Cakes, Chips, and Calculus

Abstract

For decades, scholars in the liberal arts have relinquished wonder to the natural sciences, and then swooped in ostentatiously to blame their awe on false consciousness. Science and engineering gets things wrong too, assuming that the world can only be understood by breaking it down into components. In this talk, I argue that the return to realism in metaphysics is also a return to wonder, a wonder that appreciates objects at different scales. Topics covered include cake baking, microprocessors, and STEM education, among others.