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ABSTRACTS:
Integrated science
education: strategic approach
Ion Botgros, Oleg Bursuc
Education for scientific values has become,
as
a
matter
of
course,
activity with teaching in subject context. But our lives are
not only in terms of scientific knowledge that we are part
of the universe and ourselves, but we need a knowledge of
self, the universe as a whole, which completes
the formation of a balanced personality centered on the axis
of the completeness of scientific knowledge as both the
extrinsic and intrinsic.
Scientific knowledge unit (extrinsic and intrinsic) is a way
of modernizing the school and education, a way of forming
the personality of the student intellectually, physically,
morally and spiritually.
Current formative education focused on competences,
involving a rationalistic student development, could be
first goal of science education. The student development
of SELF understanding in order to answer their
demands, to take a position on what is happening around,
would constitute a second goal of science education.
Science education in the traditional school subjects:
physics, chemistry, biology, etc.. has a strong rationalist
and pragmatic configuration, specific research areas, and
provides evidence of a materialistic orientation.
But
practice shows that most scientific discoveries and ideas,
scientific theories have arisen not only as a result of an
experiment based on strict logical deduction. In many
situations the intuitive way to extract knowledge
from the depths of the subconscious played a significant
role
So,
intuition allows to make a direct link between the
conscious and subconscious and, therefore, receive
qualitative access to the source of scientific knowledge. It
may be mentioned that there are two ways to acquire
knowledge about nature: first - the scientific knowledge
and the second - through intuitive knowledge.
Developing of scientific (rationalist) conscience and
self-consciousness (spiritual) reality of ourselves becomes
a genuine purpose of contemporary science education.
This goal can be achieved because the fundamental sciences
are in the progress of "rediscovering of the human spirit"
based on integrated research. These bring us in the front of
discovering the fifth fundamental interaction -
informational interaction that allows the description of
the Universe and Consciousness - as material objects.
In
this context, an approach of integrated science education
will have positive valences with certain values and
attitudes that will develop student’s:
•
complex and creative thinking;
•
high degree of objectivity in developing knowledge of
reality;
•
system of methods for holistic research of reality.
•
knowledge of a specific integrated scientific language;
•
appropriate behavior in solving significant problems
Culture, Scientific,
Faith-based and Religious Non-Governmental Organizations in
South-East Europe
Evgenia Antonopoulou –
Charalampopoulou, Dimitra Koutsokosta
We are going to present a
review of the main existing cultural and scientific
associations in the South-East Europe. Also, the Non
Governmental Organizations based on religion that are active
on this region, providing social and cultural work. The
existence of those associations is part of cultural
diversity helping the exchanges of culture and knowledge
between the people of this region. This rapprochement of
cultures is a big step towards Peace in the World.
The transdisciplinary
attitude as a way to the dialogue between cultures
Silvia Mihaela Grigorean
The research is part of a
larger project, the transdisciplinary studies, aiming
at a translinguistic approach of a spiritual text, at the
point of hermeneutic convergence of poetics, metaphysics
and epistemology. In assuming these premises a
transdisciplinary horizon of a different hermeneutic
is defined, a dynamic coagulation of a transgressive
knowledge, designed to enable a bridge-consciousness
between the transdisciplinary Subject and Object, through
the experience of crossing the levels of Meaning.
The transdisciplinary approach
has as the overall objective a description of the resonance
of the levels of Meaning that hermeneutically
structure, organize and direct the circulation of spiritual
information between the ontological, epistemological and
transgressive ternaries in The Gospel of Thomas.
The interrogative originality
of the tackled theme revolves around a thoroughgoing study
of a concept of great interest in the research of the
dialogue between science and spirituality: the spiritual
information. The thesis’ contribution lies in proposing
a rigorous definition of the spiritual information and its
levels of crossing, through a hermeneutic contextualization
of the ontological, logic and complexity postulate
underlying the transdisciplinary methodology. The genuine
conceptual chain, as sign of the uniqueness of the
transdisciplinary language, highlights the alogical
complexity of the Hidden Third, the key to the fruitful
understanding of every spiritual evolution in creating a
flexible inner core. The option for the French translation
of Jean-Yves Leloup’s text completes the deep valences of an
understanding of the Gospel of Thomas in the spirit
of transdisciplinarity.
