Cobb Institute

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Timothy Murphy
2023-02-28 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Online Event
Topic: Sharing Process Values in the Real World: A Minister/Activist’s Journey

Presenters: Timothy Murphy

Rev. Dr. Timothy Murphy has been Pastor and Teacher of Plymouth Church (UCC) in Fort Wayne, Indiana since 2018. Before that he had served as Transitional Pastor of All Peoples Christian Church in Los Angeles, CA. He earned his Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate University. He has served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion and Politics at Claremont School of Theology, where he taught courses in Religion, Ethics, and Politics. For three years he was Executive Director of Progressive Christians Uniting, a faith and social justice organization based in southern California, focusing on mass incarceration and climate change. From 2007-2010, he was the Minister for Youth and Social Justice at Pilgrim UCC in Carlsbad, CA. Holding standing in both the United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Timothy has served in various congregational and ministry settings in Kentucky, Missouri, Texas, and California. He is author of Counter-Imperial Churching for a Planetary Gospel: Radical Discipleship for Today and Sustaining Hope in an Unjust World: How to Keep Going When You Want to Give Up, and a children’s story book, Jesus Learns to Glow.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

Learning Circle: Process & Coffee
2023-03-02 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-03-09 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-03-16 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-03-23 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-03-30 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-04-06 08:00 - 09:00, 2023-04-13 08:00 - 09:00
Process & Coffee is about spiritual integration and exploration. We meet weekly to dive into books by mystics and sages. The discussion that follows helps to deepen our own spiritual lives.

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Mathematics, Narratives, & Life: Reconciling Science and the Humanities
2023-03-04 13:00 - 14:30
The triumph of scientific materialism in the Seventeenth Century not only bifurcated nature into matter and mind, as Whitehead pointed out. It divided science and the humanities. The core of science is the effort to comprehend the cosmos through mathematics. The core of the humanities is the effort to comprehend history through narratives. The life sciences can be seen as the zone in which the conflict between these two very different ways of comprehending the world collide. Evolutionary theory developed out of natural history as defended by Schelling, but efforts have been made to formulate neo-Darwinism through mathematical models. However, it is impossible to eliminate stories from biology. As Stuart Kauffman pointed out, mathematical models attempt to pre-state all possibilities, but in evolution there can be adjacent possibles that can be embraced by organisms but cannot be pre-stated. To account for these it is necessary to tell stories.

Yellow chamomile head showing the Fibonacci numbers in spirals consisting of 21 (blue) and 13 (aqua). Such arrangements have been noticed since the Middle Ages and can be used to make mathematical models of a wide variety of plants. [source]

Mathematics provides analytic precision allowing long chains of deduction, but tends to deny temporal becoming and cannot do justice to the openness of the future, while narratives focus on processes and events, but lack exactitude that would allow precise deductions. In advancing mathematics adequate to life, Robert Rosen argued that living beings as anticipatory systems must have models of themselves, and strove to develop a form of mathematics able to model this. It has been convincingly argued that narratives are central to human self-creation and they are lived out before being explicitly told. There models of themselves are first and foremost, narratives. If this is the case, might not living beings as biological entities be characterized by proto-narratives in their models of themselves? Biosemiotics, largely inspired by C.S. Peirce, provides a bridge between mathematical and narrative comprehension, conceiving them as different forms of semiosis. The study of life through biosemiotics should reveal how mathematics and narratives should be understood in relation to each other. This could have implications for how we understand mathematics and narratives and their relation both to each other and to reality, and thereby how we should understand science and the humanities and their relationship.

In this presentation and conversation, Dr. Arran Gare and Dr. Matthew Segall will examine work in theoretical biology that might advance these efforts.

