George Ellis on The Nature of the Physical World

On Thursday 17 September the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA) Great Texts / Big Questions lecture will present an opportunity to hear one of the world’s leading cosmologists discuss the way scientific and everyday views of the nature of things relate to each other. How do relativity theory, quantum theory, and cosmological theory change our views of the world and the universe? How do they relate to every day life?

George Ellis, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town (UCT) promises to look at some of the key features of this relation in a way that make the topics accessible to a broader audience. The lecture is inspired by ‘The Nature of the Physical World’ by early twentieth century astrophysicist Arthur Stanley Eddington.

George Ellis is an internationally renowned cosmologist. In 1973 he co-wrote ‘The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time’ with Stephen Hawking. He has written many other books and papers, including ‘Flat and Curved Space Times’ (1988), ‘The Dynamical Systems Approach to Cosmology’ (1996), and ‘Is the Universe Open or Closed? The Density of Matter in the Universe’(1997).

Ellis has also won awards for his efforts to bring together science and religion. He co-wrote ‘On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Cosmology, Theology and Ethics’ in 1996 and in 2002 wrote ‘The Universe Around Us: An Integrative View of Science and Cosmology’.  Like Eddington, Ellis is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (commonly known as Quakers).
The image used above is St Kilda Postcard by Vermin Inc and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike license.