'One useful place to start'

Coming soon:

"Provisional Heuristics: A Useful Place to Start Toward ‘Understanding Everything’"  B. Bennett-Carpenter

Forthcoming presentation to the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, & Letters annual meeting, Lawrence Technological University (forthcoming March 2024).

Abstract
One useful place to start toward attempts to “understand everything” is with heuristics.  A simple way to understand “heuristics” [pronounced YER-is-tiks or YOO-ris-tiks] is:  tools or means for discovering things.  While all human capacities (including cognitive, verbal, affective, behavioral, and experiential) remain limited in the wider context of life on Earth and in the universe, yet humans persist in their attempt to understand.  Even in the midst of unprecedented challenges, humans have and may continue to increase their capacities to negotiate the complex environments of existence.  A primary, useful place to start for doing that right now is what I currently am calling “provisional heuristics.”  This brief presentation builds upon and integrates the philosophical, multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary insights from Santayana (1910/2021), Lonergan (1957/2000), Sellars (1962), Simondon (1964/2020), Sokolowski (2000), Szostak (2004), Kahneman (2011), Dennett (2017), Keestra et al. (2022), and Bennett-Carpenter (2013; 2023).  It suggests the usefulness of rhetorical and cognitive toggling between two main modes of encountering various potential objects of understanding."