December to me means Christmas, and of all the elements of the Christmas story, the one that fascinates me most is the story of the magi. It astonishes me that learned individuals would set out and travel to another land guided only by a star, and that somehow that star would help them recognize a …
Aliens, Anchors, and How Words Still Matter
I was twelve years old and it was a school night. I was at the dining room table, carefully gluing together pieces of paper and cardboard as I tried to create a diorama on Beethoven for my social studies class the next morning. I had even made a miniature grand piano with stained music sheets …
Learned Living
Regarding Hamlet, Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that “knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.”1 He was quick to outline that Hamlet’s knowledge did not consist of an overabundance of choices or possibilities, which then made it impossible to choose between them. Rather, Nietzsche surmised that “true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth, outweighs …
Imago Dei and the Elections
Never in my life have I been so joyous to see the return of a CGI lizard selling car insurance or numerous ads selling unhealthy carbonated and caffeinated beverages than on Wednesday, November 7th2018 after the mid-term elections. The onslaught of ads for and against candidates seemed particularly onerous this year both online and on …
Winter 2019
All Colloquia will take place in JFSB 4010 at 3:00 PM unless otherwise specified. January 17 Marlene Esplin, Rex Nielsen, & Jamin Rowan Scholarship & Activism Roundtable January 24 Rico Vitz (Azusa Pacific University) Mencius, Hume, and the Virtue of Humanity: A Comparative Analysis of Benevolent Moral Development January 31 Kirk Belnap (Asian & Near Eastern …
The Things That Matter
In Antoine De Saint-Exupéry’sbeloved tale, Le Petit Prince, the little prince travels from his own planet of three volcanoes, a small sheep, and a flower in order to see what lies beyond. On the fourth planet in his journey, he comes across a red-faced businessman who rejects his attempts at conversation with a brusque, “I …
Fall 2018
The big symposium our Humanities Center hosted in September introduced a range of perspectives pertaining to the theme of vulnerability. This follow-up event will attend primarily to what vulnerability means relative to our teaching practices, especially regarding the interplay of faith and intellect. Our guest, Bo Karen Lee (of the Princeton Theological Seminary), will give a brief …
Why Support Research at BYU?
As an undergraduate I didn’t have much feeling for research, not as such, although I did have an affection for ideas and a deep gratitude to teachers who helped foster and allowed me to express them. At some point in my education I began to recognize subtle distinctions between “learning” and “research”—the former being, in …
2018
The Humanities Center in coordination with BYU’s Office of Research and Creative Activities (ORCA) will hold its annual ORCA Symposium on Friday, October 26th at 3:00 PM in 4010 JFSB. Blake Perry Smith – Open Source Consistency Evaluation for Chinese Word Segmentation Chinese in its written form does not separate its characters by spaces. Imagine …
Festival, Chaos, and Creativity
During Halloween last year, I decided to dress to the nines. With the help of a friend, I donned a blue cardigan, a red cape, a few dyed cloth strips, and a pocket-watch-necklace in order to become Marvel’s Doctor Strange. (For those who know me, there was really no better option, and I’m discovering that it’s hard …