Shankalu is an unmoderated list for rationalist Hindus, or for anyone interested in critical analysis of Hindu scriptures. Send a blank message to or subscribe at . Archives are at . [, NEW-LIST, 05Jan99.] (This parallels philosophical discussions for atheists or questioners of Christian dogma.)

The Lotus and the Sunflower is an open forum for philosophical issues at the interface between Western and Eastern philosophy. "Is Taoism a process philosophy? Does Hume's empiricist analysis of the self echo the Buddhist doctrine of no-self (anatta)? Is Advaita Vedanta a form of philosophical idealism? How closely do Derrida and Nagarjuna converge?" Subscribe at . [Steven W. Laycock or , NEW-LIST, 06Jan99.]

"The Paideia Project: Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy" will make available more than 1,100 contributed papers (available also as a 12-volume print collection). [Thomas Stone , comp.ai.philosophy, 17Jan99.]

The Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts includes searchable items from American/English literature and Western philosophy. PDF versions can be created for download, or you can download the texts and off-line search tools. . [Eric Lease Morgan, WEB4LIB, 17Sep98. net-hap.]

Got a few hours? The EDGE discussion list moderator John Brockman -- author of "The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution" and "Digerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite" -- has collected about 115 answers to the question "What is the most important invention of the past 2000 years, and why?" EDGE is a brainstorming discussion list for philosophers and intellectuals. Answers include the Internet and "distributed networked intelligence"; intellectual automation and AI agents; the computer (regressed back to electrification, the thermionic valve, the battery, Volta's pile, and Otto von Guericke's device to produce static electricity); distillation and awareness of chemical properties; genetic principles and gene sequencing; the telescope, Copernican Theory, and the clock and spectroscope (for revising our world view); scientific method and philosophical skepticism, plus organized science; mathematics, from Hindu-Arabic notation (solidified in the sixth century) to calculus, probability theory, and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem; models and representation; simulation, and digital ecosystems; board games and now video games (for their influence on science and politics); Christianity, Islam, and atheism; democracy and social justice (ignoring earlier origins); the printing press, television, communication technologies, and the idea of information as a commercial quantity; large cities (which brought people and ideas together before we had communication technologies); Francis Bacon's idea of continuing technological progress; the electric light and Edison's invention factory; formal education; steam engines, electric motors, flying machines, and space travel; the canon, Gatling gun, and atomic bomb; plumbing, sanitation, and modern health care; anesthesia and its [coming] influence on the study of quantum consciousness; and the Pill (as birth control becomes increasingly important for the world, and because it has freed both sexes from having to care for large families). Also hay; the horse collar; reading glasses (doubling the intellectual life span and preventing the world being ruled by people under forty); Western classical music; the notions of ego and the unconscious mind, and questioning of free will; quality mirrors (which encourage seeing ourselves as others see us); modern views of language; the Turing machine (which may allow alien intelligences to transmit their AI programs to us); public key cryptosystems; double entry accounting; and the unimplemented English Protestant Calendar. . [Bill Park , 28Jan99.]

-- Ken