The deep structure of the
thesis is anchored in the exploration of the Hidden Third
dimension, as a Source of spiritual experience that enables
openness towards the transreligious in the context of the
contemporary urgent need to rediscover the sacred. The
central section of the paper envisages the topography of the
ternary structure of Meaning, at the transmission and
trans-mission of the spiritual information in the light of
hermeneutic ternaries and guidance of the inner ascent on
the hermeneutics scale. The novelty, the rigor and the
coherence of the transdisciplinary approach is proven
vertically through the visionary intuition of the Gospel
of Thomas which sheds a light on the transdisciplinary
conceptual content and, conversely, the methodological
support clarifies the levels of understanding of the
apocryphal text, always conveying towards the Real, which
precedes and transcends all religiosity.
By a veiled, interpellating
and contradictory transparency, the paradoxical truths
contained in the 114 logia are now as up to date as
ever. In a humanistic transcultural resonance, Jesus, as He
appears in the Gospel of Thomas, is inviting us to
understand the world we are living in, inspiring an attitude
of openness, tolerance, rigor and dialogue. The message of
the Gospel of Thomas permeates as a Living Word all
levels of consciousness: a hope of becoming Alive, in the
mirror of the sacred.
Sociopolitical stability
and changing – a transdisciplinary and cybernetic approach
Adrian Iosif & Marius
Olteanu
The authors firstly aim to
analyze and to classify from a cybernetic perspective the
possible reactions of social systems to rapid changes that
are associated with the “step” stimuli by analogy to
cybernetics. It can be observed that a certain “step
response” corresponds to every sociopolitical paradigm. This
paper intends to reveal to what extent a sociopolitical
stability in the conditions of the contemporary
multiculturalism is possible and whether the unprecedented
complexity of the present-day sociopolitical system can
generate (and if it can, in what conditions?) a dynamics
that is noncatastrophic. In the end, the authors present how
a transdisciplinary perspective can offer relevant answers
to the contemporary society dilemmas.
Actualization, Potentialization and Included
Middle – an outline of possibilities for
dialogue between
humanistic and scientific cultures.
Cantemir Mambet
Based of Stéphane Lupasco’s “The Principle of Antagonism and
the Logic of Energy” and on Basarab Nicolescu’s “Ce este
Realitatea / What is the Reality?”, the author outlines
several possible implications of actualization,
potentialization and included middle, as well as of the
corresponding homogenization and heterogenization
antagonistic concepts, on the dialogue possibilities between
scientific and humanistic cultures. Using the T-state,
which is neither
'actual', nor 'potential' (categories replacing in Lupasco's
system the 'true' or 'false' values of standard
bivalent logic), but a resolution of the two contradictory
elements at a higher
level of reality or complexity, one serious attempt is made
towards a pragmatic understanding of the
actualization, potentialization and included middle. The
same approach is used
for the homogeneous – heterogeneous pair, since in an
apparently homogenizing world, the need for dialogue seems
to be misinterpreted and obscured due to/ by several
homogenizing and heterogenizing tendencies. Examples are
provided in relation to
these problematic situations, together with several
illustrations of possibilities for better
understanding and reconciliation.
Trans-disciplinary
Education –The Core of the Culture of Peace Building
Mirela
Mureşan
The main idea of this
presentation is that education represents the key to
culture of peace building and the trans-disciplinary
education the proper solution
The presentation will approach
a double perspective upon the culture of peace concept
considering it both as a “vision” and as a “process”.
Dealing with the
culture of peace concept as a “vision”, the paper will point
out three aspects of the problem: the philosophical
background of the concept, the relation between the cultural
paradigm and the educational paradigm and last but not least
the true understanding of what trans-disciplinary education
really means.
Dealing with the culture of
peace concept understood as a “ process”, the paper will
discuss two aspects: which should be the starting point of
building the culture of peace (where are we going to start
from? ) and also the problem of the huge potentialities the
trans-disciplinary education could offer for the process of
culture of peace designing.
