Professor Arthur Zajonc

Arthur Zajonc, Ph.D. is Andrew Mellon professor of physics and interdisciplinary studies at Amherst College, where he has taught since 1978.
 
He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan. He has been visiting professor and research scientist at the Ecole Normale Superieure 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.
 
Arthur’s 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: The Entwined History of Light and Mind, coauthor 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. 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.
 
He currently directs the Academic Program 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, Arthur has authored Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love. He has coauthored a book with Parker Palmer, The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal.
 
Arthur blogs for Psychology Today on meditation. He has also been General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America, a cofounder of the Kira Institute, president of the Lindisfarne Association, and a senior program director at the Fetzer Institute.
 
His papers include Cognitive-Affective Connections in Teaching and Learning: The Relationship Between Love and Knowledge, Contemplative and Transformative Pedagogy, What can we know?: Knowledge between science and spirituality, Goethe’s Theory of Color and Scientific Intuition, Light: Re-considered, Delayed-choice experiments in quantum interference, and Differential cross section for electron impact excitation of metastable helium measured by the atomic-time-of-flight method. Read the full list of his publications!
 
Watch Contemplative Pedagogy, Webinar: The Science of Meditation, Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love, and Mind and Life XIV — Day 1 am – with the Dalai Lama. Read Investigating the Space of the Invisible: Conversation with Professor Arthur Zajonc. Visit his Facebook page. Read his LinkedIn profile.