The Nature of Reality

January 29 @ 2:30pm

The Nature of Reality
Roundtable discussion featuring Mark Alford, Deepak Chopra (moderator), Stuart Hameroff, Menas Kafatos, David Kleinberg-Levin

In the concluding chapter of The Road to Reality, mathematician Roger Penrose asks, “What is reality?” He goes on to state, “I do not believe that we have yet found the true ‘road to reality,’ despite the extraordinary progress that has been made over two and half millennia, particularly in the last few centuries. Some fundamentally new insights are certainly needed.... Some readers may still take the view that the road itself may be a mirage. Others might take the view that the very notion of a ‘physical reality’ with a truly objective nature, independent of how we might choose to look at it, is itself a pipe dream.” Penrose’s inquiry provides the parameters for this roundtable—can physics and mathematics fully describe reality? Is it possible that reality will never be fully described within a mathematical framework, thus questioning whether mental processes and consciousness can be fully explained within the physics/mathematics paradigm? Is it possible that a future, yet undiscovered physics/mathematics will accurately define reality?

(Please Note: This event is free and open to the public. It is recommended that you arrive at least 20 minutes early to get a seat. Please do not hold seats for late-comers. Additional seating will be available for a large-screen simulcast one floor down from the event space.)

Philoctetes Center is housed at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute at 247 East 82nd St. in New York City.