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Conway Memorial Lecture 2016 – Lawrence Krauss

16th December 2016 · 7:00pm - 9:00pm

In person | Virtual event

 Conway Memorial Lecture 2016 – Lawrence Krauss
 

When Vincent Van Gogh painted starry night, he saw a very different world than you and I. But in turn we all experience the world in a way that is shielded from the deeper realities hidden underlying everyday phenomena. If we lived in a ice crystal on a window during a winter morning, the direction along the spine of the crystal would seem special. The forces we would feel in every other direction would be different. We might even make up some mythical stories about why this was so, but seen from the outside we know that apparent special direction is merely circumstantial, not fundamental. We might also not anticipate our fate when the afternoon sun might later shine on the window.

Could the world we experience be eerily similar?

The story of science’s effort to uncover these hidden realities involves the greatest intellectual journey ever taken by humans, from Plato through Einstein and beyond. A tale ripe with drama and surprise, it has implications for our our understanding of space and time, our origins, and our future, and ultimately addresses that fundamental question: Why are we here?

Lawrence Krauss is a prolific and popular writer and an indefatigable fighter for science and critical thinking. At Arizona State University, he is Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics Departments, Associate Director of the Beyond Center, and Co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative. He is also Director of the exciting new Origins Initiative, which explores questions ranging from the origin of the Universe to the origins of human culture and cognition. He has studied and explained matters from the microscopic to astronomical. In performing with the Cleveland Orchestra, judging at the Sundance Film Festival, and his Grammy nominated notes for Telarc Records, Krauss has also bridged the chasm between science and popular culture.

The event will be chaired by Prof. Anthony Grayling.

A. C. Grayling is an English philosopher who founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London. Grayling is a former Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford.

Grayling is the author of about 30 books on philosophy, including The Refutation of Scepticism(1985), The Future of Moral Values (1997), The Meaning of Things (2001), and The Good Book (2011). He is a Trustee of the London Library, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is also a director of and contributor to Prospect Magazine.

Conway Memorial Lectures

Every year guest lecturers have been invited to speak on subjects across disciplines such as philosophy, history, science, sociology and art, all with the intent of presenting the latest thinking on those subjects by leading experts in their respective fields. Since 1910, a staggering portfolio of speakers and topics have been presented that is worthy of comparison to other such similar memorial lectures run by other institutions.

Bertrand Russell, Jonathan Miller, Lisa Jardine and Roger Penrose are some of those among the many who have given Conway Memorial Lectures. Those sitting in the Chair at these lectures have been equally illustrious, for example Dame Anne McLaren chaired Prof. Hermann Bondi’s 1919 lecture on Humanism – The Only Valid Foundation for Ethics. More details of past Conway Memorial Lectures can be found on our website here: Conway Memorial Lectures.

Tickets will be released to members of Conway Hall Ethical Society on the 16th September 2016. General release on the 1st October.

Cash bar will be available on the night.

Books by the authors will be available to buy on the night courtesy of Newham Bookshop which can be signed by Lawrence and A. C. on the night.

Doors 6.15pm. Start 7.00pm. This event will be recorded.

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