Kiarina Kordela – Modern Miracles & Scientific Religion
Wednesday, October 27, 2021 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm CEST/GMT+2Discussion
Kiarina Kordela will lead a discussion on the role of miracles in the development of Early Modern Science, based on the assigned reading Peter Harrison: "Miracles, Early Modern Science, and Rational Religion," in Church History. Participants will are asked to consider the following discussion questions:
- What is the difference between a miracle and a natural law? Between a miracle and an unprecedented event? Between an unprecedented event and a natural law?
- How many times does something exceptional need to occur before it becomes expected?
- How can a religious system be grounded? (and a scientific system?) Why, according to Harrison’s article, is “miracle” a modern concept?
- Following Harrison’s line of argumentation, what is the relation between religion and science?
A. Kiarina Kordela, Professor of German & Director of Critical Theory Program, Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA, works on philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis, social and political theory, and biopolitics. She is the author of Epistemontology in Spinoza-Marx-Freud-Lacan: The (Bio)Power of Structure (Routledge, 2018), Being, Time, Bios: Capitalism and Ontology (SUNY Press, 2013), and Surplus: Spinoza, Lacan (SUNY Press, 2007), and the co-editor of Spinoza’s Authority: Volume 1: Resistance and Power in Ethics, and Volume 2: Resistance and Power in Political Treatises (both: Bloomsbury, 2018), and Freedom and Confinement in Modernity: Kafka’s Cages (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), as well as of numerous articles in collections and journals.
This event is the first in a series of seminars organized by the BCB Science & Religion Project, a part of the Oxford-led project "New Horizons for Science and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe" with support from the Templeton Foundation.
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