Jonathon Keats
Experimental Philosopher and Conceptual Artist
Jonathon Keats is a San Francisco-based experimental philosopher who has, over the years, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time proposed by string theory (he sold a hundred and seventy-two extra-dimensional lots in the Bay Area in a single day); made an attempt to genetically engineer God (God turns out to be related to the cyanobacterium); and copyrighted his own mind (in order to get a seventy-year post-life extension.
Keats's bold experiments raise serious questions and put into practice his conviction that the world needs more "curious amateurs," willing to explore publicly whatever intrigues them, in defiance of a culture that increasingly forecloses on wonder and siloes knowledge into narrowly defined areas of expertise.
Experimental philosopher Jonathan Keats dives into the work of Buckminster Fuller, an early 20th century oddball scientist whose visionary ideas we are only now catching up to.
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Nathan Broderick documents experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats’ Millennium Camera Project
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Using Experimental Philosophy to Shift Perspective, with Jonathon Keats Jonathon Keats introduces his workshop by listing the following five rules for looking at the world like an experimental philosopher: 1. […]
Keats explains how he combined string theory with San Francisco real estate to explore the relationships between paradoxical concepts.
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Keats explains how marriage can be treated as a metaphor by explaining the process by which two people can become married not by government definition, but by a law of nature, thanks to advances in quantum physics.
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Keats explains how a thought experiment in which he attempts to genetically engineer God allowed him to create a situation in which science and religion became compatible.
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Keats explains an experiment in which he opened a restaurant for plants and how it helped spur an exploration of cuisine as cultural trademark.
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The worth thing to ever happen to us, says Jonathon Keats, was when we stopped being children. Fortunately, he explains (by way of honeybees) that it’s possible to re-enter that space of precociousness and wonder.
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Jonathon Keats introduces his workshop on experimental philosophy by listing the rules and lessons he’s developed over the years.
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Where do new ideas come from? One tactic is to train your brain to innovate through the use of thought experiments.
If curiosity is your curriculum the best way in which that curriculum can be undertaken is for all of your students to cut school and that’s a great idea, but it really won’t work at an institutional level in most universities.
The art market is a market where commodification is the purpose even at the level of museums which effectively exist by virtue of the generosity of patrons.
Harnessing relativity, technology can even give us the time to live.
My thought experiments don’t happen in my mind. I undertake these experiments out in the world.
I decided that I would attempt to scientifically figure out where on the phylogenetic tree, which is the master map of all the species on earth, where you might put God.
We all every now and then have that guilty pleasure of thinking like a child.
Thought experiment: can we communicate across species in a way that might facilitate a greater deeper relationship between us.
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The Microbial Academy of Sciences is an academy where microbes would be in a position to study the cosmos.
Plants are able to perform photosynthesis and therefore, plants are in a position to enjoy cinematography, to enjoy films since the essence of film is light.
For God little bangs might be stimulating, and might stimulate God to create other universes.
Can the incredibly concrete and the totally abstract coexist?
Next month I will establish the world’s first quantum bank. The bank will be headquartered in Rockefeller Plaza, the global center of finance.
I have begun to use pheromones in place of color pigments to make honest paintings laden with emotion. I call it olfactory expressionism.
I think that human beings are most limited in their tendency to pursue certainty and to think that answers are somehow absolute or even beneficial.
I don’t know that I have any ideas. I have notions maybe. I have curiosity. I have a deep appreciation for serendipity. I have a way of living my life, […]
The idea of forgery resonates more than ever today in a culture in which “the open exchange of ideas has been rebranded as piracy.”
Call it art, experimental philosophy, theater, or what you will – Jonathan Keats plays the fool as a kind of public protest against the ever-present danger of taking ourselves and […]
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Jonathon Keats is an open-source experimental philosopher who has created pornography for God and sold real estate in alternate dimensions of space-time. He joined us to discuss his work and […]
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