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In the late seventies I lived and worked in New York. My job took me all around the United States and Canada. So I like to go back occasionally; the last time being a couple of years ago with my soon to be wife Wendy. She had never been to New York so I worked up an itinerary to show her the highlights in just a few days. We also decided to drive to Washington DC and Boston.
At the end of February 2016 Wendy and I took a package deal to visit Bali. These days almost everyone knows that Bali is a smallish island off the east tip of Java in the Southern Indonesian archipelago, just south of the equator. Longitudinally it's just to the west of Perth, not a huge distance from Darwin. The whole Island chain is highly actively volcanic with regular eruptions that quite frequently disrupt air traffic. Bali is well watered, volcanic, fertile and very warm year round, with seasons defined by the amount of rain.
In 1960 the Russians shot down an American U-2 spy plane that was overflying and photographing their military bases. The U-2 Incident was big news when I was in High School and I remember it quite clearly.
The Incident forms the background to Bridge of Spies a 2015 movie, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance from a screenplay written by Matt Charman together with Ethan and Joel Coen that centres on these true events.
Spielberg and the Cohen Brothers. Who could miss it?
Professor Courtenay Raia lectures on science and religion as historical phenomena that have evolved over time; starting in pre-history. She goes on to examine the pre-1700 mind-set when science encompassed elements of magic; how Western cosmologies became 'disenchanted'; and how magical traditions have been transformed into modern mysticisms.
The lectures raise a lot of interesting issues. For example in Lecture 1, dealing with pre-history, it is convincingly argued that 'The Secret', promoted by Oprah, is not a secret at all, but is the natural primitive human belief position: that it is fundamentally an appeal to magic; the primitive 'default' position.
But magic is suppressed by both religion and science. So in our modern secular culture traditional magic has itself been transmogrified, magically transformed, into mysticism.