Arran Gare is an Australian philosopher and Reader (Associate Professor) in Philosophy and Cultural Inquiry at Swinburne University. His main areas of research are environmental philosophy, history and philosophy of science, mathematics and metaphysics, the history and philosophy of culture, and Chinese philosophy. He is aligned with the tradition of process metaphysics, and has published widely on these topics and am the author of a number of books, including Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis (London: Routledge, 1995), Nihilism Inc.: Environmental Destruction and the Metaphysics of Sustainability (Sydney: Eco-Logical Press, 1996). and The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization: A manifesto for the future (London: Routledge, 2017). He also founded the Joseph Needham Center of Complex Processes Research and the online journal Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy. His current work is devoted to providing the philosophical foundations for a global ecological civilization.

Arran Gare

Matt Segall is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco where he teaches graduate level courses on process philosophy and German Idealism. His recent book, Physics of the World-Soul: Alfred North Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology, put Whitehead’s process cosmology into conversation with various contemporary scientific theories, such as general relativity and quantum theory. This book is exemplary of much of Matt’s recent work, which puts ideas from process philosophy into conversation with the natural sciences.

Matt Segall

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This event is sponsored by the Science Advisory Committee of the Cobb Institute.

Learning Circle: Readings on Faiths Around the World
2023-03-06 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-03-13 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-03-20 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-03-27 08:30 - 09:30
Readings on Faiths Around the World is a book group that reads and discusses books covering the vast diversity of world faiths. Beginning Thursday, March 6th and ending March 27th, we will read and discuss Karen Armstrong’s book Buddha together. The group will meet weekly online via Zoom at 8:30 AM Pacific / 10:30 AM Central.

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This learning circle is made possible by a collaboration among friends:

Learning Circle: An Awakening Planet?
2023-03-07 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-03-21 08:30 - 09:30, 2023-04-04 08:30 - 09:30 | Online Event
A Discussion Group Contemplating the Vision of Teilhard de Chardin

Facilitated by Dr. Ernie Tamminga, this group meets every two weeks to carefully consider how and whether Teilhard de Chardin’s hope-filled perspective on the human evolutionary future can still inspire us in a time full of conflicts and division.

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Bethany Sollereder
2023-03-07 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Creating Your Own Theology in Light of Suffering

Presenters: Bethany Sollereder

Bethany Sollereder is a lecturer in science and religion at the University of Edinburgh. She specializes in theology concerning evolution and the problem of suffering and is currently working on the theological aspects of restoration ecology. Bethany received her PhD in Theology from the University of Exeter and an MCS in interdisciplinary studies from Regent College, Vancouver, B.C. She is author of God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering: Theodicy without a Fall and Why Is There Suffering? Pick Your Own Theological Expedition. This latter book, published by Zondervan (2021), is the first “pick your own ending” theology book! Dr. Sollereder was a presenter at the 50th Anniversary CPS Conference on the topic, “Pentecostal Meets Process: A Pluralist Model of Divine Action.” She was also a panelist at this year’s ORTline23 Open and Relational Theology online conference.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Tim Burnette
2023-03-14 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Politics and Beauty: A Process Mysticism

Presenters: Tim Burnette

Rev. Dr. Tim Burnette is a Minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and is the Core Curator of Way Collective in Santa Barbara, California—a contemplative community for love and liberation. (You can find reflections on process theology and the Way Collective at Open Horizons.) He earned his D.Min. in Spiritual Renewal, Contemplative Practice, & Strategic Leadership from Claremont School of Theology, and is passionate about bringing sustaining spiritual practices to the work of justice. Tim has served as host for a Theopoetics Podcast for ARC (Arts, Religion, Culture), and has been a guest presenter for John Cobb & Friends. He was a presenter at the 50th Anniversary CPS Conference on the topic, “Nonduality as Resistance: Mystical Internals, Political Externals, and Process Spirituality in Contemplative Community.” You can find out more about him at his website and follow him on Twitter.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

