Welcome to this course on Journey of the Universe Conversations. This educational series is a sequence of interviews with ten scientists and historians. And ten environmentalists who are involved in implementing this bridging across this relationship of a new story of our emergence. From the universe and the way in which that story is being implemented now in on the ground projects. It's really an amazing discussion, in an entry that Mary Ellen conducts with these 20 individuals. In which they begin to not only explore ways in which theory and our understanding of the universe as emerging. But also how this is impacting our projects with regard to cities, with regard to solar energies, new technologies and our understanding. So, how economic relates to the larger earth community. So this relationship then in this journey of universe course conversation is exploring new ways of knowing. In ways in which our understanding of a functional cosmology interrelates with an understanding of a living universe. So many of these individuals were exploring these very practical and also this story quality, the narrative quality of our emergent story. >> Right, what we were trying to do was take up the conversation after the film and the book with individuals, scientists, historians, and environmentalists as John has said. Many of these individuals have been inspired by the sense that their knowledge, their contributions. Their work is enhanced by this larger context of the story, of an epic of evolution, of deep time. And so the scientists, for example, are suggesting that understanding of stars and galaxies. Needs to be related to the understandings of life and plants and then what is a deeper significance? As Ursula Goodenough says and she talks about the cell and it's the sense even of a self. >> Yeah. >> In a cell. >> Yeah. >> It's quite astonishing, she talks about motility and reproduction and. How the membrane discerns what comes in and out and she's saying these are the qualities of a cell. So, she's helping us to understand the development of a cell, the characteristics of a cell. And how the multi-cellular life exploded and expanded on this globe for plants and animals and humans, all life. >> Yes and this becomes very interesting then to see how biologist, a cell biologist reflects in light of. The earlier scientific voices who were talking about the primal flaring forth of the universe in the sense of dark matter, dark energy. So the relationship between these different scientific voices, is placed in relationship to individuals from the social sciences and the humanities. To begin to explore how their are multiple ways of knowing, they are coming to bear on this story. For example, the interview that we did together, we took on the question of human origins. And it's a fascinating discussion to think about the role of narrative in the emergence of the human family. The sense of shared story and how communities then build themselves around what we're calling cosmologies or even religious cosmologies, narratives. That bind our communities together and how these are adapted over time. So this conversational series is a fascinating discovery of how different voices provide portals for understanding. Shared questions across the sciences, natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. So in this course, we will undertake explorations that are really providing a framing actually. To framing new ways of understanding how that these narratives orient us and ground us and nurture us and transform us. Which I think is a perspective that you've also spoken on. >> Well I think those are words that we've developed to suggest how cosmology is not just an abstraction. That cosmology is a living cosmology within a living universe as you've said. In other words, what we're suggesting with the scientists is there's an orientation to the universe. To the emergence of stars and planets and galaxies and our solar system. We're actually oriented to something vast and complex and yet inspiring. Men goes talking about the emergence of earth like creek cockle and plate tectonics giving that sense of grounding in this planetary system, 4.6 billion year old system. And life with the biologists and chemists and the animals got and talking about the diversity and even culture of animals. So we're grounded on the Earth and then the sense that cosmology also nourishes us, nurtures us. So we have Penny Livingston talking about food and permaculture, and how growing food through permaculture. And certainly through biodynamics, is aligning the human with the unfolding powers of Earth systems, Earth processes, and so on. And how we do that as you said in cities and so on but also how we transform ourselves in terms of issues like race of difference. We're not saying this is a monolithic only unity is the goal here. We've got Carl Anthony talking about issues of race and how reading Thomas Berry's book, Dream of the Earth, completely transformed his sense of identity as African American. >> And in that sense also, when the Navajo Dine Teacher, David Begay speaks about his people's relationship with stars, we encounter this effort to grope to find language. And certainly, David is speaking in terms of his own Navajo language. How to express these ideas but he brings us into a rather powerful understanding of his people's enter into deep time. And so, his discussion of the speaking of stars as in the past, in the present, and how we move towards the future. The way he explores deep time and it's presence is a really remarkable dimension of this course, Journey of the Universe, The Conversations. In a way in which we are trying to, again, see the ways in which an emerging universe story does not simply locate us in the past. Or tell us about the future that we're going, but somehow brings us into the living character of a narrative that places us within the universe. >> That's right, and the sense then of the integration of knowledge and action, of inspiration of the story but of perspiration, of the work on the ground, if you will. As Thomas Berry would say, it's the functional cosmology, and it's the great work. And examples of that are throughout these conversations, conversations in particular the eco-economics. We need an economics that, as Dick Norgard would say, is cooperative and co-evolving over time, gives us that sense of alignment. And education as well will hopefully transform over time. On all levels we've got education already doing the sense of a universe story. High Schools are beginning to teach it and Tom Collins speaks about that. The sense that education can take up this context for how we live our lives, what our professions might be and this search for meaning and our role in the scheme of things. So that's the invitation here, great work on the ground, the inspiring story, and we hope that you will find your way in this journey of the universe. [MUSIC]
