Our first gathering is taking place on Oct 20^th, addressing the topic “The many kinds of intelligence: animal, human, plant, extraterrestrial, machine, planetary, emotional.”

This course investigates the cultural and scientific roots of these polar representations and how they evolved from the 17th century onwards.

This course describes how science works as a model to inspire better ways of living. We describe the origins of science, the development of the scientific method and what it teaches us about reason, ethics, data, and how to trust (or not) those making statements about what they claim is the “truth.”

In this interdisciplinary course we will address these questions, exploring how philosophers and physicists from Plato to Einstein and many others have attempted to explain the nature of the world and of reality.

Starting with ancient creation myths about the origin of the universe, and ending with the Big Bang model and our current understanding of quantum physics, this course offers a historical examination of the evolution of physical theories of natural phenomena from Greek antiquity to the present.