The Science & Society (SS) Series presents topics at the intersection of science, public policy, social issues, and daily life. These programs allow active engagement between policy makers, scientists and program participants.
Previous SS events have covered science in films, Women in STEM, the science of music, science education policy, gender stereotypes, and how curiosity-driven research impacts society.
Distinguished SS speakers have included Cristal Thomas, former Deputy Governor of Illinois; Robbert Dijkgraaf, Ph.D., Director of the Institute for Advanced Study and Leon Levy Professor; and Lawrence Krauss, Ph.D., Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics Department, and Inaugural Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University.
The arts provide a key avenue of insight into ancient human behavior and symbolic evolution. In this lecture we will review some of the evidence and analysis of how our ancestors of the later Ice Age used the material and visual world to create meanings, to develop and solidify social relationships, and to become “effective world settlers.” Continue reading “Making Things Meaningful in the Ice Age”
The Chicago Council on Science and Technology and the Institute for Advanced Study Present “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge”
Robbert Dijkgraaf, Institute for Advanced Study Director and Leon Levy Professor, will discuss the re-publication of “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge” (Princeton University Press), which features IAS Founding Director Abraham Flexner’s classic essay of the same title, first published in Harper’s magazine in 1939. Continue reading “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge”
The brain is what allows us to function, yet we understand little about how it works.
Using electrodes implanted inside people’s brains during surgery we can learn how thinking, deciding, feeling and dreaming works. In this talk, you will learn about the current neuroscience research about the way our neurons code our behavior, and how understanding this can help us grasp the nature of free will and our identity kernels. Continue reading “Hacking the Brain to Find Ourselves”
Running 26.2 miles.
The human body wasn’t exactly designed to accomplish this, let alone very easily.
The toll a marathon takes on a body cannot be taken lightly: the inflammatory storm caused in the body can wreak havoc, affecting myriad bodily functions. In order to achieve this feat of athleticism. one must prepare, with months of training and strategic planning. Continue reading “C2ST Speakeasy: “The Metabolism of a Marathon” with Kelly Kester”
Join us for a private tour of The Plant, a closed-loop collaborative community of food producing business in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood.
In the past decade, we’ve heard a lot about the innate differences between males and females. So we’ve come to accept that boys can’t focus in a classroom and girls are obsessed with relationships: “That’s just the way they’re built.” Continue reading “The Myth of Brain Sex”
