"Mind, Body, and the Myth of Holism in Early China"

On Tuesday, April 9, 2019, at 4:30pm in Moore B03, Edward Slingerland gave the James & David Orr Memorial Lecture on Culture & Religion at Dartmouth.

Edward Slingerland is Distinguished University Scholar at the University of British Columbia, where he is also Professor of Asian Studies and associate member of the Departments of Philosophy and Psychology. His research specialties include Warring States (5th-3rd c. B.C.E.) Chinese thought, religious studies (comparative religion, cognitive science and evolution of religion), cognitive linguistics (blending and conceptual metaphor theory), ethics (virtue ethics, moral psychology), evolutionary psychology, the relationship between the humanities and the natural sciences, and the classical Chinese language. His most recent academic monograph, Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism, was published by Oxford University Press in December, 2018. His current book project is a trade book with the working title, Drunk: Intoxication, Ecstasy and the Origins of Civilization, under contract at Little, Brown (Spark), and slated for publication in Spring 2019. His first trade book, Trying Not to Try: Ancient China, Modern Science and the Power of Spontaneity was released by Crown (Random House) in March 2014, and has been translated into five languages. You can watch his TED talk, Trying Not to Try: The Power of Spontaneity, here: https://youtu.be/GIdrptTwzQY. The lecture was open to all, and a reception followed.

The James and David Orr Memorial Lectures on Culture and Religion bring to Dartmouth each year scholars and writers whose achievements are at the highest level, but whose main fields of interest are not necessarily religion. Past Orr Lecturers include historians, anthropologists, novelists, biologists, and philosophers.