Abstract

Come to Trinity’s Winstanley Lecture Hall at 6 pm on 14th November to hear from Professor Brian Josephson, laureate of Nobel Prize in Physics 1973! Known for his pioneering works on superconductivity and quantum tunnelling, Prof Josephson will tell us more about how his thinking developed after his Nobel Prize winning discoveries, his main focus moving from mainstream physics to the issue of how processes associated with the mind can be fitted into physics.

This talk is free and open for all! It will start from 18:15 with refreshments available from 18:00. To access the venue, enter the gate opposite to Great Gate, turn right, head upstairs, and take the second left turn. See you there!

“Complex coordination (systems working together to produce some specific outcome) plays an essential role in biology, whereas in regular physics coordination manifests only in simple forms. Through their search for ‘theories of everything’, physicists have been led to an oversimplified picture of the natural world, one that works very well in the situations used to test physical theories, but which fails to address clearly issues such as quantum observation, thought, and meaning. A synthesis of the approaches of physicists and biosemioticians (biologists who take due account of meaning) is likely to lead to advances in our understanding of the natural world comparable to those associated with the advent of quantum theory.”