Arthur Zajonc is President of the Mind & Life Institute in Hadley, Massachusetts. He is also emeritus professor of physics at Amherst College, where he taught from 1978 to 2012. He received his BS and PhD in physics from the University of Michigan. He has been visiting professor and research scientist at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, and the universities of Rochester, and Hannover. He has been Fulbright professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
His research has included studies in electron-atom physics, parity violation in atoms, quantum optics, the experimental foundations of quantum physics, and the relationship between science, the humanities and the contemplative traditions. He has written extensively on Goethe’s science work. He is author of the book: Catching the Light, co-author of The Quantum Challenge, and co-editor of Goethe’s Way of Science. In 1997 he served as scientific coordinator for the Mind and Life dialogue published as The New Physics and Cosmology: Dialogues with the Dalai Lama (Oxford 2004). He again organized the 2002 dialogue with the Dalai Lama, “The Nature of Matter, the Nature of Life,” and acted as moderator at MIT for the “Investigating the Mind” Mind and Life dialogue in 2003. The proceedings of the Mind and Life-MIT meeting were published under the title The Dalai Lama at MIT (Harvard UP 2006). He is former Executive Director of the Center for Contemplative Mind, which supports appropriate inclusion of contemplative practice in higher education. Out of this work and his long-standing meditative practice, Zajonc has authored Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love. He has co-authored a book with Parker Palmer, The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal. Zajonc has blogged for Psychology Today on meditation. He has also been General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America, a co-founder of the Kira Institute, president of the Lindisfarne Association, and a senior program director at the Fetzer Institute.
Contributions to Humans & Nature:
- Love as Ethical Insight
A response to “Mind and morality: where do they meet?” - Question Response Video
Arthur shares his reflections at the Questions for a Resilient Future gathering. - Roundtable Discussion Video
A conversation with Arthur Zajonc, Michael McCullough, and Krista Tippett. - Mind and Morality: Where Do They Meet?
From Minding Nature, May 2015, Volume 8, Number 2.
Noteworthy Links:
- Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love
A book by Arthur Zajonc. - The Dalai Lama at MIT
Papers and discussion from the Dalai Lama’s visit to MIT, edited by Anna Harrington and Arthur Zajonc. - The Mind and Life Institute
Learn more about the work of the Mind and Life Institute.