Conclusions will focus on the
idea that the trans-disciplinary education could be a
solution for the 21st century society and for the changing
of its cultural paradigm.
The trans-humanism is not a
utopia but a proper solution.
The transdisciplinary model
of the sacred – a bridge between cultures
Anca Mustea
A transdisciplinary approach,
complementary to the disciplinary, multi- and
inter-disciplinary ones, was used to analyze the need for
the sacred of the contemporary man. If the last approaches
see reality as reduced to the object at a single level of
reality, from a transdisciplinary point of view, the
emphasis is on the multilevel and complex character of
Reality, as well as on the interaction between the Subject,
the Object and the Hidden Third, all based on the logic of
included middle. The finality of transdisciplinary approach
consist in the unity of knowledge, the reconsideration of
the ontological character of scientific knowledge, and the
reconsideration of the Subject, not only at an individual
and social level, but at cosmic level as well.
The theories concerning the
sacred, concept mainly used by scientists, evolved from the
objective and reductionist perspective of
sociological and ethnological theories, passing through the
subjectivity of phenomenological theories and the
complexity of hermeneutics, to the multilevel and
complex approach of transdisciplinarity. Our analysis
highlights the existence of a total homo religiosus,
oriented towards both, material and spiritual, dimensions,
who continually tries to place himself in contact with the
sacred, this being a central element of his consciousness.
In opposition to this, there is the contemporary man,
religious or not, giving preference to the rationality and
the materiality, who looses more and more his spiritual
dimension, which constitutes a danger for its integrity and
survival.
Considering the
transdisciplinary point of view, an image of the sacred
emerges: immanent and transcendent, rational, bun non-rationalizable,
in a single word transparent, though still absolute
resistance in the context of the harmony and communication
between the Subject and the Object, constitutive part of the
Subject and of the Object, and mediating Third between them,
permanently in dialogue with the Subject in search for
meaning, and mediator of the dialog between the Subject and
the Object, source of the self-consistency of outer and
inner world.
The transdisciplinary approach
seems to be the most adequate to study the sacred, because
the sacred is part of the transdisciplinary model of
Reality, and on the other hand, because of the need to
mediate the dialogue between different religions,
manifestations of spirituality or forms of knowledge. The
empirical results emphasize the need for a transdisciplinary
approach of the sacred and religious phenomena in order for
scientific knowledge to regain its ontological character.
A Non
Conflict after World
Mariana
Ionela Niţu
The contemporary cemetery, as
a cultural multiethnic center polarizes different aspects of
society, developing a complex transdisciplinary perspective
of History, Sociology, Architecture, Art,
Religion and Science
revealing important information about its past and its
evolution.
The East European region has been, through
time, the scene of numerous international conflicts,
and the
testimony of this reality is reflected by the presence of
the military foreign cemeteries. They
appear as strange formal
presences, expressing through different artistic and
architectural forms, the same old universal trough: the
death. In the same time they are the proof of the historical
reality once
happened,
and synthesized in a moral, political message exposed by the
authorities in the public space.
As
spatial entities, these cemeteries gather cultural and
artistic values, archeological and historical information,
religious and scientifically aspects. My text stresses on
the importance of
considering this “Realm of memory"1 as a complex
entity, composed of different layers which once
interpreted give a complete perspective of a society.
I will present three military cemeteries: one
considered historical monument in Slobozia, made
after the
First World War, and another from Sinaia, build after the
same event, and a cemetery
constructed after the
Second World War. As an opposite of the city, the Necropolis2,
“is the forerunner, almost the core, of every living
city". The military cemetery gains after the wars a moral
aspect and become the hall of fame for the heroes, shown as
social examples of bravery and courage. The
international character
is maintained with special care in the realization of the
tombs, respecting religion and other cultural aspects,
demonstrating that for a contemporary secularized European
society, these cemeteries are “a non conflict after
world”.
