Main Speakers'
Abstracts :
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Ian Hacking
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Informations about Ian Hacking |
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Read the Summary |
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Why Physics is Easy and People are Hard
Of course physics is not easy. But it has evolved ways to turn the
wonderful "blooming, buzzing" confusion around us, into problems simple enough for us to solve. "Give me a laboratory and I will move the world." A current example will serve: the ultracold, the amazing domain of almost absolute zero. In the past few years it has been turned from the unattainably complex into something with which we can interact. It is teaching us new things about the universe almost every week.
Contrast the enigma of autism. It shows up early in the life of a
child. Something is wrong neurologically, which may have genetic
origins. Autism is devastating for parents. Despite optimistic
announcements, we have no idea what causes it. We have only a little
practical knowledge about how best to help autistic people. It is a
deep psychological and biological problem that may teach us something
about the human brain, the human mind, the human being. But only when
we have overcome its complexity.
Both autism and the ultracold are fascinating. Between them they show that there is not just one kind of complexity, but at least two. The complexity of climatic modelling points to a third. Degrees of complexity in the theory of information and computation are different again. We should not address "complexity" as if it were one thing. We need to understand its many faces. |
