States of Beyond

Issue 79 October 2023

Interconnections between memory, time and place

Karey Kessler creates map-paintings that contain ideas about physical, spiritual, internal, and temporal spaces.

“My maps tell the story of an ever changing environment, impermanence, and the immensity of time. They tell stories about the interconnected ecosystems of the world that don’t end where one country’s borders end and another’s begins: how both air and water (and therefore pollution), defy borders. The stories include deep time (before humans were on earth) and the eternal things that will remain once we’re gone.”

Thaddeus Holownia: Structures of Place

Thaddeus Holownia is a visual artist, teacher, letterpress printer and publisher. In Holownia’s large-scale photographs, he uses the idea of heightened perception to explore the traces humankind leaves on the landscape. About his work, he echoes Thoreau’s observation, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see”. In this interview with art and ecology author, John K. Grande, he discusses his ideas and work.

Serious Meditation

John Moat was a writer and an artist whose work is a living embodiment of the search for integration and balance. In 1968, with John Fairfax, he founded what has become the country’s foremost creative writing centre, Arvon. He has taught creative writing to people of all ages, from university to primary school, alcoholics to children in care.

Poems

Maxwell Sebastian Burchett is president of the charity Golden Hearts that provides support to Ukrainian war refugees. His short story “Covid Love” is featured in the July 2023, 111th issue of 34thParallel Magazine (34thparallel.net), and his poems “Abyss of Addiction” and “The Gift” are shown on Poetry.com. His novel “Red Star Rising” is being released as serial episodes on Kindle and an anthology of his poems will be released later this year.

Poems

Lynne Goldsmith’s first poetry collection, ‘Secondary Cicatrices’, won seven honors. Her second poetry collection, ‘By Light and Hidden Matter’, was published last year and she recently won Honorable Mention in the 2023 International Photography Awards in the Nature/Flower non-professional category: https://www.photoawards.com/winner/zoom.php?eid=8-1686636415-23

Are near-death experiences hallucinations? Experts explain the science behind this puzzling phenomenon

Neil Dagnall is a Reader in Applied Cognitive Psychology, Manchester Metropolitan University.
“I am a cognitive and parapsychological researcher (Anomalous Psychology, Cognitive Psychology & Experimental Methods). I work closely with Andrew Parker, Kenneth Drinkwater, and Andrew Denovan. We are undertaking several projects centering on memory (eye movements), belief in the paranormal, mental toughness and anomalous throught processes.”

Ken Drinkwater is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Cognitive and Parapsychology, Manchester Metropolitan University.
“I completed my undergraduate BSc (2001 – Main study: Memory and Part set cuing effects) and a postgraduate MSc (2007 – 2 Main studies: 1. I.Q. Assessment of adults with learning disabilities, and the usefulness of the Ravens Progressive Matrices as a predictor of ability and 2. Focus groups (with Adults who have Learning Disabilities) in developing an accessible leaflet for clinical psychology at Oldham NHS penning care and at Manchester Metropolitan University.”

Friday essay: how the West discovered the Buddha

Philip C. Almond is Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought, The University of Queensland.
Philip Almond is an historian of religious thought who has been engaged in the study of religion for over fifty years. He has done so, not as a believer in any religion, but as an agnostic who is nonetheless committed to the belief that an understanding of religion and religions is crucial to our understanding of the past and the present.
His book ‘The Devil: A New Biography’ (London and Ithaca: I B Tauris and Cornell University Press, 2014) is available in paperback. His book, ‘The Afterlife: A History of Life After Death’ has been published by I B Tauris and Cornell University Press in 2016. His book: ‘God: A New Biography’ was published by I B Tauris in 2018.
‘The Antichrist: A New Biography’ was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.
‘Mary Magdalene: A Cultural History’ was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022
He current book entitled ‘The Buddha: Life and Afterlife between East and West’ will be published by Cambridge University Press on 31 January 2024.

How could the Big Bang arise from nothing?

Alastair Wilson is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, working on metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science and philosophy of physics. His doctoral thesis was on the metaphysics of Everettian (many-worlds) quantum mechanics, and this line of thought culminated in his book The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism (OUP, 2020). More recently he has worked on explanation and dependence in physics and metaphysics as part of his ERC-funded project FraMEPhys, on metaphysical explanation in physics. He has also worked on laws of nature, chance, properties, causation, counterfactuals, and the epistemology of disagreement and of self-locating beliefs. He was President of the Society for the Metaphysics of Science in 2017-18 and Honorary Secretary of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science in 2018-19. He remains on the SMS and BSPS committees, and is also a member of the climate task force of the Philosophy of Science Association and a Trustee of the Philosophy of Physics Association. He is PhilPapers editor for the categories ‘Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics’ and ‘Theories of Modality’, and a Managing Editor of the open-access journal Ergo.

How we created the first map of an insect brain – and what it means for our understanding of the human brain

Michael Wilding is a Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London, UK.
“I generated and analysed the first synaptic wiring diagram, or connectome, of an entire insect brain. Using this brain map and linked experimental tools, my group aims to understand how brain-wide computations generate social behaviours and how these computations go awry after social isolation or in disease.”

What are the best conditions for life? Exploring the multiverse can help us find out

Geraint Lewis is Professor of Astrophysics, University of Sydney. He undertakes a broad spectrum of research. On the largest scales, his program involves looking at the influence of dark energy and dark matter on the evolution and ultimate fate of the Universe.
Another aspect of his research uses the phenomenon of gravitational lensing to probe the nature and distribution of the pervasive dark matter, and employing individual stars to magnify the hearts of quasars, the most luminous objects in the Universe.
Closer to home, Geraint’s research focuses upon Galactic cannibalism, where small dwarf galaxies are torn apart by the much more massive Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy. Using telescopes from around the world, including the 10-m Keck telescope in Hawaii, he has mapped the tell-tale signs of tidal disruption and destruction, providing important clues to how large galaxies have grown over time.