Freeman Dyson (#301)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Please support the podcast by taking our short listener survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/intotheimpossible For that last four years of his life, Freeman Dyson would spend winters in La Jolla, and work alongside physicists at UC San Diego (as well as the super-secret scientific advisory group known as the JASONS). This video was from my last conversation with Freeman at UC San Diego in 2018. Freeman Dyson was Professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study. Mathematician, physicist, philosopher and iconoclast Freeman Dyson was one of the most influential, far-reaching and unconstrained minds of our age. His explorations -- ranging from fusion power to star-encapsulating energy collectors called 'Dyson Spheres' -- stimulated thinkers around the globe. Boldly speculating ahead trillions of years, Dyson has been called the top theologian of the 20th century. Always unabashed, he has raised controversy from all ends of the political spectrum with unusual ideas about climate change. Dyson came to Cornell University as a graduate student in 1947 and worked with Hans Bethe and Richard Feynman, producing a user-friendly way to calculate the behavior of atoms and radiation. Though he never formally received his PhD, Dyson's work was incredibly influential and diverse. He worked on fields ranging from nuclear reactors, to solid-state physics, to ferromagnetism, astrophysics, and biology, looking for situations where elegant mathematics could be usefully applied. Dyson’s books include Disturbing the Universe, Origins of Life, The Scientist as Rebel, and most recently. Dyson was a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 2000, he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. Topics include Freeman's final book, Maker of Patterns: A Life in Letters:: https://amzn.to/3auNIbG , science and religion, and the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). In 2019 Freeman and Greg Benford (UCSD PhD 1967) had a conversation, moderated by me and hosted at UCSD about the deep future of humanity. Find that video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riPDQ3VJBCI Lastly, please see here for a nice retrospective on Freeman by San Diego Union-Tribune reporter, Gary Robbins: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/science/story/2020-02-28/remembering-famed-physicist-freeman-dyson-and-his-la-jolla-years Connect with Professor Keating: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast Subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show for amazing content from Apple’s best podcast of 2018! https://www.jordanharbinger.com/podcasts Please leave a rating and review of my Podcast: scroll down to the ratings and leave a 5 star rating and review The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast. On Apple devices, click here, https://apple.co/39UaHlB On Spotify it’s here: https://spoti.fi/3vpfXok On Audible it’s here https://tinyurl.com/wtpvej9v Find other ways to rate here: https://briankeating.com/podcast Support the podcast on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating or become a Member on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Science is really not about things we understand.
0:07.3	Science is about things we don't understand.
0:11.5	That's what makes it exciting and in that sense of
0:14.3	course science and religion are not so different that both science and religion are
0:18.8	mysteries we have this amazing ability which we can't explain to find out how nature thinks.
0:28.0	I've always liked to say, I mean, we just are monkeys who came down from the trees rather recently.
0:33.6	And it's amazing that a monkey can write a symphony or invent stream theory or anything else.
0:41.7	I mean, the imagination which we have wasn't required to survive in the
0:46.8	jungle or when we were living up in the trees. Somehow this imagination is a gift from nature which we don't understand like many other things. Welcome everyone to this replay edition of Into the Impossible
1:09.7	to commemorate the third anniversary of the passing of one of our first guests, the great thinker,
1:14.4	theoretical physicist, and author of over a dozen books, the great Freeman Dyson.
1:20.9	He was a frequent visitor to the University of California in San Diego and his mist.
1:25.0	In this far-reaching interview, your host Brian Keating,
1:29.0	probes Freeman and Theism, the evolution of physics in the 20th century, his approach to science, and his thoughts on the origins and evolution of life.
1:38.0	Freeman shares his proclivity for thinking large and small, his inspiration for Dyson spheres fears and the role of science fiction in his work.
1:46.3	He discusses his roles in the search for extraterrestrial techno signatures and
1:50.3	Interstellar Travel. If you appreciate hearing from great minds like Freeman's,
1:56.0	consider adorning us with a five-star rating.
1:59.0	And please, keep in touch with Professor Keating by joining his email list at Brian Keating.com
2:03.8	slash list. And if you have a dot edu domain, we'll send you a bit of space dust in the form of
2:08.9	an authentic meteorite fragment. Please help make the show better by filling out our listener survey at the link in the show notes.
2:17.0	And please, let us know what you think of the show in the form of a review, like this one.
	...

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