In this module we have attended to the historical development of scientific disciplines, to the arising of specific forms of competence and knowledge over specific areas, and to the challenge of considering such a fractured landscape from any single point of view. We began with a very recent debate about an alleged pseudo-science (Integrated Information Theory).
A few years ago, I committed an intellectual sin. I tried to jointly consider the much vaunted scientific domain, and its people, and to consider the knowledges that it excludes, and must exclude. This did not make things clearer. But it did alert me to the fact that almost any discredited practice, any scandalous inquiry that reeks of superstition and magic, has the strongest parallels in contemporary scientific practice, and in everyday living in Ireland in the present.
You can find my musings on selected topics in this blog post, where you can read brief ruminations on alchemy, homeopathy, God, and the like. These are initial thoughts, and possible seeds for discussion.
Each of you will have thoughts on such matters, and there is no predicting where they will go. So as a more substantial and scholarly source, I give you here a whole book by Wouter Hanegraaff, who runs the Centre for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, in the University of Amsterdam.
Hanegraaff, W. J. (2013). Western esotericism: a guide for the perplexed. Bloomsbury.
My suggestion is that everybody warm up by dipping into the topics of the blog post. This can be done over a single cup of coffee. Then orient yourself with Chapter 1 of Hanegraaff (2013), and dip into the remainder of the book ad libitum. Find something that speaks to you (or challenges you), and be prepared to discuss it in class. Although our methods include attention to an ever changing historical picture (history is always made from the present, and thus unstable), our primary concern is with how knowledge of ourselves, our place in things, and the search for knowledge itself are manifest in our living and our world.
Interdisciplinary Challenges 