Bay Area Lectures by Piero Scaruffi
(An offshoot of my lectures on the History of Knowledge)

Logos 1 - 22/3/2006 - "A Brief History of God" (Slides)
  • How the idea of the afterlife developed
  • Ancient gods in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, India, China, Greece, Rome
  • Evolution of Monotheism
  • Did "god" mean the same thing to different civilizations?
  • Why do humans believe in God?
  • Neural correlate of the mystical experience
Logos 2 - 5/4/2006 - "Islamic civilization" (Slides)
  • Pre-Islamic Arabia
  • The Arab empires
  • The Turko-Persian empires
  • Decline and fall
  • Renewal and Reformism
  • The Rise of the Quran
  • Western Integration
  • Cultural Psychology
Logos 3 - 19/4/2006 - "History of Slavery" (Slides)
  • Slavery and Religion
  • Slavery in the ancient world
  • Christianity, a religion for slaves
  • Islam and the birth of the international slave trade
  • The sugar economy and Christian slavery
  • Slave-trading kingdoms of Africa
  • The Atlantic slave trade
  • Abolition after one million years
Logos 4 - 03/05/2006 - "A Herstory of Women/ Women in History"
Logos 5 - 17/05/2006 - "The Scientific and Industrial Revolutions" (Slides)
  • The world in the 16th century: Islam, India, China
  • Why did the scientific revolution happen in Europe?
  • Copernicus, Galileo, Newton
  • Origins of the industrial revolution
  • The chemical revolution
  • The electrical revolution
  • The USA
  • The age of the literal
Logos 6 - 31/05/2006 - "The Second Scientific and Industrial Revolution" (Slides)
  • The Biological revolution
  • The Electrical revolution
  • The Transport revolution
  • The Subatomic revolution
  • The Cosmological revolution
  • The Synthetic revolution
  • The Digital revolution
  • The Cognitive revolution
  • The Genetic revolution
Logos 7 - 14/06/2006 - "The origins of Writing, Poetry, Fiction and Theater" (Slides)
  • The origin of language and languages
  • The origin of writing and literature
  • Poetry and fiction in the ancient Near East
  • Shang China
  • The beginning of Indo-European literature and the Vedic language
  • The alphabet: Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew
  • Poetry and theater in ancient Greece
  • Sanskrit literature
  • Han China
Logos 8 - 28/06/2006 - "New Arts of the 20th Century" (Slides)
  • Comics
  • Cinema
  • Popular music from the vaudeville to rock
  • Skyscrapers
  • TV Shows
  • Videogames
Logos 9 - 25/03/2007 - "Comparing India, China and the West" (Slides)
  • The Dravidians
  • Buddhist Art
  • Hindu Art
  • Modern India
  • India, China and the West
Logos 10 - 23/08/2006 - "Geopolitics of the modern Middle East" (Slides)
  • Decolonization of the Arab world
  • Israel
  • Iran
  • Terrorism