Choose timezone
Your profile timezone:
When Bertolt Brecht looked into Heisenberg´s microscope
→
Europe/Zurich
6/2-024 - BE Auditorium Meyrin (CERN)
, , ,
Description
The meeting will be hosted in Vidyo (http://information-technology.web.cern.ch/services/fe/vidyo)
In order to connect from your PC firstcheck if your requirements are o.k. http://stage.xcarab.com/vidyo/syscheck/ . You need a microphone to be connected at least to hear the speaker.
To connect
In order to connect from your PC firstcheck if your requirements are o.k. http://stage.xcarab.com/vidyo/syscheck/ . You need a microphone to be connected at least to hear the speaker.
To connect
- If you want to connect to the system using your CERN account you should register to the Vidyo service (http://information-technology.web.cern.ch/services/fe/vidyo/howto/users-register-vidyo-service).
- Go to the Join Now! link below and click on it. You will be directed to the Vydio Portal.
- You can login as a "guest" or you can use your CERN account.
- If you login as a "guest" you will only need to enteer a random Guest Name and click on Join.
-
If you want to login with your CERN user account, put in your regeistered account (username and password are the same of your standard CERN account)
- You will be proposed to to download and install the Vidyo client, and once done will automatically be connected to the Vidyo room.
- The PIN for the connection is 12345
In the talk, Lukas Mairhofer will discuss the interference between Brecht's theatre and quantum physics as well as its philosophical consequences.
The talk will be introduced by a short theatre play, quoting three scenes of Brecht's 'Life of Galileo', 'Fear and Misery of the Third Reich' and 'Exile Dialogues', which all are in relationship to physics and science philosophy.
In 1926, when the mathematical principles of Quantum mechanics had just been formulated, Bertolt Brecht compares the individual with the entities of modern physics: 'If one of my figures moves in contradictions, this is only because a person cannot be the same in two different moments. The continuous self is a myth. Man is a constantly disintegrating and reconstituting atom.'
The reference to quantum mechanics will be proven to be profound: Brecht seizes on the problem of causality in quantum mechanics to counter the claim of objective necessities and strict determinism in social processes. The thought experiment of Heisenberg's microscope describes an unavoidable influence of the observer on its object. Brecht explicitly applies Heisenberg's microscope to society and to the relation between audience and actors in his theory of theatre. The discretization of the observed process becomes essential for his aesthetic approach, where Brecht works with 'Wirkungsquanten' [quanta of action].
Lukas Mairhofer has studied Philosophy and Physics at the University of Vienna, the University of Helsinki, Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi and UC Berkeley. 2007 graduation in Philosophy from the University of Vienna on 'The notion of inertia in Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica', 2009-2011 Junior Fellow of the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften (Vienna). 2013 graduation in Physics from the University of Vienna on 'Deflectometry in a Kapitza-Dirac-Talbot-Lau Interferometer for matter waves'. Currently fellow of the gruadate school 'Complex Quantum Systems' (University of Vienna) and at the University of Konstanz. PhD-project in Philosophy on Bertolt Brecht's interference with quantum mechanics."
Andrej Peter studies Theatre studies and Philosophy at the University of Bern. Karin Ernst is medical student at the University of Zurich. They have been working together on many theatre projects, be it on acting, directing or screen writing.