1
Memory space- translated term of the “lieux de mémoire“ used
by the French historian Pierre Nora.(1984–1992: Les Lieux de
mémoire (Gallimard), abridged translation, Realms of Memory,
Columbia University Press, 1996–1998)
2
Mumford, Lewis. 1961. The City in History: Its Origins, Its
Transformations, and Its Prospects. New York: Harcourt,
Brace and World.
Equity and individuality –
justice as transdisciplinary element of peace
Adrian Mirel Petrariu.
Peace is a complex phenomenon.
People inevitably subdue each other and equally resources
are erratically distributed, whatever the name, title and
legal grounds given, within each social system, to the
actual fact that a certain individual has access to material
resources. If we analyze such situation at a superior level,
we shall reach the same conclusion but between groups of
people, communities. Therefore, if within a given human
community, some individuals have higher opportunities to
express themselves and satisfy their needs than other
individuals, the same applies to relations between human
communities. State subordination, be it economic, political
or military, thus gains a sort of logic deriving from the
nature of things, and equally the planet’s geopolitical and
economic map, with its historical actors. However,
subordination becomes unnatural when creating the sense of
injustice. Social peace, within communities, seems to be a
factor of general peace and the individuals’ sense of
justice appears to be a factor of such social peace. A
transdisciplinary response to the question What is justice?
becomes even more necessary as it is called upon to
reconcile the antagonism between equality and freedom,
between equality and individualism, between individual good
and common good. Is there any connection between justice and
the rightful place of every human being in the world? For if
it is, then justice becomes a particular consequence of the
religion, understood as way to rebound the inner world of
man with the outer world.
Peace
–
War
– Culture -
Religion
Eleni Rovithis-Livaniou
and Eugenia Antonopoulou
In this
presentation the causes of the lack of peace in our days are
pointed out. Considering that the main reason for war
today is the energy problem, to which the
lack of clean water will be added
soon, will be discussed how science,
culture and religion, in general, can
help towards peace in the world. The further
development and use of the mild energy sources, will help
towards the Earth’s preservation, as is referred in the
Bible, while recycling, as the Universe teaches us, are
discussed, too.
IT4S – an extension of the
previous activities in Romania concerning the dialogue
between Science and Religion
Magda Stavinschi
10 years of dialogue between
Science and Religion occurred in Romania under the aegis of
John Templeton Foundation. The results were extraordinary:
research and education, an international journal and more
than 40 books, original or translations, a lot of articles
or programs in mass media. From this point of view, Romania
is now a pilot for SE Europe.
We considered that the
time is come to enlarge our activity, to extend the dialogue
to science and spirituality, and to find its impact for
society. Spirituality is associated to the quest of the
sense in opposition to
the apparent evanescence of the world.
A short presentation of these new aspects of our interest
will be presented.
The role of science – religion
dialogue in the democratization of post-totalitarian
societies
Marijan Sunjic
My first thesis is that religious and scientistic extremisms
(or fundamentalisms) are embedded neither in religion nor in
science, but are motivated by other personal and social
tendencies. In fact, they always acquire different
ideological forms which serve as means to achieve
essentially political goals. In this way, while nominally
promising utopias based on one or the other ideology (or
secular religion) they always tend to achieve dominance in a
society and ultimately a totalitarian rule.
Unfortunately, 20th
century provides several examples of such extremisms, with
terrible consequences in terms of human suffering and
destruction of civilizational values. It was dominated by
ideologies based on scientistic premises, with the
intellectual justification provided by the naïve
interpretation of 19th century science and its
results. This led, or at least facilitated the rise of
totalitarian political regimes – Nazism (in the period
1933-1945) communism (which could be nominally bounded
between the October Revolution in 1918 and the fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989) and later Nazism (in the period
1933-1945). On the other hand, revival of religious
fundamentalisms (or more correctly – fundamentalisms
claiming to be justified by religion) is a relatively new
but quite dangerous phenomenon, which is acquiring virulent
form in some countries within Islam and Hinduism. In
Christianity fundamentalism is relatively localized and
limited mostly to verbal manifestations.
