TagThat Hideous Strength (book)
C.S. Lewis’s “That Hideous Strength” is Making the Rounds Again
NYT columnist Ross Douthat offers his two cents on the dystopian classicJust last week, Mind Matters editor Peter Biles wrote about That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis, a dystopian novel about a fearsome technocracy trying to conquer humanity. New York Times also wanted in on the fun, too, apparently. Ross Douthat, the conservative voice of the Times’ opinion column, published his latest essay on Lewis’s harrowing tale, and examined its modern pertinence. Douthat acknowledges the possibility of a mega-powerful technocracy, but notes how Lewis believed that on the outside, such an organization may look like the face of progress and humanitarianism. Douthat writes, Crucially, almost nobody in Lewis’s invented organization has any idea that in the inner ring they’re contacting the dark powers. Most people think they’re working for humanitarianism and Read More ›
C.S. Lewis and Science Fiction
Sci-fi can reveal that you don't necessarily need to visit Mars to find the bizarre and beautifulThe 20th-century intellectual, novelist, poet, and popular theologian C.S. Lewis was a rare bird. He spent most of his life embedded in the academic world, to which he contributed greatly, but was also a lover of fairy tales and the dystopian. His long-held affection for fantasy and science fiction led him to write some of the most popular fictional works in recent memory, most notably The Chronicles of Narnia and what’s commonly known as the “space trilogy,” though Lewis himself objected to the term “space” as an adequate descriptor of what he viewed as a vibrant and meaningful cosmos. In a more obscure Lewis title, Of Other Worlds, Lewis writes of his appreciation for science fiction and what makes the Read More ›
John Lennox: Transhumanism Versus Traditional Humans
In the second part of his bonus feature for Science Uprising, Oxford mathematician Lennox compares transhumanism with traditional claims to transcend humanityIn the second part of Oxford mathematician John Lennox’s bonus interview for the Science Uprising series, “John Lennox on the Transhumanist Claim AI Will Turn Humans into Gods” (October 17, 2022), Lennox talks about claims that we will merge with computers (artificial intelligence) to achieve immortality. How plausible is that? Lennox is the author of 2084:: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity (2020). A partial transcript and notes for the second half follow (the first half is here): The AI concept of transhumanism? (13:45) John Lennox: The origin of the word “transhumanism,” interestingly enough, is not secular at all. It wasn’t first used by a scientist but it was used in a translation of one of the books of Read More ›
Why Oxford’s John Lennox Wrote a Book on AI Promises and Threats
His book 2084 leans on George Orwell’s 1984 but takes its inspiration from C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous StrengthRecently, Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed Oxford mathematician John Lennox on his latest book 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity (2020). He focused on why Lennox chose that theme and how far we have caught up with George Orwell’s 1984. Here are some excerpts from the combined interviews in “John Lennox on Artificial Intelligence and Humanity”: https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-123-John-Lennox.mp3 A partial transcript follows, along with highlights, Show Notes, and Resources: Robert J. Marks (starting at roughly 1:40 min): Many of Orwell’s predictions about communism were proven. So what will be the effects of AI a century later in the year 2084? Replacing George Orwell is Dr. John Lennox who has written 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future Read More ›