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Conferences & lectures

Isaac Newton and the origin of Civilization CANCELLED

Concordia Science College Public Lecture


Date & time
Thursday, March 27, 2014
8 p.m. – 10 p.m.
Cost

This event is free

Where

Oscar Peterson Concert Hall
7141 Sherbrooke W.

Wheel chair accessible

Yes

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.

Isaac Newton, also aimed to overturn the entire history of civilization. By the late 1690s Newton had become convinced that the natural rate of population growth implied that elaborately organized social life had not arisen until near the time of Solomon’s kingdom. Here we will find Newton’s unorthodox religious convictions interacting in complex ways with the new methods that he had introduced into experimental science. And we will also see how the most sophisticated of techniques can produce error when data is massaged to fit a strongly-held theory.

About the Speaker

Buchwald is Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of History at the California Institute of Technology. Awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1995 and a Killam Fellowship in 1990 (Canada), Buchwald was trained at Princeton (BA’71) and Harvard (MA and Ph.D. ’74.) From 1974 to 1992 he taught at, and then served as Director of, the University of Toronto’s Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. From 1992 to 2001 he was at MIT as Dibner Professor of the History of Science, where he also directed the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. Buchwald has authored or co-authored five books and edited ten volumes on the history of science and related matters, as well as about seventy articles. At Caltech Buchwald teaches courses in ancient civilization, the origins of religion and in the history of physics. He is a member of the Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences (effectif), and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Philosophical.

There is no charge for this event

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