Professor: Barbara Mossberg
4 credits
Is thinking like the sun an existential idea, or utterly necessary to real lives today? What does it mean to think like the sun--an entity that gives life, but is not “alive,” that is thought about, but does not think (we think), that we share a common fate with to go extinct? Welcome to my world of questions that take us down the Rabbit Hole. I am excited and honored for this opportunity to undertake extra-boundary learning beyond time and space in our own Clark Honors College dimensions. This is essentially a workshop for the understanding of relationships and belonging that govern our world. The ideas of connectivity and inclusion that are the heart of natural laws are explored in our class across disciplines and species, whether expressed as metaphors in the humanities, equations in mathematics, or deep structure in geology or linguistics.
Thinking Like the Sun is one way that we can think creatively and use our imaginations and knowledge to solve our own and the world’s most perplexing problems. We explore ways to learn from an ultimate “other” like the sun, and other fractals of our known universe, to conceive and engage with Others in the natural and social environment. We invite Thought Leaders and Others in our communities to our class Solar Lab. We do independent research based on our own fields and interests, and collaborate with each other for a human consensus on this riddle of engaging with an ultimate Other. We are mentored by Others.
Our class is a project-based, problem-centered, Thought Experiment. Our course design provides us with ways of thinking and problem-solving in the context of biophysics as we explore our human capacity to relate to Others with knowledge and imagination, wondering—wise not knowing—and learning what existence is like from other points of view. With greater and more comprehensive perspectives of diverse entities, we learn how to look at ourselves and our problems, big or little, that ultimately involve our galactic world as we know it, with more empathy: forgiveness, love, and appreciation, and most of all, hope, for greater understanding of the reality of our common need for one another in an interdependent world.