The Neuroscientist's Perspective on Space and Time

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"I'm not a physicist at all, so I have to start with an immediate disclaimer here," he says. "What I had been thinking about for the last few months is how the nervous system has really come to be in the course of the evolution of the universe and the evolution of life" He then goes on to ask why we've seen more and more entropy accumulate as the universe has gone on. 'Why does that happen? How do you move toward higher or lower levels of competence without any direction?' The answer comes from thermodynamics but it doesn't always make sense because there are many different ways to arrange things macroscopically.

Our observable universe started out in a highly non-generic state, one of very low entropy, and disorderliness has been growing ever since. How, then, can we account for the appearance of complex systems such as organisms and biospheres? The answer is that very low-entropy states typically appear simple, and high-entropy states also appear simple, and complexity can emerge along the road in between. Today’s podcast is more of a discussion than an interview, in which behavioral neuroscientist Kate Jeffery and I discuss how complexity emerges through cosmological and biological evolution. As someone on the biological side of things, Kate is especially interested in how complexity can build up and then catastrophically disappear, as in mass extinction events.

There were some audio-quality issues with the remote recording of this episode, but loyal listeners David Gennaro and Ben Cordell were able to help repair it. I think it sounds pretty good!

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Kate Jeffery received her Ph.D. in behavioural neuroscience from the University of Edinburgh. She is currently a professor in the Department of Behavioural Neuroscience at University College, London. She is the founder and Director of the Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience at UCL.

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