David Eagleman + Sean Carroll

“The ancient Greeks, according to [Robert] Pirsig, “˜saw the future as something that came upon them from behind their backs, with the past receding away before their eyes.'”

“•Sean Carroll, From Eternity to Here

When a cosmologist and a neuroscientist get together, how do you imagine they might spend their time? In this case, talking about time. The theoretical physicist Sean Carroll is the author of From Eternity to Here. He and Brainwave curator David Eagleman test concepts and theories of time from the vantage point of their different scientific disciplines. Will they both come out in favor of the block universe theory? Only time will tell.

The program will be followed by a book signing.

Brainwave is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

About the Speakers

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and the New York Times bestselling author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain and Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives. He is the writer and host of the Emmy-nominated PBS television series The Brain. Eagleman is an adjunct professor at Stanford University, a Guggenheim fellow, and the director of the Center for Science and Law. He has written for the New York Times, Discover Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, Wired and many others, and he appears regularly on National Public Radio and BBC.

Sean Carroll is a Research Professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology. He received his PhD in 1993 from Harvard University. His research has focused on fundamental physics and cosmology, especially issues of dark matter, dark energy, spacetime symmetries, and the origin of the universe. Recently, Carroll has worked on the foundations of quantum mechanics, the emergence of spacetime, and the evolution of entropy and complexity. Carroll is the author of The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, and Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity. He has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Sloan Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Royal Society of London, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Carroll has appeared on TV shows such as The Colbert Report, PBS’s NOVA, and Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, and frequently serves as a science consultant for film and television. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, writer Jennifer Ouellette.