Invisible College: Santa Cruz

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3/6 - 4/10: The Core and Canon of the Humanities

4/17 - 5/15: Math Musings I

6/12 - 7/17: Math Musings II

Introduction

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The Invisible College is a loose knit association of folks who come
together to share knowledge and information.

Meeting Monday nights at 7:30PM until 9:00PM, sessions consist of 1 hour
lectures followed by 1/2 hour discussions.

Subject matter probes the history, culture, science and philosophy of
the human race, setting down what we know (or what we think we know) and
speculating about the unknown.

Classes

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The Core and the Canon of the Humanities
The Rise of Rational Self-Consciousness in Ancient Greece: From Homer to Plato
by Paul A. Lee, PhD

Dates: March 6, 13, 20, 27
            April 3, 10
Cost: $60.00 advance registration required

  • l. Mind and Migration
  • 2. Homer: The Oral Tradition of Preliteracy
    a. The Fate of Achilles: Mortality and Heroic Song--Overcoming the Anxiety of Having-To-Die
    b. The Confession of Agamemnon and the Myth of Ate
    c. Homeric Similes and the Self-Nature Correlation
    d. Homeric anthropology and the Origins of the Self: The Thymos Doctrine
    e. The Nature of Epic, the Perfect Tense and the Homeric Theology
  • 3. The Archaic Smile and Greek Sculpture
  • 4. The Presocratics and the Quest for Being-As-Such
  • 5. Socrates as Savior/Scapegoat and the Bearer of Rational Self-Consciousness
  • 6. Plato and the Socratic Theology: The Confession of Self-Delusion
    a. The Republic: The Parable of the Cave and the Myth of Er
    b. The Phaedrus and the Myth of the Charioteer:
    The Mysteries Glimpsed and the Greek Meaning of Truth as Aletheia

Math Musings I: Chaos and Divination
by Ralph Abraham
(no math prerequisite required)

Dates: April 17, 24
            May 1, 8, 15
Cost:$50.00 pre registration required

Ralph's class resources page.

  • 1.1. math theories of chaos and bifurcation:
    what are they and why?
    the cabinet of dr. calimari
  • 1.2. the mathematics of paranormality:
    models for telepathy, precognition
    astrology, the I Ching, and stock options
  • 1.3. sacred geometry:
    prehistoric chaos theory
    the silence of the sphinx
  • 1.4. archeoastrology:
    where did we go wrong?
    how to relocate the milky way
  • 1.5. chaos in relationship:
    how to retreat from dichotomy
    what is consciousness anyway?

Math Musings II: Chaos and the Environment
by Ralph Abraham
(no math prerequisite required)

Dates: June 12, 19, 26
            July 10, 17
Cost:$50.00 pre registration required

  • 2.1. math and the millennium:
    cultural creativity and the future
    do we really have to take psychedelics?
  • 2.2. the end of math education:
    the SAT and other disasters
    will the real mathematics please stand up
  • 2.3. math and the environment:
    monarch migrations and other miracles
    watersheds, forest fires, and the Gaia hypothesis
  • 2.4. complixity and fixxy logic:
    guide to the perplexed
    x-ing the paragrab
  • 2.5. fractals and fringes:
    the biggest thing since euclid
    and how it passed unnoticed

Instructors

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Dr. Paul Lee

  • Harvard STB (Bachelor of Sacred Theology), PhD
    Taught humanities at Harvard, t.a. to Paul Tillich
    Taught humanities at MIT
  • Professor of Philosophy, religious studies and history of consciousness at UCSC
    founder of the Chadwick Garden
  • Protestant chaplain Brandeis University
  • Executive Director:
    Herb Trade Association
    William James Association
    United Services Agency (USA)
  • Board Chairman:
    Citizens Committee for the Homeless
    Homeless Garden Project

Dr. Ralph A. Abraham

  • Professor of Mathematics at the University of California at Santa Cruz since 1968.
  • He received the Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1960, and taught at Berkeley, Columbia, and Princeton before moving to Santa Cruz. He has held visiting positions in Amsterdam, Paris, Warwick, Barce- lona, Basel, and Florence, and is the author of more than 20 texts, including the following books currently in print:

    Foundations of Mechanics, 2nd edn. 1978 (with J.E. Marsden),

    Manifolds, Tensor Analysis, and Applications, 2nd edn. 1982 (with J.E. Marsden and T. Ratiu),

    Dynamics, the Geometry of Behavior, 2nd edn. 1992 (with C.D. Shaw), transl. in Japanese,

    Trialogues on the Edge of the West, 1992 (with Terence McKenna and Rupert Sheldrake), transl. in French, German, Portuguese, Dutch.

    Chaos, Gaia, Eros, 1992, transl. in Korean, Chinese,

    The Web Empowerment Book, 1995 (with Frank Jas and Will Russell),

    Chaos in Discrete Dynamical Systems, 1997, and

    Evolutionary Mind, 1998 (with Terence McKenna and Rupert Sheldrake), transl. in German.

    He has been active on the research frontier of dynamics and chaos theory -- in pure mathematics since 1960, and in math applications and experiments since 1973. He has been a consultant on chaos theory and its applications in numerous fields (medical physiology, ecology, mathematical economics, psychotherapy, etc.) and is a founding editor of the technical journals World Futures, and the International Journal of Bifurcations and Chaos.

    In 1975, he founded the Visual Mathematics Project at the University of Cal- ifornia at Santa Cruz, which became the Visual Math Institute in 1990, with its World Wide Web site since early 1994. He has performed works of visual and aural mathematics and music (with Ami Radunskaya and Peter Broadwell) since 1992.

Registration

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All series require payment and registration in advance.

All classes are held at the Cruzio classroom in downtown Santa Cruz.
The address is 903 Pacific Avenue, suite 101, the classroom is located in the
Cruzio Store across from the Metro station.

You can register and pay for a series in person at the Cruzio store or,
using a credit card, over the phone at 831-459-6301 between 10AM and 6PM
on weekdays.

For more information, please send mail.