Christopher Jargocki, also known by the pen name Christopher Jargodzki, is a Polish-born American physicist, author, and translator who is a Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Central Missouri, as well as the Director of the Center for Cooperative Phenomena. He held a previous academic appointment at Northeastern University in Boston.
Early life
Jargocki was born and raised in Włochy, now a western district of Warsaw, the son of Stefania and Zdzisław Jargocki. After the Warsaw Uprising, his father was taken to Auschwitz, and then to Buchenwald where he died. Christopher Jargocki was raised as a Roman Catholic. At the age of 13, as a voice actor, he did dubbing work for the Russian children's movie Old Khottabych based on a socialist-realist book by Lazar Lagin.
From 1966 to 1975 Jargocki worked part-time as a translator of books and articles from Russian and other languages into English for the American Mathematical Society and SCITRAN. In 1977 Jargocki replaced Isaac Asimov as the contributing editor to the Science Digest Quick Quiz, a feature of Science Digest, a monthly American magazine published from 1937 through 1986. His four books, the last two co-authored with Franklin Potter, deal primarily with paradoxes and misconceptions in physics and astronomy.
In 2006, Jargocki founded the Center for Cooperative Phenomena to promote the study of the emergent, and specifically, cooperative phenomena at all levels of complexity from the physical to social sciences. One of his major areas of interest is the subject of synchronicity.
Encyclopedia of Conversational English
Jargocki founded the website in November 2013. From the welcome page: "We hope that the Encyclopedia of Conversational English will become a standard reference and/or text for students and teachers of English as a Second Language, both in the United States and around the world. In a sense, the Encyclopedia may be viewed as a time capsule describing the language and culture of the United States and Great Britain as they have existed in the last 15-20 years." Currently, the project comprises two volumes, Communication and Education, containing more than 2600 webpages. Volumes dealing with Daily Life and Transportation are forthcoming.
Selected bibliography
Books
Science Braintwisters, Paradoxes, and Fallacies
Science Braintwisters, Paradoxes, and Fallacies
More Science Braintwisters and Paradoxes
Mad About Physics - Braintwisters, Paradoxes, and Curiosities
Mad About Modern Physics - Braintwisters, Paradoxes, and Curiosities.
Papers
C. Jargocki and M. Bander, Field-theoretic Version of a Two-Dimensional Coulomb Gas with Repulsive Cores, Physical Review B 23, Jan. 1, 1981
R. Aaron, M.H. Friedman, and C.P. Jargocki, Calculations of q¯2 q2 States in Potential Theory, Physical Review D 28, Oct. 1, 1983
C. Jargocki, Teleology versus Natural Selection in Anthropic Cosmology, Proceedings of the Institute for Liberal Studies, Vol. 4, Fall 1993.
Lectures
"From Reductionism to Emergence: Science Takes a Cooperative Turn,” a talk given at the international Metanexus Institute conference “Continuity & Change: Perspectives on Science and Religion,” June 6, 2006, in Philadelphia, PA.
“Cosmic Optimism: From the Principle of Maximum Diversity to Path Optimization,” a talk given at the international Metanexus Institute conference “Transdisciplinarity and the Unity of Knowledge: Beyond the ‘Science and Religion Dialogue,’” June 4, 2007, in Philadelphia, PA.
"From Stephen Hawking's Flexiverse to Synchronicity: Intimations of Our Transhuman Future," a talk given at the international Metanexus Institute conference "Cosmos, Nature, Culture: A Transdisciplinary Conference," July 18 – 21, 2009, in Phoenix, AZ.
V. T. Fomenko, “On Infinitesimal Deformations of Convex Surfaces with a Boundary Condition of Generalized Translation,” 1969 Math. USSR Sbornik 9. Translated from Russian.
M. L. Tsetlin, Automaton Theory and Modeling of Biological Systems. Translated from Russian.
