Space, Place and Spirit

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Margaret Wertheim

A talk by Margaret Wertheim: author, feminist and physicist.

Margaret Wertheim, author and science commentator, traces the evolution of concepts about space from the Middle Ages to today. In the medieval era Europeans saw themselves embedded in both physical space and spiritual space – their cosmology included a place not only for the body but also for the soul.

Over the past four hundred years physicists have developed an ever more sophisticated understanding of physical space. Margaret explores early perceptions of humanity’s place and destiny in the universe and suggests that cyberspace lacks a moral dimension and questions whether it can have any truly redemptive significance.