International Academic Conference
Birnbaum’s
BARD COLLEGE International Academic Conference
on
Summa Metaph ysica by
David Birnbaum
April 16 - 20, 2012 HarvardYardPress@gmail.com
www.SummaM.org www.DBacademic.com
www.BARD.edu
on
International week-long Academic Conference 's Summa Metaphysica work Leon Botstein
President, Bard College Conference Opening April 16, 2012
Bruce Chilton Chairman
Garry Hagberg Co-Chairman
Jacob Neusner
Professor of the History and Theology of Judaism Bard Scholar-in-Residence 2-day “JUST WARS� conference to follow 4/23-24
on
International week-long Academic Conference 's Summa Metaphysica work
Bruce Chilton Chairman
Bruce Chilton is a scholar of early Christianity and Judaism, now Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College, and formerly Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament at Yale University. He holds a degree in New Testament from Cambridge University (St. John's College). He has previously held academic positions at the Universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and M端nster. He wrote the first critical commentary on the Aramaic version of Isaiah (The Isaiah Targum, 1987), as well as academic studies that analyze Jesus in his Judaic context (A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible, 1984; The Temple of Jesus, 1992; Pure Kingdom, 1996), and explain the Bible critically (Redeeming Time: The Wisdom of Ancient Jewish and Christian Festal Calendars, 2002; The Cambridge Companion to the Bible, 2007). He founded two academic periodicals, Journal for the Study of the New Testament and The Bulletin for Biblical Research. He has also been active in the ministry of the Anglican Church, and is Rector of the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Barrytown, New York. His popular books have been widely reviewed. Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography showed Jesus' development through the environments hat proved formative influences on him. Those environments, illuminated by archaeology and by historical sources, include: (1) rural Jewish Galilee, (2) the movement of John the Baptist, (3) the towns Jesus encountered as a rabbi, (4) the political strategy of Herod Antipas, and (5) deep controversy concerning the Temple in Jerusalem.
International Academic Conference
Monday, 16 April Faculty Dining Room of Kline Commons
5:00
Opening Reception
5:45
Introduction: President Leon Botstein
6:00
Bruce Chilton, “Metaphysics, the New Gnosticism, and Scientific Dialogue”
7:00
Dinner and discussion
Tuesday, 17 April Auditorium of the Olin Building
9:30
Bernhard Lang, “A Mixed Blessing The First Human Sin as a Fortunate and a Tragic Event in German and French Philosophical Thought”
10:30
Coffee in the Olin Atrium
11:00
Lawrence Schiffman
12:00
Lunch, Kline Commons
1:30
Gheorghe Popa, “L’ETRE,existence et orientation spirituelle dans la metaphisique theologique. Aspects
2:30
John Mark Reynolds
3:30
Tea and coffee Free time Dinner, Kline Commons
International Academic Conference Wednesday, 18 April Olin Building
9:30
10:30
Marcelo Gleiser, “The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable: Science, Religion, and our Knowledge of the World” Coffee, Olin Atrium
11:00
Peter Atkins
12:00
Lunch
1:30
Donald Goldsmith, “A [Naïve] Scientist Ponders Metaphysics, Science, and Religion” Tammy Nyden
2:30
• Excursion to the gravesite of Teilhard de Chardin, with a presentation by Garry Hagberg and concluding discussion at the Culinary Institute of America.
International Academic Conference
Thursday, 19 April Departure
Abstracts Bernhard Lang The Fall of Man in Paradise as a Fortunate Event The book of Genesis tells the story of the first human sin. In Christian tradition, this story gave rise to the notion of original sin – a sin whose consequences have affected all generations of humankind. The first human couple lost its original perfection, and all subsequent generations have suffered from the result of the Fall. This negative view of human origins was revised by early-modern western thinkers such as Herder and Kant. In Friedrich Schiller’s lecture “Some Thoughts on the First Human Society” (1789), the novel idea of the Fall of man in paradise as a fortunate event found its clearest expression. The present paper sketches this new view and explains how it was made possible by three antecedent notions: the traditional Christian idea of felix culpa (paradisal sin as a “happy fault”), the marginalization of original sin in the context of Leibniz’s idea
International Academic Conference
of our world as the best of possible worlds (God would not create an imperfect world), and the idea of progress from primitive origins to ever greater perfection in human culture and religion (Lessing). While the bold re-interpretation of the Fall never became part of any official version of Christianity, it is part of Jewish philosophy, including the philosophy of David Birnbaum, in which it serves as an argument in defense of free will.
• In addition, there is to be a submitted paper from Stefan Afloroaei
Leon Botstein (born in Switzerland) - is an American conductor and the President of Bard College (since 1975). Botstein is the music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and conductor laureate of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, where he served as music director and principal conductor from 2003-2010. He is also the founder and co-Artistic Director of the Bard Music Festival. He is a member of the Board of Directors of The After-School Corporation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding educational opportunities for all students. He also serves as the Board Chairman of the Central European University. Botstein became the youngest college president in U.S. history at age 23, serving from 1970 to 1975 at the now-defunct Franconia College.
