Physicist Marcelo Gleiser to speak on ‘Unknowns in Heaven and Earth’ at St Paul’s Cathedral

Theoretical physicist, author and science educator Professor Marcelo Gleiser will deliver the Drawbridge Lecture at St Paul’s Cathedral on Tuesday 22 May 2018, in a lecture entitled ‘Unknowns in Heaven and Earth’. The lecture will call for a re-engagement between the sciences and the humanities, including religion and the arts. ‘We must confront the unknowns in heaven and earth, many of them crucial to our shared future on this planet,’ says Marcelo Gleiser, who is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.

Entry to the lecture is by free ticket. Please register here

The Drawbridge Lecture is a lecture series of the Christian Evidence Society. Previous speakers have included Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Russian dissident poet Irina Ratushinskaya, and Professor Alister McGrath. The 2018 lecture will be followed by a conversation between Marcelo Gleiser and the Revd Andrew Pinsent, Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at Oxford University.

Says Marcelo Gleiser: ‘Having pursued my postgraduate studies in London, I often visited St Paul’s to sit in silence and experience a deep sense of reverence. I couldn’t be more excited to come back after so many years to share some of my thoughts on science, religion, and our search for meaning under its hallowed dome. In our fractioned and contentious world, there is much to do, walls to bring down, in particular those between a materialistic and a faith-based view of reality. At the center stands our humanity, often perplexed by existence. I hope you will join me in this meditation on how to face what we know and what we don’t know with intellectual courage and spiritual humility.’

In books such as The Island of Knowledge (2014) and A Tear at the Edge of Creation (2010), Marcelo Gleiser has argued for a positive view of the relationship between science and the humanities, incuding religion, philosophy and the arts.

The Drawbridge Lecture, ‘Unknowns in Heaven and Earth’, takes place in the Crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral on Tuesday 22 May 2018, starting at 6.30pm.

Entry to the lecture is by free ticket. Please register here

Photo of particle collision: CERN