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Blaine Snow

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Blaine’s cognitive-science shelf

Philosophy in the Flesh by George Lakoff

The View from Within by Francisco J. Varela

Embodied Cognition by Lawrence A. Shapiro

Why Red Doesn't Sound Like a Bell by J. Kevin O'Regan

Embodiment and Cognitive Science by Raymond W. Gibbs Jr.

The Feeling of Life Itself by Christof Koch

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Blaine’s Bookshelves

read‎ (792)
currently-reading‎ (15)
to-read‎ (682)
buddhism‎ (348)
western-philosophy‎ (180)
china-japan-korea‎ (174)
music‎ (152)
nondual-philosophy‎ (112)
complex-systems‎ (108)
general-science‎ (104)
cognitive-science‎ (94)
indian-philosophy‎ (91)

all-time-favorites‎ (72)
psychology‎ (68)
astronomy-cosmology‎ (63)
history-cultural‎ (63)
transpersonal-psy‎ (51)
poetry‎ (48)
inter-cross-cultural‎ (47)
biography‎ (46)
cultural-studies‎ (46)
evolution‎ (46)
social-science-theory‎ (45)
natural-science‎ (41)

philos-of-mind‎ (41)
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taiji-quan-qigong‎ (33)
language‎ (32)
power-privilege‎ (31)
mathematics-logic‎ (28)
phenomenology‎ (25)
art‎ (24)
outdoor-rec-nature‎ (24)
religion-mythology‎ (24)
hist-of-ideas-west‎ (23)
cross-cult-philosophy‎ (22)

history-general‎ (18)
meditation‎ (16)
health‎ (14)
natural-history‎ (14)
politics‎ (14)
classic-novels‎ (11)
lit-theory-criticism‎ (8)
literature‎ (7)
archeology-anthropology‎ (3)
history-science‎ (3)
climate-collapse‎ (2)
origin-of-life‎ (1)

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Blaine is Currently Reading

Blaine Snow is currently reading

Ancient Teotihuacan: Early Urbanism in Central Mexico (Case Studies in Early Societies)

by George L. Cowgill

bookshelves: archeology-anthropology, currently-reading

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Jul 23, 2024 03:37PM

Blaine Snow is currently reading

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber

bookshelves: history-cultural, cultural-studies, history-general, all-time-favorites, currently-reading, archeology-anthropology

Reading for the 2nd time

read in April 2024

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Blaine Snow said: " So far paradigm-changing... completely upending my view of human history. Very worth the time. Review forthcoming. "

progress:

(page 356 of 720)
— Apr 23, 2024 04:22AM

Jul 23, 2024 03:39PM · see review

Blaine Snow is currently reading

Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature

by Eric Chaisson

bookshelves: general-science, complex-systems, evolution, currently-reading, astronomy-cosmology

Reading for the 2nd time

read in December 2012

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Blaine Snow said: " [Rewrite pending, Jan-2024]

As a grand evolutionary synthesis, this book by Chaisson does a fine job; a fine job that is, if your definition of "grand" excludes mind, consciousness, interiority, experience, and everything that is NOT matter, energy, s [Rewrite pending, Jan-2024]

As a grand evolutionary synthesis, this book by Chaisson does a fine job; a fine job that is, if your definition of "grand" excludes mind, consciousness, interiority, experience, and everything that is NOT matter, energy, space, and time (physics, chemistry, biology). Chaisson gives us an outstanding review of what's currently understood as the big picture of evolution in the realms of the natural sciences, a kind of updated version of similar books from 1980s systems theory such as Laszlo's Evolution: The Grand Synthesis and Jantsch's The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications. And as a physicist-astronomer, he can be forgiven for focusing solely on the third-person-objective-materialist aspects of human experience since, well, since that's what he's trained to do (focus here, ignore there).

If you want a book that defines "grand evolutionary synthesis" there's no better place to go than the books of Ken Wilber (despite their shortcomings), a synthetic genius who takes all of what Chaisson presents and couples it with the co-evolution of interiority, mind, and consciousness (see his Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution). Wilber's synthesis is vast and brings together huge areas of human knowledge that have hitherto been separate such as western developmental psychology, eastern nondual philosophy, postmodern intersubjective perspectives, complex systems theory, states of consciousness research, and more. Wilber's work however has suffered from charges of teleology, over-emphasis on hierarchical levels, reliance on a contemporary version of the Great Chain model, and a lot of writing not grounded in careful research, referencing, and scholarship. But so much of Wilber's work is hugely valuable, if only his distinction of the difference between "cosmos" and "Kosmos", the former being what Chaisson is talking about, i.e., the material cosmos only, and the latter, Kosmos, what Wilber writes about which includes four interrelated, interdependent aspects of evolution: the objective organism, the subjective mind, the interobjective environment, and the intersubjective culture.

Probably the best and most careful work on synthesizing the interior/mind and exterior/matter aspects of evolution is the work by the embodied mind cognitive science folks who are also incorporating complex systems theory into their work such as Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, Andy Clark, Alva Noe, Alicia Juaerro, Daniel Hutto, Shawn Gallagher, Terrance Deacon, and many others (see my Embodied Cognition listopia list for more ). Thompson's book Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind is an outstanding contribution to a view that can truly be called "grand synthesis," a view that incorporates subjective phenomenological first-person experience with objective third-person knowledge of biological systems organization.

For a (slightly technical) romp through the materialist version of the evolutionary grand synthesis, Chaisson delivers admirably. But for those of us who can't ignore interiority, consciousness, and first-person perspectives in our view of grand synthesis I suggest digging into the literature on embodied mind cognitive science, particularly the enactive approach pioneered in the Varela-Thompson-Rosch's The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. ...more "

progress:

(page 237 of 288)
"Loving it." — Feb 03, 2024 10:13PM

Jan 30, 2024 08:33PM · see review

See all 15 books that Blaine is reading…

Blaine’s Quotes

“Since all is empty, all is possible.”
― Nagarjuna

34 likes

“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”
― Niels Bohr

tags: paradox, physics

142 likes

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Rumi

tags: inspirational-love, misattributed

9473 likes

“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”
― Arnold Toynbee

tags: cultural-decay

131 likes

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil.

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

tags: evil, good, heart, religion

637 likes

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