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In 1944 the psychiatrist and pioneer of transpersonal psychology Carl G. Jung had a heart attack, which led to an exceptionally vivid near-death experience, recalling which he said: “It seemed to me as if behind the horizon of the cosmos a three dimensional world had been artificially built up, in which each person sat by himself in a little box. . . . I had been so glad to shed it all, and now it had come about that I—along with everyone else—would again be hung up in a box by a thread. ”
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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a pivotal text whose story haunts us today. Published in 1819, the spirit of the depths below the spirit of the times in which it was written foreshadowed how Victor Frankenstein’s dream to animate dead matter has become our nightmare. As a new god who would all but banish death from life, he would use the newly discovered science of electricity and create a technology to create a new race of beings who, as he says, would bless him as their father. But horrified by the creature he has made and whom he never names, he abandons him and denies responsibility for the consequences of his actions.
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Time is at once intimately familiar and yet deeply mysterious. We say it flows like a river, yet that “flow” seems to disappear under scientific scrutiny. No wonder poets, philosophers, and physicists have grappled with the enigma of time for centuries. In this illustrated talk – adapted from his second book, In Search of Time – science journalist Dan Falk looks at the history, physics, and philosophy of time from Aristotle to Einstein and beyond.
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There is a widely-held view that religion and science are incompatible. How true is this – in any sense? Do they conflict in their vision of reality? Do ‘real’ scientists find an allegiance to both impossible, or even difficult, to maintain? Does the fact that there are differences in approach to the world make mutual comprehension impossible or incoherent? What are the significant differences between spirituality and religion?