Closing Panel: Multiple Universes

Closing Panel: Multiple Universes

with Bernard Carr, Geraldine Patrick Encina, Ruth Kastner, Mindahi Crescencio Bastida Muñoz, Paul Tappenden and Jean-Francois Vezina

Sunday October 24, 2021
9:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST  |  18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

A panel discussion with some of the speakers of the Multiple Universes series will close the event, reflecting on the various perspectives that have emerged in the presentations and comparing different world views.

The session will begin by posing the panelists a few key questions to start the discussion. It will continue as a Q&A session open to everybody. You are invited to have your questions and comments ready, and in formulating them please be mindful of other people’s need to ask their own questions! The best questions are often the most concise ones.

To see the Full Multiple Universes Program

Bernard Carr is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary University of London. His professional area of research is cosmology and astrophysics and includes such topics as the early universe, dark matter, black holes and the anthropic principle. For his PhD he studied the first second of the Universe, working under the supervision of Stephen Hawking at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology.He was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1975 and moved to Queen Mary College in 1985. He has also held Visiting Professorships at Kyoto University, Tokyo University, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. He is the author of nearly three hundred scientific papers and the books Universe or Multiverse? and Quantum Black Holes. Beyond his professional field, he is interested in the role of consciousness in physics and in an expanded paradigm which accommodates mind. He also has a long-standing interest in the relationship between science and religion. He was President of the Society for Psychical Research in 2000-2004 and is currently President of the Scientific and Medical Network.

Ruth E. Kastner earned her M.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Maryland. Since that time, she has taught widely and conducted research in Foundations of Physics, particularly in interpretations of quantum theory. She is the author of 3 books: The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Theory: The Reality of Possibility (Cambridge University Press, 2012; 2^nd edition forthcoming in Fall 2021), Understanding Our Unseen Reality: Solving Quantum Riddles (Imperial College Press, 2015); and Adventures In Quantumland: Exploring Our Unseen Reality (World Scientific, 2019).  She has presented talks and interviews throughout the world and in video recordings on the interpretational challenges of quantum theory.

Paul Tappenden’s first degree was in philosophy and psychology but he has long taken an interest in physics and was particularly fascinated by the philosophical problems associated with quantum mechanics. His PhD from King’s College, London, was an attempt to relate an important current debate in philosophy of mind with ideas in the so-called Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. Since then he has taught philosophy of science to physics students in Grenoble, France, and has pursued the ideas in his doctorate in a series of papers, the most recent being in the journal Synthese, 2019.

Jean-François Vezina is a clinical psychologist in Quebec and author of 6 books including Necessary Chances: Synchronicity in the Encounters That Transform Us by Pari Publishing. He was president of the Jungian society of Quebec for seven years and the animator and producer of the radio show Projections: Psychology and Cinema about symbols in the movies. He is also an international lecturer and a musician. www.jfvezina.net/