In this
paper I analyse some consequences of this period of
totalitarian rule in the region of Central and Eastern
Europe, specifically. the suppression of religion and the
spread of scientistic dogmas, on the formation of the mental
attitudes in the society and on their various
manifestations. Such an analysis, focusing on the perception
of science and spirituality in general and their dialogue,
could contribute to find a way from a post-totalitarian to a
real democratic society, especially in correlation with
similar efforts in other countries of the region.
To Dissolve Proverbs,
Sentences, Gnoms… to arguments supporting them: an
Inexhaustible Source of Upbriging
Milan Tasić,
If our schools educate they do
not up bring at all. In the same time the upbringings in
families are arbitrary to the end and the society lacks a
habitual system of rugalae of comportment up to a
level of "everyday" customs and rituals … that should
receive in ultima linea a character of tradition. In
that respect we explain here the possibility of some
coherent system of educational values to be derived just
from maxims, aphorisms, proverbs and sentences, as a part of
the collective memory of a people, which would help a
national culture to take a more definite place between other
cultures of the world afterwards.
For there is
nothing that will mark to a greater extent the culture of a
people of these customs and rituals, so that most of them
are performing just in a religious sign: so is in Chinese
philosophy (Li Jing, book of rituals), in Pythagoras
or Dionysian mysteries, in ancient Greece, until to each of
religions of the world (''big'' or ''small'') today.
Speaking the Language
of Diversity.
Heka and mageia and their
Practitioners in Late Antiquity.
Renata Tatomir
The purpose of the present
paper is to investigate the developments and the interaction
at the end of Late Antiquity between two seemingly different
mental categories, belonging to different societies and
frames of thinking, i.e., the Egyptian pharaonic concept of
Heka, and the Greek (via Indo-European, Persian
concept), mageia.
From Hellenistic period to
the end of Antiquity, the two terms came to be not only
assimilated one another, but, in some moments, responding to
political interests of the Roman emperors, were given
intentionally erroneous pejorative connotations. In the
Mediterranean societies of Late antiquity, influenced by the
Greco-Roman paradigm of thinking, these terms have deviated
from their original meaning until they came to be an
umbrella term – “magic” - for any and all suspected use of
supernatural powers. Many ancient Greek and Latin literary
texts, of various type, associated the magician and his work
of magic with all sorts of dubious characters, such as
priests, beggars and sorcerers.
Heka
and mageia, however, by their multi-layer
connotations and applicability, and last but not least, by
their practitioners (magicians) (originally belonging to the
priests category in both Egyptian Pharaonic and
Indo-European Persian societies), cover a much wider area,
which today is divided into three segments of knowledge:
science, religion and a third one, a very fragile one, which
is labeled depending upon one’s cultural and thorough
understanding, either pejorative - magic, sorcery, similar
to pseudoscience and quackery - or objectively, integrated
into the frontier science research.
By the elements that
distinguish them, but also by their common ones, the two
concepts translate, in fact, the unity in diversity of a
mental category which virtually synthesizes an integrated
knowledge paradigm specific to the ancient societies.
Some specific issues will be
explored: to what extent the two concepts, Heka and
mageia, can be equated, to what extent they overlap,
even if nowadays they are translated by a single term, which
unfortunately weighs the negative connotations of "magic" as
sorcery and pseudoscience; and finally, in what manner the
two terms have influenced the thinking evolution of the
human society at the end of Antiquity, particularly in
South-Eastern Europe.
In the last
decades much attention has been dedicated to this phenomenon
through consistently and critical academic analyses. Famous
scholars such as Ph. Derchain, Robert K. Ritner, Sarah Iles
Johnston, Janet Johnson, Hand D. Betz, Friz Graf, Alan F.
Segal, Jan Bremmer, etc., have investigated as authors or
publishers as well the phenomenon of magic in Late
Mediterranean Antiquity. Examples of some of the renowned
ancient sources will be provided: e.g., the Demotic and
Greek Magical papyri, or texts belonging to ancient writers
from the I-III centuries AD, such as Thessalus of Tralles (Liber
de virtutibus herbarum),
Apuleius (Apologia
sive pro se de magia liber),
etc.
