Digest Week 8 Michaelmas Term 2024

Title: Unlikely Stories: How the Ancient Drama of Philosophy Can Help us Think about the Non-Human World.

Speaker: Louise Hickman, Birmingham Newman University

 A lecture presented by the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion

This talk is free and open to the public. 

Abstract: It is often forgotten that Plato wrote philosophy not in the form of treatises but as dramatic dialogue, often full of myth and abounding with animals. In the Platonic corpus, narrative is an integral part of gaining knowledge of the world. Plato’s dialogues also put before us a trenchant critique of writing. This paper will argue that revisiting this era of shift from oral to written culture, and the resultant debates about mythos, logos, truth, and human knowledge of the natural world, can point us towards a way of including nonhuman species more meaningfully in narrative by affirming the co-created nature of stories. Full abstract here.

 Dr Louise Hickman is Reader in Philosophy of Religion, and programme lead for taught post-graduate Theology provision at Birmingham Newman University. She studied for her first two degrees at the University of Exeter and completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge. She has published on various aspects of the history of philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and science and religion. From 2011-2018, she was editor of Reviews in Science and Religion. Louise is a Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion and a Senior Fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy. She is also a trustee of the Trussell Trust.

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These events are organised by the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion.

Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion

University of Oxford, Gibson Building

Radcliffe Observatory Quarter

Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG.

www.ianramseycentre.ox.ac.uk