| 2005 Summer Seminar |
—Lyman Hazelton, Ph.D.
Course Description:
(This talk is part of the symposium on philosophy of science)
Philosophers from the time of Aristotle have considered causality to be a central pillar of their mental models of the universe. The last century has brought the existence of true randomness and chaotic processes into the realm of man's observations. Many physical processes that were once thought to be completely predictable are, in many circumstances, not predictable, regardless of how much apriori knowledge is available. Lyman Hazleton will argue that modern observation and knowledge about the stability and predictability of processes at and above human scale require some modifications in how we view identity, causality and predictability. These three fundamental ideas are central to Objectivist philosophy, so changes in them may have broad and far reaching consequences. While this new knowledge complicates our view of reality, it does not destroy it. Rather, it may provide us with powerful explanations for certain processes we have not previously understood.
Lyman Hazelton earned a baccalaureate and masters in theoretical physics, specializing in quantum optics and cosmology, at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. He later earned an interdepartmental doctorate of science in Aeronautics/Astronautics and Electrical Engineering/Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taught classes at MIT for two decades. He is the winner of the 1995 NASA Presidential Space Act award for artificial intelligence and vestibular physiology experiments carried aboard the Space Shuttle. Dr. Hazelton has published numerous journal papers in physics, neuro-physiology and computer science.
Schedule: Thursday, 2:15-3:30 PM
Track: Philosophy