the Sparks of Randomness

by Atlan, Henri

• ISBN13: 9780804760270
• ISBN10: 0804760276
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-11-22
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

The Sparks of Randomness, Henri Atlan's magnum opus, develops his whole philosophy with a highly impressive display of knowledge, wisdom, depth, rigor, and intellectual and moral vigor. Atlan founds an ethics adapted to the new power over life that modern scientific knowledge has given us. He holds that theresultsof science cannot ground any ethical or political truth whatsoever, while human creative activity and the conquest of knowledge are a double-edged sword. This first volume,Spermatic Knowledge, begins with the Talmudic tale about the prophet Jeremiah's creation of a golem, or artificial man. Atlan shows that the Jewish tradition does not demonize man for creating and changing living things--a charge often leveled at promoters of advanced technologies, like biologists, who are accused of "playing God." To the contrary, man is depicted as being the co-creator of the world. Although Atlan believes that the fabrication of life "from scratch" will take place in the near future, he posits that this achievement will not really amount tocreating lifecurrent biology and biotechnologies have demonstrated that there is no absolute distinction between life and non-life, no critical threshold whose crossing would be taboo. He also debunks and demystifies our belief in free will and our conviction, of theological origin, that there would be no possibility for ethics if free will were shown to be an illusion. Throughout, he combines science, ancient and modern philosophy, in unexpected and inspired ways. His radical, uncompromising Spinozism allows him to propose a complete revision of cognitive science and philosophy of mind, while showing that their current impasses stem from remnants of traditional dualism. From his brilliant reflections on time, he also derives exciting considerations for medicine and epidemiology.

Author Biography

Henri Atlan is Director of the Human Biology Research Center and a scholar at Hadassah University Hospital, Jerusalem, Professor Emeritus of Biophysics at the Universities of Paris VI and Jerusalem and Director of Research at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. He is an officer of the Legion of Honor, the French Order of Arts and Letters, and the French National Order of Merit.

Table of Contents

Translator's Introduction	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
The Sparks Of Randomness And The Manufacture of The Living	p. 21
Producing Life, Controlling Time	p. 21
Seminal Reason and "It's All in the Genes"	p. 23
Concept and Life	p. 25
Golems	p. 28
The Sparks of Randomness and Their Ambiguity	p. 34
The Generations of the Flood, of the Tower of Babel, and of the Wilderness	p. 37
Ashmedai and Solomon: Tricks of Nature and Tricks with Nature	p. 39
The Tree of Knowledge, Good and Bad	p. 43
Ambiguity and Polysemy	p. 47
The Randomness of Birth: Evil at Its Source Is Not Evil	p. 49
The "Mixed Multitude" in the Wilderness and the "Head That Is Not Known"	p. 53
The Flood and the Tower of Babel	p. 55
The Time of Magic and the Time of Technology	p. 57
The Times of Memory	p. 61
The Individual "Seal" in the Nature of Things	p. 62
No One Knows What The Body Can Do: The Tree of Knowledge and Games Of Absolute Determinism	p. 66
The Shape of the Body and the Corporeality of God	p. 66
Good and Evil: Moral Conscience or Knowledge of the True	p. 72
The Tree of Knowledge and the Fall of the First Man, According to Rabbi Shlomo Eliaschow's Book of Knowledge	p. 74
An Ambiguous Serpent	p. 79
A Return to the Sparks of Randomness	p. 82
The Yearning for Yearning: Eros and the Holy	p. 84
Behemoth and Leviathan	p. 86
What the Body Can Do	p. 88
Mechanism and Responsibility	p. 90
Nature's Ultimate Trick: The Parable of the Divine Intrigues ('alilot)	p. 96
"Before Creation": The World of Tobu and the 974 Lost Generations	p. 101
What Freedom?	p. 109
The Call of Ethics	p. 119
The Games of the Infinite-in Itself, by Itself, and for Itself	p. 124
Incorporations	p. 130
Appendix: The Dialectic of Absolute Determinism and Choice in the Book of Knowledge and in Ecclesiastes	p. 132
Spirits And Demons: Subject And Shadow	p. 142
Hidden Causes	p. 142
Spinoza and the Spirits	p. 146
Causes in Nature and Animation of Subjects	p. 149
"Natural Magic" and the Science of Bygone Times	p. 149
"The Spirits Tell"	p. 152
The Determining Causes of Nature and Their Representations in Classical Antiquity	p. 153
The "Genetic" Causes of Scholasticism	p. 155
Elements of Talmudic Demonology	p. 156
Divination and Prophecy	p. 158
The Shadow of a Shadow	p. 162
Shadow and Shade, Inside and Outside	p. 164
Subject and Shadow	p. 166
Knowledge Without Conscience?	p. 168
Wisdom of the Left Side and Wisdom of the Right Side	p. 169
Knowledge "Below" and Unity "Above"	p. 172
The Ego and the Subject	p. 176
The Stakes of the Infinite	p. 180
Angels and Demons in the Generation of Babel	p. 182
"God" and the Names of the Name	p. 184
Myth And Philosophy, Kabbalah, "Expanded Spinozism"	p. 189
Philosophical Questions, Mythical Answers	p. 189
Criticism of Kant's Critique: Methodological Dogmatism and Empirical Skepticism in Salomon Maimon	p. 200
Reconstruction and Active Thinking	p. 217
East and West: New Philosophical Myths and Theological-Political Conflicts	p. 210
The Indian East and Semitic East in the Contemporary History of Greek Philosophy	p. 216
Spinoza's "Anti-Judaism"	p. 221
Spinoza's "Pharisees" and the End of Prophecy	p. 232
The Salvation of the Unlettered in the Tractatus Theologicus-Politicus	p. 238
The Pharisees and the Birth of Judaism	p. 242
The Book of Esther	p. 246
Salvation for All and a Provisional Moral Code	p. 251
Leibniz and Kabbalah: Mathematics and Theodicy	p. 259
Leibniz and Spinoza: Science and Philosophy in the Europe of the Churches	p. 268
Spinoza's "Christianity," Ancient Philosophy, and Eternal Wisdom	p. 273
Expanded Spinozism and Limited Kabbalah	p. 279
The Desacralization of Chance: From Oracular Lottery To The Indifference Of The Random	p. 289
Chance and Casting Lots	p. 289
A Rereading of Joshua 7:1-19	p. 294
Ruth and Boaz: Chance and Destiny	p. 299
Desacralized Chance and the Paths of Knowledge	p. 302
Throwing Dice	p. 305
Appendix: Stéphane Mallarmé, "A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance"	p. 306
How The Biblical God "Goes At Random" In Hebrew, But Not In Translation	p. 310
Index	p. 317
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