Candy Gunther Brown
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781469648484
- eISBN:
- 9781469648507
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469648484.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
Chapter 10 analyzes decisions by the Pennsylvania Department of EducationCharter School Appeal Board (CAB) first to grant and then to rescind an elementary school charter in Education for New ...
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Chapter 10 analyzes decisions by the Pennsylvania Department of EducationCharter School Appeal Board (CAB) first to grant and then to rescind an elementary school charter in Education for New Generations Charter School v. North Penn School District(2016). CAB determined that school ties to Pranic Healing and Arhatic Yoga (PHAY) and plans to teach Superbrain yoga(SBY) constitute sectarian religious instruction. Master Choa Kok Sui (1952-2007) avowedly developed PHAY in the Philippines to manipulate subtle energies; SBY makes the brain “super” by increasing intuitive intelligence through activating heart and crown chakras to open the gateway to God. One of the proposed school’s co-founders argued in an unrelated case that PHAY is a religion for free exercise purposes. CAB almost granted the charter, illustrating that less familiar religions can be difficult to recognize when framed as scientific techniques with educational benefits. Comparing Sedlock with Education for New Generations, this chapter argues that resource disparities between those issuing and defending against religious charges exert a surprising degree of influence on legal determinations; the California school district had financial motives for teaching yoga, whereas the Pennsylvania district had financial reasons to block a charter school that happened to be based on yoga.Less
Chapter 10 analyzes decisions by the Pennsylvania Department of EducationCharter School Appeal Board (CAB) first to grant and then to rescind an elementary school charter in Education for New Generations Charter School v. North Penn School District(2016). CAB determined that school ties to Pranic Healing and Arhatic Yoga (PHAY) and plans to teach Superbrain yoga(SBY) constitute sectarian religious instruction. Master Choa Kok Sui (1952-2007) avowedly developed PHAY in the Philippines to manipulate subtle energies; SBY makes the brain “super” by increasing intuitive intelligence through activating heart and crown chakras to open the gateway to God. One of the proposed school’s co-founders argued in an unrelated case that PHAY is a religion for free exercise purposes. CAB almost granted the charter, illustrating that less familiar religions can be difficult to recognize when framed as scientific techniques with educational benefits. Comparing Sedlock with Education for New Generations, this chapter argues that resource disparities between those issuing and defending against religious charges exert a surprising degree of influence on legal determinations; the California school district had financial motives for teaching yoga, whereas the Pennsylvania district had financial reasons to block a charter school that happened to be based on yoga.
John Hoffecker
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231147040
- eISBN:
- 9780231518482
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231147040.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology
This book explores the origin and growth of the human mind, drawing on archaeology, history, and the fossil record. It suggests that, as an indirect result of bipedal locomotion, early humans ...
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This book explores the origin and growth of the human mind, drawing on archaeology, history, and the fossil record. It suggests that, as an indirect result of bipedal locomotion, early humans developed a feedback relationship among their hands, brains, and tools that evolved into the capacity to externalize thoughts in the form of shaped stone objects. When anatomically modern humans evolved a parallel capacity to externalize thoughts as symbolic language, individual brains within social groups became integrated into a “neocortical Internet,” or super-brain, giving birth to the mind. Noting that archaeological traces of symbolism coincide with evidence of the ability to generate novel technology, the book contends that human creativity, as well as higher order consciousness, is a product of the superbrain. It equates the subsequent growth of the mind with human history, which began in Africa more than 50,000 years ago. As anatomically modern humans spread across the globe, adapting to a variety of climates and habitats, they redesigned themselves technologically and created alternative realities through tools, language, and art. The book connects the rise of civilization to a hierarchical reorganization of the super-brain, triggered by explosive population growth. Subsequent human history reflects to varying degrees the suppression of the mind's creative powers by the rigid hierarchies of nationstates and empires, constraining the further accumulation of knowledge. The modern world emerged after 1200 from the fragments of the Roman Empire, whose collapse had eliminated a central that could thwart innovation. The text concludes with speculation about the possibility of artificial intelligence and the consequences of a mind liberated from its organic antecedents to exist in an independent, nonbiological form.Less
This book explores the origin and growth of the human mind, drawing on archaeology, history, and the fossil record. It suggests that, as an indirect result of bipedal locomotion, early humans developed a feedback relationship among their hands, brains, and tools that evolved into the capacity to externalize thoughts in the form of shaped stone objects. When anatomically modern humans evolved a parallel capacity to externalize thoughts as symbolic language, individual brains within social groups became integrated into a “neocortical Internet,” or super-brain, giving birth to the mind. Noting that archaeological traces of symbolism coincide with evidence of the ability to generate novel technology, the book contends that human creativity, as well as higher order consciousness, is a product of the superbrain. It equates the subsequent growth of the mind with human history, which began in Africa more than 50,000 years ago. As anatomically modern humans spread across the globe, adapting to a variety of climates and habitats, they redesigned themselves technologically and created alternative realities through tools, language, and art. The book connects the rise of civilization to a hierarchical reorganization of the super-brain, triggered by explosive population growth. Subsequent human history reflects to varying degrees the suppression of the mind's creative powers by the rigid hierarchies of nationstates and empires, constraining the further accumulation of knowledge. The modern world emerged after 1200 from the fragments of the Roman Empire, whose collapse had eliminated a central that could thwart innovation. The text concludes with speculation about the possibility of artificial intelligence and the consequences of a mind liberated from its organic antecedents to exist in an independent, nonbiological form.
