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Marcelo Gleiser is the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy at Dartmouth, a world-renowned theoretical physicist and public intellectual. He’s authored hundreds of technical and nontechnical papers and essays, and six books in English translated to 15 languages, the latest being Great Minds Don’t Think Alike. His popular writings explore the historical, religious, and philosophical roots of science. 

Marcelo is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a recipient of the Presidential Faculty Fellows Award from the White House, and founder and past director of the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement at Dartmouth. He co-founded NPR’s 13.7 Science and Culture blog, and currently writes weekly for BigThink.com. He is the 2019 Templeton Prize laureate, an honor he shares with Mother Tereza, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and scientists Freeman Dyson, Jane Goodall, Francis Collins, and Sir Martin Rees.

In this episode we talk about: 

1. What first drew Marcelo to physics in his childhood
2. On his first encounters with beauty in science
3. Why Marcelo finds asymmetries in the world beautiful
4. Why scientific models can be misleading
5. Can we view science as the absolute truth?
6. On the problem with ultimate theories of everything
7. How can realizing science is limited actually fuel our pursuit for more knowledge?
8. How does our lost connection with nature affect us as a society?
9. What is the relationship between science and spirituality?
10. How can one overcome corrosive institutional pressures in science?

To learn more about Marcelo’s work, visit: https://marcelogleiser.com 

Resources Mentioned:

The blind spot: https://aeon.co/essays/the-blind-spot-of-science-is-the-neglect-of-lived-experience

This episode is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust as part of a grant on the aesthetic dimensions of science (TRT0296). To learn more about them, visit www.templetonreligiontrust.org

This episode is also sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, a global research center located at the University of Southern California. IACS works to create dialogue, spark ideas and sustain academic research on Catholic thought, creative imagination and lived experience. Learn more at iacs.usc.edu

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