Hay Festival Querétaro 2022 – Philosophy

There are questions that have been in the minds of humans since we emerged as enquiring beings: are the stars inhabited? Or are we alone in the universe? The guest who will discuss this matter with us is Carlos Briones (Spain), a doctor of science, a specialist in biochemistry and molecular biology and a researcher at the Council of Scientific Research’s Astrobiology Centre in Spain, an organization affiliated with NASA. Briones is the author of the book ¿Estamos solos? En busca de otras vidas en el cosmos, in which he takes up this question from an interdisciplinary viewpoint, looking at the history of how humans have reflected on extraterrestrial life not only from a scientific perspective, but also through art, literature, philosophy, music and science fiction. Briones is a dedicated Third Culture advocate, supporting the integration of the sciences, humanities and the arts. He will talk to Criseida Ruiz Aguilar.

Are we bewildered in the face of an almost permanent feeling of crisis? The eminent French writer and historian François Hartog offers this talk on history and time, as presented in his new book, Chronos (2022). What he calls regimes of historicity are ways in which societies order time, articulating the present, past and future. Hartog has explored this concept in a number of his books, analysing how the modern idea of “history”, imposed by 19th-century European thought, proposes the notion of an open future and constant progress; meanwhile, since the 1980s, a new paradigm has arisen of “future crisis”. In Chronos, Hartog looks at what he considers to be the regime introduced by Christianity, an “apocalyptic presentism”. In conversation with Guillaume Boccara.

Simultaneous translation from French to Spanish available

There are questions that have been in the minds of humans since we emerged as enquiring beings: are the stars inhabited? Or are we alone in the universe? The guest who will discuss this matter with us is Carlos Briones (Spain), a doctor of science, a specialist in biochemistry and molecular biology and a researcher at the Council of Scientific Research’s Astrobiology Centre in Spain, an organization affiliated with NASA. Briones is the author of the book ¿Estamos solos? En busca de otras vidas en el cosmos, in which he takes up this question from an interdisciplinary viewpoint, looking at the history of how humans have reflected on extraterrestrial life not only from a scientific perspective, but also through art, literature, philosophy, music and science fiction. Briones is a dedicated Third Culture advocate, supporting the integration of the sciences, humanities and the arts. He will talk to Cecilia Barría.

The “hard problem of consciousness” is one that we must return to again and again. The award-winning historian, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst George Makari explores this in his outstanding work of non-fiction, Soul Machine (2015). The author teases out the history of concepts such as “soul” and “mind”, and how one term came to replace the other along with advances in philosophy, science and psychology. The book tackles the relationship between body and mind, between brain and consciousness, the transition from religious paradigms to rationalist views on such matters, and the philosophical, political and ethical implications of these processes, resulting in the nuances of current thought in this area. In conversation with Pablo Duarte.

Simultaneous translation from English to Spanish available