Professor Michael O’Rourke discusses philosophy at the AH! Talks first session Tuesday. Photo by Jennifer Freise/The Dakota Student.

Professor Michael O’Rourke was welcomed by UND as its first presenter of the spring semester for AH! Talks (Arts and Humanities Talks) speaker series.

O’Rourke, professor of Philosophy and faculty in AgBioResearch at Michigan State University, challenged his audience to think more broadly about the role of the humanities in his presentation titled “Interdisciplinary Responses to Complex Problems: Are the Humanities Relevant?”

“It’s not obvious that a discipline like philosophy might have much to add (to a scientific discussion),” O’Rourke said. “But these issues will always involve people. We’re not robots.”

O’Rourke is a large supporter of the humanities and what they can provide to a university. He believes that the humanities should be working side-by-side with the sciences in order to do its part in a university.

“Scholars in the humanities have a significant role to play in the interdisciplinary implementation of responses to complex problems,” O’Rourke said in a press release.

“I thought Professor O’Rourke’s lecture was very interesting,” sophomore Eve Trainor said. “Some of it went a little over my head but I had a lot of fun listening to him and trying to come to my own conclusions about his ideas.”

About AH!

According to a UND press release, AH! Talks is an “Interdisciplinary Studies speaker series at UND. These presentations are designed to engage interdisciplinary thinking broadly and to be accessible to the larger community – bringing listeners to their own “AH!” moments as intellectual connections are made and our understanding of one another expands.”

The talks are designed to create questions from humanities students and staff in a smaller setting. Generally the conversations are between arts and humanities scholars, but do not discourage outside studies.

About O’Rourke

O’Rourke’s research interests include environmental philosophy, the nature of epistemic integration and communication in collaborative, cross-disciplinary research and the nature of linguistic communication between intelligent agents.

He is Director of the Toolbox Project, an NSF-sponsored research initiative that investigates philosophical approaches to facilitating interdisciplinary research.

O’Rourke has published extensively on the topics of communication, interdisciplinary theory and practice and robotic agent design.

In the past he has been a co-principal investigator or collaborator on funded projects involving environmental science education, facilitating cross-disciplinary communication, biodiversity conservation, sustainable agriculture, resilience in environmental systems, and autonomous underwater vehicles.

O’Rourke co-founded and served as co-director of the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference, an interdisciplinary conference on philosophical themes, and as co-editor of the Topics in Contemporary Philosophy series published by MIT Press.

Katie Haines is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected].