Western New York
2025 Seminar Series
REALITY
Science & Reality:
Panel Discussion
Associate Professor of Psychology, RIT
Professor of Mathematics & Statistics, RIT
Professor of Physics, U of Rochester
Tuesday March 18 | 7:00PM
Wallace Library, 3rd floor, Room 3560
R I T
K. V. Laurikainen (January 6, 1916–February 13, 1997) was a Finnish nuclear and particle physicist. In addition to his achievements in physics, he wrote extensively about the metaphysical dimension of natural sciences and the limits of human knowledge. The discovery of the wave-particle duality of matter in the 1920s and development of quantum mechanics replacing of causal laws with laws of probability feature prominently in his thinking and writing. Quantum mechanics may have revealed a limit of precision of observations, and thus a limit of scientific methods to describe reality, not to mention explain it. In this panel we discuss the questions of what is real (and why it matters), the role of science in revealing reality, limits of probabilistic laws to allow us to fully understand reality, that is, the hard limit of human knowledge, and the difference between ontology and epistemology.
Representations of Reality in Literature: The Long View: Erich Auerbach and the Uses of Literature
Independent Scholar
March 29 | Noon
R I T Wallace Library, 3rd floor, WAL-3530
A German Jew in exile during World War II, Erich Auerbach traced changing perceptions of the world through two and a half millennia in Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. This pivotal book employs the tools of philology—broad reading, acute analysis, and the meticulous knowledge of several languages—to help readers understand the past through some of its most articulate spokespersons. Tacitly, it also rebukes the Nazis, whose contrived and fragile reality ended the lives of millions and forced countless others to flee their homelands.
Each chapter of Mimesis can stand alone as a brilliant exposition of a cultural moment, often through a contrast of two or more authors. But the book’s through line is that literature offers historical perspective that allows us to orient ourselves in our own time and place.
From Plato's cave to the Man cave: Tekne & Reality in the Visual Arts
This lecture will survey the ways that the visual arts and their attendant technologies, what the Greeks called “tekne,” have shaped our reality throughout history, teaching us to “see” the world in ways previous generations could have never imagined. As demonstrated in his “Allegory of the Cave,” Plato believed the arts were detrimental to society, because they were not representations of true reality and inflamed the senses. Was he wrong? As today’s tekne becomes superficially more and more “real,” society moves further away from the ultimate reality. Despite our boasts of progress, we are still willingly chaining ourselves to our “man cave” walls (and for women, our cameras and the selfie).
Associate Professor, SUNY Brockport
April 9 | 7:00 PM
St. John Fisher University
Wegmans School of Pharmacy room 132
Seminars are free and open to the public
Students that attend the series may request a certificate of completion
Previous Seminar Series: Intersections (2022) Beauty (2022-2023) Happiness (2024)
For more information write to: contact@agathoninstitute.org