Roundtables: 2015

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Our roundtable format is designated the Theaetetus Table, an extempore discussion among five participants, all leaders in their respective fields, and named for the classical Greek mathematician and eponym for the Platonic dialogue investigating the nature of knowledge, who proved that there are five regular convex polyhedra, or Platonic solids. Each Theaetetus Table aspires to emulate the dialogue’s unhurried search for wisdom; and, like the five Platonic solids held to be the fundamental building blocks of the classical elements, the contributions of our five participants become the fundamental constituents of interdisciplinary insights emerging in the alchemy of the roundtable, insights that, in turn, transform the elemental thinking of those participants. The gathering of five discussants also symbolizes the five interrelated qualities of mind our interdisciplinary forums are intended to facilitate in our participants, and inculcate in our audience: curiosity, playfulness, inspiration, reflection, and wonder.

Thu
Jan 1st
2015
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Science and the Big Questions: Roundtable Series on the Physical and Spiritual World, the Brain-Mind Connection, and Human Development and Genetics

The Helix Center is pleased to announce receipt of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation in support of a series of fourteen roundtables addressing big questions in the physical, natural, and biological sciences and the humanities. The topics are: Knowledge and Limitations; The Span of Infinity; Complexity and Emergence; The Search for Immortality;  The Sublime Experience; The Meditative State; The Realm of Mystery; The Changing Nature of Free Will; Genes, Computers, and Medicine; Epigenetics at Work; Speak, Memory; Apprehending Consciousness; Understanding Genius; and The Mind of a Child.… read more »

Sat
Feb 7th
2015
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The Sublime Experience

Prior to the eighteenth century, and before Edmund Burke’s foundational treatise, the sublime was understood as beauty and greatness beyond measure. Subsequently, awe, the emotion classically associated with the sublime, was given new psychological depth and even physiological dimensions, bringing fear and the grotesque into aesthetic considerations of the sublime.… read more »

Sat
Mar 7th
2015
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Apprehending Consciousness

Is science nearing an answer to the question of how and why consciousness and self-consciousness come about? In attempting to resolve the mystery of sentience, what roles do physics, psychology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience play? How do various philosophical and religious traditions contribute to our inquiries into this obvious and everyday universal experience?… read more »

Sat
Mar 14th
2015
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Curiosity

Curiosity has been seen through the ages as the impulse that drives our knowledge forward and the temptation that leads us toward dangerous and forbidden waters. The question “Why?” has appeared under a multiplicity of guises and in vastly different contexts throughout the chapters of human history.… read more »

Sat
Apr 18th
2015
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The Mind of a Child

How does a one-year-old understand the world? A three-year-old? A five-year-old? How does the mental functioning of very young children differ from that of older children and of adults? Recognizing the ways in which children conceptualize the world, remember their experiences, and modulate emotions is crucial in providing both normally developing children and children with developmental disorders, like autism, with optimum care throughout their formative years.… read more »

Sat
Sep 12th
2015
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Epigenetics at Work

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck might today say, echoing the words of Mark Twain, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Lamarck’s theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, once derided as “soft inheritance,” has been revived through the field of epigenetics: the study of alterations in gene expression or phenotype caused by mechanisms other than primary alterations in nucleotide sequence, and through transgenerational epigenetics, the study of the inheritability of such effects.… read more »

Sat
Nov 21st
2015
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Translation Matters

Why is translation, which formerly referred to a set of restricted technical procedures taking place between two languages, now widely understood to be the basis of all human culture? What is it about this dynamic principle of displacement, exchange, and creative renewal that also links it to the exercise of political power and the possession of linguistic/literary capital?… read more »

Sat
Dec 5th
2015
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A Freudian Perspective on What Ails the World Today

A Colloquium of

The Helix Center for Interdisciplinary Investigation

and

L’ Association Des Amis de Passages (ADAPes) Comité Freud

December 5th and 6th, 2015

at the Helix Center

Participants:

Marilia Aisenstein

Psychoanalyst; Former President, Société Psychanalyste de Paris

(Paris Psychoanalytic Society)

Ian Buckingham

Psychoanalyst; President, New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute

Vincent Crapanzano

Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Comparative Literature,

Graduate Center of the City University of New York

Philippe Douste-Blazy

United Nations Under-Secretary-General

Paul Fry

Professor Emeritus of English and Literature, Yale University

Lynn Gamwell

Writer, Professor of Humanities, School of Visual Arts, New York

Claude Landman

Psychoanalyst; Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes en Psychopathologies (EPhEP)

(Practical School of Higher Studies in Psychopathologies)

Patrick Landman

Psychoanalyst; Professor, Université de Paris VII (Paris Diderot University)

Emile H.… read more »

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