Tag: Great Ideas
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
CATEGORIES
November 24, 2023 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Each fall, Great Books San Francisco hosts a Poetry Weekend. And if there’s one thing that I’m grateful for in this world, it’s poetry. I love to attend this event because of its hybrid nature. The first day is filled with reading and …
May 27, 2022 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. In order to continue with my investigations of Artificial Intelligence (AI), I am looking into historical understandings of the mind. Mind is also one of the great ideas, so obviously there has been a lot of research, discussion, and theorizing about what it …
May 13, 2022 Thanks to 2022 Fellow in Ideas, David Yamada, for today’s post. Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life by Zena Hitz As the humanities and social sciences face core threats fueled by higher education budget cuts and political divisions, they are conventionally defended on vocational and practical grounds. The …
January 31, 2020 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. “Genome engineered plants and animals are happening right now. And this puts in front of all of us a huge responsibility to consider carefully both the unintended consequences as well as the intended impacts of a scientific breakthrough.” – Jennifer Duodna, TED Talk …
January 4, 2019 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Some members in my family celebrate New Year’s Eve with lutefisk or sauerkraut. Some people celebrate with both. I, however, draw the line at lutefisk. I just cannot stomach it. What seems to me to be a petty difference of taste really bothers …
June 29, 2018 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all …
June 9, 2017 Thanks to Alissa Simon for today’s post. In the Syntopicon (Astronomy and Cosmology chapter), Mortimer Adler notes that “Man has used astronomy to measure not only the passage of time or the course of a voyage, but also his position in the world, his power of knowing, his relation to God. When …
April 28, 2017 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Did you know that Poetry is listed as one of the Great Ideas in the Syntopicon? If you didn’t you are not alone. However, the importance of this inclusion is often overlooked. Since it is National Poetry Month, now is the best time …
February 17, 2017 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. In “Philebus”, Socrates and Protarchus attempt to understand unity. Socrates states, “The one and many become identified by thought…They run about together, in and out of every word which is uttered…This union of them will never cease, and is not now beginning, but …
December 9, 2016 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s blog. Last week was the first of four scheduled discussions of Harrison Middleton University’s film course on The Hollow Crown series. Ben Whishaw portrays Richard II in Shakespeare’s play by the same name. In it, Bolingbroke (Henry IV) steals the throne from Richard II. …
