Summer Reading

With the conclusion of ARS' wedding, for which I was writer, director, and producer, I have finally come to the close of the academic year. One of the most important ways of marking this is the selection of works to be read over the summer months; this list also really involves my core reading goals (sounds like I'm in 3rd grade) for the next twelve months. Last summer, for instance, began the pursuit of two blockbusters, The Brothers Karamazov and Middlemarch, as well as a chunk of Shakespeare histories and tragedies. It'll be hard to match that this year, so I'm embarking in some different directions. Of course, I'll complete my long-standing goal of the last of the Big Four Russian Novels, Anna Karenina. But I've decided to devote a large portion on science reading, specifically the emerging science around complexity known as the "science of networks" or "network theory." I am more convinced than ever that this nexus of problems and concepts in biology, mathematics, physics, computer science, and economics will ultimately be THE turning point for the next revolution in knowledge. At some point in the next 50 years, I predict that theories around complexity will lead to a synthesis on the order of Newton's formulation of classical mechanics, Darwin/Mendel and the emergence of the genetic idea, or the dual feat of quantum mechanics and relativity. Further, this line of inquiry has the possibility of revealing deep strucutural connections between life, physical, and social sciences. Once the still-to-be-discovered fundamental insights of cultural evolution and memes emerge, it will be possible to bridge the gap even between humanistic and scientific worlds - NOT to subsume one into the other, but to bring each beyond the confines they currently know. Somewhere down the road, complexity will make possible the dream posited by E.O. Wilson - CONSILIENCE.

[I will be publishing a reflection on finishing my first year of seminary shortly.]