PUBLIC LECTURE: The Way the Mind Works

Lecture Abstract: The developmental processes underlying brain development have been characterised by Gerald Edelman as Neural Darwinism. This fits together in a very coherent way with the present increasing understanding of the importance of the emotional or affective dimension in neuroscience. A synthesis of these two features provides an integrative viewpoint relating psychological issues at the macro level to neurobiological processes structuring neuronal connections at the micro level. George Ellis will describe this proposal, and then look at the various implications of such an integrative viewpoint relating genetically determined affective systems to higher cortical functions.

Speaker Profile: A specialist in general relativity theory, George F R Ellis is considered to be among a handful of the world's leading relativistic cosmologists, including luminaries such as Stephen Hawking and Malcolm MacCallum. His most recent investigations question whether or not there was ever a start to the universe and, indeed, if there is only one universe or many.

George Ellis received his Ph.D. in applied maths and theoretical physics from Cambridge University. In 1973, he co-wrote The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with Stephen Hawking, debuting at a strategic moment in the development of General Relativity Theory. Ellis also pursued cosmological inquiry, writing or co-writing Flat and Curved Space Times (1988), The Dynamical Systems Approach to Cosmology (1996), and Is the Universe Open or Closed? The Density of Matter in the Universe (1997). In 1996 he co-wrote On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Cosmology, Theology and Ethics, a significant contribution to understanding the ethical underpinnings of the universe, one that specifically holds that the moral basis of ethics is the self-sacrificing love known as kenotics. In 2002 he wrote The Universe Around Us: An Integrative View of Science and Cosmology, an electronic book comparing the natural and life sciences.

He was awarded the 2004 Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities.

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