Profs & Pints Baltimore: The Cosmic Imagination

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Cosmic Imagination,” a look at thinkers who have changed our conception of reality, with William Egginton, professor of humanities and director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

Twentieth-century science was turned on its head by the discoveries of relativity and quantum physics. But what if you were told that those discoveries weren’t uniquely the product of the field of physics, but also sprang from centuries of efforts by artists, mystics, and thinkers to probe the extremes of human knowledge and challenge our very conception of reality?

Come learn the long, hidden history of such endeavors from Professor William Egginton, who teaches literature and intellectual history at Johns Hopkins, created that university’s Program in Medicine, Science, and Humanities, and has wowed Profs and Pints audiences with his captivating past talks on multiverses, zombies and philosophy, and dark winter folklore.

In a riveting lecture filled with gorgeous images from both art history and modern cosmology, Professor Egginton tells the sweeping story of the poets, physicists, and philosophers who upended our most basic notions of what is real.

His talk will deal with the problems of time and space on a cosmic and microcosmic scale, spanning from quantum fluctuations to the curvature of the cosmos. The collection of great thinkers that he’ll touch upon includes Plato, Kant, Dante, Borges, Einstein, and Heisenberg, among others. The science will be accurate, but both it and the philosophy covered by the talk will be geared toward a general audience.

You’ll end up looking at the universe through a different lens, with plenty to think about and a newfound respect for the expansiveness of the human imagination.

(Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5. Talk begins at 6:30.)