It is no mere poetic metaphor to compare the birth of the universe with the work of an artist, or the way material forms unfold and evolve to the manner in which scientific insights turn into theories or, for that matter, to the writing a poem and the healing of strife within a community.
– F. David Peat, The Blackwinged Night
Justin Trudeau will speak at the third annual open-to-all evening lecture and dialogue titled Creating the Next Alberta: The Alberta We Want in the 21st Century. The keynote address, however, will be delivered by David Peat, a scientist and noted author whose books include Blackfoot Physics, an exploration of the confluence of ancient teachings and modern science and his most recent volume, The Blackwinged Night: Creativity in Nature and Mind.
Peat’s Calgary lecture is titled "Beyond Illusions of Certainty." Trudeau and Peat will both speak about the future of Alberta and what it might look like in the coming decades. Peat has written and lectured extensively about how science is often touted as the end word on the human experience even though many phenomena cannot be explained in a rational way.
"Science and rationality made enormous advances over the centuries to the point where people believed they could predict the future with accuracy, control the natural and social systems that surrounded them and enjoy endless progress," Peat explains. "This reached a peak in the year 1900 when the president of the Royal Society in England said that "science had discovered everything there was to discover." An international court had been established in The Hague to eliminate wars, and the U.S. had adopted the gold standard. It was also a year of important discoveries." He adds, "But 1900 was also the year that Plank proposed the quantum and Henri Poincaré made the first discovery that would lead to chaos theory. Today we know that some systems are so complex we can never have total information about them, we may have only a limited ability to predict the future and may not be able to totally control these systems. These have enormous implications for our attitudes towards economic, social and natural systems."
A quantum physicist who has previously conducted research at the National Research Council of Canada, Peat is skeptical about relying too heavily on science to answer all of life’s questions. "Science is good at describing mechanical systems but is limited when it comes to social systems," he says. "It also tells us that reality is more mysterious than we thought, and we don't really understand the nature of time."
What may sound like New Age theory is to Peat instead a serious investigation of the world and our place in it. "I'm not New Age," says Peat. "By that I would mean that some people make weak analogies between, say, religion or psychotherapy, by pulling in images from physics. This is very popular, but often the analogies are weak and inaccurate. People talk about "energies" and "fields" without being clear about what they really mean. I would not close the door on any speculation, but it is important that we be clear."
On a planet where the world’s population is being forced to examine how we conduct our daily lives, Peat remains hopeful that explorations of the nature of matter may hold the key to our future survival. "Quantum physics can teach us new ways of thinking. For example, there is an essential wholeness to the world, that the world is not a machine but more like a living thing. It tells us that there is a limit to the language we use, that reality is so rich that it can’t be exhausted by one single description but may require complementary and even paradoxical descriptions. It tells us that we influence the world when we look at it and the answers we get depend on the context in which we ask them."
Ruminations about quantum physics colliding with art and the ponderings of a young man planning to follow his father’s footsteps into Canadian politics are all part of what will be offered by Peat and Trudeau respectively as they consider Alberta’s future in front of a Calgary audience.
Creating the Next Alberta will be held on the evening of March 15th at the Red & White Club (north end of McMahon Stadium). Tickets are $20. Doors open and reception at 5:30 p.m. Program starts at 6:45 p.m. |
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