Where God Comes From Reflections on Science, Systems, and the Sublime

by Livingston, Ira

• ISBN13: 9781780994000
• ISBN10: 1780994001
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-10-16
• Publisher: Zero Books

Summary

Where God Comes From explores how the sublime and miraculous can be found in a whole range of processes-- from chemistry and biology to language and literature and social interactions -- and how they loop back on themselves to form complex systems, stitching themselves and their environments together. The book traces an arc that passes through a series of different essay forms: a prose poem in Twitter-length units, a philosophical dialogue, traditional essays, and finally a story. Each is a metacognitive investigation of mystical experience as what happens when consciousness discovers its family resemblances with other recursive processes.

Author Biography

Ira Livingston is Professor and Chair of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Vision of Ezekiel and the Films of Stanley Kubrick	p. 1
Miracles and Signs
Recognition to Infinity	p. 22
The Gravity Suspension Miracle	p. 25
The Perfect-Fitting Clothes Miracle	p. 29
The Fried Noodles Miracle	p. 31
The Miracle of the Materialized Key	p. 33
The Mockingbird Sign	p. 34
The Jellyfish Sign	p. 37
Road Trip #1: The Story of Virgil	p. 43
Where God Comes From	p. 48
The Pedestrian Sublime	p. 53
A Web of Meandering Connections	p. 56
Keats and Kauffman	p. 58
Beginnings
Are We Being Hustled by God?	p. 64
Dumb Luck Versus Intelligent Design	p. 68
Claymation	p. 74
Getting Stuck and Unstuck
The Lamb Soup of Xinjiang	p. 82
Renunciation	p. 84
Nonlinear Time Is Rife with Messiahs	p. 87
Depressive Realism	p. 90
Theory of Mind	p. 92
Entification	p. 100
Famous Poems Made Up of One Enormous Word	p. 106
Beginning Again
Chaos and Complexity Theory	p. 113
Finding Your Theme Music	p. 125
Poetics and Autopoietics	p. 132
Ending and Returning
Road Trip with(out) Professor Lee	p. 145
Waking Up in Beijing	p. 151
Still Knitting	p. 159
Road Trip #3: An Answer for Thad	p. 165
Acknowledgements	p. 184
References	p. 185
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