Friday/Saturday 19/20 March 2010
Nearly four hundred years ago, Galileo offered us the poetic image of the Book of Nature, lying open before us. We could read it, he said, if only we understood its language—the language of mathematics. This image motivates the search for a concise mathematical description of the world around us, and this intellectual adventure has been remarkably successful. From deep inside the atomic nucleus to the large scale structure of the universe, we can calculate what we see as we look quantitatively at the world. Beyond predictions about the natural world, this theoretical framework gives us the power to design new devices that have changed our lives in fundamental ways. But there is a chapter missing from our reading of the Book of Nature—the chapter about our inner world, about the phenomena of life. While experiments have uncovered many of the intricate mechanisms at work in the machinery of life, there is no predictive theoretical framework that ties these discoveries together, nothing comparable to the success of theoretical physics in organizing and codifying our understanding of the inanimate world. For many reasons, the time seems right to bridge this gap, to bring the rich and beautiful phenomena of life under this powerful predictive umbrella. This interaction between the physical and biological sciences has the potential to redraw the intellectual landscape of the sciences, and to change our view of ourselves.
Speakers will include:
Curtis Callan, Princeton University
Adrienne Fairhall, University of Washington
Irene Giardina, Università di Roma, La Sapienza
Marilyn Gunner, City College of New York
Philip Nelson, University of Pennsylvania
Marcelo Magnasco, Rockefeller University
José Nelson Onuchic, University of California at San Diego
Boris Shraiman, University of California at Santa Barbara
Massimo Vergassola, Institut Pasteur
If you are interested in attending the workshop, please email its@gc.cuny.edu. Funds are available to help students and postdocs stay in New York so they can participate more fully. A detailed schedule will be available shortly.
Source/Fonte: Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences
NOTA IMPERTINENTE DESTE BLOGGER:
Mas Darwin não tinha explicado a origem e evolução das espécies através da seleção natural? O fato, Fato, FATO da evolução não é tão cientificamente comprovado como a lei da gravidade? E o que fazem esses físicos teóricos? Ah, eles não entendem nada de ciência, e nem como se dá a evolução. Devem ser religiosamente motivados para realizarem este workshop.
Fui, nem sei por que, pensando que cada vez mais confio nos físicos e químicos quanto a explicarem a origem e a evolução da vida do que nos biólogos.