Interfaith Explorations Spring 2023: Cultivating Spirituality in Daily Life
2023-03-15 10:00 - 11:00, 2023-03-22 10:00 - 11:00, 2023-03-29 10:00 - 11:00, 2023-04-05 10:00 - 11:00, 2023-04-12 10:00 - 11:00
In this offering, qualities of heart and mind to help us in our daily life at home, in family, in the workplace, and other situations in the journey of life, such as births, deaths, joys, traumas will be explored through the framework of Spiritual Alphabet, developed by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. Our sessions will be facilitated by Dr. Jay McDaniel and Sophia Said, who will bring two “letters” from the spiritual alphabet to each session (“A” is for attention, “B” is for beauty, “C” is for connection, etc.), sharing quotations, poems, and stories from personal experiences that illuminate them; and then, with help from prompting questions, invite others to do the same.

Interfaith Explorations is a program of the Interfaith Center of Arkansas, and is co-sponsored by the Cobb Institute, Spirituality & Practice, and Process & Faith.

This event is free and open to the public.

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Starting With Whitehead: Session 1
2023-03-18 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
This five-part conversation series offers an analysis of learning events at each of the three stages of the rhythm of education, described in Whitehead’s classic The Aims of Education. Each conversation will focus on the recently published book Starting with Whitehead, by Lynn De Jonghe, which bridges the gap between the theory and practice of educational reform, and points the way for adults to help children thrive in a world of change.

“There is only one subject matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations.”—Alfred North Whitehead

As we search for guidance on how to thrive in changing times, we are led to the work of Alfred North Whitehead, who brilliantly perceived that the process of change itself is fundamental to existence. Whitehead grasped the profound role of change in determining how we how we learn, how we experience ourselves and others and how we interact with the world around us. In his classic work, The Aims of Education, he elaborated a three-stage process of learning, involving romance, precision and generalization. He called for an education that explored real life experiences and events rather than packing of scraps of information into passive students.

Starting with Whitehead: Raising Children to Thrive in Treacherous Times offers examples of learning events at each stage that point the way for adults to help children thrive in a world of change. These events are presented in the richness of their contexts and unfolding, rather than as dry results of controlled data gathering procedures. The events recorded here are based on the author’s extensive experience working directly with children as a parent, teacher, principal and policy maker. Drawing on the best of psychological and educational research, Dr. De Jonghe sets these exemplary events in a vigorous theoretical foundation and proposes specific strategies for success. Her recommendations have relevance not only for parents but also for teachers, principals, and educational policy makers.

Conversation Series Outline

Takes place on Saturdays at 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM Pacific, from March 18th thru April 22nd

Session 1: March 18: Introduction: Using events in context to inform theory; Whitehead’s Aims of Education in relation to his philosophy of process

Session 2: March 25: The Rhythm of Education: Romance

Session 3: April 1: The Rhythm of Education: Precision

Session 4: April 15: The Rhythm of Education: Generalization

Session 5: April 22: Conclusion: Using Process Philosophy to Help Meet the Challenges of Our Times

Each session will begin with a talk and slide presentation by Dr. De Jonghe, then follow with two or three respondents for comment, critique, and elaboration, after which we will open for exploratory discussion by all attendees.

“Change is constant, endemic and necessary.”—Drew Gilpin Faust

About the Author

Lynn De Jonghe’s career in progressive education has spanned more than forty years. She served as the founding Head of East Bay Sierra School, which later merged with another school to form Prospect Sierra School, to become one of the preeminent schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prior to her work in independent schools, Lynn spent fifteen years in public education administering federal funds to innovative programs, advocating for project learning as an alternative to textbooks, and pushing for integration in Massachusetts schools. She received her BA degree in History from Harvard University and a MS in Library Science from Simmons College before completing her PhD in Education at Cornell University. Her doctoral work on children’s problem solving led her to push for challenging educational programs that encourage all students to pursue learning in depth and to use problem solving skills, collaborative learning, and exploration of values in an integrated curriculum. Her work in philosophy centers on the social methodology of scientific research programs and the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. She is a member of the Philosophy of Education Society and serves on the advisory committee of the Cobb Institute.

