Over dit evenement
Second installment of our new series, Feral Salon is a collaboration between the Feral Ecologies Lab and Salon Ruigoord, bringing you intimate dialog with the most engaged and undomesticated philosophers following the pulse of our zeitgeist of the great rewilding.
This salon we feature Jeffrey Dunne on Syntropy: Comprehending a Temporally... Complex Universe
In this talk, Dr. Jeffrey Dunne will discuss the nature of syntropy, the evidence supporting it, and how we might change our worldview to accommodate a universe in which time is not the one-way river we have been led to believe.
Popular scientific dogma makes strong assertions about the nature of time, most notably that things evolve into the future solely as the result of what has happened in the past. It's a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, after all; entropy always increases, and systems will go towards states of greater disorder. To feel comfortable with this perspective, however, a surprising amount of evidence must be ignored. Life, for example, is a case where simple things like amoebae defy entropy to eventually become organisms so complex, so organized, that they can write presentation abstracts. Suggestions regarding precognitive insights—such as those that might explain why the World Trade Center had substantially reduced occupancy on September 11, 2001—are dismissed as anecdote, just as precognitive dreams are described as nothing more than chance (surely if enough monkeys have enough dreams, some of those dreams are bound to come true exactly as was dreamt, right?) As for the measurements in which a physiological response to certain stimuli begins prior to the existence of those stimuli... well, we just don't talk about that.
But what if the same equations of physics that predict entropy had a second solution? What if that solution resulted in the propagation of energy and information flowing *backward* in time? Lucky for us, that is exactly the case. Syntropy, the complementary principle to entropy, was originally dismissed as being 'merely a mathematical artifact' resulting from taking the square root of a negative number, but we have seen some amazing technologies build on the consequences of imaginary numbers and the evidence for syntropy's existence is simply too overwhelming to justify continued denial.
About Jeffrey
Dr. Jeffrey Dunne is the President of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL), a charitable research organization established in the late 1990’s to build upon the foundation established by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Laboratory. In this role, Dr. Dunne runs a variety of research and outreach activities focused on exploring the nature of consciousness, particularly as it relates to space, time, and language, and events for sharing such understanding with people from all backgrounds. In addition to his role with ICRL, Jeff is a researcher and Chief Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University who has worked over the past thirty years in a variety of fields ranging from nuclear physics, acoustics, and cybersecurity to data science and artificial intelligence. He is also an award-winning author and playwright with nearly two hundred plays that have been performed over four continents. In his 2023 novel, Nexus, Dr. Dunne unites three decades of scientific experience with four decades of pursuits in philosophy and metaphysics, weaving a story to introduce the scientific principle of syntropy and emphasize its importance in finding balance at every scale – personal, societal, and global.
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Salon Ruigoord offers in-house blended and brewed elixirs as well as more standard (alcoholic) fare. The evening also comes with the option of a hearty and lekker vegan dinner.
After Jeffrey's talk, an invitation for Q&A with the audience will follow, with discussants including environmental philosopher Yogi Hendlin.
Directions to Salon Ruigoord
By Car
If you come by car please use the address below and park in the parking lot. Cars cannot park inside the village.
📍 Ruigoord 76, 1047 HH Amsterdam, Netherlands
By Public Transport
From Amsterdam Sloterdijk Station, take bus 382 (direction IJmuiden via Halfweg).
Get off at the stop Ruigoord.
From there, it’s about a 10-minute walk down the Ruigoordweg to the village and the salon.
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