Scientific Collaboration as
a Part of Dialogue of Cultures
Katya Tsvetkova
We consider the international
scientific collaboration as a part of dialogue of cultures.
On
focus is the first
international astronomical project Carte du Ciel as
an example of a long-standing tradition of dialogue
activities, collected the efforts of all leading
observatories in the end of 19 century for more than 50
years, for preparing sky maps and a catalogue of positions.
With this project a tendency of development of science on
the base of shared experience, i.e. possibility for
transfers and exchanges of the knowledge among the different
observatories in the different parts of the world - from
Alger and South Africa, through European countries,
including Vatican, to Australia, India, and Latin America
with different economical and political societies, among
scientists with different religion, was put. In the case of
Carte du Ciel project, science with its ideas leaves
behind such social activity as politics of that time in the
efforts to establish grounds for benefit of the society for
its development having as a main purpose common peaceful
existence. Now with the web there are very big possibilities
to share the information, respectively knowledge, having the
Christian ideas that one common peaceful world can be built
with developing science, making people more intelligent,
educating them and helping to understand the real human
values.
The World Scientific
Heritage and its Role for Further Development of our
Civilization
Milcho Tsvetkov
Living in united Europe the
dialogue of cultures, respectively science, religion,
spirituality and society is considered as a main factor for
understanding each other and therefore for establishment of
peace in the common world. How science as a part of culture
contributes to this dialogue despite of the limited funds
for science as a rule in this part of the world? How we try
to find our regional priorities in the conditions of limited
funds and political and economic diversities and religions?
Here we make an attempt to answer these questions presenting
the work to store the scientific heritage, which helped to
solve such great questions about our Universe, changed the
religion understanding and which is still used as time
machine revealing the past of our sky. The idea is that
science (in particular astronomy) uses the previous
accumulated knowledge, immediately put new questions and
requirements to the new information and communication
technologies giving in this way a field for their
development. The question is how the progress of the modern
technologies will be reflected in the human spirituality.
The Joy as a
source of peace in different religions: its common origins
in Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism.
Antonella Verdiani
The joy, or
rather, the Joy with a capital letter, is a founding value
in all the living spiritualities of the world. It is as old
as the humanity, the source of peace and non- violence in
the humankind, mentioned by the most well-know philosophers
and by all the religious texts, from the West to the East.
In this
workshop, Dr Antonella Verdiani will introduce this concept
which refers to her academic research and is developed in
the training workshops that she is currently being given on
"education for joy." Her thesis also refers to the recent
discoveries in the field of neuroscience, for example the
works of Professors Damasio and Beauregard or those
currently being developed by the “Mind and Life Institute”
in United States, supported by the Dalai Lama.
Starting from a
transdisciplinary approach, the author will propose to come
out and go beyond the disciplines: from psychology (for
which the joy is a simple emotion) to different
spiritualities and philosophies (Christianity, Hinduism and
Buddhism), that defines Joy as a peaceful “state of being”
that connects people among them and to Heaven and Earth.
Peace, Religion, Humanism, and
the Posthumaists
Richard Witt
The newest fashionable current in contemporary thought,
rapidly establishing itself on the network of conferences
and publications, is posthumanism. Under examination this
proves to be a collage of schools of thought (sociological,
aesthetic, philosophical, anarchist) that have as their
common denominator a reaction to, and often a rejection of,
the mainstream humanism that has dominated European culture
for perhaps six hundred years. Humanism itself is indebted
to a web of Christian values (or para-Christian values, as
in the thought of George Eliot) that encourage the
individual to "seek peace and pursue it". In Oriental
religions a similar web of values holds, though based on
very different theologies. Since there are central doctrines
of European humanism that indicate and privilege peace (in
whatever sense), equilibrium and coexistence as central
values to be aimed for, it is interesting, at the
theoretical level and possibly practically, to see what
posthumanism, which will be with us for a while yet, has to
say about the meanings of peace, in an era of Warcraft. Can
the precept of "loving one's neighbour" bear up against this
latest onslaught?
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