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Ron Nahser
2023-03-21 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Medieval Monastic and University Spirituality: Management Practices for Ecological Civilization?

Presenters: Ron Nahser

In a world sharply divided by differing views of economic, environmental, and political realities, Dr. Ron Nahser has been living out his own “calling,” influenced by early encounter with Whitehead’s pragmatic philosophy, and continued influence from Benedict’s monastic spirituality, and Boethius’s liberal arts as practiced in Medieval Universities. He frequently finds time to join John Cobb & friends as we aim to live into our calling toward an ecological civilization.

Ron Nahser is the founding Provost – now Emeritus – of Presidio Graduate School, the first to offer an accredited MBA in sustainable management. He’s living out his “calling” in various vocations—as advertising executive, teacher and educational executive, and scholar/practitioner of American Pragmatism He has a China connection as Professor of Ecological Economics and Pragmatic Inquiry at the Center for Confucian Entrepreneurship and East Asian Culture, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.

A recent issue of Amplify (vol. 35, no. 4, 2022) carries an article he co-authored, “Reclaiming Values and Vision in Management Education to Create Systems Change.” The issue’s summary of Nahser’s career documents the range of his professional activities. He is Executive Director for Corporantes, an outgrowth of The Nahser Agency/Advertising. He is Senior Fellow/Director of Urban Sustainable Management Programs, Institute for Nature and Culture at DePaul University’s Department of Environmental Science and Studies. He lectures and consults with business and academic audiences in the US and internationally on business values, vision, marketing strategy, branding, social responsibility, and integrative sustainable management.

Dr. Nahser is the author of Learning to Read the Signs: Reclaiming Pragmatism in Business (available here at a very reasonable price – also includes the 32 page PathFinder Field Notebook) and Journeys to Oxford: Nine Pragmatic Inquiries into the Practice of Values in Business and Education. He has developed a values and vision-driven strategy method known as PathFinder Pragmatic Inquiry®. Dr. Nahser is also a Fellow of the World Business Academy, Curator of the Willis Harman Archive, founding Partner of the Oxford Leadership Academy in the US, and Strategic Advisor to the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) Secretariat.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame, an MBA from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a master’s degree in religious studies from Loyola/Mundelein College, and a PhD in American business philosophy from DePaul University.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

Starting With Whitehead: Session 2
2023-03-25 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Mark Anielski
2023-03-28 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Economic Strategies We Can Learn from First Nations Peoples

Presenters: Mark Anielski

After a presentation on Native peoples by Professor Tink Tinker, the Cobb Institute reached out to Mark Anielski to help us further explore what we can learn from First Nations. He was the guest of John Cobb & Friends on September 29, 2020. John Cobb calls Mark his “favorite economist” because “he thinks the economy should serve the wellbeing of the people.” Economist Anielski asks about feelings and experiences. He’ll report hopeful things happening among Canada’s First Nations peoples and wherever there are opportunities to develop local economies of resilience and trust in local systems of trade and production.

Mark Anielski, a resident of Alberta, has worked to apply Herman Daly’s economic theories in practical ways. His work of measuring well-being extends from First Nations in Canada, Nunavut (Canada), Alberta, Singapore, China, South Korea, The Netherlands, Austria, and French Polynesia (Tahiti). New Zealand, Iceland, Ireland, and Scotland are advancing well-being budgeting and governance, common-sense-economics for building a better and happier world. He’s also consulted with folks in Santa Monica and Pomona. Anielski has authored two books: An Economy of Well-being: Common Sense Tools for Building Genuine Wealth and Happiness (2018) and the award-winning book The Economics of Happiness (2007). See him on a wide-ranging Green Interview about an “Economy of Love.”