Vilém Flusser
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816670208
- eISBN:
- 9781452947235
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816670208.003.0017
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter describes a telematic society where bodies attached to artificial brains will shrink. In a telematic society, there will be brains that are linked through a dream-secreting superbrain to ...
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This chapter describes a telematic society where bodies attached to artificial brains will shrink. In a telematic society, there will be brains that are linked through a dream-secreting superbrain to each other and to artificial brains. And yet there will be bodies attached, like anachronisms, to these brains, bodies that demand to be nourished, to reproduce, and to die: spoilsports. This consideration for bodies will make them appear continually smaller, less interesting: they will shrink. Everything physical, everything voluminous is already beginning to atrophy. Devices, in particular, are becoming smaller, cheaper, and tend to shrink into invisibility and be delivered for free. The emerging telematic superbrain will be enormous because it will be a mosaic composed entirely of tiny stones. Size and physicality have become unworthy of interest. What is interesting now is the calculation and computation of minutiae to produce information.Less
This chapter describes a telematic society where bodies attached to artificial brains will shrink. In a telematic society, there will be brains that are linked through a dream-secreting superbrain to each other and to artificial brains. And yet there will be bodies attached, like anachronisms, to these brains, bodies that demand to be nourished, to reproduce, and to die: spoilsports. This consideration for bodies will make them appear continually smaller, less interesting: they will shrink. Everything physical, everything voluminous is already beginning to atrophy. Devices, in particular, are becoming smaller, cheaper, and tend to shrink into invisibility and be delivered for free. The emerging telematic superbrain will be enormous because it will be a mosaic composed entirely of tiny stones. Size and physicality have become unworthy of interest. What is interesting now is the calculation and computation of minutiae to produce information.
Vilém Flusser
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816670208
- eISBN:
- 9781452947235
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816670208.003.0020
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter predicts a scenario in which chamber music can serve as a model of social structure for the coming telematic society. The scenario involves a fabulous universe, that of technical images, ...
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This chapter predicts a scenario in which chamber music can serve as a model of social structure for the coming telematic society. The scenario involves a fabulous universe, that of technical images, and a fabulous society, that of cybernetic dialogue, as well as a fabulous consciousness, that of making music with the power of imagination. In this scenario, people will be in contact with one another through their fingertips on keyboards and so form a dialogical net, a global superbrain that will radiate an ever-expanding, self-renewing, and self-concentrating aura of technical images. Artificial intelligences will be in dialogue with human beings, connected through cables and similar nerve strands. Chamber music will serve as a model for dialogic communication in general, and for telematic communication in particular. This chapter considers chamber music in relation to cybernetics, along with the similarities and differences between chamber music and telematics.Less
This chapter predicts a scenario in which chamber music can serve as a model of social structure for the coming telematic society. The scenario involves a fabulous universe, that of technical images, and a fabulous society, that of cybernetic dialogue, as well as a fabulous consciousness, that of making music with the power of imagination. In this scenario, people will be in contact with one another through their fingertips on keyboards and so form a dialogical net, a global superbrain that will radiate an ever-expanding, self-renewing, and self-concentrating aura of technical images. Artificial intelligences will be in dialogue with human beings, connected through cables and similar nerve strands. Chamber music will serve as a model for dialogic communication in general, and for telematic communication in particular. This chapter considers chamber music in relation to cybernetics, along with the similarities and differences between chamber music and telematics.
