A syllabus for the California Institute of Integral Studies
Instructor: Emil Páleš
Description of Course Content:
The course is based on the results of my original research in the past 25 years.
I will briefly introduce sophiology as an effort to integrate revelation, reason and sensory experience. Then take the ancient teaching on angels as spirits of time as an example.
Seven gods/archangels/archetypes of planets have been believed to act as creative intelligences inspiring human biography, cultural history and natural history by many ancient people. We will compare these beliefs to the knowledge of contemporary science: developmental psychology, cultural anthropology and evolutionary biology. We will find out that the Chaldean sequence of planets best approximates the course of human history. The oldest philosophy of history is the most scientific one, because it enables statistically verifiable predictions.
The same sequence of archetypes coincides with the phases of human biography as known in developmental psychology. And again the same archetypes can be find in the biological evolution of plants and animals. Here they can clarify certain phenomena which darwinism can not account for (synchronous convergences, fractal structure of human body).
Among the co-workers of CIIS my work can be best compared to the one of Richard Tarnas. Both analyse time-patterns in world history in terms of archetypes of classical astrology. It differs in that it does not work with planetary alignments but with the fixed Chaldean sequence (which belonged also to the core of Babylonian astrology). It goes beyond Tarnas´ work in three points: 1) Instead of author´s narrarive only it is being tested on quantified double-blind studies. 2) Not only past 500 years of western culture, but complete known history of the world is taken into account. 3) The same principles are being tested trans-disciplinary: in individual psychology, cultural history and biological evolution.
Learning Objective:
To see that true science is not necessarily connected with philosophical materialism, but can be successfully done also on the background of platonic idealism. To learn to work with transdisciplinary archetypal principles and see how many well-known phenomena make sense only in a world viewed upon as a living and intelligent whole. To experience that materialism is largely a self-hypnosis drawing our attention selectively to phenomena corroborating with its own world-view.
Percentage of Course Composed of:
Lecture 55%
Discussion 40%
Experiential 5% (Slides from history of art & nature – painting, architecture, fashion, fossil animals etc.)
Required Reading:
Emil Páleš: Seven Archangels. Rhythms of Inspiration in the History of Culture and Nature. Sophia, Bratislava, 2009, 184 p. ISBN 978-80-968045-9-7
Instructor´s Biography:
Dr. Emil Páleš (1966) graduated at the Faculty of Mathematics & Physics at the Comenius University in Bratislava. Thereafter teaching at the Chair of Artificial Intelligence. In 1989-1994 head of the research project Computational model of Slovak language at the Institute of Linguistics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, where he defended also his PhD. thesis in philology.
Since 1994 he founded and is leading the Sophia Foundation for Integral Studies. 1994-99 editor-in-chief of the Sophia journal quarterly. He ranks among the few representants of sophiology in the world. In his work he carries on Komensky’s and Solovjov’s effort for the synthesis of sciences, humanities, arts & religion as well as the idealistic biology of Goethe and Portmann. Of his research the discovery of periodic and synchronous time-patterns in history and in the evolution of nature are of fundamental importance. He is the author of Angelology of History. Synchronicity and Periodicity in History.
Detailed Schedule:
Friday ... ...evening
Sophiology as the integral methodology of Slavic people.
Angelology as the scientific paradigm of Middle Ages.
Seven archangels/archetypes in human biography.
Saturday ... 1000-1700
Seven archangels/archetypes in the history of arts, science and religion.
Sunday ... 1000-1700
Seven archangels/archetypes in the evolution of biological species.
