What we're about
SADHO is a curiosity-driven philosophy Meetup with a critical-theoretical interest in automatic and shared ways of worldmaking.
METHOD
- We present audiovisual surveys of Western philosophy and of the history and philosophy of science—surveys that are masterpieces of illuminating exposition—performed by the BBC Three, and
- Discuss them, with
- A professional philosopher or other Guest Expert.
SADHO in a Nutshell
SADHO makes scholarship fun by serving up the greatest embodied minds of all time in bite-sized, Technicolor, beautifully arranged morsels, and by bringing bona fide experts to the table for special lectures and Q&A.
In a word, SADHO is a fun, friendly, fast-moving, (non-)free-form* forum for philosophizing alongside, and under the guidance of, legendary professional and practicing philosophers.
SADHO’s Two Promises
Unlike other philosophy Meetup groups, whose discussions drift all over the Solar System, our high-quality discussions remain firmly within the Kuiper Belt. That’s our promise to you.
- SADHO’s First Promise — Our excursions and tangents will never stray outside the event’s topical Kuiper Belt.
Sound impossible? It’s not. The reason is that SADHO Meetups are … not actually free-form. They are anchored and constrained by a force.
A great force.
A force more powerful than even Vader …
The all-conquering force of radical insight, expressed vividly and clearly, by a master teacher.
There is nothing better than an illuminating and meticulously lucid discourse delivered by a riveting and intensely expressive person. Add to this a great video, diagram, or model, and you have the makings of peak experience.
This force flows neither from Scott & Dave, nor from the great topics we choose, but from the the expository virtuosos that elucidate these topics—i.e., from our Guest Experts and the BBC Three.
The BBC Three
SADHO meetings revolve around recorded performances by the greatest scientific, historical, and philosophical exegetes of all time. While incarnated on the Prime Material plane, these lofty ones were known as Jacob Bronowski, Bryan Magee, and James Burke.
These men, the BBC Three, will be our guides. That’s our second promise.
- SADHO’s Second Promise — Our meetings will always include either a Guest Expert or one of the BBC Three.
These engrossing masters of elegant exposition; these dexterous wordsmiths of rhetorical Fabergé eggs; these benevolent ministers of restorative mind-tonics; these tireless disciples of skillful means; these master-architects of felicitous visual models, diagrams, and schemas; these altruistic wielders of knot-cutting scalpels; these humble and plain-speaking sweepers of cobwebs; these irreverent deflators of metaphysical extravagance; these view-transforming founts of illuminating metaphor; these poetic alchemists of feeling and idea; these massively multi-channel pedagogical improvisors; these fascinating bards of scientific and philosophical history …
Words cannot capture the glory of the BBC Three. And two of them are now dead. I count it as the greatest blessing to humanity that all three of them worked for the BBC in the 70s and that we have audiovisual records of their performances.
Surely, it is these performances, and not the writings of LRH, that should have been engraved on stainless steel tablets and encased in titanium capsules beneath Trementina Base.
P.S. — We now have a baby YouTube channel. Video for our events will be uploaded here (if possible) as will videos of our events (eventually).