In this panel during the international symposium "Can beauty save the world?" held at McGill University, Oct 24-25 2025, Jean-Sébastien Vallée (McGill), Katie Bank (Birmingham), Rebekah Wallace (Oxford), Ian Corbin (Harvard), and Jonathan Berger (Stanford) explored the transformative power of music. The panel was moderated by Stephen Bullivant (St. Mary's London).

We began with a performance by an acapella quartet from the Schulich School of Music (McGill).

Jean-Sébastien described the conductor’s task as creating a sonic space where sound becomes meaning—a community where difference becomes harmony. One of his singers, who had just lost her husband, came to perform because “singing with my choir is the only way I can breathe right now.” Katie and Rebekah described how early modern thinkers saw music as acting on the whole person, not as external stimulus but as an activity of the soul. Ian reflected on the relevance of music to our longing for wholeness, which passes through failure, undoing, despondence. Jonathan discussed his fascinating research on the sonic signatures of sacred spaces, and how the balance between clarity and blur in sound transforms acoustics into awe.

The event was sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.

Learn more at www.canbeautysavetheworld.com and www.beautyatwork.net

#beauty #music #transformation #philosophy #musicology #spirituality

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This is the opening panel for the international symposium "Can beauty save the world?" held at McGill University, Montreal, Oct 24-25, 2025.

We begin with introductions from Dan Cere (McGill), Brandon Vaidyanathan (Catholic University of America), Charles Taylor (McGill), and Tara Isabella Burton (Catholic University of America), followed by a panel discussion between Sean Kelly (Harvard), Elaine Scarry (Harvard), and Richard Kearney (Boston College), moderated by Bill Barbieri (Catholic University of America)

Sean Kelly reflected that beauty moves us beyond ourselves. It saves us from the flattening of meaningful differences. To encounter beauty is to order one’s life around the object of love. When we long for others to share in that recognition, we glimpse beauty’s political potential—it calls us into conversation rather than conflict.

Elaine Scarry deepened that insight, reminding us that the opposite of beauty is not ugliness, but injury. Beauty and justice both arise from a sense of fairness and the desire to repair harm. Beauty’s lasting impact, she noted, is generative—it makes us want to create.

Richard Kearney drew on Gerard Manley Hopkins’s image of the “pied” world—speckled, varied, alive with difference. Beauty, he said, is not pure symmetry but aftering: it often arrives through suffering and loss, reconciling the universal and the particular.

And Charles Taylor reminded us that beauty cannot be defined apart from itself. Its relation to truth is reciprocal, not hierarchical. To understand one, we must hold the other in view. “That,” he said, “is how beauty can save the world.”

The symposium was sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.

Learn more at www.canbeautysavetheworld.com and www.beautyatwork.net

#beautyatwork #beauty #aesthetics #philosophy #philosophyofbeauty

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Helen and Dave Edwards are co-founders of the Artificiality Institute, a nonprofit research organization that helps people stay human in the age of AI. They explore how AI changes the way we think, who we become, and what it means to be human. Through story-based research, education, and community, they help people choose the relationship they want with machines, so they remain the authors of their own minds.

Before founding the Artificiality Institute, they co-founded Intelligentsia.ai, an AI-focused research firm acquired by Atlantic Media. Helen previously led large-scale technology and transformation efforts in critical infrastructure, while Dave spent years shaping creative tools at Apple and investing in emerging technologies as a venture capitalist at CRV and an equity research analyst at Morgan Stanley and ThinkEquity.

In this second part of our conversation, we talk about:

1. Rethinking intelligence as something layered, embodied, and expressed in different forms
2. The “SaaSpocalypse” moment on Wall Street
3. The “Dust Bowl” metaphor and the risk of automating complex human systems too quickly
4. Transition from the attention economy to the intimacy economy
5. Dave and Helen’s reflections on what is lost when we use AI
6. How AI systems uncover hidden structures in language, science, and the natural world
7. Practical ways creators can decide where AI belongs in their creative process

To learn more about Helen and Dave’s work, you can find them at:

https://artificialityinstitute.org/

Books and resources mentioned:

The Artificiality, AI Culture, and Why the Future Will Be Co-Evolution (by Helen Edwards)

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust.

Support the show