Annual Philosophy Day at the City College of New York 

This year’s keynote speaker will be Prof. Jenann Ismael, from Columbia University, who will talk on “Time and Visual Imagination — From Physics to Philosophy.”

There are few scientific advances with the kind of revolutionary philosophical import of the theory of relativity. Aside from being perhaps the most beautiful theory in the history of science, it induced a profound change in our ideas of space and time, presenting them as different dimensions in a static four-dimensional manifold of events. The reaction to the theory was immediate and divided. Some said that physics had lost touch with everything that is essential to time as we know it. Others said that physics had shown that the passage of time was an illusion. We want to step back from the controversy and talk about the visual imagination, because it is behind a deep misunderstanding about what relativity teaches us about the nature of time. We’ll start with a brief history of space-time theories, then we’ll talk about the images of time coming out of physics and the philosophical confusions to which they give rise. There will be some wider lessons here about the difference between an internal and external perspective on the world. The talk will presuppose no physics and there will be lots of pretty pictures.

The Talk will be on Thursday, 11/17, at 6:o0pm in NAC 1/202. Everyone is invited to attend!