technology
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New Faculty Fellow: Adam Pugen
The Lyceum Institute is happy to welcome a new Faculty Fellow for 2025, Dr. Adam Pugen. I have long been interested in the relationship between rational inquiry, existential meaning, and the aesthetic ways in which ordinary and transcendent experience is symbolized by different forms of human culture. Discovering the work of media theorist Marshall McLuhan,…
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Digital Identity and the Disintegration of the Human Soul
As part of the Humanitas Technica project, the Lyceum Institute is hosting a discussion panel at the American Catholic Philosophical Association’s Annual Meeting, in Chicago, Illinois, this weekend (November 15 at 11am CT) on “Digital identity and the Disintegration of the Human Soul”. A description of this panel is below: lyceum institute acpa satellite session…
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On Propaganda
A Philosophical Happy Hour on propaganda’s causes, consequences, and cures. The advent of mass communication—beginning with the national newspaper but greatly accelerated first through radio and second, with great totalization, through television—ushered in a new paradigm for shaping the actions of human beings: propaganda. It has been used to impose faux cultural homogeneity, to establish…
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Total (Moral/Human) Annihilation
The following is excerpted from Lewis Mumford’s 1961: The City in History, c.18, “The Myth of Megalopolis”, an important source in our upcoming Difficulties of Technology seminar. Here we explore the themes of “total human annihilation”—particularly in its moral dimension. Naïve Functionaries of Annihilation Much of the thought about the prospective development of cities today…
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On Consumers and Consumerism
A Philosophical Happy Hour on our having become consumers and how we might escape consumerism. I am uncomfortable in nearly all shopping environments (used bookstores being the primary exception). I do not know when this began—but it became very noticeable to me while in graduate school; perhaps because I was rather poor in those years. …
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On Nature and the Artificial
A Philosophical Happy Hour against the Inversion of our Knowledge What does it mean for something to be natural? We find the word ubiquitous in today’s marketing: all natural bug spray, dog treats, body wash, shampoo, deodorant, laundry detergent, toothpaste, sunscreen. Ironically, of course, none of these products occur by nature. Each is a product…
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Science & Engineering
Ask most people today what we mean by “science” and the answers will vary, but commonly include that it is: empirical, experimental, authoritative, highly specialized, the result of intensive training, and concerned with discoveries that are precise, accurate, and actionable. One also finds the word frequently paired with “technology”—as well as “engineering” and “mathematics” (STEM).…
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Expertise vs. Wisdom
Much has been said in the past decade about the “elite”—those with significant wealth, power, influence, and education (or, rather, the reputation garnered from attending specific schools, regardless of education actually attained)—and little of it positive. In our culture of political polarization and populism, to be “elite” is to be painted with two black marks: first,…