Mark suggests that you explore his Economics of Well-being Podcast conversations with several First Nations people including Chief Christian Sinclair of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation in Manitoba whose Nation he worked with in 2020/21 in conducting a well-being assessment in the process of establishing a working economy of well-being. Here is another with former Chief Larry Sault from Ontario. This one with Lewis Cardinal is about the story of Canada from a First Nations perspective.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

Starting With Whitehead: Session 3
2023-04-01 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Ellyn Polsky, Sophia Said, and Jay McDaniel
2023-04-04 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Passover, Ramadan, and Holy Week: An Interfaith Conversation

Presenters: Ellyn Polsky, Sophia Said, and Jay McDaniel

This conversation, co-sponsored with the Interfaith Center of Arkansas, will honor holy seasons of Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

Ellyn Polsky will guide our understanding of Passover. She has been teaching in secular and Jewish schools and camps for over 50 years, most recently as Director of Lifelong Learning at Reform Jewish congregations in St. Louis and then in Little Rock. You can see her in the following 10-minute video about a program for elementary school children. She worked tirelessly to help Sophia Said establish, teach and have fun in—Interfaith Friendship Camp of Arkansas. An educator at The Interfaith Center, she has been curriculum director of the camp for the last 6 years.

Sophia Said, Executive Director of The Interfaith Center of Arkansas, will discuss Ramadan. She has received multiple awards recognizing her contributions to civil society. Perhaps you remember her previous conversation with John Cobb & Friends “On Being Muslim in America.” A native of Pakistan who came to America when her husband came to study, she responded to the 9-11 tragedy by founding the Interfaith Center. Explore Open Horizons website for her story, her affirmation of “The America I believe in,” and Jay McDaniel’s “process appreciation” of her vision. Also, Sophia and Jay reflect on interfaith relations in light of the results of the 2016 US Presidential election. Explore her personal story, plus course materials she developed with Jay McDaniel for a class they taught at Hendrix College on “Leadership in a Multi-Faith World.”

Jay McDaniel will discuss Holy Week. He is Professor Emeritus of World Religions at Hendrix College, board chair for Cobb Institute, active supporter of the Institute for Postmodern Development of China and of the Becomings Collective for Emerging Artists (becomingscollective.org). He is curator of OpenHorizons.org. He has collaborated often with Sophia Said, contributing to the programs of the Interfaith Center of Arkansas. See the page with his biodata on the website of Spirituality & Practice.

For basic information about Jewish, Muslim, and Christian holy seasons, you may explore these resources available from the Harvard Pluralism Project:

Passover

Ramadan

Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Herman Greene
2023-04-11 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Process & Law: The New Ecological Social Contract

Presenters: Herman Greene

Herman Greene will begin with a discussion of the past work done of process thinkers on legal theory. He will then move to his own work in the emerging field of Earth law and the new ecological social contract. (See his attached Earth Law chapter, “Ecocentric Governance: The New Ecological Social Contract.”) Bruno Latour argued in his 2013 Gifford lectures that we humans have entered a new state of nature, a Hobbesian condition of a war of all against all, with the protagonists now including tuna, and sea levels, and carbon emissions, as well as the various human factions. This time though it is not a condition before people entered into a social contract, it is a present condition, and calls for a new social contract that includes nature—a task that will take “two hundred” years. It is the primary task of humans in the Anthropocene.

Herman Greene, JD, MA, MDiv, DMin is founder and president of the Center for Ecozoic Studies in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a research and education center for an ecological-cultural age. He is Thomas Berry Scholar-in-Residence of the Earth Law Center and is co-author and co-editor of Earth Law: Emerging Ecocentric Law—A Guide for Practitioners. He serves on the Board of the International Process Network, and on the Advisory Boards of the Center for Process Studies and the Institute for the Post-Modern Development of China. He is a retired business lawyer and holds graduate degrees in law (University of North Carolina-JD), theology (University of Chicago-MTh & MDiv, and United Theological Seminary-DMin), and political science (Stanford University-MA).

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.
