seuil, 1999; The Sparks of Randomness, Stanford University Press, 2011-2013), and Le Vivant post-génomique (Odile Jacob, 2011).
Michael Mack is the author of Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity: The Hidden Enlightenment of Diversity from Spinoza to Freud (New York: Continuum, 2010).
For more information, please contact Dr. Mauro Senatore (Durham University), mauro.senatore@durham.ac.uk
This seminar is organised thanks to the support received from the British Academy and the Centre for Cultural Ecology at Durham University.