All content © RJ Robinson 2002-8
The Prometheus Research Group was a loose affiliation of academics and other intellectuals interested in the origins, nature and significance of human nature, especially the role played by intelligence.
André Hopper and I founded the Group in 2001 for several reasons.
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Firstly, we felt that the problem of human nature and what it means to be a human being were simply not being addressed by either the sciences or the humanities. There is ample research and theorising about parts and aspects of human nature, but this (often very insightful) thinking tends to be fragmented by conventional disciplinary boundaries.
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Secondly, we felt that many of the key contributors to this debate were fast disappearing from view. Hegel - vast, bombastic, frequently ludicrous but never less than brilliant - scarcely made it out of the 19th century; Marx seems equally lost in the 20th; and Piaget - the great hope for a comprehensive view of human nature in the last few decades - has never been raised to the level of which he was capable. And so on.
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Finally, André and I thought we had something to say about this topic too.
So we created the Prometheus Research Group. By late 2005, we had put three complete books on line - one by Christopher Hallpike, the others by me - plus a small collection of trans- and interdisciplinary papers from various eminent academics we felt had been unjustly neglected. We also published a rapidly growing collection of odds and ends, from links to relevant scientific and historical websites to collections of twaddle proving that human beings may be intelligent but they aren't always very bright.
We built the site ourselves, based on the skills we'd managed to pick up in our day jobs - André is a very fine software engineer, and I am a management consultant with a lot of grey hair. André was responsible for the technical stuff. For example, if you joined in the discussions, then you used pages he built. Otherwise, most of the fixed content was by me, and so was the design. André tended to let me go my own way about content, but little is included that he and I haven't agreed on.
The Prometheus Research Group folded in May 2006. Basically we could not strike the necessary chord, even when we floated a proper academic journal, entitled Reason and Science, which attracted a few papers but never the critical mass needed to make a go of it. Given that our editorial board included Jacques Voneche and Les Smith, it is hard to see what more a small group could have done. But it didn't work.
So we have now given up, and this website is simply a vehicle for my personal ideas.
Science
Etc.
Work in progress