Naturalism Videos

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Edward Hessler


In 2012, California Institute of Technology theoretical physicist organized a workshop with the title "Moving Naturalism Forward."

The workshop was by invitation only and included 14 scientists and philosophers, among them philosopher Daniel Dennett, theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg (a Nobel prize honoree), philosopher/novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, theoretical physicist Janna Levin and evolutionary biologists, Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins.

Naturalism is simply not to believe in the supernatural or to put it another way, what follows when you don't believe in God. Another way of putting it is that all of reality, every last drop, can be accounted for in naturalistic terms. The result of the workshop were long transcripts and 10 unedited. These unwieldy videos were posted on YouTube. The ten videos are about 1 and 1/2 hours in length.

On May 10, Professor Carroll announced that the videos have been edited.  He wrote, "Thanks to the heroic efforts of Gia Moore , the proceedings have been edited down to a number of much more accessible and content-centered highlights. There are over 80 videos (!), with a median length of maybe 5 minutes, though they range up to about 20 minutes and down to less than one. Each video centers on a particular idea, theme, or point of discussion, so you can dive right into whatever particular issues you may be interested in."

These videos are posted on the workshop's webpage. By clicking on each of the 9 categories you can sample the titles of the videos included in that category.

Here is Carroll's original post announcing their availability and the workshop webpage. 

Carroll has also discussed another kind of naturalism, poetic naturalism. He illustrates it with a quote from writer Muriel Ruykeyser: The universe is made of stories, not atoms. It is a particular approach to naturalism, one that takes into account that while there is only one world, there are many other ways of talking about the world. 

Here you will find his comments on poetic naturalism.