What is Movement?

As some of you know, in many of the pieces on this blog (often given as Sunday addresses/thoughts for the day to the congregation of the Cambridge Unitarian Church) I have foregrounded the need for our liberal, free and enquiring religion consciously to adopt a philosophy of motion/movement so we can engage ever more effectively and appropriately with the world as it is now showing up to us through the modern natural sciences. Just type the word “motion” in the search box on this blog to pull up a few of the more explicit examples of what I have written, or simply click on THIS LINK which will do the same thing.

A key figure for me in my exploration has been Thomas Nail who has written extensively on the subject, firstly through an exploration of borders and migration, then through an exploration of Lucretius’ great poem, “On the Nature of Things”, through a more generalised study of motion in a series of books for Oxford University Press and Stanford University Press and, most recently a book about the role motion plays in the work of Karl Marx.

Now, I fully realise that most of you are not going to dive deeply into his work in the way I have but, the good news is, that he has recently published a very straightforward, entertaining and engaging five-minute long educational video on YouTube that summarises in what consists a philosophy of movement very well. I highly recommend it. Enjoy!