Teaching Human Commonality through the Eyes of Modern Science and Philosophy

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Stephen Modell, M.D., M.S. is the Dissemination Activities Director, Center for Public Health and Community Genomics, and an instructor and researcher in the Department of Health Management and Policy, University of Michigan School of Public Health. He is a primary member of the National Science Foundation-funded “Genetics and Racial-Ethnic Identity” Project and the U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded “Genetics, Community and Equity” Project, both happening at the University of Michigan. He is co-editor of the journal “Ultimate Reality and Meaning: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Philosophy of Understanding,” published by University of Toronto Press. Steve’s recent publications deal with the genetics of heart arrhythmia, genetics dialogue in communities of color and religious communities, and Aristotelian influence in the formation of medical theory.

Global education is in a unique position to unify diverse strands of people by showing individuals the commonalities they share. A modern approach to teaching human commonality rests on communicating the existence of a linked human background both from the scientific and philosophical-spiritual perspectives. My discussion will harness the space-time-person model proposed by Tibor Horvath, founder of the International Society on Ultimate Reality and Meaning (URAM), to explore both directions, touching on shared human categories and organs of perception leading to shared human consciousness, common human origins from the genetic and transcendentalist tradition points of view, and common existential aims centered on appreciation of a mutually inhabited ecosystem. A conviction of universal care and concern rests on an intellectual foundation that “digs deep” to counter the hold of materialism.

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