On September 30, 2022, IFF director Margaret Wertheim presented a talk at the International Forum on Consciousness at the BTC Institute in Madison WI. This year’s conference theme As Above, So Below, derives from the 19th century Swedish philosopher-mystic Emanuel Swedenborg.
Wertheim’s talk, Concepts of Space and Concepts of Self, looked at how throughout Western history concepts of human self-hood have been entwined with ideas about the space in which we believe human beings are embedded. The presentation is based on her book The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet, a pioneering account of modern scientific conceptions of space and their consequent effects on our culture. Video of Ms Wertheim’s talk can be seen here:
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Other conference speakers: Jeffrey Kripal (Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University), John Donne (Professor of Religion at the University of Wisconsin, Madison), Sutton King (indigenous rights activist and creator of an indigenous health network in NYC), Paulo Roberto Silva da Souza (Brazillian ayahauska shaman), SoundMedicine pioneer Elizabeth Krasnoff, and Rosalind Watts (psychadelics researcher formally at Imperial College London). Panels moderated by Steve Paulson (host of NPR’s To The Best of Our Knowledge)
The International Forum on Consciousness is hosted by the BioPharmaceutical Technology Center Institute on the campus of the Promega bio-technical company.
Conference Brochure and Schedule:
Talk Abstracts:
See here for videos of all conference talks:
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Concepts of Space and Concepts of Self – Talk Abstract
In the 16th and 17th centuries Western science made a leap in thinking about the cosmological scheme in which humans are embedded. From seeing humanity at the center of an angel-filled cosmos with everything connected to God, we shifted to seeing ourselves as inhabitants of an insignificant planet in an infinite void. In this talk Margaret Wertheim will trace the history of Western ideas about space from the Middle Ages to today and argue that concepts of space and concepts self are inextricably entwined. How we see our selves is bound up with the question of how we understand where we
are in space. Indeed, what we think the ‘self’ is reflects our views about what we think is the spatial scheme of the cosmological whole. Other cultures have very different concepts both of self and space. Finally, Wertheim will discuss ‘cyberspace’ and ask how this new techno-social development is again changing our understanding of human personhood. Here we are witnessing a return to a kind of dual notion of self, where one self exists in the physical world and a potentially other self, or selves, exist in the digital domain. The talk will draw parallels between this emerging cyber-dualism and the older concept of a person being composed of a body and soul.