Bruce Chilton - is a scholar of early Christianity and Judaism, now Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College, and formerly Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament at Yale University. He holds a degree in New Testament from Cambridge University (St. John’s College). He has previously held academic positions at the Universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and Münster.
Garry L. Hagberg - is an author, professor, philosopher, and jazz musician. He currently holds a chair in philosophy at the University of East Anglia. Hagberg became a professor of philosophyphy at Bard College in 1990, and subsequently the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics. The chair was endowed during his time at Bard. He has been the recipient of many fellowships and grants from Dartmouth College; Cambridge University Library; Institute for the Theory and Criticism of the Visual Arts; British Library, London; St. John’s College, and Cambridge University.
Bernhard Lang - a German Catholic theologian. Long since 1985 professor of the Old Testament at the University of Paderborn. He became Doctor of Divinity in 1975 at the University of T端bingen. In 1977, he habilitated at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau. From 1977 to 1982 he was professor in T端bingen and from 1982 to 1985 Professor at the University of Mainz. Since 1985 he is professor at the University of Paderborn. Visiting professor in 1982 were long in Philadelphia, in 1991 at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, 1992/1993 at the Sorbonne, 1999/2000 at the University of St. Andrews. Since 2008 he is Honorary Doctor of the University of Aarhus in Denmark.
Lawrence H. Schiffman Rabbi Dr. was appointed as the Vice-Provost of Undergraduate Education at Yeshiva University and Professor of Jewish Studies in early 2011. He had been the Chair of New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and serves as the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University (NYU). He is a specialist in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Judaism in Late Antiquity, the history of Jewish law, and Talmudic literature. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University.
Gheorghe Popa - a Vice-Rector for research of “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University, Iasi, Romania. Coordinator, on behalf of the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi, of the European research network PECO - 08469 for the years 1993 - 1995, entitled “Fundamental studies of discharge in view of their technological applications”. Romanian coordinator of the Programme COPERNICUS - ERB 3512 PL 561 (COP 1561) for the period 1995 – 1998. Responsible from Romanian side within the “Brancusi” program of cooperation between “Al.I.Cuza” University of Iasi, Romania and University Paris – sud, Orsay, France (2003-2004 and 2007-2008)
John Mark Reynolds - is the founder and director of the Torrey Honors Institute, a great books program at Biola. His academic areas of specialty are ancient philosophy and epistemology, however he also lectures frequently on philosophy of science, cultural apologetics, home-schooling and cultural trends. He regularly appears on talk radio shows, such as the Hugh Hewitt show, and blogs regularly for Washington Post’s “On Faith” column and Scriptoriumdaily.com.
Marcelo Gleiser (born in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian physicist and astronomer. - received his bachelor’s degree in 1981 from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, his M.Sc. degree in 1982 from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, and his Ph.D. in 1986 from King’s College London. After this he worked as a postdoc at Fermilab until 1988 and from then until 1991 at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. Since 1991, he has taught at Dartmouth College, where he was awarded the Appleton Professorship of Natural Philosophy in 1999, and is currently a professor of physics and astronomy. Gleiser’s current research interests include the physics of the early Universe, the properties of solitons in quantum field theories, and questions related to the origin of life on Earth and elsewhere in the Universe.
Peter William Atkins - is a British chemist and former Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Lincoln College. He is a prolific writer of popular chemistry textbooks, including Physical Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and Molecular Quantum Mechanics. Atkins is also the author of a number of science books for the general public, including Atkins’ Molecules and Galileo’s Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science. He was a member of the Council of the Royal Institution and the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was the founding chairman of IUPAC Committee on Chemistry Education, and is a trustee of a variety of charities. Atkins has lectured in quantum mechanics, quantum chemistry, and thermodynamics courses (up to graduate level) at the University of Oxford. He is a patron of the Oxford University Scientific Society.
Donald Goldsmith - was the science editor and co-writer of the PBS television series The Astronomers and the co-writer of NOVA’s Is Anybody Out There? with Lily Tomlin. He has written and edited 15 books on astronomy, including The Runaway Universe, Worlds Unnumbered, Supernova!, and The Hunt for Life on Mars. Donald Goldsmith received his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley, and has taught astronomy courses there and at other institutions, including Stanford University, Cornell University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has received the lifetime achievement award in popularizing astronomy from the American Astronomical Society, the science writing award from the American Institute of Physics, and the Dorothea Klumpke-Roberts award for increasing public awareness of astronomy from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
Tammy Nyden Areas of Special Competence: Metaphysics and epistemology in the history of science and philosophy, especially in the 17th century. The Dutch Enlightenment, especially Spinoza and the reception of Cartesianism. The History and Philosophy of Science Other Academic Interests: Asian Philosophies (particularly Buddhist and Daoist Philosophies and interactions between 17th century European and Chinese philosophical traditions) Education / Degrees: • Ph.D. in Philosophy, Claremont Graduate University, 2003 • M.A. in Philosophy, Baylor University, 1995 • B.A. in Philosophy, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 1993
contact: SummaConference@gmail.com
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