Everything is connected. Everything changes. Pay attention.

The idea that everything is essentially relation and process was once common in early cultures, East and West. It was then lost in the Christian era but gradually rediscovered in recent centuries and has now permeated disciplines across the sciences and humanities.

However, the process philosophers who fully developed the implications of this idea had no wish to theorise abstractly or even to influence disciplines. They wished only to improve the lives of individuals, to enrich and intensify everyday experience, and to confer enhanced vitality and zest.

In this conversation, Michael Foley will outline the history and contemporary relevance of the idea and discuss the many benefits for those who adopt this new way of thinking that is also very old – benefits that include ways of thinking about love, power, time, perception, the body, the senses, ageing and mortality.

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Doors will open at 6pm for a 6.30pm start. Tickets include a glass of wine or soft drink. A selection of Michael’s books will be available to purchase.

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Michael Foley was born in 1947 in Derry, Northern Ireland, and educated at St Columb’s College and Queens University, Belfast, where he took degrees in Chemistry and Computer Science and did research in Computer Science. In 1972 he moved to London, where he still lives, and a career in teaching, culminating in twenty three years at the University of Westminster lecturing in Information Technology. He retired in 2007 to devote himself to writing.

His first poems were published in 1969 in The Honest Ulsterman, a magazine he went on to edit with Frank Ormsby, and his first prose in a satirical column in the magazine Fortnight, which also serialised his first novel, The Passion of Jamesie Coyle. After retirement from teaching he wrote his first non-fiction book, The Age of Absurdity, and has since written four more non-fiction books. You can find out more here: https://www.michael-foley.net/