F. David Peat
From Certainty to Uncertainty
18 October 2006, 16:00, EMBL Small Operon
F. David Peat - physicist and writer
In 1900, the President of the Royal Society claimed that in principle everything that could be known in science was already known, and the combination of Newton's mechanics and Maxwell's theory of light now encompassed the entire field. But 1900 was also the year in which Planck proposed the quantum and the work of Gregor Mendel was rediscovered.
Quantum theory has radically changed the way we think about the world. The way it has deconstructed the nature of matter and of certainly parallels the loss of certainty in so many other fields. In considering these intellectual revolutions of the twentieth century I would also like to explore how the stories told by science impact our lives and change the way we think about ourselves and our society.