Enlightenment to Enlightenment: Intercritique of Science and Myth

This book is a thorough and critical, comparative analysis of the logic of modern scientific thought and of traditional teachings generally referred to as mythological and mystical.Different rationalities with different domains of interest and legitimacy exist, which should not be confused and cannot be unified in any theory of "Ultimate Reality." Atlan suggests they must coexist in practice, although each of them presents itself as an exclusive and all-encompassing truth. The book introduces teachings from Jewish talmudic, midrashic, and kabbalist sources and text from Zen and Taoism to exemplify the kind of rationality or controlled irrationality at work in such traditional thinking.

Politics & Social Sciences

Atlan, Henri

Philosophy

State Univ of New York Pr

Religion & Spirituality

State University of New York Press

The Sparks of Randomness, Volume 1: Spermatic Knowledge (Cultural Memory in the Present)

The Sparks of Randomness, Henri Atlan's magnum opus, develops his whole philosophy with a highly impressive display of knowledge, wisdom, depth, rigor, and intellectual and moral vigor. Atlan founds an ethics adapted to the new power over life that modern scientific knowledge has given us. He holds that the results of science cannot ground any ethical or political truth whatsoever, while human creative activity and the conquest of knowledge are a double-edged sword. This first volume, Spermatic Knowledge, begins with the Talmudic tale about the prophet Jeremiah's creation of a golem, or artificial man. Atlan shows that the Jewish tradition does not demonize man for creating and changing living things―a charge often leveled at promoters of advanced technologies, like biologists, who are accused of "playing God." To the contrary, man is depicted as being the co-creator of the world. Although Atlan believes that the fabrication of life "from scratch" will take place in the near future, he posits that this achievement will not really amount to creating life current biology and biotechnologies have demonstrated that there is no absolute distinction between life and non-life, no critical threshold whose crossing would be taboo. He also debunks and demystifies our belief in free will and our conviction, of theological origin, that there would be no possibility for ethics if free will were shown to be an illusion. Throughout, he combines science, religion, and ancient and modern philosophy in unexpected and inspired ways. His radical, uncompromising Spinozism allows him to propose a complete revision of cognitive science and philosophy of mind, while showing that their current impasses stem from remnants of traditional dualism. From his brilliant reflections on time, he also derives exciting considerations for medicine and epidemiology.

Science & Math

Stanford University Press

The Sparks of Randomness, Volume 2: The Atheism of Scripture (Cultural Memory in the Present)

In this second volume of The Sparks of Randomness, Henri Atlan pursues his investigation of human life, which he grounds in a distinctive intermingling of the biological and cognitive sciences and traditions of Jewish thought. The Atheism of Scripture offers up a paradox: its audacious thesis is that the Word or revealed scripture can be better understood without God. It must be decrypted or analyzed atheistically, that is, not as divine revelation, but in and of itself. The first part of the book addresses contemporary science. It puts the evolution of ideas about life and knowledge as conceived by today's biological and cognitive sciences into perspective and shows how the genealogy of ethics must be approached in a new way. The second part takes up this challenge by putting classical philosophy in dialogue with the Talmud and the Kabbalah to advance a non-dualistic anthropology of the body and the mind.

The Sparks of Randomness, Henri Atlan's magnum opus, develops his whole philosophy with a highly impressive display of knowledge, wisdom, depth, rigor, and intellectual and moral vigor. Atlan founds an ethics adapted to the new power over life that modern scientific knowledge has given us. He holds that the results of science cannot ground any ethical or political truth whatsoever, while human creative activity and the conquest of knowledge are a double-edged sword. This first volume, Spermatic Knowledge, begins with the Talmudic tale about the prophet Jeremiah's creation of a golem, or artificial man. Atlan shows that the Jewish tradition does not demonize man for creating and changing living things―a charge often leveled at promoters of advanced technologies, like biologists, who are accused of "playing God." To the contrary, man is depicted as being the co-creator of the world. Although Atlan believes that the fabrication of life "from scratch" will take place in the near future, he posits that this achievement will not really amount to creating life current biology and biotechnologies have demonstrated that there is no absolute distinction between life and non-life, no critical threshold whose crossing would be taboo. He also debunks and demystifies our belief in free will and our conviction, of theological origin, that there would be no possibility for ethics if free will were shown to be an illusion. Throughout, he combines science, religion, and ancient and modern philosophy in unexpected and inspired ways. His radical, uncompromising Spinozism allows him to propose a complete revision of cognitive science and philosophy of mind, while showing that their current impasses stem from remnants of traditional dualism. From his brilliant reflections on time, he also derives exciting considerations for medicine and epidemiology.

Best known for his pioneering work in theories of self-organization and complexity, the biophysicist and philosopher Henri Atlan has during the past thirty years been a major voice in contemporary European philosophical and bioethical debates. In a massive oeuvre that ranges from biology and neural network theory to Spinoza’s thought and the history of philosophy, and from artificial intelligence and information theory to Jewish mysticism and contemporary medical ethics, Atlan has come to offer an exceptionally powerful philosophical argumentation that is as hostile to scientism as it is attentive to biology’s conceptual and experimental rigor, as careful with concepts of rationality as it is committed to rethinking the human place in a radically determined yet forever changing world.
This is the first volume to bring together the major strands of Atlan’s work for an English-language audience. It is an indispensable compendium for those seeking to clarify the joint stakes and shared import of philosophy and science for questions of life and the living―today and tomorrow.

Selected Writings: On Self-Organization, Philosophy, Bioethics, and Judaism (Forms of Living)

Fordham University Press

Spinoza and Contemporary Biology: Lectures on the Philosophy of Biology and Cognitivism (Spinoza Studies)

Edinburgh University Press

Entre le cristal et la fumée. Essai sur l'organisation du vivant

SEUIL

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Atlan, Henri. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Atlan, Henri

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Atlan, Henri. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Enlightenment to Enlightenment: Intercritique of Science and Myth

Enlightenment to Enlightenment: Intercritique of Science and Myth

The Sparks of Randomness, Volume 1: Spermatic Knowledge (Cultural Memory in the Present)

The Sparks of Randomness, Volume 2: The Atheism of Scripture (Cultural Memory in the Present)

The Sparks of Randomness, Volume 2: The Atheism of Scripture (Cultural Memory in the Present)

The Sparks of Randomness, Volume 1: Spermatic Knowledge (Cultural Memory in the Present)

Selected Writings: On Self-Organization, Philosophy, Bioethics, and Judaism (Forms of Living)

Selected Writings: On Self-Organization, Philosophy, Bioethics, and Judaism (Forms of Living)

Spinoza and Contemporary Biology: Lectures on the Philosophy of Biology and Cognitivism (Spinoza Studies)

Entre le cristal et la fumée. Essai sur l'organisation du vivant