International conference

Eternity between Space and Time: from consciousness to the cosmos (EST)

Convention Center "Orto Botanico" (19-20) / Ruzante Theater (21) May 2022

The international conference "Eternity between Space and Time: from consciousness to the cosmos" (EST) takes on a theme as important as it is impressive: eternity.

We are used to thinking about what is spatially and temporally limited, so it is very difficult to conceive the absolute absence of perimeters, as the concept of eternity implies. The greatest thinkers in history have always grappled with this challenge, which EST has made its own by opening the comparison between scholars of different disciplines, from physics to psychology, from philosophy to theology.

The encounter between different knowledge is always fruitful, as shown by the experience of the middle of the last century, in Palo Alto, California, when physicists, biologists, psychologists, sociologists, mathematicians, cyberneticians made an appointment to work together with a meta-theory that could match the contents of different competences.

From this hybridization the general systems theory was born. It is from experiences like these that the so-called "scientific revolutions" begin.

With the scientific direction of Ines testoni, Fabio Scardigli and Andrea Toniolo, EST brings together Nobel laureates (Penrose and T'Hooft), world-renowned researchers (including Veneziano, Faggin, Plebani, Appel, Cacciari) to discuss how to deal with the concept of eternity in an innovative way.

This could be a first step of authentic and mutual interdisciplinary fertilization that sees the University of Padua, as for eight hundred years, an inexhaustible source of innovation