[act-ma] 8/21 Failures, Errors & the Boundaries of Our Minds, with Richard Levins (Saturday, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. @ e5)

[Suren Moodliar]

Join the eminent scientist and activist Richard Levins for a
thought-provoking conversation on "Failures, Errors & the Boundaries of Our
Minds"

Saturday, August 21, 2010, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave, 5th floor, Boston, 02111

Celebrating the 35th anniversary of the New York's Brecht
Forum<http://www.brechtforum.org>,
Richard Levins will speak to how the dialectical method allows us to
understand and learn from our inevitable failures, errors and
misunderstandings of both nature and society.

A Harvard School of Public Health faculty member, mathematical ecologist,
philosopher of science and farmer, Richard will draw on a wide range of
scientific theories, policy experiments and natural phenomena to illustrate
sources of error and also suggest methods for overcoming (but never
completely avoiding) these. From the Green Revolution to Corporate-driven
Pharmacology to Sociobiology, Levins shows us how the both the fragmentation
and commodification of knowledge, together with a static, reductionist
philosophy produces conceptual errors. These are systematic in nature and go
beyond mere momentary and individual miscalculations. Conversely, Richard
will also lead a conversation on how we may overcome these errors.

This philosophical but down-to-earth conversation takes place live and
in-person in Boston and will be teleconferenced to an audience at the Brecht
Forum in New York.

For more background on this topic, see Richard's essays attached here. You
may also wish to read Richard Levins' *Talking about Trees. *(Leftword
Books, New Delhi. 2008). chapter 4, The Science of Dharma and the Dharma of
science.<http://books.google.com/books?id=I7Rj-drVW0gC&lpg=PA84&dq=isbn%3A8187496630&pg=PA84#v=onepage&q&f=false>

The Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Levins> and the Harvard
School of Public
Health<http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty/richard-levins/>websites
offer short biographical introductions to Richard's work.

The event is free and open to interested community members. For more
information on this presentation, contact Suren Moodliar,
suren at fairjobs.orgor Liz Mestres,
liz at brechtforum.org. For directions, public transport options and parking
information, please visit http://www.encuentro5.org.
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